corps of cavalry and the horse-archers, and marched forward to the
frontiers of the Gadrôsoi and the Oreitai, where he was informed his way
would lie through a narrow defile before which the combined forces of the
Oreitai and the Gadrôsoi were lying encamped, resolved to prevent his
passage. They were in fact drawn up there, but when they were apprised of
Alexander’s approach most of them deserted the posts they were guarding
and fled from the pass. Then the leaders of the Oreitai came to him
to surrender themselves and their nation. He ordered them to collect
the multitude of the Oreitai, and send them away to their homes, since
they were not to be subjected to any bad treatment. Over these people
he placed Apollophanês as satrap. Along with him he left Leonnatos, an
officer of the body-guard in Ora,[195] in command of all the Agrianians,
some of the archers and cavalry, and the rest of the Grecian mercenary
infantry and cavalry, and instructed him to remain in the country till
the fleet sailed past its shores, to settle a colony in the city, and
establish order among the Oreitai, so that they might be readier to pay
respect and obedience to the satrap. He himself with the great bulk of
the army (for Hêphaistiôn had now rejoined him with his detachment)
advanced to the country of the Gadrôsoi[196] by a route mostly desert.
Aristoboulos says that myrrh-trees larger than the common kind grow
plentifully in this desert, and that the Phoenicians who followed
the army as suttlers collected the drops of myrrh which oozed out in
great abundance from the trees (their stems being large and hitherto
uncropped), and conveyed away the produce loaded on their beasts of
burden. He says also that this desert yields an abundance of odoriferous
roots of nard, which the Phoenicians likewise collected; but much of
it was trodden down by the army, and the sweet perfume thus crushed
out of it was from its great abundance diffused far and wide over the
country.[197] Other kinds of trees are found in the desert, one in
particular which had a foliage like that of the laurel, and grew in
places washed by the waves of the sea. These trees when the tide ebbed
were left in dry ground, but when it returned they looked as if they grew
in the sea. The roots of some were always washed by the sea, since they
grew in hollows from which the water never receded, and yet trees of this
kind were not destroyed by the brine. Some of these trees attained here
the great height of 30 cubits. They happened to be at that season in
bloom, and their flower closely resembled the white violet,[198] which,
however, it far surpassed in the sweetness of its perfume. Another kind
of thorny stalk is mentioned, which grew on dry land, and was armed with
a thorn so strong that when it got entangled in the dress of some who
were riding past, it rather pulled the rider down from his horse than
was itself torn away from its stalk. When hares are running past these
bushes the thorns are said to fasten themselves in the fur so that the
hares are caught like birds with bird-lime or fish with hooks. These
thorns were, however, easily cut through with steel, and when severed the
stalk yielded juice even more abundant and more acid than what flows from
fig-trees in springtime.[199]
_Chapter XXIII.—Alexander marching through Gadrôsia endeavours to collect
supplies for the fleet_
Thence he marched through the country of the Gadrôsoi by a difficult
route, on which it was scarcely possible to procure the necessaries of
life, and which often failed to yield water for the army. They were
besides compelled to march most of the way by night, and at too great a
distance from the sea; for Alexander wished to go along the sea-coast,
both to see what harbours it had, and to make in the course of his march
whatever preparations were possible for the benefit of the fleet, either
by making his men dig wells or seek out markets and anchorages. The
maritime parts of Gadrôsia were, however, entirely desert. Nevertheless
he sent Thoas, the son of Mandradôros, down to the sea with a few
horsemen to see if there happened to be any anchorage or water not far
from the sea, or anything else that could supply the wants of the fleet.
This man on returning reported that he found some fishermen upon the
beach living in stifling huts, which had been constructed by heaping up
mussel shells, while the roofs were formed of the backbones of fish. He
also reported that these fishermen had only scanty supplies of water,
obtained with difficulty by their digging through the shingle, and that
what they got was far from sweet.[200]
When Alexander came to a district of the Gadrôsian country where corn
was more abundant, he seized it, placed it upon the beasts of burden,
and having marked it with his own seal ordered it to be conveyed to the
sea. But when he was coming to the halting station nearest the sea,
the soldiers paid but little regard to the seal, and even the guards
themselves made use of the corn and gave a share of it to such as
were most pinched with hunger. Indeed, they were so overcome by their
sufferings, that, as reason dictated, they took more account of the
impending danger with which they now stood face to face than of the
unseen and remote danger of the king’s resentment. Alexander, however,
forgave the offenders when made aware of the necessity which had prompted
their act. He himself scoured the country in search of provisions, and
sent Krêtheus the Kallatian[201] with all the supplies he could collect
for the use of the army which was sailing round with the fleet. He also
ordered the natives to grind all the corn they could collect in the
interior districts, and convey it, for sale to the army, along with dates
and sheep. He besides sent Telephos, one of the companions, to another
locality with a small supply of ground corn.
_Chapter XXIV.—Difficulties encountered on the march through Gadrôsia_
He then advanced towards the capital of the Gadrôsoi, called Poura,[202]
and arrived there in sixty days after he had started from Ora. Most
of Alexander’s historians admit that all the hardships which his army
suffered in Asia are not to be compared with the miseries which it here
experienced. Nearchos is the only author who says that Alexander did
not take that route in ignorance of its difficulty, but that he chose
it on learning that no one had as yet traversed it with an army except
Semiramis when she fled from India. The natives of the country say that
she escaped with only twenty men of all her army, while even Cyrus, the
son of Kambyses, escaped with only seven. For Cyrus, they say, did in
truth enter this region to invade India, but lost, before reaching it,
the greater part of his army from the difficulties which beset his march
through the desert. When Alexander heard these accounts he was seized, it
is said, with an ambition to outrival both Cyrus and Semiramis. Nearchos
says that this motive, added to his desire to be near the coast in order
to keep the fleet supplied with provisions, induced him to march by this
route; but that the blazing heat and want of water destroyed a great part
of the army, and especially the beasts of burden, which perished from the
great depth of the sand, and the heat which scorched like fire, while a
great many died of thirst. For they met, he says, with lofty ridges of
deep sand not hard and compact, but so loose that those who stepped on it
sunk down as into mud or rather into untrodden snow. The horses and mules
besides suffered still more severely both in ascending and descending
the ridges, because the road was not only uneven, but wanted firmness.
The great distances also between the stages were most distressing to the
army, compelled as it was at times from want of water to make marches
above the ordinary length. When they traversed by night all the stage
they had to complete and came to water in the morning, their distress was
all but entirely relieved. But if as the day advanced they were caught
still marching owing to the great length of the stage, then suffer they
did, tortured alike by raging heat and thirst unquenchable.
_Chapter XXV.—Sufferings of the army in the Gadrôsian desert_
The soldiers destroyed many of the beasts of burden of their own accord.
For when their provisions ran short they came together and killed most
of the horses and mules. They ate the flesh of these animals, which they
professed had died of thirst and perished from the heat. No one cared to
look very narrowly into the exact nature of what was doing, both because
of the prevailing distress and also because all were alike implicated in
the same offence. Alexander himself was not unaware of what was going
on, but he saw that the remedy for the existing state of things was
to pretend ignorance of it rather than permit it as a matter that lay
within his cognisance. It was therefore no longer easy to convey the
soldiers labouring under sickness, nor others who had fallen behind on
the march from exhaustion. This arose not only from the want of beasts
of burden, but also because the men themselves took to destroying the
waggons when they could no longer drag them forward owing to the deepness
of the sand. They had done this even in the early stages of the march,
because for the sake of the waggons they had to go not by the shortest
roads, but those easiest for carriages. Thus some were left behind on
the road from sickness, others from fatigue or the effects of the heat
or intolerable thirst, while there were none who could take them forward
or remain to tend them in their sickness. For the army marched on apace,
and in the anxiety for its safety as a whole the care of individuals
was of necessity disregarded. As they generally made their marches by
night, some of the men were overcome by sleep on the way, but on awaking
afterwards those who still had some strength left followed close on the
track of the army, and a few out of many saved their lives by overtaking
it. The majority perished in the sand like shipwrecked men at sea.
Another disaster also befell the army which seriously affected the men
themselves as well as the horses and the beasts of burden. For the
country of the Gadrôsians, like that of the Indians, is supplied with
rains by the Etesian winds; but these rains do not fall on the Gadrôsian
plains, but on the mountains to which the clouds are carried by the
wind, where they dissolve in rain without passing over the crests of
the mountains. When the army on one occasion lay encamped for the night
near a small winter torrent for the sake of its water, the torrent which
passes that way about the second watch of the night became swollen by
rains which had fallen unperceived by the army, and came rushing down
with so great a deluge that it destroyed most of the women and children
of the camp-followers, and swept away all the royal baggage and whatever
beasts of burden were still left. The soldiers themselves, after a hard
struggle, barely escaped with their lives, and a portion only of their
weapons. Many of them besides came by their death through drinking, for
if when jaded by the broiling heat and thirst they fell in with abundance
of water, they quaffed it with insatiable avidity till they killed
themselves. For this reason Alexander generally pitched his camp not in
the immediate vicinity of the watering-places, but some twenty stadia
off to prevent the men and beasts from rushing in crowds into the water
to the danger of their lives, as well as to prohibit those who had no
self-control from polluting the water for the rest of the troops by their
stepping into the springs or streams.
_Chapter XXVI.—Incidents of the march through Gadrôsia_
Here I feel myself bound not to pass over in silence a noble act
performed by Alexander, perhaps the noblest in his record, which occurred
either in this country or, as some other authors have asserted, still
earlier, among the Parapamisadai. The story is this. The army was
prosecuting its march through the sand under a sun already blazing high
because a halt could not be made till water, which lay on the way farther
on was reached, and Alexander himself, though distressed with thirst,
was nevertheless with pain and difficulty marching on foot at the head
of his army, that the soldiers might, as they usually do in a case of
the kind, more cheerfully bear their hardships when they saw the misery
equalised. But in the meantime some of the light-armed soldiers, starting
off from the army, found water collected in the shallow bed of a torrent
in a small and impure spring. Having, with difficulty, collected this
water they hastened off to Alexander as if they were the bearers of some
great boon. As soon as they came near the king they poured the water
into a helmet, and offered it to him. He took it and thanked the men who
brought it, but at once poured it upon the ground in the sight of all. By
this deed the whole army was inspired with fresh vigour to such a degree
that one would have imagined that the water poured out by Alexander had
supplied a draught to the men all round. This deed I commend above all
others, as it exhibits Alexander’s power of endurance as well as his
wonderful tact in the management of an army.
The army met also with the following adventure in this country. The
guides, becoming uncertain of the way, at last declared that they could
no longer recognise it, because all its tracks had been obliterated by
the sands which the wind blew over them. Amid the deep sands, moreover,
which had been everywhere heaped up to a uniform level, nothing rose up
from which they could conjecture their path, not even the usual fringe
of trees, nor so much as the sure landmark of a hill-crest. Nor had they
practised the art of finding their way by observation of the stars by
night or of the sun by day, as sailors do by watching one or other of the
Bears—the Phoenicians the Lesser Bear, and all other nations the Greater.
Alexander, at last perceiving that he should direct his march to the
left, rode away forward, taking a small party of horsemen with him. But
when their horses were tired out by the heat, he left most of his escort
behind, and rode on with only five men and found the sea. Having scraped
away the shingle on the beach, he found water, both fresh and pure, and
then went back and brought his whole army to this place. And for seven
days they marched along the sea-coast, and procured water from the beach.
As the guides by this time knew the way, he led his expedition thence
into the interior parts.
_Chapter XXVII.—Appointment of satraps—Alexander learns that the satrap
Philippos had been murdered in India—Punishes satraps who had misgoverned_
When he arrived at the capital of the Gadrôsians he then gave his army a
rest. Apollophanês he deposed from his satrapy because he found out that
he had utterly disregarded his instructions. He appointed Thoas to be
satrap over the people of this district, but, as he took ill and died,
Siburtios received the vacant office. The same man had also recently
been appointed by Alexander satrap of Karmania, but now the government
of the Arachotians and Gadrôsians was committed to him, and Tlêpolemos,
the son of Pythophanês, got Karmania. The king was already advancing
into Karmania when tidings reached him that Philippos, the satrap of
the Indian country, had been plotted against by the mercenaries and
treacherously murdered; but that the Macedonian bodyguards of Philippos
had put to death his murderers whom they had caught in the very act, and
others whom they had afterwards seized. On learning what had occurred
he sent a letter to India addressed to Eudêmos and Taxilês directing
them to assume the administration of the province previously governed by
Philippos until he could send a satrap to govern it.
When he arrived in Karmania, Krateros joined him, bringing the rest of
the army and the elephants. He brought also Ordanês, whom he had made
prisoner for revolting and attempting to make a revolution. Thither came
also Stasanôr, the satrap of the Areians and Zarangians, accompanied by
Pharismanes, the son of Phrataphernês, the satrap of the Parthyaians
and Hyrkanians. There came besides the generals who had been left with
Parmenion over the army in Media, Kleander and Sitalkês and Hêrakôn,
who brought with them the greater part of their army. Against Kleander
and Sitalkês both the natives and the soldiers themselves brought many
accusations, as that they had pillaged temples, despoiled ancient tombs,
and perpetrated other outrageous acts of injustice and tyranny against
their subjects. When these charges were proved against them, he put them
to death, to make others who might be left as satraps, or governors, or
chiefs of districts, stand in fear of suffering a like punishment if they
violated their duty. This was the means which above all others served to
keep in due order and obedience the nations which Alexander had conquered
in war or which had voluntarily submitted to him, numerous as they were,
and so far remote from each other, because under his sceptre the ruled
were not allowed to be unjustly treated by their rulers. Hêrakôn on this
occasion was acquitted of the charge, but was soon afterwards punished,
because he was convicted by the men of Sousa of having plundered the
temple of their city. Stasanôr and Phrataphernês in setting out to join
Alexander, took with them a multitude of beasts of burden and many
camels, because they learned that he was taking the route through the
Gadrôsians, and conjectured that his army would suffer, as it actually
did. These men arrived therefore very opportunely, as did also their
camels and their beasts of burden. For Alexander distributed all these
animals to the officers one by one, to the squadrons and centuries of
the cavalry, and to the companies of the infantry as far as their number
sufficed.
_Chapter XXVIII.—Alexander holds rejoicings in Karmania on account of
his Indian victories—List of his body-guards—Nearchos reports to him the
safety of the fleet_
Some authors have recorded, though I cannot believe what they state,
that he made his progress through Karmania stretched at length with his
companions on two covered waggons joined together, enjoying the while the
music of the flute, and followed by the soldiers crowned with garlands
and making holiday. They say also that food and all kinds of good cheer
were provided for them along the roads by the Karmanians, and that these
things were done by Alexander in imitation of the Bacchic revelry of
Dionysos, because it was said of that deity that, after conquering the
Indians, he traversed, in this manner, a great part of Asia, and received
the name of Thriambos in addition to that of Dionysos, and that for this
very reason the splendid processions in honour of victories in war were
called _Thriamboi_.[203] But neither Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, nor
Aristoboulos has mentioned these doings in their narratives, nor any
other writer whose testimony on such subjects it would be safe to trust,
and as for myself I have done enough in recording them as unworthy of
belief. But in the account I now proceed to offer I follow Aristoboulos.
In Karmania Alexander offered sacrifice in thanksgiving to the gods for
his victory over the Indians, and the preservation of his army during
its march through Gadrôsia. He celebrated also a musical and a gymnastic
contest. He then appointed Peukestas to be one of his body-guards, having
already resolved to make him the satrap of Persis. He wished him, before
his promotion to the satrapy, to experience this honour and mark of
confidence for the service he rendered among the Malloi. Up to this time
the number of his body-guards was seven—Leonnatos, the son of Anteas;
Hêphastiôn, the son of Amyntôr; Lysimachos, the son of Agathoklês;
Aristonous, the son of Peisaios, who were all Pellaians; Perdikkas, the
son of Orontês from Orestis; Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, and Peithôn, the
son of Krateuas, who were both Heordaians—Peukestas, who had held the
shield over Alexander, was added to them as an eighth.
At this time Nearchos, having sailed round the coast of Ora and Gadrôsia,
and that of the Ichthyophagoi, put into port in the inhabited parts of
the Karmanian coast, and going up thence into the interior with a few
followers related to Alexander the incidents of the voyage which he had
made for him in the outer sea. He was sent down again to sea, to sail
round to the land of the Sousians and the outlets of the river Tigris.
How he sailed from the river Indus to the Persian Sea and the mouth of
the Tigris, I shall describe in a separate work, wherein I shall follow
Nearchos himself, as the history which he composed in the Greek language
had Alexander for its subject. Perhaps at some future time I shall
produce this work if my own inclination and the deity prompt me to the
task.
Q. CURTIUS RUFUS
HISTORY OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, BY Q. CURTIUS RUFUS
EIGHTH BOOK
_Chapter IX.—Description of India_
Alexander, not to foster repose which naturally sets rumours in
circulation, advanced towards India, always adding more to his glory by
warfare than by his acts after victory.
India lies almost entirely towards the east,[204] and it is of less
extent in breadth than in length.[205] The southern parts rise in hills
of considerable elevation.[206] The country is elsewhere level, and hence
many famous rivers which rise in Mount Caucasus traverse the plains with
languid currents. The Indus is colder than the other rivers, and its
waters differ but little in colour from those of the sea. The Ganges,
which is the greatest of all rivers in the east, flows down to the south
country, and running in a straight bed washes great mountain-chains until
a barrier of rocks diverts its course towards the east. Both rivers
enter the Red Sea.[207] The Indus wears away its banks, absorbing into
its waters great numbers of trees and much of the soil. It is besides
obstructed with rocks by which it is frequently beaten back. Where it
finds the soil soft and yielding it spreads out into pools and forms
islands. The Acesines increases its volume. The Ganges, in running
downward to the sea, intercepts the Iomanes,[208] and the two streams
dash against each other with great violence. The Ganges in fact presents
a rough face to the entrance of its affluent, the waters of which though
beaten back in eddies, hold their own.
The Dyardanes is less frequently mentioned, as it flows through the
remotest parts of India. But it breeds not only crocodiles, like the
Nile, but dolphins also, and various aquatic monsters unknown to other
nations.[209] The Ethimanthus, which curves time after time in frequent
maeanders, is used up for irrigation by the people on its banks. Hence
it contributes to the sea but a small and nameless residue of its
waters.[210] The country is everywhere intersected with many rivers
besides these, but they are obscure, their course being too short
to bring them into prominent notice. The maritime tracts, however,
are most parched up by the north wind. This wind is prevented by the
mountain-summits from penetrating to the interior parts, which for this
reason are mild and nourish the crops.[211] But so completely has nature
altered the regular changes of the season in these regions that, when
other countries are basking under the hot rays of the sun, India is
covered with snow; and on the other hand, when the world elsewhere is
frost-bound, India is oppressed with intolerable heat. The reason why
nature has thus inverted her order is not apparent; the sea, at any rate,
by which India is washed does not differ in colour from other seas. It
takes its name from King Erythrus, and hence ignorant people believe that
its waters are red.[212]
The soil produces flax from which the dress ordinarily worn by the
natives is made.[213] The tender side of the barks of trees receives
written characters like paper.[214] The birds can be readily trained
to imitate the sounds of human speech.[215] The animals except those
imported are unknown among other nations. The same country yields fit
food for the rhinoceros, but this animal is not indigenous.[216] The
elephants are more powerful than those tamed in Africa, and their size
corresponds to their strength.[217] Gold is carried down by several
rivers, whose loitering waters glide with slow and gentle currents.[218]
The sea casts upon the shores precious stones and pearls, nor has
anything contributed more to the opulence of the natives, especially
since they spread the community of evil to foreign nations; for these
offscourings of the boiling sea are valued at the price which fashion
sets on coveted luxuries.[219]