The Campaigns of Alexander (Classics) (26 page)

At this juncture Alexander sent Alcetas with his battalion to pick up the wounded and to recall the men who were still engaged. On the fourth day of the battle the procedure was repeated – another engine was brought into action, and another bridge laid.

So long as their chief survived, the Indians fought with great courage; but when he was killed by a missile from a catapult, what with their own losses in the four days’ continuous siege and the large numbers of men wounded or put out of action, they sent to Alexander to ask for a truce. For him it was a pleasure to save the lives of such brave
men, and he agreed with the Indian mercenaries that they should serve under himself, as a part of his own army. These troops, accordingly, marched with their arms out of the town and went into camp by themselves on a hill facing the Macedonian position. Their intention was not what Alexander expected; for, having no desire to fight against other Indians, they meant to desert under cover of night and disperse to their homes. Their purpose, however, was reported to Alexander, and that same night he stationed his whole force in a ring round the hill, caught the Indians in a trap, and butchered them.
⁶⁵
He then seized the town, now undefended. Assacenus’ mother and daughter were among the prisoners.
⁶⁶
During the operation as a whole Alexander’s losses amounted to about twenty-five men.

From Massaga, Alexander sent Coenus to Bazira, on the supposition that the people of that town, when they learned of the fate of Massaga, would surrender to him. At the same time Attalus, Alcetas, and Demetrius, the cavalry commander, were dispatched to Ora, with instructions to blockade it with a ring-wall pending his own arrival. The Indians in Ora made a sally against Alcetas’ troops, but were repulsed without difficulty and forced to withdraw within the wall again. At Bazira, meanwhile, Coenus was unsuccessful; the natives there were encouraged to resist by the natural strength of the town’s position – it stood very high and was well fortified on every side – and showed no sign of surrender.

Alexander started for Bazira as soon as he learned of this check; he was diverted, however, by a further report that some of the Indians of the neighbourhood, upon instructions from Abisares, were preparing to make their way secretly into Ora.
⁶⁷
So he made Ora his first objective, sending an order to Coenus to construct a blockhouse outside Bazira, garrison it sufficiently to prevent the people of the town from making free use of the surrounding country, and then join him with the remainder of his troops.

When the Indians in Bazira saw the greater part of Coenus’ forces moving off, they were not unnaturally contemptuous: the Macedonians – evidently – were no match for them. So out they all came, and a brisk engagement ensued. During the course of it about 500 of the Indians were killed and more than seventy captured; the remainder withdrew within the town. After this incident the garrison of the blockhouse took still stronger measures to bar access to the surrounding country.

The siege of Ora gave Alexander very little trouble; in fact, he took the place at the first assault – including the elephants which had been left there.

The news from Ora soon persuaded the Indians at Bazira that their position was hopeless. At midnight they abandoned the town. The other Indians of the district all followed their example: without exception they left their towns and fled for refuge to what was known as the Rock of Aornos.
⁶⁸
This rock is a really tremendous thing; and the story goes that Heracles himself, the son of Zeus, was
unable to capture it.
⁶⁹
Personally, of course, I should not like to state categorically that the Theban, or the Tyrian, or the Egyptian Heracles did, in fact, go to India. I incline to fancy that he did not; for it seems to me that people like to make difficulties look much more difficult than they really are, and to this end start a legend about Heracles’ failure to overcome them. That, at any rate, is my opinion about this rock: the name of Heracles was introduced simply to make the story more impressive. The circumference of Aornos is said to be about 25 miles, and its height, not including the peaks, nearly 8,000 feet. There is only one way up it, a difficult path, hewn from the rock. On the summit there is an abundant supply of pure water from a spring – it comes streaming out – and also woodland and enough good arable land to keep 1,000 men busy.

The description of this remarkable place awakened in Alexander a passionate desire to capture it, and the story about Heracles was not the least of his incentives.
⁷⁰

Ora and Massaga he converted into blockhouses for keeping order in the neighbourhood. Bazira was fully fortified. Hephaestion and Perdiccas, having fortified and garrisoned another town, called Orobatis, started for the Indus, where they set about the construction of the bridge according to Alexander’s orders. Nicanor, one of the Companions, was appointed governor of the territory west of the Indus.

On his march to Aornos, Alexander started in the direction of the Indus; the town of Peucelaotis, which stood not far from the river, he took over by surrender
and garrisoned with Macedonian troops under the command of Philip.
⁷¹
A number of other small places on the river also fell into his hands. He was accompanied on his march by the chiefs of the district, Cophaeus and Assagetes. Arrived at Embolima, a town close to Aornos, he detached a portion of his forces, under the command of Craterus, with orders to lay in supplies of all kinds in sufficient quantity for a long period of time, as his intention was to use the town as a base from which he could, by a protracted siege, little by little break the resistance of the Indians on Aornos, should it prove impossible to take the Rock by assault. Then, with the archers, the Agrianes, Coenus’ battalion, the best-armed and most active of the other infantry units, 200 Companions and 100 mounted archers, he moved on towards the Rock.

Before the day was over he halted in what he judged to be a convenient spot, and on the morrow advanced a little further; then halted again. While he waited there, some natives sought an interview with him. They put themselves into his hands, and then declared that they would guide him to the most vulnerable point of the Rock and from there he would be able to secure a valuable offensive position without difficulty. Alexander accepted the offer and ordered Ptolemy, son of Lagus, of his personal Guard, with the Agrianes, the other light-armed units, and a picked company of Guards, to go with the guides, seize the position they mentioned, make sure to secure it strongly, and inform him by signal in the event of his success.

The rough track made difficult going, but Ptolemy, un-perceived by the enemy, reached the position and occupied it. He at once proceeded to secure it by a ditch and stockade, and raised a fire-signal on an eminence where
Alexander would be sure to see it. Alexander did see it, instantly, and on the following day began his own advance, but, meeting resistance from the enemy and great difficulty from the broken ground, achieved, for the time being, nothing. The Indians no sooner perceived that Alexander’s offensive was getting nowhere than they turned their attention to Ptolemy. They moved to the attack, and there was a fierce struggle, the Indians doing all they could to tear down the stockade, while Ptolemy fought to maintain his hold. The weight of the Macedonian missiles overpowered the Indians, who at nightfall were forced to withdraw.

Wishing to get a message through to Ptolemy, Alexander chose as his messenger one of the Indian deserters, a trustworthy fellow with the further recommendation of an intimate knowledge of the locality. Under cover of darkness he sent this man with a letter containing instructions to Ptolemy, not to rest content with holding the position he had occupied, but to take the offensive: his attack, moreover, should be simultaneous with his own, so that the Indians would be caught between two fires. Next day at dawn Alexander moved; he marched for the track by which Ptolemy had made his secret ascent, in the belief that if once he could get through and join Ptolemy, what remained to do would be comparatively easy. All went according to plan: there was a hard struggle lasting until noon, the Macedonians trying to force their way up and the Indians doing what they could to stop them by all the missiles they could muster. Company by company the Macedonians pressed relentlessly up the slope, the leading files pausing till their companions below could join them, and at last, just as the light was going, they managed to get through and made contact with Ptolemy. The whole force, now united, then moved forward to the assault of
the actual Rock. The assault, however, proved abortive, and for what remained of the day nothing else was accomplished.

The following dawn Alexander issued an order for every man to cut a hundred stakes. This was done, and he then began the construction of an extensive earthwork, to reach from his present position on the crest of the hill across to Aornos itself. From the top of this he judged that the defenders of the Rock would be within range both of arrows and of catapults. Every man set to and took a hand, while Alexander himself kept an eye upon things and was as quick to punish shoddy work as to praise what was well and truly done.

During the first day the earthwork was carried forward about 200 yards; by the second, slingers and catapults operating from the portion already completed were able to check enemy raids on the men still working; within three days the entire space was filled. Then, on the fourth day, a small party of Macedonians stormed and secured another height, of no great extent, the summit of which was level with the Rock, and Alexander promptly began to extend the earthwork in this direction, in order to make it run without a break right up to this new position.

The seizure of this second height was an act of daring wholly beyond the Indians’ experience; they were badly shaken, and when they saw the earthwork completed and continuous, they abandoned any further hope of resistance, and sent an offer to Alexander to surrender the Rock upon terms. They expected to be able to protract the discussion of terms throughout the day, and their plan was to slip away during the night and disperse to their various homes. Alexander, however, was informed of their intention; giving them plenty of time to get away and to remove the pickets which were stationed all round the Rock, he
waited till the actual withdrawal began, and then, with a party of 700 of the Guards and his personal guard, moved forward to that part of the Rock which was now undefended. He was himself the first to set foot upon it, and his men followed, hauling each other up.

At a given signal they turned upon the retreating Indians and killed many of them as they tried to escape; others in sudden desperation flung themselves over the cliffs.

Thus Alexander was left in possession of the Rock which had baffled Heracles himself. Upon it he offered sacrifice, and then garrisoned it with troops under the command of Sisicottus, an Indian who some time previously had deserted to Bessus in Bactria and had subsequently taken service under Alexander, after his conquest of Bactria, and proved himself highly trustworthy.

Leaving Aornos, Alexander entered the territory of the Assacenians on the strength of a report that Assacenus’ brother with his elephants and a large number of natives proposed to defend themselves in the mountains there. The town of Dyrta he found empty and abandoned, as was the country in the immediate neighbourhood, and the day after his arrival there he detached Nearchus with the light-armed units and the Agrianes, and Antiochus with his own regiment of Guards and two others and sent them out to reconnoitre. Their orders were also to capture and question any natives they could lay hands on, and, in particular, to get what information they could about elephants, as this interested him more than than anything.

He now marched for the Indus. It was difficult country, and troops went on ahead to make a practicable route. A few natives were captured, and from them he learned that the Indians of the district had fled to Abisares,
⁷²
leaving
their elephants where they were to feed by the river. He ordered the men to take him to the elephants.

Many Indians hunt elephants, and Alexander greatly liked to have elephant-hunters in his retinue. On this occasion, too, he went hunting with his guides; two of the beasts, in the course of the hunt, jumped over a cliff and were killed, but the rest were caught. They permitted riders to mount them and were attached to the army.

There was a wood by the river, and as the timber was of good quality Alexander had it felled and boats built. The boats were taken down-river to the bridge, the construction of which Hephaestion and Perdiccas had some time ago completed.
⁷³

The people of Nysa, upon Alexander’s approach, sent their chief, Acuphis, to him accompanied by thirty of their most distinguished men with instructions to ask him to leave their city to its god. The story is that when they entered Alexander’s tent, they found him sitting there dusty and travel-stained, still wearing his equipment, his helmet on his head and a spear in his hand. The sight of
him sitting thus surprised them so much that they prostrated themselves upon the ground and for a long time spoke never a word. At last, however, Alexander bade them get up and not be alarmed; whereupon Acuphis addressed him in the following words: ‘Sire, it is the request of the people of Nysa that you show your reverence for Dionysus by leaving them free and independent. For when Dionysus, after his conquest of the Indians, was on his way homeward towards the Grecian sea, he founded this city as a memorial of his long journey and his victory, leaving to inhabit it those of his men who were no longer fit for service – who were also his Priests. He did but as you have done; for you too founded Alexandria in the Caucasus and Alexandria in Egypt and many other cities as well, and will found yet more hereafter, in that you will have surpassed the achievements of Dionysus.

‘Dionysus named this city Nysa and this land Nysaea in memory of his nurse, who bore that name; and to the mountain near the city he gave the name Merus – or the Thigh – because legend has it that he grew in the thigh of Zeus. Ever since that time Nysa has been free; we who live in it have made our own laws – and obeyed them, as good men should. If you wish for a proof that Dionysus was our founder, here it is: this is the only place in India where ivy grows.’

Alexander found what Acuphis said highly agreeable; he would have liked very much to believe the old tale about Dionysus’ journey and his foundings of Nysa, for then he would have had the satisfaction of knowing that he had already penetrated as far as Dionysus did, and would presently advance yet further; he felt moreover that his Macedonian troops would consent to share his hardships a little longer, if they knew they were in competition
with Dionysus. Accordingly he granted to the people of Nysa the continuance of their freedom and autonomy.

He inquired about the nature of their institutions, and on being told that the government was aristocratic in form, he expressed approval and asked that 300 of their mounted troops should be sent to join him together with 100 men chosen from the most distinguished in the governing class (which also happened to consist of 300 men). Acuphis, whom Alexander appointed governor of Nysaea, was to select them. Acuphis is said to have smiled at this request, and on being asked by Alexander what it was that amused him, the story goes that he replied: ‘But how, my lord, do you suppose that a city can lose a hundred good men and still be well governed? If you have our interest at heart, we will, indeed, send for the three hundred cavalrymen, and more, if you want them; but instead of the hundred able and distinguished citizens whom you ask me to select, take, I beg you, double the number of the inferior sort, so that when you come again to visit us you may find us as well governed as we are now.’

Alexander acceded to the request, which he thought a sensible one. He repeated his order that Acuphis should send the cavalrymen to accompany him, but neither the select hundred nor any substitutes for them. Acuphis, however, sent him his son and grandson.

There was a certain spot which the people of Nysa were very proud of because of its connexions with Dionysus. Alexander was extremely anxious to visit it; he longed to go with the Companion cavalry and his Guard of infantry to Mount Merus and see with his own eyes the ivy and laurel which grew there in such abundance, the groves of various trees which covered it, and the dense
woodland full of game of all kinds for hunting. Accordingly they went, and the Macedonians were delighted with the ivy, which they had not seen for so long – there is none in India elsewhere, not even in districts where the vine grows – and at once eagerly set themselves to make wreaths of it which they put on their heads while they sang songs of praise to Dionysus and called upon him by his many names. Alexander offered sacrifice on the sacred spot and made merry with his friends – and there is a story (which you may believe if you like) that a number of distinguished Macedonian officers, once the ivy crown was on their heads and the god invoked, were possessed by his spirit and with cries
of Euoi, Euoi
, lost their wits in the true Bacchic frenzy.

These tales, however, you may believe or not, as you think fit. Personally I do not completely accept the view of Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who tells us that everything attributed by the Macedonians to the divine influence was grossly exaggerated in order to please Alexander.
³
For instance, there is the case of the cave in the territory of the Parapamisadae: according to Eratosthenes, the Macedonians saw this cave and on the strength of some local legend – which they may well have invented – put it about that it was the cave where Prometheus was hung in chains when the eagle used to come to feed on his guts, and that Heracles came thither to kill the eagle and set Prometheus free; so that by means of this tale the Macedonians transferred Mount Caucasus from Pontus to the far east, fixing it in India in the country of the Parapamisadae, and gave the name Caucasus to what was in reality the Parapamisus
range simply to flatter Alexander by the inference that he had crossed Caucasus. Again, having seen Indian cattle branded with the image of a club, they used this as an argument to prove that Heracles had visited India. Eratosthenes is equally sceptical about similar tales of Dionysus’ wanderings – but, for my own part, I am content to maintain neutrality in these matters.
⁴

On reaching the Indus, Alexander found that Hephaestion had already bridged it and collected a large number of small boats and two thirty-oared galleys. Gifts from Taxiles the Indian were awaiting him: 200 talents of silver, 3,000 oxen and over 10,000 sheep for sacrificial purposes, and some thirty elephants. A cavalry contingent 700 strong also came from Taxiles to join Alexander’s forces, and the town of Taxila, which is the most considerable between the Indus and the Hydaspes, was given into his hands.
⁵
Here Alexander offered sacrifice to the gods whom it was his custom to honour, and held a contest of athletics and horsemanship by the river. The omens from the sacrifice were favourable for the crossing.

The Indus is bigger than any river in Europe, and than any other in India except the Ganges; it rises somewhere west of the Parapamisus (or Caucasus) range
⁶
and flows into the Indian Ocean to the southward; it has two mouths and in both of them the lower reaches are swampy like the five mouths of the Danube; it forms a delta (called Pattala in the Indian language) similar to the delta
of the Nile in Egypt: all these are accepted facts, and I take the opportunity of recording them here. The four Indian rivers, Hydaspes, Acesines, Hydraotes, and Hyphasis,
⁷
though much greater than the other Asian rivers, are nevertheless smaller – indeed much smaller – than the Indus, as the Indus itself is smaller than the Ganges. Ctesias indeed (if his report is worth anything as evidence) says that at its narrowest part the breadth of the Indus is about five miles, at its widest about twelve miles, while for most of its course it is somewhere between the two.
⁸
This, then, was the river which early one morning Alexander crossed with his army, and so entered India.

I have not included in this book an account of the Indian way of life, or any description of the strange animals to be found, or of the variety and size of the fish and other aquatic creatures in the Indus, the Hydaspes, the Ganges, and elsewhere: nor have I mentioned gold-mining ants and gold-guarding griffons
⁹
and other queer things which people have invented rather for diversion than as serious history, in the belief that none of the absurd stories they tell about India are likely to be brought to the test of truth. Actually, however, most of these fables were indeed proved or disproved by Alexander and his men – except in a few cases where they themselves were guilty of invention. They proved, for instance, that the Indians have no gold – at any rate the very considerable section of them which Alexander visited in the course
of his campaign – and that their domestic arrangements are far from luxurious. The men are taller than any other Asiatics, most of them being over seven feet, or not much less; they are darker-skinned than any other race except the Ethiopians, and the finest fighters to be found anywhere in Asia at that time. I cannot satisfactorily compare them with the ancient Persians who marched with Cyrus, son of Cambyses, when he wrested the sovereignty of Asia from the Medes and established his control either by force or by consent over so many other peoples as well; for the Persians at that period of their history were a poor nation and lived in a harsh land, and their way of life was as near as may be to the stern discipline of Sparta;
¹⁰
nor can I make any certain inference from the Persian disaster in Scythia, not knowing if the cause of it was the unfavourable nature of the ground where the battle was fought, or some mistake made by Cyrus, or the actual military inferiority of the Persian soldiers to the Scythians of those parts.

However, about India it is my intention to write a special account
¹¹
based on the most reliable reports from Alexander’s expedition and the discoveries of Nearchus, who sailed along the northern coasts of the Indian Ocean,
¹²
and including facts recorded by the two distinguished writers Megasthenes and Eratosthenes. My account will cover the Indian way of life, any strange creatures to be found in the country, and the actual coastal voyage in the Southern Ocean. For the present I must be content with what I have felt to be adequate simply for the illustration of Alexander’s achievements: namely, that
the boundary of Asia is the Taurus range, beginning at Mycale opposite the island of Samos, running north of Pamphylia and Cilicia, and thence to Armenia, whence it continues by way of Parthia and Chorasmia to Media, and in Bactria joins the Parapamisus range. It was this latter range which Alexander’s men called the Caucasus, apparently for the purpose of magnifying his achievement by the suggestion that he reached the further side of the Caucasus in his triumphant advance. It is possible, however, that there is no real break between this Indian Caucasus and the Scythian Caucasus, any more than there is between it and Taurus, and it is for that reason that I have already used the name Caucasus for it, and shall continue to do so. It runs down to the Indian Ocean.

Thus all the important rivers of Asia rise either in the Taurus or in the Caucasus Mountains, some of them flowing north and entering either Lake Maeotis or the so-called Hyrcanian Sea
¹³
itself a gulf of the Ocean
¹⁴
– others flowing south, such as the Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, Hydaspes, Acesines, Hydraotes, Hyphasis, and all the rest between these and the Ganges, which either empty themselves into the sea or disperse into swamp and disappear, as the Euphrates does.

Imagine Asia as divided by the Taurus and Caucasus ranges, running in an east-west direction, and you will see that the two main divisions are formed by the Taurus, one lying north of it, the other south; the southern part may then again be divided into four, the largest of which
is, according to Eratosthenes and Megasthenes, India; (Megasthenes, by the way, spent much time in Arachotia with its governor Sibyrtius, and tells us that he frequently visited the Indian King Sandracottus);
¹⁵
the smallest division, bounded on the east by the Euphrates, lies towards the Aegean, and the two remaining divisions, lying between the Euphrates and the Indus, can hardly, when put together, be compared in extent with India. India itself, east and west and right down to the south, is bounded by the Indian Ocean, and on the north by the Indian Caucasus as far as its junction with the Taurus range; from these mountains to the Indian Ocean its western boundary is the Indus. Most of the country is plain, generally supposed to be alluvial; and it is a fact that elsewhere, too, the majority of coastal plains have been formed by the silt of rivers – which was also, presumably, the reason why in ancient times the name of the country was the same as that of its river: for example, there is a plain of Hermus, a river which rises in the mountain of Dindymene the Great Mother,
¹⁶
in Asia, and flows into the sea near Smyrna in Aeolia; then there is the Cayster, which gives its name to a plain in Lydia, the Caïcus in Mysia, and the Maeander in Caria, after which is named the whole coastal strip as far as Miletus in Ionia. The historians Herodotus and Hecataeus (if the latter is indeed the author of the book in question) both call Egypt ‘the gift of the river’, and Herodotus has proved the point by very clear evidence.
¹⁷
In this case, too, the river gave its name to the country, for that Aegyptus was originally the name of the river now known both in Egypt and elsewhere in the world as the Nile there is sufficient evidence in Homer, where we find the statement that Menelaus brought up ‘at the mouth of the Aegyptus’.
¹⁸

If, therefore, in various parts of the world one river, and a comparatively small one at that, can on its course to the sea build up a large area of land by means of the mud and silt which it brings down from the uplands where it rises, there is surely no reason why one should not admit that India, too, is for the most part an alluvial plain; for if one added together the Hermus, Cayster, Caïcus, Maeander, and all the other Asian rivers which flow into the Aegean, they would not, for sheer volume of water, compare with any single one of the rivers of India – to say nothing of the greatest, the Ganges, with which not even the Egyptian Nile or the great European river the Danube is to be mentioned in the same breath: indeed, combine all those rivers into one and they would not equal in volume even the Indus, which is a mighty stream right from its source and receives the waters of fifteen tributaries, all of them bigger than the rivers of Asia,
¹⁹
and imposes its name upon the country as it flows down to meet the sea. That is all I will say here about this great country. I must keep the rest for my other book,
The History of India
.