The Persians lost by the battle 20,000 of their best footmen, and one or two thousand horse.  Among their slain the proportion of men of rank was unusually large.  The list included Spithridates, satrap of Lydia, Mithrobarzanes, governor of Cappadocia, Pharnaces, a brother-in-law, and Mithridates, a son-in-law of Darius, Arbupales, a grandson of Artaxerxes Mnemon, Omares, the commander of the mercenaries, Niphates, Petines, and Ehoesaces, generals.  The Greek loss is said to have been exceedingly small.  Aristobulus made the total number of the slain thirty-four; Arrian gives it as one hundred and fifteen, or a little over.  It has been suspected that even the latter estimate is below the truth; but the analogy furnished by the other great victories of the Greeks over the Persians tends rather to confirm Arrian’s statement.

The battle of the Granicus threw open to Alexander the whole of Asia Minor.  There was no force left in the entire country that could venture to resist him, unless protected by walls.  Accordingly, the Macedonian operations for the next twelve months, or during nearly the whole space that intervened between the battles of the Granicus and of Issus, consist of little more than a series of marches and sieges.  The reader of Persian history will scarcely wish for an account of these operations in detail.  Suffice it to say that Alexander rapidly overran Lydia, Ionia, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Phrygia, besieged and took Miletus, Halicarnassus, Marmareis, and Sagalassus, and received the submission of Dascyleium, Sardis, Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, the Lycian Telmisseis, Pinara, Xanthus, Patara, Phaselis, Side, Aspendus, Celaenee, and Gordium.  This last city was the capital of Phrygia; and there the conqueror for the first time since his landing gave himself and his army a few months’ rest during the latter part of the winter.

With the first breath of spring his forces were again in motion.  Hitherto anxious with respect to the state of things on the coast and in Greece, he had remained in the western half of Asia Minor, within call of his friends in Macedonia, at no time distant more than about 200 miles from the sea.  Now intelligence reached him which made him feel at liberty to advance into the interior of Asia.  Memnon the Rhodian fell sick and died in the early spring of B.C. 333.  It is strange that so much should have depended on a single life; but it certainly seems that there was no one in the Persian service who, on Memnon’s death, could replace him—­no one fitted for the difficult task of uniting Greeks and Asiatics together, capable of influencing and managing the one while he preserved the confidence of the other.  Memnon’s death disconcerted all the plans of the Great King, who till it occurred had fully intended to carry the war into his enemy’s country.  It induced Darius even to give up the notion of maintaining a powerful fleet, and to transfer to the land service the most efficient of his naval forces.  At the same time it set Alexander free to march wherever he liked, liberating him from the keen anxiety, which he had previously felt, as to the maintenance of the Macedonian power in Europe.