Before establishing his empire, Alexander longed to survey the unknown
lands further eastwards, and he led his army down the long, terrible
Khybar pass to the banks of the Indus, where he fought a great battle
with an Indian king called Porus, the bravest enemy he had yet met. At
last Porus was defeated and made prisoner. He came to Alexander as if he
were visiting him, and Alexander received him with like courtesy, and
asked if he had any request to make. "None, save to be treated as a
king," said Porus. "That I shall do, for my own sake," said Alexander,
and the two became friends. In this country of the Indus, Alexander
received the submission of thirty-five cities, and founded two more, one
of which he named Bucephala, in honour of his good horse Bucephalus,
which died in the middle of a battle without a wound.
Alexander longed to press on and see all the wonders of India, and the
great river Ganges, but his Macedonians were weary of the march, and
absolutely refused to go any further, so that he was obliged to turn
back, in hopes of collecting another army, and going to the very shores
of the Eastern Ocean.
He would not, however, return by the way he had gone, through the
mountains, but he built ships on the river Jhelum, a tributary of the
Indus, with which to coast along the shores to the mouth of the
Euphrates. There were forests of fir and pine to supply the wood, but
their inhabitants, the apes and monkeys, collected in such force on the
top of a hill near at hand, that the Greeks thought they were human
enemies, and were about to attack them, till a native explained the
mistake.
They met more dangerous enemies when they came to Mooltan, the city of a
tribe called the Malli. This was a fort shut in by a strong outer wall,
within which trees were growing. Alexander planted a ladder against the
wall, and mounted it first, but while his men were climbing up after him,
it broke, and he stood alone on the wall, a mark for all the darts of the
enemy. His guards stretched up their arms, begging him to leap back to
them, but he scorned to do this, and jumped down within, among the enemy.
They gave back for a moment, but, on finding that he was quite alone,
closed in upon him. He set his back against the wall, under a fig-tree,
and slew with his sword all who approached. Then they formed into a
half-circle, and shot at him with barbed arrows, six feet long. By this
time a few of his guards had climbed up the wall, and were coming down to
his help, at the moment when an arrow pierced his breast, and he sank
down in a kneeling posture, with his brow on the rim of his shield, while
his men held their shields over him till the rest could come to their
aid, and he was taken up as one dead, and carried out on his shield,
while all within the fort were slaughtered in the rage of the
Macedonians. When the king had been carried to his tent, the point of
the arrow was found to be firmly fixed in his breast-bone, and he bade
Perdiccas, his friend, cut a gash wide enough to allow the barbs to pass
before drawing it out. He refused to be held while this was done, but
kept himself perfectly still, until he fainted, and lay for many hours
between life and death; nor was it for a week that he could even bear to
be placed on board a galley, and lie on the deck under an awning as it
went down the river, whilst his men were in raptures to see him restored
to them.
He had to halt for some weeks, and then proceed along the Indus, until he
reached the Indian Ocean, where the Greeks were delighted to see their
old friend the sea, though they were amazed at the tides, having never
seen any in their own Mediterranean. Alexander now sent an old
commander, Nearchus, to take charge of the ships along the coast, while
he himself marched along inland, to collect provisions and dig wells for
their supply; but the dreadful, bare, waterless country, covered with
rocks, is so unfit for men that his troops suffered exceedingly, and
hardly anyone has been there since his time. He shared all the
distresses of his soldiers, and once, when a little water, found with
great difficulty, was brought him as he plodded along in the scorching
heat of a noonday sun, he gave heartfelt thanks, but in the sight of all
poured out the water, not choosing to take to himself what all could not
share. In the midst the guides lost their way, and Alexander had to
steer their course for a week by his own instinct, and the sun and stars,
until after sixty days he reached a place which seems to be Bunpore, part
of the Persian empire, where his difficulties were over, and Nearchus
by-and-by joined him, after a wonderful voyage, of which he wrote an
account, which has not come down to our times, so that we only know that
no Greek believed in it. Alexander meant to try if he could sail through
this strange sea, and return to Greece by the Pillars of Hercules, as we
now know would have been quite possible.
He found, when he came back to Persia, that the governors he had left in
the cities had thought that he was sure to perish in India, and had
plundered shamefully, so that he had to punish severely both Greeks and
Persians; but then, to make the two nations friends, he held an immense
wedding feast at Susa, when eighty Greek bridegrooms married eighty
Persian brides. Alexander himself and his friend Hephaestion had the two
daughters of Darius, and the other ladies were daughters of satraps. The
wedding was thus conducted: in one great hall eighty double seats were
placed, and here the bridegrooms sat down to feast, till the brides
entered, in jewelled turbans, wide linen drawers, silken tunics, and
broad belts. Alexander rose, took his princess by the hand, and led her
to his seat, and all the rest followed his example--each led his lady to
his seat, kissed her, and placed her beside him, then cut a loaf of bread
in two, poured out wine, and ate and drank with her.
[Picture: Supposed Walls of Babylon--From an Ancient Coin]
Hephaestion died soon after, at Ecbatana, of a fever he had not taken
care of in time. Alexander caused his corpse to be brought to Babylon,
and burnt on a funeral pile; while he himself was in an agony of grief,
and sent to ask the oracle of Ammon whether his friend might not be
worshipped as a hero-god. He himself had already demanded divine honours
from the Greeks. The Athenians obeyed, but secretly mocked; and the
Spartans grimly answered, "If Alexander will be a god, let him."
Alexander was at Babylon, newly fortifying it, and preparing it to be the
capital of his mighty empire. He held his court seated on the golden
throne of the Persian Shahs, with a golden pine over it, the leaves of
emeralds and the fruit of carbuncles; and here he received embassies from
every known people in Europe and Asia, and stood at the highest point of
glory that man has ever reached, not knowing how near the end was.
Ever since Cyrus had taken Babylon by turning the Euphrates out of its
course, the ground had been ill drained, swampy, and unhealthy; and
before setting out on further conquests, Alexander wished to put all this
in order again, and went about in a boat on the canals to give
directions. His broad-brimmed hat was blown off, and lodged among the
weeping willows round some old Assyrian's tomb; and though it was brought
back at once, the Greeks thought its having been on a tomb an evil omen,
but the real harm was in the heat of the sun on his bare head, which he
had shorn in mourning for Hephaestion.
He meant to go on an expedition to Arabia, and offered a great sacrifice,
but at night fever came on. The Greeks at home, who hated him, said it
was from drinking a huge cup of wine at one draught; but this is almost
certain not to be true, since his doctors have left a daily journal of
his illness, and make no mention of any such excess. He daily grew
worse, worn out by his toils and his wounds, and soon he sank into a
lethargy, in which he hardly spoke. Once he said something about his
empire passing to the strongest, and of great strife at his funeral
games, and at last, when his breath was almost gone, he held out his
signet ring to Perdiccas, the only one of his old friends who was near
him. He was only thirty-three years old, and had made his mighty
conquests in twelve years, when he thus died in 323. The poor old
Persian queen, Sisygambis, so grieved for him that she refused all food,
sat weeping in a corner, and died a few days after him.
[Picture: Site of Susa, Ancient Metropolis of Persia]