After the best part of a year, Alexander could finally swing west to Egypt. The sieges of Tyre and Gaza had cost him dearly in time as well as manpower, and he sent Amyntas, commander of the phalanx corps, to Macedonia for more troops. The winter timing of Amyntas’s mission shows the desperate situation. It was doubly dangerous in the ancient world to travel by sea in winter, but so urgent was Alexander’s need for men that Amyntas’s safety came second.