yet gentle, began to mingle its brine with the fresh water of the river.
Then they rowed out to another island that lay in the middle of the
river, making, however, slower progress in rowing since the stream of the
river was now beaten back by the force of the tide. They put in to the
shore of the island, and such as landed ran hither and thither in quest
of provisions, never dreaming of the mishap which was to overtake them
from their ignorance of tides. It was now about the third hour of the day
when the ocean, undergoing its periodic change, rose in flood-tide, and
began to burst upon them and force back the current of the river, which
being at first retarded, and then more violently repelled, was driven
upward contrary to its natural direction with more than the impetuosity
of rivers in flood rushing down precipitous beds. The men in general were
ignorant of the nature of the sea, and so, when they saw it continually
swelling higher, and overflowing the beach which before was dry, they
looked upon this as something supernatural by which the gods signified
their wrath against their rash presumption.
When the vessels were now fairly floated, and the whole squadron
scattered in different directions, the men who had gone on shore ran back
in consternation to the ships, confounded beyond measure by a calamity
of a nature so unexpected. But amid the tumult their haste served only
to mar their speed. Some were to be seen pushing the vessels with poles;
others had taken their seats to row, but in doing so had meanwhile
been preventing the proper adjustment of the oars. Others again, in
hastening to sail out into the clear channel, without waiting for the
requisite number of sailors and pilots, worked the vessels to little
effect, crippled as these were and otherwise difficult to handle. At
the same time several other vessels drifted away with the stream before
those who were pell-mell crowding into them could all get on board, and
in this case the crowding caused as much delay in hurrying off as did
the scarcity of hands in the other vessels. From one side were shouted
orders to stay, from another to put off, so that amid this confusion of
contradictory orders nothing that was of any service could be seen or
even heard. In such an emergency the pilots themselves were useless,
since their commands could neither be heard for the uproar, nor executed
by men so distracted with terror.
The ships accordingly ran foul of each other, broke away each other’s
oars, and bumped each other’s sterns. A spectator could not have supposed
that what he saw was the fleet of one and the same army, but rather two
hostile fleets engaged in a sea-fight. Prows were dashed against poops,
and vessels that damaged other vessels in front of them were themselves
damaged in turn by vessels at their stern. The men, as was but natural,
lost their temper, and from high words fell to blows. By this time the
tide had overflowed all the level lands near the river’s edge, leaving
only sandheaps visible above the water like so many islands. To these
numbers of the men swam for safety, neglecting through fear the safety of
the vessels they quitted, some of which were riding in very deep water
where depressions existed in the ground, while others were stranded on
shoals where the waves had covered the more or less elevated parts of the
channel. But now they were suddenly surprised with a new danger, still
greater than the first, for the sea, which had begun to ebb, was rushing
back whence it came with a strong current, and was rendering back the
lands which just before had been deeply submerged. This pitched some of
the stranded vessels upon their sterns, and caused others to fall upon
their sides, and that too with such violence that the fields around them
were strewn with baggage, arms, broken oars, and wreckage.
The soldiers, meanwhile, neither dared to trust themselves to the land
nor to leave their ships, as they dreaded that some calamity, worse than
before, might at any moment befall them. They could scarcely indeed
believe what they saw and experienced, these shipwrecks upon dry land,
and the presence of the sea in the river. Nor did their misfortunes end
here, for as they did not know that the tide would soon afterwards bring
back the sea and float their ships, they anticipated that they would be
reduced by famine to the most dismal extremities. To add to their terror
monstrous creatures of frightful aspect, which the sea had left behind
it, were seen wandering about.
As night drew on the hopelessness of the situation oppressed even the
king himself with harassing anxieties. But no care could ever daunt his
indomitable spirit, and great as was his anxiety it did not prevent him
from remaining all night on the watch and giving out his orders. He even
sent some horsemen to the mouth of the river with instructions that when
they saw the tide returning they should go before it and announce its
approach. Meanwhile he caused the shattered vessels to be repaired, and
those that were overturned to be set upright, at the same time ordering
the men to be ready and on the alert when the land would be inundated
by the return of the tide. The whole of that night had been spent by
the king in watching and addressing words of encouragement to his men,
when the horsemen came back at full gallop, with the tide following at
their heels. It came at first with a gentle current which sufficed to
set the ships afloat, but it soon gathered strength enough to set the
whole fleet in motion. Then the soldiers and sailors, giving vent to
their irrepressible joy at their unexpected deliverance, made the shores
and banks resound with their exulting cheers. They asked each other
wonderingly wherefrom so vast a sea had suddenly returned, whereto it
had retired the day before, what was the nature of this strange element,
which at one time was out of harmony with the natural laws of space, but
at another was obedient to some fixed laws in respect of time?[324] The
king conjecturing from what had happened that the tide would return
after sunrise, took advantage of it, and starting at midnight sailed down
the river attended by a few ships, and having passed its mouth, advanced
into the sea a distance of 400 stadia, and thus at last accomplished the
object he had so much at heart. Having then sacrificed to the tutelary
gods of the sea and of the places adjacent, he took the way back to his
fleet.
_Chapter X.—Alexander goes homeward by land, leaving Nearchus to follow
by sea and conduct the fleet to the head of the Persian Gulf—Disastrous
march through Gedrosia—Alexander arrives in Carmania, where he holds
Bacchic revels to celebrate his conquests_
He sailed thence up the river, and next day reached a place of anchorage
not far from a salt lake,[325] the peculiar properties of which being
unknown to his men, deceived those who thoughtlessly bathed in its
waters. For scabs broke out over their bodies, and the disease being
contagious, infected even others who had not bathed. The application of
oil, however, cured the sores. Then as the country through which the army
was to pass was dry and waterless, Alexander sent on Leonnatus in advance
to dig wells, while he remained himself with the troops where he was,
waiting for the arrival of spring. In the meantime he built a good many
cities,[326] and ordered Nearchus and Onesicritus, who were experienced
navigators, to sail with the stoutest ships down to the ocean, and
proceeding as far as they could with safety to make themselves acquainted
with the nature of the sea. Having done this, they might return to join
him by sailing up either the same river or the Euphrates.[327]
The winter being now wellnigh over, he burned the useless ships, and
marched homeward with his army by land. In the course of nine encampments
he reached the land of the Arabites, and in nine more the land of the
Cedrosii—a free people, who agreed to surrender after holding a council
to consider the subject. As they surrendered voluntarily, nothing was
exacted from them except a supply of provisions. On the fifth day
thereafter he came to a river, which the natives called the Arabus, and
beyond it he found the country barren and waterless. This he traversed,
and so entered the dominions of the Oritae. Here he gave Hephaestion
the great bulk of the army, and divided the rest of it, consisting of
light-armed troops, between Ptolemy, Leonnatus, and himself. These three
divisions plundered the Indians simultaneously, and carried off a large
booty. Ptolemy devastated the maritime country, while the king himself
and Leonnatus between them ravaged all the interior. Here too he built
a city, which he peopled with Arachosians.[328] Thence he came to those
Indians who inhabit the sea-coast, possessing a great extent of country,
and holding no manner of intercourse even with their next neighbours.
This isolation from the rest of the world has brutalised their character,
which even by nature is far from humane. They have long claw-like nails
and long shaggy hair, for they cut the growth of neither. They live in
huts constructed of shells and other offscourings of the sea. Their
clothing consists of the skins of wild beasts, and they feed on fish
dried in the sun, and on the flesh of sea monsters cast on the shore
during stormy weather.[329] The Macedonians having by this time consumed
all their provisions, suffered first from scarcity and at last from
hunger, so that they were driven to search everywhere for the roots of
the palm, which is the only tree that country produces. When even this
kind of food failed them, they began to kill their beasts of burden, and
did not spare even their horses. They were thus deprived of the means of
carrying their baggage, and had to burn the rich spoils taken from their
enemies, for the sake of which they had marched to the utmost extremities
of the East.
A pestilence succeeded the famine, for the new juices of the unwholesome
esculents on which they fed, superadded to the fatigue of marching and
the strain of their mental anxiety, had spread various distempers among
them, so that they were threatened with destruction whether they remained
where they were or resumed their march. If they stayed famine would
assail them, and if they advanced a still deadlier enemy, pestilence,
would have them in its grasp. The plains were in consequence bestrewn
with almost more bodies of the dying than of the dead. Even those who
suffered least from the distemper could not keep pace with the main army,
because every one believed that the faster he travelled he advanced the
more surely to health and safety. The men, therefore, whose strength
failed craved help from all and sundry, whether known to them or unknown.
But there were no beasts of burden now by which they could be taken on,
and the soldiers had enough to do to carry their arms, whilst at the same
time the dreadful figure of the calamity impending over themselves was
ever before their eyes. Being thus repeatedly appealed to, they could
not so much as bear to cast back a look at their comrades, their pity for
others being lost in their fears for themselves.
Those, on the other hand, who were thus forsaken, implored the king, in
the name of the gods and by the rites of their common religion, to help
them in their sore need, and when they found that they vainly importuned
deaf ears, their despair turned to frantic rage, so that they fell to
imprecations, wishing for those who refused to help them a similar death
and similar friends. The king, feeling himself to be the cause of so
great a calamity, was oppressed with grief and shame, and sent orders
to Phrataphernes, the satrap of the Parthyaeans,[330] to forward him
upon camels provisions ready cooked, and he also notified his wants to
the governors of the adjacent provinces. In obedience to his orders the
supplies were at once forwarded, and the army being thus rescued, from
famine at least, reached eventually the frontiers of Cedrosia, a region
which alone of all these parts produces everything in great abundance.
Here, therefore, he halted for some time to refresh his harassed troops
by an interval of repose.
Meanwhile he received a letter from Leonnatus reporting that he had
defeated the Oritae, who had brought against him a force of 8000 foot and
300 horse. Word came also from Craterus that he had crushed an incipient
rebellion, instigated by two Persian nobles, Ozines and Zariaspes, whom
he had seized and placed under custody. On leaving this place Alexander
appointed Sibyrtius to be governor of that province in succession to
Memnon, who had lately been cut off by some malady, and he then marched
into Carmania, which was governed by the satrap Aspastes, whom he
suspected of having designed to make himself independent while he was
a great distance off in India. Aspastes came to meet Alexander, who,
dissembling his resentment, received him graciously, and let him remain
in office till he could inquire into the charges preferred against him.
Then as the different governors, in compliance with his demands, had sent
him a large supply of horses and draught cattle from their respective
provinces, he accommodated all his men who wanted them with horses and
waggons. He restored also their arms to their former splendour, for
they were now not far from Persia, which was a rich country and in the
enjoyment of profound peace.
So then Alexander, whose soul aspired to more than human greatness,
since he had rivalled, as we said before, the glory which Father Bacchus
had achieved by his conquest of India, resolved also to match his
reputation by imitating the Bacchanalian procession which that divinity
first invented, whether that was a triumph or merely some kind of frolic
with which his Bacchanals amused themselves. To this end he ordered
the streets through which he was to pass to be strewn with flowers and
chaplets, and beakers and other capacious vessels brimming with wine to
be placed at all the house doors. Then he ordered waggons to be made,
each capable of holding many soldiers, and these to be decorated like
tents, some with white canvas and others with costly tapestry.
The king headed the procession with his friends and the members of his
select body-guard, wearing on their heads chaplets made of a variety
of flowers. The strains of music were to be heard in every part of the
procession, here the breathings of the flute, and there the warblings
of the lyre. All the army followed, feasting and carousing as they rode
in the waggons, which they had decorated as gaily as they possibly
could, and had hung round with their choicest and showiest weapons. The
king himself and the companions of his revelry rode in a chariot, which
groaned under the weight of goblets of gold and large drinking cups made
of the same precious metal. The army for seven days advanced in this
bacchanalian fashion, so that it might have fallen an easy prey to the
vanquished if they had but had a spark of spirit to attack it when in
this drunken condition. Why, a thousand men only, if with some mettle in
them and sober, could have captured the whole army in the midst of its
triumph, besotted as it was with its seven days’ drunken debauch.
But fortune, which assigns to every thing its fame and value in the
world’s estimation, turned into glory this gross military scandal; and
the contemporaries of Alexander, as well as those who came after his
time, regarded it as a wonderful achievement, that his soldiers, though
drunk, passed in safety through nations hardly as yet sufficiently
subdued, the barbarians taking, what was in reality a piece of great
temerity, to be a display of well-grounded confidence.[331] All this
grand exhibition, however, had the executioner in its wake, for the
satrap Aspastes, of whom we before made mention, was ordered to be put to
death.[332] So true is it that cruelty is no obstacle to the indulgence
of luxury, nor luxury to the indulgence of cruelty.
DIODÔROS SICULUS
BIBLIOTHECA HISTORICA OF DIODÔROS SICULUS
SEVENTEENTH BOOK
_Chapter LXXXIV.—Alexander at Massaga—His treachery towards the Indian
mercenaries who had capitulated_
When the capitulation on those terms had been ratified by oaths, the
Queen [of Massaga], to show her admiration of Alexander’s magnanimity,
sent out to him most valuable presents, with an intimation that she would
fulfil all the stipulations. Then the mercenaries at once, in accordance
with the terms of the agreement, evacuated the city, and after retiring
to a distance of eighty stadia, pitched their camp unmolested without
thought of what was to happen. But Alexander, who was actuated by an
implacable enmity against the mercenaries, and had kept his troops under
arms ready for action, pursued the barbarians, and falling suddenly
upon them, made a great slaughter of their ranks. The barbarians at
first loudly protested that they were attacked in violation of sworn
obligations, and invoked the gods whom he had desecrated by taking false
oaths in their name. But Alexander with loud voice retorted that his
covenant merely bound him to let them depart from the city, and was by
no means a league of perpetual amity between them and the Macedonians.
The mercenaries, undismayed by the greatness of their danger, drew
their ranks together in form of a ring, within which they placed the
women and children to guard them on all sides against their assailants.
As they were now desperate, and by their audacity and feats of valour,
made the conflict in which they closed hot work for the enemy, while the
Macedonians held it a point of honour not to be outdone in courage by
a horde of barbarians, great was the astonishment and alarm which the
peril of the crisis created. For as the combatants were locked together
fighting hand to hand, death and wounds were dealt round in every variety
of form. Thus the Macedonians, when once their long spikes had shattered
the shields of the barbarians, pierced their vitals with the steel points
of these weapons, and on the other hand the mercenaries never hurled
their javelins without deadly effect against the near mark presented by
the dense ranks of the enemy. When many were thus wounded and not a few
killed, the women, taking the arms of the fallen, fought side by side
with the men, for the imminence of the danger and the great interests
at stake forced them to do violence to their nature, and to take an
active part in the defence. Accordingly some of them who had supplied
themselves with arms, did their best to cover their husbands with their
shields, while others who were without arms did much to impede the enemy
by flinging themselves upon them and catching hold of their shields.
The defenders, however, after fighting desperately along with their
wives, were at last overpowered by superior numbers, and met a glorious
death which they would have disdained to exchange for a life with
dishonour.[333] Alexander spared the unwarlike and unarmed multitude, as
well as the women that still survived, but took them away under charge of
the cavalry.
_Chapter LXXXV.—Alexander captures the rock Aornos_
He took many other cities, and put to death all who offered resistance
to his arms. He then advanced to the rock called Aornos, unto which such
of the inhabitants as survived had fled for refuge, because it was a
stronghold of incomparable security.[334] Heraklês, it is said, had in
the days of old assaulted this rock, but had abandoned the siege on the
occurrence of violent earthquakes and signs from heaven. Now, when this
story came to Alexander’s ears, it only whetted his eagerness to attack
the stronghold, and match himself against the god in a contest for glory.
The rock was 100 stadia in circuit, 16 stadia in height, and had a level
surface, forming a complete circle. On its southern side it was washed
by the Indus, the greatest of Indian rivers, but elsewhere it was all
environed with deep ravines and inaccessible cliffs. When Alexander, who
perceived the difficult nature of the ground, had given up all hope of
taking the place by assault, there came to him an old man accompanied by
his two sons. He was miserably poor, this man, and had lived a long time
in that neighbourhood, inhabiting a cave with three lairs cut into the
rock, which served as night-quarters for himself and his sons. He had
thus a familiar knowledge of all that locality. This old man then, coming
to the king, explained to him what his circumstances were, and undertook
to guide his army up the difficult ascent, and take him to a position
which commanded the barbarians in occupation of the rock. Alexander
promised the man an ample recompense for this service, and in following
his guidance seized in the first place the narrow pass which alone gave
access to the rock, and, as there was no exit from it elsewhere, he so
closely blocked up the enemy that no assistance could possibly reach them
from any quarter. In the next place he set all his men to work to fill
up with a mound the ravine which lay at the root of the rock. Having
thus got nearer the place, he pushed the siege with all possible vigour,
making assaults for seven days and as many nights without intermission,
the troops taking duty by turns. The advantage, however, lay at first
with the barbarians, who fought from a higher position, and killed many
who pressed the attack too recklessly. But when the mound had been
completed, and catapults which shot bolts to a great distance and other
engines of war had been brought to bear against them, and when it became
manifest besides that the king would by no means abandon the siege, the
Indians were struck with despair. Alexander, whose sagacity foresaw what
would occur, withdrew the guard which he had left at the pass, thus
giving the men on the rock, if they wished to retire, a free passage out.
So then the barbarians, dismayed alike by the valour of the Macedonians
and the king’s fixed ambition to be master of the place, evacuated the
rock by night.
_Chapter LXXXVI.—Alexander crosses the Indus, and is hospitably received
by Taxilês_
Alexander having thus outwitted the Indians by these feints, obtained
possession of the rock without risk being incurred. He then gave his
guide the stipulated reward, and moved off with his army at the very time
when Aphrikês, an Indian who had 20,000 soldiers and 15 elephants, was
hovering about in that locality.[335] This man certain of his followers
put to death, and, having brought his head to Alexander, procured for
this service their own safety. The king took them into his own ranks, and
got possession of the elephants, which were wandering at large about the
country.