Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander 9.8.7

9.8.7

Ergo universi ad eos, qui in armis erant, currant furere clamitantes et cum dis proelium inituros: navigia non posse numerari, quae invictos viros veherent. Tantumque in exercitum suorum intulere terroris, ut legatos mitterent gentem dedituros.

They had elected three generals renowned for their valour and military skill; but when those who lived near the river, the banks of which were most thickly studded with their villages, saw the whole river as far as the eye could reach covered with ships, and saw besides the many thousands of men and their gleaming arms, they took fright at the strange spectacle and imagined that an army of the gods and a second Father Bacchus, a name famous in that country, were coming into their midst. The shouts of the soldiers and the noise of the oars, together with the confused voices of the sailors encouraging each other, so filled their alarmed ears that they all ran off to the army and cried out to the soldiers that they would be mad to offer battle to the gods, that the number of ships carrying these invincible warriors was past all counting. By these reports they created such a terror in the ranks of their own army that they sent ambassadors commissioned to surrender their whole nation to Alexander.