“When Alexander burst into Asia, however, no opposition could stop him.” Collier.
“In 331 b.c., refusing an offer from Darius to cede all lands west of the Euphrates, he crossed the Euphrates and Tigris from northern Syria. With an army reinforced to over 40,000 men, he met the full force of Darius’ empire in the plains at Gaugamela, sixty miles west of Arbela (modern Erbil), even though the name Arbela is sometimes given to the battle. Enormously outnumbered, but with consummate skill, he advanced obliquely towards Darius’ left wing, holding off outflanking cavalry attacks with flank guards of his Greek and Thracian troops, while Thracian javelin men in advance brought down the horses of a Persian scythed-chariot charge.
“A gap opened between the Persian center and left as the Persian formation tried to conform to his flankward movement, and into it Alexander charged with his 2,000 ‘companions’ or horse guards, supported on their left by the main force of his infantry pikemen, the Macedonian phalanx. Darius’ best infantry were cut to pieces in a short, fierce struggle, and he, as at Issus, fled. The date was probably October 7, not October 11 as has often been claimed.” Collier.
Verse 4 states that “his empire will be broken up and parceled out toward the four winds of heaven. It will not go to his descendants, nor will it have the power he exercised, because his empire will be uprooted and given to others.”
How true that prophecy was. When Alexander died, “he had still made no arrangements for the government of the empire, even of Macedonia itself, in the event of his death or disablement (surely a heavy count against him); and fighting between his generals, in which the empire was dismembered and his posthumous son and only child perished along with Roxane, began within two years.” Collier