Hegesias
…. The subject which the sophist is treating is as follows. Alexander, when besieging Gaza, a strongly fortified position in Syria, is wounded during the assault and captures the place after some time. Carried away by anger he massacres all the surviving inhabitants, allowing his Macedonians to kill anyone they should meet; and having captured their commander, a man who was highly honoured for his position and his appearance, he gives orders that he should be bound alive to a war-chariot and the horses should be driven at full speed before the eyes of all; and he kills him in this way. No one could have a story of more terrible suffering to tell, or one containing more visual horror. Has our sophist portrayed this scene in a dignified and elevated manner, or a mean and ridiculous one? It is worthwhile to see:
'The King advanced leading his division (syntagma). Some plan had been formed by the enemy commanders to meet him as he approached; for they had come to the conclusion that, if they overcame this one man, they would rout his host at the same time. This hope led them on to daring, so that never before had Alexander been in danger to such a degree. One of the enemy fell on his knees, and Alexander thought he had done so in order to ask for mercy. Having allowed him to approach, he narrowly avoided the thrust of a sword (xiphos) which the man carried under the flaps of his corselet (pteruges), so that the blow was not mortal. Alexander himself dispatched the man with a blow to the head from his sabre (macheira), but the king's followers were inflamed with spontaneous anger. In fact, so completely did the man's insane daring banish pity from the minds of everyone who saw or heard of it, that six thousand barbarians were cut down at the trumpet signal which followed. Baetis himself however, was brought before the king alive by Leonatos and Philotas. And Alexander, seeing that he was corpulent and tall and savage-looking ( for he was black in colour too) , was seized with loathing for his appearance as well as for his designs against his life, and ordered that a bronze ring be drawn through his feet and that he should be dragged round, naked. Pounded with the pain of passing over many rough pieces of ground, he set up a scream. And it was just this detail which I mention that brought people together. The pain racked him, and he kept on yelling like a barbarian, begging Alexander for mercy and calling him 'Lord' (despoten); and his peculiar language made them laugh. His fat swelling flesh suggested another creature, a Babylonian beast of ample proportions. So that the troops made sport of him, mocking with the coarse mockery (hubris) of the camp an enemy who was hateful in appearance and clumsy in his manner.'