Tristan Hughes

takes them time, it means losses, it means risks.

In all the fights of Alexander's campaigns, right from the beginning through, it is striking how there's always a very high proportion of wounded to the number of dead.

which does suggest that quite a high proportion of his men, like Alexander, are taking hits and they are recovering.

So they're going on with wounds to the arms, to the legs, to the head, the memory of it.

And there will probably tend to be more and more wounded and killed amongst the men who go first, the first up the ladder, the first through the open gateway.

So your most aggressive, your sort of real cutting edge of the army just gets ground down.

It's an interesting thing because when you think they're basically wearing a cuirass of some sort, a helmet, perhaps greaves, it does seem very successfully to protect the vital organs against the weaponry that's deployed against it, whether arrows, spears, bows.

So there are, at some of the times where it's mentioned, there are 10 times as many wounded as there are fatalities.

So a lot of people are getting hurt.

They are recovering and coming back eventually.

But, you know, they've got their scars.

And there may well be mental ones as well as the physical ones.

So it's wearing everybody down.

And it's hard.

It's arduous.

It isn't pretty.

It's ugly fighting.

But they keep doing it and they keep winning, but at a cost.

I don't know how large we can say it is.

It's not on the scale of Issus or Garibamela.