Very similar are his statements about Alexander. He says that when he crossed to Asia he had forty thousand foot and four thousand five hundred horse,
and that when he was on the point of invading <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Cilicia&groupId=467&placeId=350">Cilicia</a> he was joined by a further force of five thousand foot and eight hundred horse.
Suppose we deduct from this total three thousand foot and three hundred horse, a liberal allowance for those absent on special service, there still remain forty-two thousand foot and five thousand horse.
Assuming these numbers, he tells us that when Alexander heard the news of Darius\'s arrival in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Cilicia&groupId=467&placeId=350">Cilicia</a> he was a hundred stades away and had already traversed the pass.
In consequence he turned and marched back through the pass with the phalanx in front, followed by the cavalry, and last of all the baggage-train.
Immediately on issuing into the open country he re-formed his order, passing to all the word of command to form into phalanx, making it at first thirty-two deep, changing this subsequently to sixteen deep, and finally as he approach the enemy to eight deep.
These statements are even more absurd than his former ones. For with the proper intervals for marching order a stade, when the men are sixteen deep, will hold sixteen hundred, each man being at a distance of six feet from the next.
It is evident, then, that ten stades will hold sixteen thousand men and twenty stades twice as many.
From all this it is quite plain that when Alexander made his army sixteen deep the line necessarily extended for twenty stades, and this left all the cavalry and ten thousand of the infantry over.
Walbank Commentary