When the stakes had been cut he began piling them up towards the rock
(beginning from the crown of the hill on which the camp had been pitched)
to form a great mound, whence he thought it would be possible for arrows
and for missiles shot from engines to reach the defenders. Every one took
part in the work helping to advance the mound. Alexander himself was
present to superintend, commending those that were intent on getting the
work done, and chastising any one that at the moment was idling.
_Chapter XXX.—Capture of Aornos—Advance to the Indus_
The army by the first day’s work extended the mound the length of a
stadium, and on the following day the slingers by slinging stones at the
Indians from the mound just constructed, and the bolts shot at them from
the engines, drove them back whenever they sallied out to attack the men
engaged upon the mound. The work of piling it up thus went on for three
days, without intermission, when on the fourth day a few Macedonians
forced their way to a small hill which was on a level with the rock,
and occupied its crest. Alexander without ever resting drove the mound
towards the hill which the handful of men had occupied, his object being
to join the two together.
But the Indians terror-struck both by the unheard-of audacity of the
Macedonians in forcing their way to the hill, and also by seeing that
this position was now connected with the mound, abstained from further
resistance, and, sending their herald to Alexander, professed they were
willing to surrender the rock if he granted them terms of capitulation.
But the purpose they had in view was to consume the day in spinning
out negotiations, and to disperse by night to their several homes. When
Alexander saw this he allowed them to start off as well as to withdraw
the sentinels from the whole circle of outposts. He did not himself stir
until they began their retreat, but, when they did so, he took with him
700 of the bodyguards and the hypaspists and scaled the rock at the point
abandoned by the enemy. He was himself the first to reach the top, the
Macedonians ascending after him pulling one another up, some at one place
and some at another. Then at a preconcerted signal they turned upon the
retreating barbarians and slew many of them in the flight, besides so
terrifying some others that in retreating they flung themselves down
the precipices, and were in consequence dashed to death. Alexander
thus became master of the rock which had baffled Heraklês himself. He
sacrificed upon it and built a fort, giving the command of its garrison
to Sisikottos,[60] who long before had in Baktra deserted from the
Indians to Bessos, but after Alexander had conquered the Baktrian land
served in his army, and showed himself a man worthy of all confidence.
He then set out from the rock and invaded the land of the
Assakênians,[61] for he had been apprised that the brother of Assakênos,
with the elephants and a host of the barbarians from the adjoining
country, had fled for refuge to the mountains of that land. On reaching
Dyrta[62] he found there were no inhabitants either in the city itself or
the surrounding district. So next day he sent out Nearchos and Antiochos,
commanders of the hypaspists, the former with the light-armed Agrianians,
and the latter with his own regiment and other two regiments besides.
They were despatched to examine the nature of the localities, and to
capture, if possible, some of the barbarians who might give information
about the state of matters in the country, and particularly about the
elephants, as he was very anxious to know where they were.
He himself now marched towards the river Indus, and the army going on
before made a road for him, without which there would have been no means
of passing through that part of the country.[63] He there captured a
few of the barbarians, from whom he learned that the Indians of the
country had fled away for refuge to Abisarês,[64] but had left their
elephants there at pasture near the river Indus. He ordered these men to
show him the way to the elephants. Now many of the Indians are elephant
hunters,[65] and men of this class found favour with him and were kept
in his retinue, and on this occasion he went with them in pursuit of the
elephants. Two of these animals were killed in the chase by throwing
themselves down a steep place, but the others on being caught suffered
drivers to mount them, and were added to the army. He was further
fortunate in finding serviceable timber[66] along the river, and this
was cut for him by the army and employed in building boats. These were
taken down the river Indus to the bridge which a good while before this
Hêphaistiôn and Perdikkas had constructed.[67]
FIFTH BOOK
_Chapter I.—Alexander at Nysa_
In the country traversed by Alexander between the Kôphên and the river
Indus, they say that besides the cities already mentioned, there stood
also the city of Nysa,[68] which owed its foundation to Dionysos, and
that Dionysos founded it when he conquered the Indians, whoever this
Dionysos in reality was, and when or whencesoever he made his expedition
against the Indians; for I have no means of deciding whether the Theban
Dionysos setting out either from Thebes or the Lydian Tmôlos[69] marched
with an army against the Indians, passing through a great many warlike
nations unknown to the Greeks of those days, but without subjugating
any of them by force of arms except only the Indian nations; all I know
is, that one is not called on to sift minutely the legends of antiquity
concerning the gods; for things that are not credible, if one reasons
as to their consistency with the course of nature, do not seem to be
incredible altogether if one takes the divine agency into account.
When Alexander came to Nysa, the Nysaians sent out to him their
president, whose name was Akouphis,[70] and along with him thirty
deputies of their most eminent citizens, to entreat him to spare the
city for the sake of the god. The deputies, it is said, on entering
Alexander’s tent found him sitting in his armour, covered with dust from
his journey, wearing his helmet and grasping his spear. They fell to the
ground in amazement at the sight, and remained for a long time silent.
But when Alexander had bidden them rise and to be of good courage, then
Akouphis taking up speech thus addressed him.
“The Nysaians entreat you, O King! to permit them to be still free
and to be governed by their own laws from reverence towards Dionysos;
for when Dionysos after conquering the Indian nation was returning to
the shores of Greece he founded with his war-worn soldiers, who were
also his bacchanals, this very city to be a memorial to posterity of
his wanderings and his victory, just as you have founded yourself an
Alexandreia near Kaukasos, and another Alexandreia in the land of the
Egyptians, not to speak of many others, some of which you have already
founded, while others will follow in the course of time, just as your
achievements exceed in number those displayed by Dionysos. Now Dionysos
called our city Nysa, and our land the Nysaian, after the name of his
nurse Nysa; and he besides gave to the mountain which lies near the city
the name of Mêros, because according to the legend he grew, before his
birth, in the thigh of Zeus. And from his time forth we inhabit Nysa as
a free city, and are governed by our own laws, and are a well-ordered
community. But that Dionysos was our founder, take this as a proof, that
ivy which grows nowhere else in the land of the Indians, grows with
us.”[71]
_Chapter II.—Alexander permits the Nysaians to retain their
Autonomy—Visits Mount Mêros_
It gratified Alexander to hear all this, for he was desirous that the
legends concerning the wanderings of Dionysos should be believed, as
well as that Nysa owed its foundation to Dionysos, since he had himself
reached the place to which that deity had come, and meant to penetrate
farther than he; for the Macedonians, he thought, would not refuse to
share his toils if he advanced with an ambition to rival the exploits of
Dionysos. He therefore confirmed the inhabitants of Nysa in the enjoyment
of their freedom and their own laws; and when he enquired about their
laws, he praised them because the government of their state was in the
hands of the aristocracy. He moreover requested them to send with him 300
of their horsemen, together with 100 of their best men selected from the
governing body, which consisted of 300 members. He then asked Akouphis,
whom he appointed governor of the Nysaian land, to make the selection.
When Akouphis heard this, he is said to have smiled at the request, and
when Alexander asked him why he laughed, to have replied, “How, O King!
can a single city if deprived of a hundred of its best men continue to be
well-governed? But if you have the welfare of the Nysaians at heart, take
with you the 300 horsemen, or, if you wish, even more; but instead of the
hundred of our best men you have asked me to select, take with you twice
that number of our worst men, so that on your returning hither you may
find the city as well governed as it is now.” By these words he persuaded
Alexander, who thought he spoke sensibly, and who ordered him to send
the horsemen without again asking for the hundred men who were to have
been selected, or even for others to supply their place. He requested
Akouphis, however, to send him his son and his daughter’s son to attend
him on his expedition.
Alexander felt a strong desire to see the place where the Nysaians
boasted to have certain memorials of Dionysos. So he went, it is said,
to Mount Mêros with the companion cavalry and the body of foot-guards,
and found that the mountain abounded with ivy and laurel and umbrageous
groves of all manner of trees, and that it had also chases supplied
with game of every description. The Macedonians, to whom the sight of
the ivy was particularly welcome, as it was the first they had seen for
a long time (there being no ivy in the land of the Indians, even where
they have the vine), are said to have set themselves at once to weave
ivy chaplets, and, accoutred as they were, to have crowned themselves
with these, chanting the while hymns to Dionysos and invoking the god
by his different names.[72] Alexander, they say, offered while there
sacrifice to Dionysos and feasted with his friends. Some even go so far
as to allege, if any one cares to believe such things, that many of
his courtiers, Macedonians of no mean rank, while invoking Dionysos,
and wreathed with ivy crowns, were seized with the inspiration of the
god, raised in his honour shouts of Evoi, and revelled like Bacchanals
celebrating the orgies.
_Chapter III—How Eratosthenes views the legends concerning Heraklês and
Dionysos—Alexander crosses the Indus_
Any one who hears these stories is free to believe them or disbelieve
them as he chooses. For my own part, I do not altogether agree with
Eratosthenes the Kyrênian, who says that all these references to the
deity were circulated by the Macedonians in connection with the deeds of
Alexander, to gratify his pride by grossly exaggerating their importance.
For, to take an instance, he says that the Macedonians, on seeing a
cavern among the Paropamisadai, and either hearing some local legend
about it, or inventing one themselves, spread a report that this was
beyond doubt the cave in which Promêtheus had been bound, and to which
the eagle resorted to prey upon his vitals, until Heraklês, coming
that way, slew the eagle and freed Promêtheus from his bonds.[73]
And again, he says that the Macedonians transferred the name of Mount
Kaukasos from Pontos to the eastern parts of the world and the land of
the Paropamisadai adjacent to India (for they called Mount Paropamisos,
Kaukasos), to enhance the glory of Alexander as if he had passed over
Kaukasos. And again, he says that when the Macedonians saw in India
itself oxen marked with a brand in the form of a club, they took this as
a proof that Heraklês had gone as far as the Indians. Eratosthenes has
likewise no belief in similar stories about the wanderings of Dionysos.
Whether or not the accounts about them are true, I cannot decide, and so
leave them.
When Alexander arrived at the river Indus he found a bridge already
made over it by Hêphaistiôn, and two thirty-oared galleys, besides a
great many small boats. He found also a present which had been sent
by Taxilês the Indian, consisting of 200 talents of silver, 3000 oxen
fattened for the shambles, 10,000 sheep or more, and 30 elephants. The
same prince had also sent to his assistance a force of 700 horsemen, and
these brought word that Taxilês surrendered into his hands his capital
Taxila, the greatest of all the cities between the river Indus and the
Hydaspês. Alexander there offered sacrifices to the gods to whom it was
his custom to sacrifice, and entertained his army with gymnastic and
equestrian contests on the banks of the river. The sacrifices proved to
be favourable for his undertaking the passage.
_Chapter IV.—General description of the Indus and of the people of India_
That the Indus is the greatest of all the rivers of Asia, except the
Ganges, which is itself an Indian river; that its sources lie on this
side of the Paropamisos or Kaukasos;[74] that it falls into the great
sea which washes the shores of India towards the south wind; that it
has two mouths, both of which outlets abound with shallows, like the
five mouths of the Ister; and that it forms a delta in the land of the
Indians closely resembling the Egyptian Delta, and that this is called in
the Indian tongue Pâtâla,[75] let this be my description of the Indus,
setting forth those facts which can least be disputed, since the Hydaspês
and the Akesinês and the Hydraôtês and the Hyphasis, which are also
Indian rivers, are considerably larger than any other rivers in Asia, but
are smaller, I may even say much smaller, than the Indus, just as also
the Indus itself is smaller than the Ganges. Indeed, Ktêsias (if any one
thinks him a proper authority) states that where the Indus is narrowest
its banks are 40 stadia apart, and where broadest 100 stadia, while its
ordinary breadth is the mean between these two distances.[76]
This river Indus Alexander began to cross at daybreak with his army to
enter the country of the Indians. Concerning this people I have, in this
present work, described neither under what laws they live, nor what
strange animals their country produces, nor in what number and variety
fish and water-monsters are bred in the Indus, the Hydaspês, the Ganges,
and other Indian rivers. Nor have I described the ants which dig up
gold for them, nor its guardians the griffins,[77] nor other stories
invented rather to amuse than to convey a knowledge of facts, since
there was no one to expose the falsehood of any absurd stories told
about the Indians. However, Alexander and those who served in his army
did expose the falsehood of most of them, although some even of these
very men invented lies of their own. They proved also, in contradiction
of the common belief, that the Indians were goldless, those tribes at
least, and they were many, which Alexander visited with his army; and
that they were not at all luxurious in their style of living, while they
were of so great a stature[78] that they were amongst the tallest men in
Asia, being five cubits in height, or nearly so. They were blacker than
any other men except the Aethiopians,[79] while in the art of war they
were far superior to the other nations by which Asia was at that time
inhabited. For I cannot make any proper comparison between the Indians
and the race of ancient Persians, who, under the command of Cyrus, the
son of Kambyses, wrested the supremacy of Asia from the Medes, and added
to their empire other nations, some by conquest and others by voluntary
submission; for the Persians of those days were but a poor people,
inhabiting a rugged country and approximating closely in the austerity
of their laws and usages to the Spartan discipline.[80] Then with regard
to the discomfiture of the Persians in the Skythian land, I cannot with
certainty conjecture to what cause it was attributable, whether to the
difficult nature of the country into which they were led, or to some
other mistake made by Cyrus, or whether it was that the Persians were
inferior in the art of war to those Skythians whose territories they
invaded.[81]
_Chapter V.—The rivers and mountains of Asia_
However, I shall treat of the Indians in a separate work,[82] in which I
shall set down whatever seems to be most credible in the reports supplied
by those who accompanied Alexander in his expedition, and by Nearchos
who made a voyage round the Great Sea which adjoins the Indians. I shall
then add the accounts of the country which were compiled by Megasthenes
and Eratosthenês, who are both writers of standard authority. I shall
describe the customs of the Indians and the remarkable animals which
their country is said to produce, and also the voyage which was made
by Nearchos in the outer sea.[83] In the meantime it will suffice if I
content myself with describing only what seems requisite to make the
account of Alexander’s operations clearly intelligible. Mount Tauros
divides Asia, beginning from Mykalê, the mountain which lies opposite
to the island of Samos; then forming the boundary of the country of the
Pamphylians and Kilikians, it stretches onwards to Armenia. From the
Armenians it passes into Mêdia, and runs through the country of the
Parthians and the Khorasmians. Reaching Baktria it there unites with
Mount Parapamisos, which the Macedonians of Alexander’s army called
the Kaukasos, for the purpose, it is said, of magnifying the deeds of
Alexander, for it could thus be said that he had carried his victorious
arms even beyond the Kaukasos. It is possible, however, that this
mountain range may be a continuation of that other Kaukasos which is in
Skythia, in the same way as it is a continuation of the Tauric range. For
this reason I have before this occasionally called this range Kaukasos,
and in future I mean to call it so. This Kaukasos extends as far as the
great Indian Ocean in the direction of the east.[84] All the important
rivers of Asia accordingly rise either in Mount Tauros or Mount Kaukasos,
and shape their courses some to the north, and others to the south.
Those which run northward discharge their waters either into the Maiôtic
Lake, or into the Hyrkanian Sea, which is in reality a gulf of the Great
Sea.[85] The rivers which run southward are the Euphrates, Tigris,
Indus, Hydaspês, Akesines, Hydraôtes, and Hyphasis, together with the
rivers between these and the Ganges. All these either enter the sea, or,
like the Euphrates, disappear among the swamps which receive their waters.
_Chapter VI.—Position and boundaries of India and how its plains may have
been formed_
If anyone takes this view of Asia, that it is divided by the Tauros
and the Kaukasos from west to east, then he finds that it is formed by
the Tauros itself into two great sections, one of which lies towards
the south and the south wind, and the other towards the north and
the north wind. The southern section is divided into four parts, of
which, according to Eratosthenês, India is the largest, this being also
the opinion of Megasthenes who resided with Siburtios the satrap of
Arakhôsia, and who tells us that he frequently visited Sandrakottos the
king of the Indians.[86] They say that the smallest part is that which is
bounded by the river Euphrates, and which extends to our own inland sea,
while the other two parts which lie between the river Euphrates and the
Indus will scarcely bear comparison with India even if both were taken
together. They also say that India is bounded towards the east and the
east wind as far as the south by the Great Sea, and towards the north
by Mount Kaukasos, as far as its junction with the Tauros, while the
river Indus cuts it off from other countries towards the west and the
north-west wind as far as the Great Sea. The larger portion of India is
a plain, and this, as they conjecture, has been formed from the alluvial
deposits of the rivers, just as in other countries plains which are
not far off from the sea are generally formations of their respective
rivers, a fact which explains why the names of such countries were
applied of old to their rivers. There is, for instance, in the country
of Asia the plain of the Hermos, a river which rises in the mountain
of Mother Dindymênê, and on its way to the sea flows past the Aiolian
city of Smyrna. There is again another Lydian plain, called that of the
Kaÿstros, which is a Lydian river, and another plain in Mysia, that of
the Kaïkos, and another in Karia, that of the Maiandros, which extends as
far as the Ionian city of Milêtos. In the case of Egypt again, the two
historians, Herodotos, and Hêkataios (or at any rate the author of the
work on Egypt, if he was other than Hêkataios) agree in declaring that
in the same way Egypt was the gift of its river,[87] and clear proofs
have been adduced by Herodotos in support of this view, so that even the
country itself got perhaps its name from the river, for that in early
times Aigyptos was the name of the river which the Egyptians and other
nations now call the Nile the words of Homer sufficiently prove, since
he says[88] that Menelaös anchored his ships at the mouth of the river
Aigyptos. Now if the rivers we have mentioned, which are of no great
size, can each of them separately form in its course to the sea a large
tract of new country, by carrying down silt and slime from the upland
districts in which they have their sources, there can be no good reason
for doubting that India is mostly a plain which has been formed by the
alluvial deposits of its rivers.[89] For if the Hermos and the Kaÿstros
and the Kaïkos and the Maiandros and the other rivers of Asia which fall
into the inland sea were united, they could not be compared in volume of
water with one of the Indian rivers, and much less with the Ganges, which
is the greatest of them all, and with which neither the volume of the
Egyptian Nile, nor the Istros (Danube) which flows through Europe, can be
for a moment compared. Nay, the whole of those rivers if combined into
one would not be equal to the Indus, which is already a large river where
it issues from its springs, and which after receiving as tributaries
fifteen rivers,[90] all greater than those of Asia, enters the sea still
retaining its own name. Let these remarks which I have made about the
country of the Indians suffice for the present, while I reserve all other
particulars for my description of India.
_Chapter VII.—The bridging of rivers_