and returned to Zariaspa (Baktra?), where he spent the winter. Sentence
was here pronounced upon Bessos, who was mutilated and then sent to
Ekbatana for execution. Alexander’s European forces, as the narrative
has shown, were constantly undergoing diminution, not only by losses
in the field, but also by his leaving Macedonian veterans to garrison
important strongholds, or to form the nucleus of the population of the
cities he founded. He therefore from time to time sent requisitions
for recruits to Macedonia and Greece, and as these were adequately met
the fighting quality of his troops was always maintained at the same
high level. During his stay at Baktra a great number of such recruits
arrived, and filled up the large gap which the late disaster had made
in his ranks. There came thither also ambassadors from the King of the
Skythians, bringing presents and the offer of a marriage alliance, which
was declined. The King of the Khorasmians, moreover, whose dominions,
according to his own account, bordered on the land of the Kolchians and
the Amazons, came in person and offered his services to Alexander should
he wish to subdue the nations to the north and west of the Kaspian Sea.
Alexander, however, being now anxious to enter India, declined his offers
for the present.
The accounts of his next two campaigns are confused, and not always
mutually consistent. According to Curtius, when he moved from Zariaspa,
he crossed the river Ochos (now the Aksou), and came to a city called
Marginia, probably the _Marginan_ of our times. Arrian, however, makes
no mention of this expedition. The Baktrians were still imperfectly
subjugated, and the Sogdians, notwithstanding the severe chastisement
they had received, were again up in arms against his authority. He
therefore left Krateros to deal with the former, while he marched in
person against Marakanda. On his way thither he performed another of
his marvellous achievements, the capture of a fortress perched on the
summit of a steep, lofty, and strongly fortified rock, held by a powerful
garrison, and deemed to be impregnable. He captured it, nevertheless.
Within this stronghold Oxyartes, a Baktrian chief, had for safety
deposited his wife and daughters. Roxana, the eldest daughter, was, next
to the wife of Darius, the most beautiful of all Asiatic women, and
Alexander was so captivated with her charms that he did not hesitate to
make her his wife.
Spitamenes, meanwhile, assisted by the Massagetai, one of the Skythian
tribes that ranged over the Khorasmian desert, made a devastating
irruption into Baktria, and though he was in the end repulsed by
Krateros, escaped into the desert beyond the reach of pursuit. Fearing
he might renew his attack in some other quarter, Alexander hastened to
Marakanda to settle the province and provide for its security against
future hostile incursions. To this end he directed a number of new towns
to be founded and planted with Macedonian, Greek, and native colonists.
In the course of this expedition he came to the Royal Park at Bazaria
(perhaps Bokhara), and while hunting within its precincts killed a lion
of extraordinary size with his own hand.
On his return to Marakanda a tragic incident occurred—his murder of
Kleitos, from whom he had received some provocation in the course of
a drunken revel. As he was tenderly attached to Kleitos, who was the
brother of his nurse, and had saved his life at the Granîkos, his remorse
for this frenzied deed knew no bounds at the time, and gave him many
bitter moments in his after life.
His next expedition led him towards the western frontier of the province,
where he reduced the district called Xenippa, which lay on the skirts
of the Noura mountains—a range that runs from east to west about ten
miles north of Bokhara. As Spitamenes was supposed to be in the desert
not far off, he left Koinos in that part of the country with orders to
capture that audacious rebel, while he himself withdrew to Nautaka,
where he intended to pass the winter. This place was situated in a
fertile oasis between Samarkand and the Oxus, and must have occupied the
site of Kurshee or Kesh, noted afterwards as the birthplace of Timour.
Spitamenes, meanwhile, attacked Koinos, but was defeated after a severe
struggle, and driven back into the desert. His Skythian confederates,
fearing their own country might be invaded, cut off his head and sent
it to Alexander; and so perished the most active, bold, and persevering
antagonist that he had as yet encountered in Asia, one of the few who
resolutely and to the last scorned to bend his neck to a foreign yoke.
With the first return of spring (B.C. 327) he moved from his winter
quarters to invade the Paraitakai, who, as their name indicates,
inhabited a mountainous district, and were, some think, a branch of
the widespread Takka tribe, the name of which appears in Taxila, which
designated a great capital it possessed in India. In the country of
the Paraitakai, which lay to the east of Baktria and Sogdiana, there
was another great rock fortress, which, like the Sogdian, was deemed
impregnable. It was the main stronghold of a chief called Khorienês,
who, after holding out for some time, was persuaded by Oxyartes to cast
himself on the generosity of the great conqueror, a quality of which
he had himself a very satisfactory experience. Khoriênes therefore
surrendered, and was rewarded by being confirmed in his government.
Alexander after this success proceeded to Baktra in order to make
preparation for his expedition into India, but left Krateros to reduce
such of the tribes as still held out for independence. At Baktra
another tragedy was enacted. The court pages, at the instigation of
one of their number, called Hermolaos, who had been subjected to some
degrading punishment, conspired against the king, who narrowly escaped
assassination. The pages, who all belonged to families of high rank, were
tortured to extract confessions of their guilt, and were then stoned
to death by the Macedonians. The confessions indicated, it is said,
that Kallisthenes, a literary man attached to the court who had been
permitted, on the recommendation of his kinsman Aristotle, to accompany
the expedition, not only knew of the existence of the plot, but had
encouraged the pages to persist in their design. He had rendered himself
obnoxious to the king by the freedom with which he expressed his opinions
and by his opposition to the Persian fashions introduced into the court,
and his doom was sealed. Accounts differ as to the time and mode of his
death. According to Ptolemy he was tortured and then crucified, but
Aristoboulos and Chares agree in stating that he was carried about in
chains and died at last of disease in India.
The summer had set in when Alexander set out from Baktra on his Indian
expedition. He crossed the chain of Paropamisos in ten days, and halted
at the Alexandreia which he had founded at their base to settle the
affairs of that city and the surrounding district. The narrative of his
campaigns, from the time he left this place till he led his army into
Karmania, after its disastrous march through the burning sands of the
Gedrosian desert, is given in full detail in the translations which form
the body of this work. His march, which on his emerging from the desert
lay through the beautiful and fertile province of Karmania, resembled a
festive procession, and the licence in which he permitted his soldiers
to indulge was meant no less to obliterate the memory of their terrible
sufferings in the desert than to celebrate according to Bacchic fashion
and example the conquest of India.
In Karmania, Alexander received intelligence that Philip, who had been
left in command of all the country west of the Indus had been slain
in a mutiny by the Greek mercenaries under his command, but that the
Macedonian troops had quelled the mutiny and put the assassins to death.
He did not at the time appoint any successor to Philip, but empowered
Eudêmos and Taxiles to take temporary charge of the affairs of the
satrapy. Before he left Karmania he was rejoined by Krateros who brought
in safety the division of the army which he had led from the Indus by way
of Arachôsia, Drangiana, and the Karmanian desert. Nearchos also visited
his camp, which at the time was a five days’ journey distant from the
sea, and communicated the welcome news that the fleet had arrived in
safety at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The admiral was instructed to
continue the voyage by sailing up the Gulf to the mouth of the Tigris,
while Hephaistiôn was put in command of the main army with orders to
proceed to Sousa along the maritime parts of Persis and Sousiana. The
king himself with a small division took the upper road which led to that
capital through Pasargadai and Persepolis. In Persis things had not gone
well in his absence. The satrap whom he had appointed was dead, and his
office had been usurped by Orxines, a Persian of great wealth and high
rank, against whom many acts of violence and oppression were charged.
He found also that the tomb of Cyrus had been desecrated and plundered,
and this outrage excited his violent indignation, since he looked upon
that conqueror as the founder of the vast empire which was now his own.
He could not discover the perpetrators, but had to content himself with
ordering the violated sepulchre to be properly restored. On reaching
Persepolis he investigated the charges against Orxines, and finding them
proved, put him to death, and gave his satrapy to Peukestas, one of the
commanders of his bodyguard.
In Persis the health of Kalanos, the Indian gymnosophist, who, at
Alexander’s request, had abjured the ascetic life and followed him
from India, began to fail, and, as he chose rather to die than suffer
the infirmities of age, he announced that it was his intention to
burn himself. The king attempted to dissuade him, but finding that he
was inexorably bent on self-destruction, ordered a funeral pyre to be
prepared for him, and all the arrangements connected with his cremation
to be superintended by Ptolemy. On the day appointed the devotee ascended
the pyre and perished in its flames, exhibiting throughout a serene
fortitude and self-possession which greatly astonished the Macedonians
who attended in throngs to witness this strange spectacle. Strabo makes
Pasargadai to be the scene of this incident, but Diodôros, Sousa, and
with more probability, since we know that Nearchos was an eye-witness of
the burning.
Alexander reached Sousa in the beginning of the year 324 B.C., and
remained there for a considerable time, regulating the affairs of his new
dominions. One of his great objects was to fuse together as far as was
practicable his European with his Asiatic subjects; and to this end he
assigned to some eighty of his generals Asiatic wives, giving with each
an ample dowry. He took himself a second wife, Barsinê, called sometimes
Stateira, the eldest daughter of Darius, and, it is said, also a third,
Parysatis, the daughter of Ochos, one of the predecessors of Darius.
About 10,000 Macedonians followed the example of their superiors, and
all who did so received presents from their royal master. Carrying out
this object in another form, he enrolled a large number of Asiatics
among his European troops. These new schemes were so bitterly resented
by the better class of his Macedonian veterans that they rose against
him in a mutiny which he had no little difficulty in quelling. About
10,000 of these veterans were dismissed, and they returned to Europe
under the command of Krateros. Towards the close of the year he went
to Ekbatana, and there he lost his chief favourite Hêphaistiôn, who
succumbed to an attack of fever. His grief at this bereavement knew no
bounds, and showed itself in acts which seem copied from those wherewith
Achilles demonstrated his passionate sense of the loss of his beloved
Patroklos. From Ekbatana he marched back towards Babylon, and was met
on the way by ambassadors from all parts of the known world, who came
to do homage to the greatest of all kings and conquerors, and also by
a deputation of Chaldaean priests who warned him of danger if at that
time he should enter Babylon. He entered it nevertheless, though with
gloomy forebodings, early in the spring of 323 B.C. As this city was the
best point of communication between the eastern and western parts of his
dominions, he had selected it to be the capital of his vast empire, and
accordingly took measures immediately on his return for the improvement
of its internal condition, for the drainage of the swampy lands in its
neighbourhood which rendered its climate unhealthy, and also for removing
obstacles to the safe and easy navigation of the great river by which it
communicated with the sea.
His ambition being still, however, unsated, he meditated fresh conquests,
which, if effected, would have made him master of the world from the
shores of the Atlantic to the Eastern Ocean. But his end was now drawing
near. The climate of Babylon was malarious, and as his spirits were
depressed both by his loss of Hêphaistiôn and by superstitious fears, he
was less able to withstand its malignant influences. He caught a fever,
and having aggravated its virulence by indulging in convivial excesses,
was cut off in June 323 B.C. at the age of thirty-three, and after he
had reigned for nearly thirteen years. “So passed from the earth,” says
Bishop Thirlwall, “one of the greatest of her sons: great above most
for what he was in himself, and not, as many who have borne the title,
for what was given him to effect. Great, not merely in the vast compass
and the persevering ardour of his ambition ... but in the course which
his ambition took, in the collateral aims which ennobled and purified
it, so that it almost grew into one with the highest of which man is
capable, the desire of knowledge and the love of good. In a word, great
as one of the benefactors of his kind.... It may be truly asserted that
his was the first of the great monarchies founded in Asia that opened a
prospect of progressive improvement, and not of continual degradation, to
its subjects: it was the first that contained any element of moral and
intellectual progress.” This estimate, high as it is, appears to be just
and sober, and to hold a due balance between the extravagant eulogiums
and the damnatory criticisms of other writers such as Mitford, Williams,
and Droysen on the one hand, and Niebuhr, Sainte-Croix, and Grote on the
other, who all alike allowed their ethical and political proclivities to
bias their judgment.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.—ALEXANDER THE GREAT.]
Alexander was dignified both in his appearance and in his demeanour.
He was not above the ordinary height, but his frame was well built and
extremely muscular. “He was very handsome in person,” says Arrian,
“devoted to exertion, of an active mind and a most heroic courage,
tenacious of honour, ever ready to meet dangers, indifferent to the
pleasures of the body, and strictly observant of his religious duties.”
Plutarch tells us that the statues of Alexander which most resembled
him were those of Lysippos, who alone had his permission to represent
him in marble, and who best hit off the turn of his head, which leaned a
little to one side.[20] He adds that he was of a fair complexion, with
a tinge of red in his face and upon his breast, and that his breath and
whole person were so fragrant that they perfumed his under garments. In
another passage, describing Alexander’s habits, the same author says that
he was very temperate in eating, and that he was not so much addicted
to wine as he was thought to be. What gave rise to this opinion was his
practice of spending a great deal of time at table. The time, however,
was passed rather in talking than drinking, every cup introducing some
long discussion. Besides, he never sat long at table except when he had
abundance of leisure. There was always a magnificence at his table, and
the expense rose with his fortune till it came to the fixed sum of 10,000
drachms for each entertainment. As in his dying moments he had given
orders that his body should be conveyed to Ammôn in the Libyan oasis,
it was embalmed, and after more than two years had been spent in making
preparations for its removal, it was conveyed with vast pomp in a car of
wondrous magnificence to Egypt, where it was entombed first at Memphis,
and afterwards, by the authority of Ptolemy,[21] at Alexandreia, the
greatest of all the cities which he had founded and called after his name.
Alexander was so prematurely cut off, and was besides so much occupied
before his death with organising fresh expeditions, both maritime and
military, that he had no time to improve or complete the measures which
he had initiated for promoting the fusion and securing the permanent
unification of the multifarious races comprised in his empire. Had he
been vouchsafed a longer term of life, it seems probable that he would
have succeeded in welding so firmly together all the parts of his
dominions that centuries might have elapsed before they became again
disintegrated; but the dissensions which speedily broke out between his
great captains, originating in their ambition to rule with independent
authority, shattered his empire and embroiled it in wars which lasted for
nearly half a century.
Soon after his death Perdikkas, to whom in his last moments he had given
his signet-ring, was appointed to conduct the government on behalf of
the royal family, which was held to consist of Arrhidaios, the king’s
half-brother, a man of weak intellect and character, and Queen Roxana,
who a few months after her husband’s death gave birth to a son who
received the name of Alexander Aigos. The satrapies were then divided
among the leading generals. Perdikkas soon began to use his position
for the furtherance of his own selfish designs, and having secured the
support of Eumenês, attempted to crush his colleagues and assume all
power to himself. He marched first into Egypt against Ptolemy, but on
the banks of the Nile he was defeated and slain in a mutiny of his own
men 321 B.C. Tidings soon afterwards reached the army that Krateros had
been defeated and slain in fighting against Eumenês while marching to
assist Ptolemy. The office of regent was upon this offered to Ptolemy,
who declined its acceptance, as he held that the satrapies should become
independent kingdoms. The army then conferred that office, along with the
tutelage of the royal family, on Antipater of Macedonia, who had crossed
over into Asia to oppose Perdikkas. A new partition of the provinces,
which did not differ much from the former, was then made at a place in
Upper Syria called Triparadeisos. Under this arrangement Ptolemy held
Egypt; Lysimachos, Thrace; Antigonos, Phrygia or Central Asia Minor;
Seleukos, Babylon; Antigenes, Sousiana; Peukestas, Persia; Peithôn,
son of Krateros, Media; Nearchos, Pamphylia and Lycia; Arrhidaios,
Hellespontine Phrygia; Antipater and Polysperchon, Macedonia and
Greece. Eumenês still held the satrapy at first assigned to him—that
of Kappadokia, Paphlagonia, and Pontos—and was now the leader of those
who had been the adherents of Perdikkas. He was supported by Alketas,
the brother of Perdikkas, Peukestas, Attalos, Antigenes, and by the
influence of Olympias, the mother of Alexander. Besides Perdikkas and
Krateros, two other great generals had by this time disappeared from the
scene—Meleager, who had been cut off by Perdikkas, and Leonnatos, who had
been slain in the Lamian war.
Antigonos was appointed by Antipater to conduct the war against Eumenês,
and after many fluctuations of fortune at last captured him and put
him to death. This happened early in the year 316 B.C. The fortunes of
Alexander’s empire were then left at the disposal of five men—Antigonos,
Lysimachos, Ptolemy, Seleukos, and Kassander, the son of Antipater, who
had died in the year 319 B.C. The ambition and ever-increasing power of
Antigonos soon led his colleagues to form a coalition against him, and
a long series of hostilities followed. In the end Antigonos and his son
Dêmêtrios, surnamed Poliorkêtês, were defeated by the confederates in
the battle of Ipsos in 301 B.C. Antigonos fell on the field of battle,
and the greater part of his dominions fell to the share of Seleukos,
whose cavalry and elephants had been chiefly instrumental in winning the
victory. He received as his reward a great part of Asia Minor as well
as the whole of Syria from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. Ptolemy
obtained Phoenicia and Hollow Syria, but these provinces afterwards gave
rise to frequent wars between succeeding kings of Egypt and Syria. A war
in later times broke out between Seleukos and Lysimachos, in which the
latter was slain in 281 B.C. His kingdom of Thrace was afterwards merged
in that of Macedonia. Thus the empire of Alexander, after a period of
incessant wars continued for upwards of forty years, was divided between
the powerful monarchs of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.—DIODOTOS.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.—ANTIOCHOS THE GREAT.]
The successors of Seleukos were unable to retain hold of their remote
eastern dependencies. About the middle of the third century B.C.
Theodotos or Diodotos, the governor of Baktra, revolted from his grandson
Antiochos II. and made Baktra an independent kingdom. Not long afterwards
Aśôka, the grandson of Chandragupta, as we learn from one of his own
inscriptions,[22] sent missionaries to the kings of the West to proclaim
to them and to their subjects the doctrines of Buddhism. The kings named
in the inscription are Antiyoka (Antiochos II., king of Syria), Turamaya
(Ptolemy III., Euergetes, king of Egypt), Antigona (Antigonas Gonatas,
king of Macedonia), Maga (Magas, king of Kyrênê). About the year 212 B.C.
Antiochos III., surnamed the Great, marched eastward to recover Parthia
and Baktria which had both revolted from the second Antiochos. He was,
however, unable, even after a war which lasted for some years, to effect
the subjugation of these kingdoms, and accordingly concluded a treaty
with them in which he recognised their independence. With the assistance
of the Baktrian sovereign Euthydêmos, who founded the greatness of the
Baktrian monarchy, he made an expedition into India, where he renewed
the alliance with that country which had been formed in the days of
Sandrokottos. From Sophagasenos,[23] the chief of the Indian kings, he
obtained a large supply of elephants, and then returned to Syria by the
route through Arachôsia in the year 205 B.C.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.—EUTHYDÊMOS.]
[Illustration: ALEXANDER’S ROUTE IN THE PANJAB
John Bartholomew & Co., Edinʳ.
_NOTE:—Lines of Route shewn thus_ ——]
ARRIAN
ARRIAN’S ANABASIS
FOURTH BOOK
_Chapter XXII.—Alexander crosses the Indian Kaukasos to invade India and
advances to the river Kôphên_
After capturing the Rock of Choriênês, Alexander went himself to Baktra,
but despatched Krateros with 600 of the Companion Cavalry[24] and a force
of infantry, consisting of his own brigade with that of Polysperchôn
and Attalos and that of Alketas, against Katanês and Austanês the only
chiefs now left in the country of the Paraitakênai[25] who still held
out against him. In the battle which ensued Krateros after a severe
struggle proved victorious. Katanês fell in the action, while Austanês
was made prisoner and brought to Alexander. Of the barbarians who had
followed them to the field, there were slain 120 horsemen and about 1500
foot. Krateros after the victory led his troops also to Baktra. While
Alexander was here the tragic incident in his history, the affair of
Kallisthenês and the pages, occurred.