Chapter XCIV

MILITARY OPERATIONS AND CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER, AFTER HIS WINTER-QUARTERS IN PERSIS, DOWN TO HIS DEATH AT BABYLON.

From this time forward to the close of Alexander’s life—a period of about seven years—his time was spent in conquering the eastern half of the Persian empire, together with various independent tribes lying beyond its extreme boundary. But neither Greece, nor Asia Minor, nor any of his previous western acquisitions, was he ever destined to see again.

Now, in regard to the history of Greece—the subject of these volumes—the first portion of Alexander’s Asiatic campaigns (from his crossing the Hellespont to the conquest of Persis, a period of four years, March 334 B. C., to March 330 B. C.), though not of direct bearing, is yet of material importance. Having in his first year completed the subjugation of the Hellenic world, he had by these subsequent campaigns absorbed it as a small fraction into the vast Persian empire, renovated under his imperial sceptre. He had accomplished a result substantially the same as would have been brought about if the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, destined, a century and a half before, to incorporate Greece with the Persian monarchy, had succeeded instead of failing.[429] Towards the kings of Macedonia alone, the subjugation of Greece would never have become complete, so long as she could receive help from the native Persian kings, who were perfectly adequate as a countervailing and tutelary force, had they known how to play their game. But all hope for Greece from without was extinguished, when Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis became subject to the same ruler as Pella and Amphipolis—and that ruler too, the ablest general, and most insatiate aggressor, of his age; to whose name was attached the prestige of success almost superhuman. Still, against even this overwhelming power, some of the bravest of the Greeks at home tried to achieve their liberation with the sword: we shall see presently how sadly the attempt miscarried.

[429] Compare the language addressed by Alexander to his weary soldiers, on the banks of the Hyphasis (Arrian, v. 26), with that which Herodotus puts into the mouth of Xerxes, when announcing his intended expedition against Greece (Herodot. vii. 8).

But though the first four years of Alexander’s Asiatic expedition, in which he conquered the Western half of the Persian empire, had thus an important effect on the condition and destinies of the Grecian cities—his last seven years, on which we are now about to enter, employed chiefly in conquering the Eastern half, scarcely touched these cities in any way. The stupendous marches to the rivers Jaxartes, Indus, and Hyphasis, which carried his victorious arms over so wide a space of Central Asia, not only added nothing to his power over the Greeks, but even withdrew him from all dealings with them, and placed him almost beyond their cognizance. To the historian of Greece, therefore, these latter campaigns can hardly be regarded as included within the range of his subject. They deserve to be told, as examples of military skill and energy, and as illustrating the character of the most illustrious general of antiquity—one who, though not a Greek, had become the master of all Greeks. But I shall not think it necessary to recount them in any detail, like the battles of Issus and Arbêla.

About six or seven months had elapsed from the battle of Arbêla to the time when Alexander prepared to quit his most recent conquest—Persis proper. During all this time, Darius had remained at Ekbatana,[430] the chief city of Media, clinging to the hope, that Alexander, when possessed of the three southern capitals and the best part of the Persian empire, might have reached the point of satiation, and might leave him unmolested in the more barren East. As soon as he learnt that Alexander was in movement towards him, he sent forward his harem and his baggage to Hyrkania, on the south-eastern border of the Caspian sea. Himself, with the small force around him, followed in the same direction, carrying off the treasure in the city (7000 talents= £1,610,000 in amount), and passed through the Caspian Grates into the territory of Parthyênê. His only chance was to escape to Baktria at the eastern extremity of the empire, ruining the country in his way for the purpose of retarding pursuers. But this chance diminished every day, from desertion among his few followers, and angry disgust among many who remained.[431]

[430] I see no reason for doubting that the Ekbatana here meant is the modern Hamadan. See a valuable Appendix added by Dr. Thirlwall to the sixth volume of his History of Greece, in which this question is argued against Mr. Williams.

Sir John Malcolm observes—“There can hardly be said to be any roads in Persia; nor are they much required, for the use of wheel carriages has not yet been introduced into that kingdom. Nothing can be more rugged and difficult than the paths which have been cut over the mountains by which it is bounded and intersected” (ch. xxiv. vol. ii. p. 525).

In this respect, indeed, as in others, the modern state of Persia must be inferior to the ancient; witness the description given by Herodotus of the road between Sardis and Susa.

[431] Arrian, iii. 19, 2-9; iii. 20, 3.

Eight days after Darius had quitted Ekbatana, Alexander entered it. How many days had been occupied in his march from Persepolis, we cannot say: in itself a long march, it had been farther prolonged, partly by the necessity of subduing the intervening mountaineers called Parætakeni,[432] partly by rumors exaggerating the Persian force at Ekbatana, and inducing him to advance with precaution and regular array. Possessed of Ekbatana—the last capital stronghold of the Persian kings, and their ordinary residence during the summer months—he halted to rest his troops, and establish a new base of operations for his future proceedings eastward. He made Ekbatana his principal depôt; depositing in the citadel, under the care of Harpalus as treasurer, with a garrison of 6000 or 7000 Macedonians, the accumulated treasures of his past conquests, out of Susa and Persepolis; amounting, we are told, to the enormous sum of 180,000 talents = £41,400,000 sterling.[433] Parmenio was invested with the chief command of this important post, and of the military force left in Media; of which territory Oxodates, a Persian who had been imprisoned at Susa by Darius, was named satrap.[434]

[432] Arrian, iii. 19, 5.

[433] Arrian, iii. 19, 14; Diodor. xvii. 80. Diodorus had before stated (xvii. 66, 71) the treasure in Susa as being 49,000 talents, and that in Persepolis as 120,000. Arrian announces the treasure in Susa as 50,000 talents—Curtius gives the uncoined gold and silver alone as 50,000 talents (v. 8, 11). The treasure of both places was transported to Ekbatana.

[434] Arrian, iii. 20, 4.

At Ekbatana Alexander was joined by a fresh force of 6000 Grecian mercenaries,[435] who had marched from Kilikia into the interior, probably crossing the Euphrates and Tigris at the same points as Alexander himself had crossed. Hence he was enabled the better to dismiss his Thessalian cavalry, with other Greeks who had been serving during his four years of Asiatic war, and who now wished to go home.[436] He distributed among them the sum of 2000 talents in addition to their full pay, and gave them the price of their horses, which they sold before departure. The operations which he was now about to commence against the eastern territories of Persia were not against regular armies, but against flying corps and distinct native tribes, relying for defence chiefly on the difficulties which mountains, deserts, privation, or mere distance, would throw in the way of an assailant. For these purposes he required an increased number of light troops, and was obliged to impose even upon his heavy-armed cavalry the most rapid and fatiguing marches, such as none but his Macedonian Companions would have been contented to execute; moreover he was called upon to act less with large masses, and more with small and broken divisions. He now therefore for the first time established a regular Taxis, or division of horse-bowmen.[437]

[435] Curtius, v. 23, 12.

[436] Arrian, iii. 19, 10: compare v. 27, 7.

[437] Arrian, iii. 24, 1. ἤδη γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ ἱππακοντισταὶ ἦσαν τάξις.

See the remarks of Rüstow and Köchly upon the change made by Alexander in his military organization about this period, as soon as he found that there was no farther chance of a large collected Persian force, able to meet him in the field (Geschichte des Griech. Kriegswesens, p. 252 seq.).

The change which they point out was real,—but I think they exaggerate it in degree.

Remaining at Ekbatana no longer than was sufficient for these new arrangements, Alexander recommenced his pursuit of Darius. He hoped to get before Darius to the Caspian Gates, at the north-eastern extremity of Media; by which Gates[438] was understood a mountain-pass, or rather a road of many hours’ march, including several difficult passes stretching eastward along the southern side of the great range of Taurus towards Parthia. He marched with his Companion-cavalry, the light-horse, the Agrianians, and the bowmen—the greater part of the phalanx keeping up as well as it could—to Rhagæ, about fifty miles north of the Caspian Gates; which town he reached in eleven days, by exertions so severe that many men as well as horses were disabled on the road. But in spite of all speed, he learnt that Darius had already passed through the Caspian Gates. After five days of halt at Rhagæ, indispensable for his army, Alexander passed them also. A day’s march on the other side of them, he was joined by two eminent Persians, Bagistanes and Antibêlus, who informed him that Darius was already dethroned and in imminent danger of losing his life.[439]

[438] The passes called the Caspian Gates appear to be those described by Morier, Fraser, and other modern travellers, as the series of narrow valleys and defiles called Ser-Desch, Sirdari, or Serdara Kahn,—on the southernmost of the two roads which lead eastward from Teheran towards Damaghan, and thence farther eastward towards Mesched and Herat. See the note of Mützel in his edition of Curtius, v. 35, 2, p. 489; also Morier, Second Journey through Persia, p. 363; Fraser’s Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan, p. 291.

The long range of mountains, called by the ancients Taurus, extends from Lesser Media and Armenia in an easterly direction along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. Its northern declivity, covered by prodigious forests with valleys and plains of no great breadth reaching to the Caspian, comprehends the moist and fertile territories now denominated Ghilan and Mazanderan. The eastern portion of Mazanderan was known in ancient times as Hyrkania, then productive and populous; while the mountain range itself was occupied by various rude and warlike tribes—Kadusii, Mardi, Tapyri, etc. The mountain range, now called Elburz, includes among other lofty eminences the very high peak of Demavend.

The road from Ekbatana to Baktra, along which both the flight of Darius and the pursuit of Alexander lay, passed along the broken ground skirting the southern flank of the mountain range Elburz. Of this broken ground the Caspian Gates formed the worst and most difficult portion.

[439] Arrian, iii. 20, 21.

The conspirators by whom this had been done, were Bessus, satrap of Baktria—Barsaentes, satrap of Drangiana and Arachosia—and Nabarzanes, general of the regal guards. The small force of Darius having been thinned by daily desertion, most of those who remained were the contingents of the still unconquered territories, Baktria, Arachosia, and Drangiana, under the orders of their respective satraps. The Grecian mercenaries, 1500 in number, and Artabazus, with a band under his special command, adhered inflexibly to Darius, but the soldiers of Eastern Asia followed their own satraps. Bessus and his colleagues intended to make their peace with Alexander by surrendering Darius, should Alexander pursue so vigorously as to leave them no hope of escape; but if they could obtain time to reach Baktria and Sogdiana, they resolved to organize an energetic resistance, under their own joint command, for the defence of those eastern provinces—the most warlike population of the empire.[440] Under the desperate circumstances of the case, this plan was perhaps the least unpromising that could be proposed. The chance of resisting Alexander, small as it was at the best, became absolutely nothing under the command of Darius, who had twice set the example of flight from the field of battle, betraying both his friends and his empire, even when surrounded by the full force of Persia. For brave and energetic Persians, unless they were prepared at once to submit to the invader, there was no choice but to set aside Darius; nor does it appear that the conspirators intended at first anything worse. At a village called Thara in Parthia, they bound him in chains of gold—placed him in a covered chariot surrounded by the Baktrian troops,—and thus carried him onward, retreating as fast as they could; Bessus assuming the command. Artabazus, with the Grecian mercenaries, too feeble to prevent the proceeding, quitted the army in disgust, and sought refuge among the mountains of the Tapuri bordering on Hyrkania towards the Caspian Sea.[441]

[440] Masistes, after the shocking outrage upon his wife by Queen Amestris, was going to Baktria to organize a revolt: see Herodot. ix. 113—about the importance of that satrapy.

[441] Arrian, iii. 21-23. Justin (xi. 15) specifies the name of the place—Thara. Both he and Curtius mention the golden chain (Curtius, 34, 20). Probably the conspirators made use of some chains which had formed a part of the ornaments of the royal wardrobe. Among the presents given by Darius son of Hystaspes to the surgeon Demokedes, there were two pairs of golden chains—Δωρέεται δή μιν Δαρεῖος πεδέων χρυσέων δύο ζεύγεσιν—Herodot. iii. 130: compare iii. 15. The Persian king and grandees habitually wore golden chains round neck and arms.

On hearing this intelligence, Alexander strained every nerve to overtake the fugitives and get possession of the person of Darius. At the head of his Companion-cavalry, his light-horse, and a body of infantry picked out for their strength and activity, he put himself in instant march, with nothing but arms and two days’ provisions for each man; leaving Kraterus to bring on the main body by easier journeys. A forced march of two nights and one day, interrupted only by a short midday repose (it was now the month of July), brought him at daybreak to the Persian camp which his informant Bagistanes had quitted. But Bessus and his troops were already beyond it, having made considerable advance in their flight; upon which Alexander, notwithstanding the exhaustion both of men and horses, pushed on with increased speed through all the night to the ensuing day at noon. He there found himself in the village where Bessus had encamped on the preceding day. Yet learning from deserters that his enemies had resolved to hasten their retreat by night marches, he despaired of overtaking them, unless he could find some shorter road. He was informed that there was another shorter, but leading through a waterless desert. Setting out by this road late in the day with his cavalry, he got over no less than forty-five miles during the night, so as to come on Bessus by complete surprise on the following morning. The Persians, marching in disorder without arms, and having no expectation of an enemy, were so panic-struck at the sudden appearance of their indefatigable conqueror, that they dispersed and fled without any attempt to resist. In this critical moment, Bessus and Barsaentes urged Darius to leave his chariot, mount his horse, and accompany them in their flight. But he refused to comply. They were determined however that he should not fall alive into the hands of Alexander, whereby his name would have been employed against them, and would have materially lessened their chance of defending the eastern provinces; they were moreover incensed by his refusal, and had contracted a feeling of hatred and contempt to which they were glad to give effect. Casting their javelins at him, they left him mortally wounded, and then pursued their flight.[442] His chariot, not distinguished by any visible mark, nor known even to the Persian soldiers themselves, was for some time not detected by the pursuers. At length a Macedonian soldier named Polystratus found him expiring, and is said to have received his last words; wherein he expressed thanks to Alexander for the kind treatment of his captive female relatives, and satisfaction that the Persian throne, lost to himself, was about to pass to so generous a conqueror. It is at least certain that he never lived to see Alexander himself.[443]

[442]

“Rarus apud Medos regum cruor; unaque cuncto Pœna manet generi; quamvis crudelibus æque Paretur dominis.” (Claudian. in Eutrop. ii. p. 478.)

Court conspiracies and assassinations of the prince, however were not unknown either among the Achæmenidæ or the Arsakidæ.

[443] This account of the remarkable incidents immediately preceding the death of Darius, is taken mainly from Arrian (iii. 21), and seems one of the most authentic chapters of his work. He is very sparing in telling what passed in the Persian camp; he mentions indeed only the communications made by the Persian deserters to Alexander.

Curtius (v. 27-34) gives the narrative far more vaguely and loosely than Arrian, but with ample details of what was going on in the Persian camp. We should have been glad to know from whom these details were borrowed. In the main they do not contradict the narrative of Arrian, but rather amplify and dilute it.

Diodorus (xvii. 73), Plutarch (Alexand. 42, 43), and Justin (xi. 15) give no new information.

Alexander had made the prodigious and indefatigable marches of the last four days, not without destruction to many men and horses, for the express purpose of taking Darius alive. It would have been a gratification to his vanity to exhibit the Great King as a helpless captive, rescued from his own servants by the sword of his enemy, and spared to occupy some subordinate command as a token of ostentatious indulgence. Moreover, apart from such feelings, it would have been a point of real advantage to seize the person of Darius, by means of whose name Alexander would have been enabled to stifle all farther resistance in the extensive and imperfectly known regions eastward of the Caspian Gates. The satraps of these regions had now gone thither with their hands free, to kindle as much Asiatic sentiment and levy as large a force as they could, against the Macedonian conqueror; who was obliged to follow them, if he wished to complete the subjugation of the empire. We can understand therefore that Alexander was deeply mortified in deriving no result from this ruinously fatiguing march, and can the better explain that savage wrath which we shall hereafter find him manifesting against the satrap Bessus.

Alexander caused the body of Darius to be buried with full pomp and ceremonial, in the regal sepulchres of Persis. The last days of this unfortunate prince have been described with almost tragic pathos by historians; and there are few subjects in history better calculated to excite such a feeling, if we regard simply the magnitude of his fall, from the highest pitch of power and splendor to defeat, degradation, and assassination. But an impartial review will not allow us to forget that the main cause of such ruin was his own blindness—his long apathy after the battle of Issus, and abandonment of Tyre and Gaza, in the fond hope of repurchasing queens whom he had himself exposed to captivity—lastly, what is still less pardonable, his personal cowardice in both the two decisive battles deliberately brought about by himself. If we follow his conduct throughout the struggle, we shall find little of that which renders a defeated prince either respectable or interesting. Those who had the greatest reason to denounce and despise him were his friends and his countrymen, whom he possessed ample means of defending, yet threw those means away. On the other hand, no one had better grounds for indulgence towards him than his conqueror; for whom he had kept unused the countless treasures of the three capitals, and for whom he had lightened in every way the difficulties of a conquest, in itself hardly less than impracticable.[444]

[444] Arrian (iii. 22) gives an indulgent criticism on Darius, dwelling chiefly upon his misfortunes, but calling him ἀνδρὶ τὰ μὲν πολέμια, εἴπερ τινὶ ἄλλῳ, μαλθακῷ τε καὶ οὐ φρενήρει, etc.

The recent forced march, undertaken by Alexander for the purpose of securing Darius as a captive, had been distressing in the extreme to his soldiers, who required a certain period of repose and compensation. This was granted to them at the town of Hekatompylus in Parthia, where the whole army was again united. Besides abundant supplies from the neighboring region, the soldiers here received a donative derived from the large booty taken in the camp of Darius.[445] In the enjoyment and revelry universal throughout the army, Alexander himself partook. His indulgences in the banquet and in wine-drinking, to which he was always addicted when leisure allowed were now unusually multiplied and prolonged. Public solemnities were celebrated, together with theatrical exhibitions by artists who joined the army from Greece. But the change of most importance in Alexander’s conduct was, that he now began to feel and act manifestly as successor of Darius on the Persian throne; to disdain the comparative simplicity of Macedonian habits, and to assume the pomp, the ostentatious apparatus of luxuries, and even the dress, of a Persian king.

[445] Curtius, vi. 5, 10; vi. 6, 15. Diodor. xvii. 74. Hekatompylus was an important position, where several roads joined (Polyb. x. 28). It was situated on one of the roads running eastward from the Caspian Gates, on the southern flank of Mount Taurus (Elburz). Its locality cannot be fixed with certainty: Ritter (Erdkunde, part viii. 465, 467) with others conceives it to have been near Damaghan; Forbiger (Handbuch der Alten Geographie, vol. ii. p. 549) places it further eastward, near Jai-Jerm. Mr. Long notes it on his map, as site unknown.

To many of Alexander’s soldiers, the conquest of Persia appeared to be consummated and the war finished, by the death of Darius. They were reluctant to exchange the repose and enjoyments of Hekatompylus for fresh fatigues; but Alexander, assembling the select regiments, addressed to them an emphatic appeal which revived the ardor of all.[446] His first march was, across one of the passes from the south to the north of Mount Elburz, into Hyrkania, the region bordering the south-eastern corner of the Caspian Sea. Here he found no resistance; the Hyrkanian satrap Phrataphernes, together with Nabarzanes, Artabazus, and other eminent Persians, surrendered themselves to him, and were favorably received. The Greek mercenaries, 1500 in number, who had served with Darius, but had retired when that monarch was placed under arrest by Bessus, sent envoys requesting to be allowed to surrender on capitulation. But Alexander—reproaching them with guilt for having taken service with the Persians, in contravention of the vote passed by the Hellenic synod—required them to surrender at discretion; which they expressed their readiness to do, praying that an officer might be despatched to conduct them to him in safety.[447] The Macedonian Andronikus was sent for this purpose, while Alexander undertook an expedition into the mountains of the Mardi; a name seemingly borne by several distinct tribes in parts remote from each other, but all poor and brave mountaineers. These Mardi occupied parts of the northern slope of the range of Mount Elburz a few miles from the Caspian Sea (Mazanderan and Ghilan). Alexander pursued them into all their retreats,—overcame them, when they stood on their defence, with great slaughter,—and reduced the remnant of the half-destroyed tribes to sue for peace.[448]

[446] This was attested by his own letters to Antipater, which Plutarch had seen (Plutarch, Alexand. 47). Curtius composes a long speech for Alexander (vi. 7, 9).

[447] Arrian, iii. 23, 15.

[448] Arrian, iii. 24, 4. In reference to the mountain tribes called Mardi, who are mentioned in several different localities—on the parts of Mount Taurus south of the Caspian, in Armenia, on Mount Zagros, and in Persis proper (see Strabo, xi. p. 508-523; Herodot. i. 125), we may note, that the Nomadic tribes, who constitute a considerable fraction of the population of the modern Persian Empire, are at this day found under the same name in spots widely distant: see Jaubert, Voyage en Arménie et en Perse, p. 254.

From this march, which had carried him in a westerly direction, he returned to Hyrkania. At the first halt he was met by the Grecian mercenaries who came to surrender themselves, as well as by various Grecian envoys from Sparta, Chalkedon, and Sinôpe, who had accompanied Darius in his flight. Alexander put the Lacedæmonians under arrest, but liberated the other envoys, considering Chalkedon and Sinôpe to have been subjects of Darius, not members of the Hellenic synod. As to the mercenaries, he made a distinction between those who had enlisted in the Persian service before the recognition of Philip as leader of Greece—and those whose enlistment had been of later date. The former he liberated at once; the latter he required to remain in his service under the command of Andronikus, on the same pay as they had hitherto received.[449] Such was the untoward conclusion of Grecian mercenary service with Persia; a system whereby the Persian monarchs, had they known how to employ it with tolerable ability, might well have maintained their empire even against such an enemy as Alexander.[450]

[449] Arrian, iii. 24, 8; Curtius, vi. 5, 9. An Athenian officer named Demokrates slew himself in despair, disdaining to surrender.

[450] See a curious passage on this subject, at the end of the Cyropædia of Xenophon.

After fifteen days of repose and festivity at Zeudracarta, the chief town of Hyrkania, Alexander marched eastward with his united army through Parthia into Aria—the region adjoining the modern Herat with its river now known as Herirood. Satibarzanes, the satrap of Aria, came to him near the border, to a town named Susia,[451] submitted, and was allowed to retain his satrapy; while Alexander, merely skirting the northern border of Aria, marched in a direction nearly east towards Baktria against the satrap Bessus, who was reported as having proclaimed himself King of Persia. But it was discovered, after three or four days, that Satibarzanes was in league with Bessus; upon which Alexander suspended for the present his plans against Baktria, and turned by forced marches to Artakoana, the chief city of Aria.[452] His return was so unexpectedly rapid, that the Arians were overawed, and Satibarzanes was obliged to escape. A few days enabled him to crush the disaffected Arians and to await the arrival of his rear division under Kraterus. He then marched southward into the territory of the Drangi, or Drangiana (the modern Seiestan), where he found no resistance—the satrap Barsaentes having sought safety among some of the Indians.[453]

[451] Arrian, iii. 25, 3-8. Droysen and Dr. Thirlwall identify Susia with the town now called Tûs or Toos, a few miles north-west of Mesched. Professor Wilson (Ariana Antiqua, p. 177) thinks that this is too much to the west, and too far from Herat: he conceives Susia to be Zuzan, on the desert side of the mountains west of Herat. Mr. Prinsep (notes on the historical results deducible from discoveries in Afghanistan, p. 14) places it at Subzawar, south of Herat, and within the region of fertility.

Tûs seems to lie in the line of Alexander’s march, more than the other two places indicated; Subzawar is too far to the south. Alexander appears to have first directed his march from Parthia to Baktria (in the line from Asterabad to Baikh through Margiana), merely touching the borders of Aria in his route.

[452] Artakoana, as well as the subsequent city of Alexandria in Ariis, are both supposed by Wilson to coincide with the locality of Herat (Wilson, Ariana Antiqua, p. 152-177).

There are two routes from Herat to Asterabad, at the south-east corner of the Caspian; one by Schahrood which is 533 English miles; the other by Mesched, which is 688 English miles (Wilson, p. 149).

[453] Arrian, iii. 25; Curtius, vi. 24, 36. The territory of the Drangi, or Zarangi, southward from Aria, coincides generally with the modern Seistan, adjoining the lake now called Zareh, which receives the waters of the river Hilmend.

In the chief town of Drangiana occurred the revolting tragedy, of which Philotas was the first victim, and his father Parmenio the second. Parmenio, now seventy years of age, and therefore little qualified for the fatigue inseparable from the invasion of the eastern satrapies, had been left in the important post of commanding the great depôt and treasure at Ekbatana. His long military experience, and confidential position even under Philip, rendered him the second person in the Macedonian army, next to Alexander himself. His three sons were all soldiers. The youngest of them, Hektor, had been accidentally drowned in the Nile, while in the suite of Alexander in Egypt; the second, Nikanor, had commanded the hypaspists or light infantry, but had died of illness, fortunately for himself, a short time before;[454] the eldest, Philotas, occupied the high rank of general of the Companion-cavalry, in daily communication with Alexander, from whom he received personal orders.

[454] Arrian, iii. 25, 6; Curtius, iv. 8, 7; vi. 6, 19.

A revelation came to Philotas, from Kebalinus, brother of a youth named Nikomachus, that a soldier, named Dimnus of Chalastra, had made boast to Nikomachus, his intimate friend or beloved person, under vows of secrecy, of an intended conspiracy against Alexander, inviting him to become an accomplice.[455] Nikomachus, at first struck with abhorrence, at length simulated compliance, asked who were the accomplices of Dimnus, and received intimation of a few names; all of which he presently communicated to his brother Kebalinus, for the purpose of being divulged. Kebalinus told the facts to Philotas, entreating him to mention them to Alexander. But Philotas, though every day in communication with the king, neglected to do this for two days; upon which Kebalinus began to suspect him of connivance, and caused the revelation to be made to Alexander through one of the pages named Metron. Dimnus was immediately arrested, but ran himself through with his sword, and expired without making any declaration.[456]

[455] Curtius, vi. 7, 2. “Dimnus, modicæ apud regem auctoritates et gratiæ, exoleti, cui Nicomacho erat nomen, amore flagrabat, obsequio uni sibi dediti corporis vinctus.” Plutarch, Alex. 49; Diodor. xvii. 79.

[456] Curt. vi. 7, 29; Plutarch, Alex. 49. The latter says that Dimnus resisted the officer sent to arrest him, and was killed by him in the combat.

Of this conspiracy, real or pretended, every thing rested on the testimony of Nikomachus. Alexander indignantly sent for Philotas, demanding why he had omitted for two days to communicate what he had heard. Philotas replied, that the source from which it came was too contemptible to deserve notice—that it would have been ridiculous to attach importance to the simple declarations of such a youth as Nikomachus, recounting the foolish boasts addressed to him by a lover. Alexander received, or affected to receive, the explanation, gave his hand to Philotas, invited him to supper, and talked to him with his usual familiarity.[457]

[457] Curtius, vi. 7, 33. “Philotas respondit, Cebalinum quidem scorti sermonem ad se detulisse, sed ipsum tam levi auctori nihil credidisse—veritum, ne jurgium inter amatorem et exoletum non sine risu aliorum detulisset.”

But it soon appeared that advantage was to be taken of this incident for the disgrace and ruin of Philotas, whose free-spoken criticisms on the pretended divine paternity,—-coupled with boasts, that he and his father Parmenio had been chief agents in the conquest of Asia,—had neither been forgotten nor forgiven. These, and other self-praises, disparaging to the glory of Alexander, had been divulged by a mistress to whom Philotas was attached; a beautiful Macedonian woman of Pydna, named Antigonê, who, having first been made a prize in visiting Samothrace by the Persian admiral Autophradates, was afterwards taken amidst the spoils of Damascus by the Macedonians victorious at Issus. The reports of Antigonê, respecting some unguarded language held by Philotas to her, had come to the knowledge of Kraterus, who brought her to Alexander, and caused her to repeat them to him. Alexander desired her to take secret note of the confidential expressions of Philotas, and report them from time to time to himself.[458]

[458] Plutarch, Alexand. 48.

It thus turned out that Alexander, though continuing to Philotas his high military rank, and talking to him constantly with seeming confidence, had for at least eighteen months, ever since his conquest of Egypt and perhaps even earlier, disliked and suspected him, keeping him under perpetual watch through the suborned and secret communications of a treacherous mistress.[459] Some of the generals around Alexander—especially Kraterus, the first suborner of Antigonê—fomented these suspicions, from jealousy of the great ascendency of Parmenio and his family. Moreover, Philotas himself was ostentatious and overbearing in his demeanor, so as to have made many enemies among the soldiers.[460] But whatever may have been his defects on this head—defects which he shared with the other Macedonian generals, all gorged with plunder and presents[461]—his fidelity as well as his military merits stand attested by the fact that Alexander had continued to employ him in the highest and most confidential command throughout all the long subsequent interval; and that Parmenio was now general at Ekbatana, the most important military appointment which the king had to confer. Even granting the deposition of Nikomachus to be trustworthy, there was nothing to implicate Philotas, whose name had not been included among the accomplices said to have been enumerated by Dimnus. There was not a tittle of evidence against him, except the fact that the deposition had been made known to him, and that he had seen Alexander twice without communicating it. Upon this single fact, however, Kraterus, and the other enemies of Philotas, worked so effectually as to inflame the suspicions and the pre-existing ill-will of Alexander into fierce rancor. He resolved on the disgrace, torture, and death of Philotas,—and on the death of Parmenio besides.[462]

[459] Plutarch, Alexand. 48, 49. Πρὸς δὲ αὐτὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ~ἐκ πάνυ πολλῶν χρόνων~ ἐτύγχανε διαβεβλημένος (Philotas).... Ὁ μὲν οὖν Φιλώτας ἐπιβουλευόμενος οὕτως ἠγνόει, καὶ συνῆν τῇ Ἀντιγόνῃ πολλὰ καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν καὶ μεγαλαυχίαν ῥήματα καὶ λόγους κατὰ τοῦ βασιλέως ἀνεπιτηδείους προϊέμενος.

Both Ptolemy and Aristobulus recognized these previous communications made to Alexander against Philotas in Egypt, but stated that he did not believe them (Arrian, iii. 26, 1).

[460] Plutarch, Alexand. 40-48; Curtius, vi. 11, 3.

[461] Phylarchus, Fragment. 41. ed. Didot, ap. Athenæum, xii. p. 539; Plutarch, Alexand. 39, 40. Even Eumenes enriched himself much; though being only secretary, and a Greek, he could not take the same liberties as the great native Macedonian generals (Plutarch, Eumenes, 2).

[462] Plutarch, Alexand. 49; Curtius, vi. 8.

To accomplish this, however, against the two highest officers in the Macedonian service, one of them enjoying a separate and distant command—required management. Alexander was obliged to carry the feelings of the soldiers along with him, and to obtain a condemnation from the army; according to an ancient Macedonian custom, in regard to capital crimes, though (as it seems) not uniformly practised. Alexander not only kept the resolution secret, but is even said to have invited Philotas to supper with the other officers, conversing with him just as usual.[463] In the middle of the night, Philotas was arrested while asleep in his bed,—put in chains,—and clothed in an ignoble garb. A military assembly was convened at daybreak, before which Alexander appeared with the chief officers in his confidence. Addressing the soldiers in a vehement tone of mingled sorrow and anger, he proclaimed to them that his life had just been providentially rescued from a dangerous conspiracy organized by two men hitherto trusted as his best friends—Philotas and Parmenio—through the intended agency of a soldier named Dimnus, who had slain himself when arrested. The dead body of Dimnus was then exhibited to the meeting, while Nikomachus and Kebalinus were brought forward to tell their story. A letter from Parmenio to his sons Philotas and Nikanor, found among the papers seized on the arrest, was read to the meeting. Its terms were altogether vague and unmeaning; but Alexander chose to construe them as it suited his purpose.[464]

[463] Curtius, vi. 8, 16. “Invitatus est etiam Philotas ad ultimas sibi epulas et rex non cœnare modo, sed etiam familiariter colloqui, cum eo quam damnaverat, sustinuit.”

[464] Arrian, iii. 26, 2. Λέγει δὲ Πτολεμαῖος εἰσαχθῆναι εἰς Μακεδόνας Φιλώταν, καὶ κατηγορῆσαι αὐτοῦ ἰσχυρῶς Ἀλέξανδρον, etc. Curtius, vi. 9, 13; Diodorus, xvii, 80.

We may easily conceive the impression produced upon these assembled soldiers by such denunciations from Alexander himself—revelations of his own personal danger, and reproaches against treacherous friends. Amyntas, and even Kœnus, the brother-in-law of Philotas, were yet more unmeasured in their invectives against the accused.[465] They, as well as the other officers with whom the arrest had been concerted, set the example of violent manifestation against him, and ardent sympathy with the king’s danger. Philotas was heard in his defence, which though strenuously denying the charge, is said to have been feeble. It was indeed sure to be so, coming from one seized thus suddenly, and overwhelmed with disadvantages; while a degree of courage, absolutely heroic, would have been required for any one else to rise and presume to criticise the proofs. A soldier named Bolon harangued his comrades on the insupportable insolence of Philotas, who always (he said) treated the soldiers with contempt, turning them out of their quarters to make room for his countless retinue of slaves. Though this allegation (probably enough well-founded) was no way connected with the charge of treason against the king, it harmonized fully with the temper of the assembly, and wound them up to the last pitch of fury. The royal pages began the cry, echoed by all around, that they would with their own hands tear the parricide in pieces.[466]

[465] Curtius, vi. 9, 30.

[466] Curtius, vi. 11, 8. “Tum vero universa concio accensa est, et a corporis custodibus initium factum, clamantibus, discerpendum esse parricidam manibus eorum. Id quidam Philotas, qui graviora supplicia metueret, haud sane iniquo animo audiebat.”

It would have been fortunate for Philotas if their wrath had been sufficiently ungovernable to instigate the execution of such a sentence on the spot. But this did not suit the purpose of his enemies. Aware that he had been condemned upon the regal word, with nothing better than the faintest negative ground of suspicion, they determined to extort from him a confession such as would justify their own purposes, not only against him, but against his father Parmenio—whom there was as yet nothing to implicate. Accordingly, during the ensuing night, Philotas was put to the torture. Hephæstion, Kraterus, and Kœnus—the last of the three being brother-in-law of Philotas[467]—themselves superintended the ministers of physical suffering. Alexander himself too was at hand, but concealed by a curtain. It is said that Philotas manifested little firmness under torture, and that Alexander, an unseen witness, indulged in sneers against the cowardice of one who had fought by his side in so many battles.[468] All who stood by were enemies, and likely to describe the conduct of Philotas in such manner as to justify their own hatred. The tortures inflicted,[469] cruel in the extreme and long-continued, wrung from him at last a confession, implicating his father along with himself. He was put to death; and at the same time, all those whose names had been indicated by Nikomachus, were slain also—apparently by being stoned, without preliminary torture. Philotas had serving in the army a numerous kindred, all of whom were struck with consternation at the news of his being tortured. It was the Macedonian law that all kinsmen of a man guilty of treason were doomed to death along with him. Accordingly, some of these men slew themselves, others fled from the camp, seeking refuge wherever they could. Such was the terror and tumult in the camp, that Alexander was obliged to proclaim a suspension of this sanguinary law for the occasion.[470]

[467] Curtius, vi. 9, 30; vi. 11, 11.

[468] Plutarch, Alexand. 49.

[469] Curtius, vi. 11, 15, “Per ultimos deinde cruciatus, utpote et damnatus et inimicis in gratiam regis torquentibus, laceratur. Ac primo quidam, quanquam hinc ignis, illinc verbera, jam non ad quæstionem, sed ad pœnam, ingerebantur, non vocem modo, sed etiam gemitus habuit in potestate; sed postquam intumescens corpus ulceribus flagellorum ictus nudis ossibus incussos ferre non poterat”, etc.

[470] Curtius, vi. 11, 20.

It now remained to kill Parmenio, who could not be safely left alive after the atrocities used towards Philotas; and to kill him, moreover, before he could have time to hear of them, since he was not only the oldest, most respected, and most influential of all Macedonian officers, but also in separate command of the great depôt at Ekbatana. Alexander summoned to his presence one of the Companions named Polydamas; a particular friend, comrade, or aide de camp, of Parmenio. Every friend of Philotas felt at this moment that his life hung by a thread; so that Polydamas entered the king’s presence in extreme terror, the rather as he was ordered to bring with him his two younger brothers. Alexander addressed him, denouncing Parmenio as a traitor, and intimating that Polydamas would be required to carry a swift and confidential message to Ekbatana, ordering his execution. Polydamas was selected as the attached friend of Parmenio, and therefore as best calculated to deceive him. Two letters were placed in his hands, addressed to Parmenio; one from Alexander himself, conveying ostensibly military communications and orders; the other, signed with the seal-ring of the deceased Philotas, and purporting to be addressed by the son to the father. Together with these, Polydamas received the real and important despatch, addressed by Alexander to Kleander and Menidas, the officers immediately subordinate to Parmenio at Ekbatana; proclaiming Parmenio guilty of high treason, and directing them to kill him at once. Large rewards were offered to Polydamas if he performed this commission with success, while his two brothers were retained as hostages against scruples or compunction. He promised even more than was demanded—too happy to purchase this reprieve from what had seemed impending death. Furnished with native guides and with swift dromedaries, he struck by the straightest road across the desert of Khorasan, and arrived at Ekbatana on the eleventh day—a distance usually requiring more than thirty days to traverse.[471] Entering the camp by night, without the knowledge of Parmenio, he delivered his despatch to Kleander, with whom he concerted measures. On the morrow he was admitted to Parmenio, while walking in his garden with Kleander and the other officers marked out by Alexander’s order as his executioners. Polydamas ran to embrace his old friend, and was heartily welcomed by the unsuspecting veteran, to whom he presented the letters professedly coming from Alexander and Philotas. While Parmenio was absorbed in the perusal, he was suddenly assailed by a mortal stab from the hand and sword of Kleander. Other wounds were heaped upon him as he fell, by the remaining officers,—the last even after life had departed.[472]

[471] Strabo, xv. p. 724; Diodor. xvii. 80; Curtius, vii. 2, 11-18.

[472] Curtius, vii. 2, 27. The proceedings respecting Philotas and Parmenio are recounted in the greatest detail by Curtius; but his details are in general harmony with the brief heads given by Arrian from Ptolemy and Aristobulus—except as to one material point. Plutarch (Alex. 49), Diodorus (xvii. 79, 80), and Justin (xii. 5), also state the fact in the same manner.

Ptolemy and Aristobulus, according to the narrative of Arrian, appear to have considered that Philotas was really implicated in a conspiracy against Alexander’s life. But when we analyze what they are reported to have said, their opinion will not be found entitled to much weight. In the first place, they state (Arrian, iii. 26, 1) that the conspiracy of Philotas had been before made known to Alexander while he was in Egypt, but that he did not then believe it. Now eighteen months had elapsed since the stay in Egypt; and the idea of a conspiracy going on for eighteen months is preposterous. That Philotas was in a mood in which he might be supposed likely to conspire, is one proposition; that he actually did conspire is another; Arrian and his authorities run the two together as if they were one. As to the evidence purporting to prove that Philotas did conspire, Arrian tells us that “the informers came forward before the assembled soldiers and convicted Philotas with the rest by other indicia not obscure, but chiefly by this—that Philotas confessed to have heard of a conspiracy going on, without mentioning it to Alexander, though twice a day in his presence”—καὶ τοὺς μηνυτὰς τοῦ ἔργου παρελθόντας ἐξελέγξαι Φιλώταν τε καὶ τοὺς ἀμφ᾽ αὐτὸν ~ἄλλοις τε ἐλέγχοις οὐκ ἀφανέσι, καὶ μάλιστα δὴ~ ὅτι αὐτὸς Φιλώτας πεπύσθαι μὲν—συνέφη, etc. What these other indicia were, we are not told; but we may see how slender was their value, when we learn that the non-revelation admitted by Philotas was stronger than any of them. The non-revelation, when we recollect that Nikomachus was the only informant (Arrian loosely talks of μηνυτὰς, as if there were more), proves absolutely nothing as to the complicity of Philotas, though it may prove something as to his indiscretion. Even on this minor charge, Curtius puts into his mouth a very sufficient exculpation. But if Alexander had taken a different view, and dismissed or even confined him for it, there would have been little room for remark.

The point upon which Arrian is at variance with Curtius, is, that he states “Philotas with the rest to have been shot to death by the Macedonians”—thus, seemingly contradicting, at least by implication, the fact of his having been tortured. Now Plutarch, Diodorus, and Justin, all concur with Curtius in affirming that he was tortured. On such a matter, I prefer their united authority to that of Ptolemy and Aristobulus. These two last-mentioned authors were probably quite content to believe in the complicity of Philotas upon the authority of Alexander himself; without troubling themselves to criticise the proofs. They tell us that Alexander vehemently denounced (κατηγορῆσαι ἰσχυρῶς) Philotas before the assembled soldiers. After this, any mere shadow or pretence of proof would be sufficient. Moreover, let us recollect that Ptolemy obtained his promotion, to be one of the confidential body guards (σωματοφύλακες), out of this very conspiracy, real or fictitious; he was promoted to the post of the condemned Demetrius (Arrian, iii. 27. 11).

How little Ptolemy and Aristobulus cared to do justice to any one whom Alexander hated, may be seen by what they say afterwards about the philosopher Kallisthenes. Both of them affirmed that the pages, condemned for conspiracy against Alexander, deposed against Kallisthenes as having instigated them to the deed (Arrian, iv. 14, 1). Now we know, from the authority of Alexander himself, whose letters Plutarch quotes (Alexand. 55), that the pages denied the privity of any one else—maintaining the project to have been altogether their own. To their great honor, the pages persisted in this deposition, even under extreme tortures—though they knew that a deposition against Kallisthenes was desired from them.

My belief is, that Diodorus, Plutarch, Curtius, and Justin, are correct in stating that Philotas was tortured. Ptolemy and Aristobulus have thought themselves warranted in omitting this fact, which they probably had little satisfaction in reflecting upon. If Philotas was not tortured, there could have been no evidence at all against Parmenio—for the only evidence against the latter was the extorted confession of Philotas.

The soldiers in Ekbatana, on hearing of this bloody deed, burst into furious mutiny, surrounded the garden wall, and threatened to break in for the purpose of avenging their general, unless Polydamas and the other murderers should be delivered to them. But Kleander, admitting a few of the ringleaders, exhibited to them Alexander’s written orders, to which the soldiers yielded, not without murmurs of reluctance and indignation. Most of them dispersed, yet a few remained, entreating permission to bury Parmenio’s body. Even this was long refused by Kleander, from dread of the king’s displeasure. At last, however, thinking it prudent to comply in part, he cut off the head, delivering to them the trunk alone for burial. The head was sent to Alexander.[473]

[473] Curtius, vii. 2, 32, 33.

Among the many tragical deeds recounted throughout the course of this history, there is none more revolting than the fate of these two generals. Alexander, violent in all his impulses, displayed on this occasion a personal rancor worthy of his ferocious mother Olympias, exasperated rather than softened by the magnitude of past services.[474] When we see the greatest officers of the Macedonian army directing in person, and under the eye of Alexander, the laceration and burning of the naked body of their colleague Philotas, and assassinating with their own hands the veteran Parmenio,—we feel how much we have passed out of the region of Greek civic feeling into that of the more savage Illyrian warrior, partially orientalized. It is not surprising to read, that Antipater, viceroy of Macedonia, who had shared with Parmenio the favor and confidence of Philip as well as of Alexander, should tremble when informed of such proceedings, and cast about for a refuge against the like possibilities to himself. Many other officers were alike alarmed and disgusted with the transactions.[475] Hence Alexander, opening and examining the letters sent home from his army to Macedonia, detected such strong expressions of indignation, that he thought it prudent to transfer many pronounced malcontents into a division by themselves, parting them off from the remaining army.[476] Instead of appointing any substitute for Philotas in the command of the Companion-cavalry, he cast that body into two divisions, nominating Hephæstion to the command of one and Kleitus to that of the other.[477]

[474] Contrast the conduct of Alexander towards Philotas and Parmenio, with that of Cyrus the younger towards the conspirator Orontes, as described in Xenophon, Anabas. i. 6.

[475] Plutarch, Alexand. 49.

[476] Curtius, vii. 2, 36; Diodor. xvii. 80; Justin, xii. 5.

[477] Arrian, iii. 27, 8.

The autumn and winter were spent by Alexander in reducing Drangiana, Gedrosia, Arachosia, and the Paropamisadæ; the modern Seiestan, Afghanistan, and the Western part of Kabul, lying between Ghazna on the north, Kandahar or Kelat on the south, and Furrah in the west. He experienced no combined resistance, but his troops suffered severely from cold and privation.[478] Near the southern termination of one of the passes of the Hindoo-Koosh (apparently north-east of the town of Kabul) he founded a new city, called Alexandria ad Caucasum, where he planted 7000 old soldiers, Macedonians, and others as colonists.[479] Towards the close of Winter he crossed over the mighty range of the Hindoo-Koosh; a march of fifteen days through regions of snow, and fraught with hardship to his army. On reaching the north side of these mountains, he found himself in Baktria.

[478] Arrian, iii. 28, 2. About the geography, compare Wilson’s Ariana Antiqua, p. 173-178. “By perambulator, the distance from Herat to Kandahar is 371 miles; from Kandahar to Kabul, 309: total 688 miles (English).” The principal city in Drangiana (Seiestan) mentioned by the subsequent Greek geographers is, Prophthasia; existing seemingly before Alexander’s arrival. See the fragments of his mensores, ap. Didot, Fragm. Hist. Alex. Magn. p. 135; Pliny, H. N. vi. 21. The quantity of remains of ancient cities, still to be found in this territory, is remarkable. Wilson observes this (p. 154).

[479] Arrian, iii. 28, 6; Curtius, vii. 3, 23; Diodor. xvii. 83. Alexandria in Ariis is probably Herat; Alexandria in Arachosia is probably Kandahar. But neither the one nor the other is mentioned as having been founded by Alexander, either in Arrian or Curtius, or Diodorus. The name Alexandria does not prove that they were founded by him; for several of the Diadochi called their own foundations by his name (Strabo, xiii. p. 593). Considering how very short a time Alexander spent in these regions, the wonder is, that he could have found time to establish those foundations which are expressly ascribed to him by Arrian and his other historians. The authority of Pliny and Steph. Byzant. is hardly sufficient to warrant us in ascribing to him more. The exact site of Alexandria ad Caucasum cannot be determined, for want of sufficient topographical data. There seems much probability that it was at the place called Beghram, twenty-five miles north-east of Kabul—in the way between Kabul on the south side of the Hindoo-Koosh, and Anderhab on the north side. The prodigious number of coins and relics, Greek as well as Mohammedan, discovered by Mr. Masson at Beghram, supply better evidence for identifying the site with that of Alexandria ad Caucasum, than can be pleaded on behalf of any other locality. See Masson’s Narrative of Journeys in Afghanistan, etc., vol. iii. ch. 7. p 148 seqq.

In crossing the Hindoo-Koosh from south to north Alexander probably marched by the pass of Bamian, which seems the only one among the four passes open to an army in the winter. See Wood’s Journey to the Oxus, p 195.

The Baktrian leader Bessus, who had assumed the title of king, could muster no more than a small force, with which he laid waste the country, and then retired across the river Oxus into Sogdiana, destroying all the boats. Alexander overran Baktria with scarce any resistance; the chief places, Baktra (Balkh) and Aornos surrendering to him on the first demonstration of attack. Having named Artabazus satrap of Baktria, and placed Archelaus with a garrison in Aornos,[480] he marched northward towards the river Oxus, the boundary between Baktria and Sogdiana. It was a march of extreme hardship; reaching for two or three days across a sandy desert destitute of water, and under very hot weather, The Oxus, six furlongs in breadth, deep, and rapid, was the most formidable river that the Macedonians had yet seen.[481] Alexander transported his army across it on the tent-skins inflated and stuffed with straw. It seems surprising that Bessus did not avail himself of this favorable opportunity for resisting a passage in itself so difficult; he had however been abandoned by his Baktrian cavalry at the moment when he quitted their territory. Some of his companions, Spitamenes and others, terrified at the news that Alexander had crossed the Oxus, were anxious to make their own peace by betraying their leader.[482] They sent a proposition to this effect; upon which Ptolemy with a light division was sent forward by Alexander, and was enabled, by extreme celerity of movements, to surprise and seize Bessus in a village. Alexander ordered that he should be held in chains, naked and with a collar round his neck, at the side of the road along which the army were marching. On reaching the spot, Alexander stopped his chariot, and sternly demanded from Bessus, on what pretence he had first arrested, and afterwards slain, his king and benefactor Darius. Bessus replied, that he had not done this single-handed; others were concerned in it along with him, to procure for themselves lenient treatment from Alexander. The king said no more, but ordered Bessus to be scourged, and then sent back as prisoner to Baktra[483]—where we shall again hear of him.

[480] Arrian, iii. 29, 3; Curtius, vii. 5, 1.

[481] Arrian, iii. 29, 4; Strabo, xi. p. 509. Evidently Ptolemy and Aristobulus were much more awe-struck with the Oxus, than with either the Tigris or the Euphrates. Arrian (iv. 6, 13) takes his standard of comparison, in regard to rivers, from the river Peneius in Thessaly.

[482] Curtius, vii. 5, 19. The exactness of Quintus Curtius, in describing the general features of Baktria and Sogdiana, is attested in the strongest language by modern travellers. See Burnes’s Travels into Bokhara, vol. ii. ch. 8. p. 211, 2nd edit.; also Morier, Second Journey in Persia, p. 282.

But in the geographical details of the country, we are at fault. We have not sufficient data to identify more than one or two of the localities mentioned, in the narrative of Alexander’s proceedings, either by Curtius or Arrian. That Marakanda is the modern Samarkand—the river Polytimetus, the modern Kohik—and Baktra or Zariaspa the modern Balkh—appears certain; but the attempts made by commentators to assign the site of other places are not such as to carry conviction.

In fact, these countries, at the present moment, are known only superficially as to their general scenery; for purposes of measurement and geography, they are almost unknown; as may be seen by any one who reads the Introduction to Erskine’s translation of the Memoirs of Sultan Baber.

[483] Arrian. iii. 30, 5-10. These details are peculiarly authentic, as coming from Ptolemy, the person chiefly concerned.

Aristobulus agreed in the description of the guise in which Bessus was exhibited, but stated that he was brought up in this way by Spitamenes and Dataphernes. Curtius (vii. 24, 36) follows this version. Diodorus also gives an account very like it, mentioning nothing about Ptolemy (xvii. 83).

In his onward march, Alexander approached a small town, inhabited by the Branchidæ; descendants of those Branchidæ near Miletus on the coast of Ionia, who had administered the great temple and oracle of Apollo on Cape Poseidion, and who had yielded up the treasures of that temple to the Persian king Xerxes, 150 years before. This surrender had brought upon them so much odium, that when the dominion of Xerxes was overthrown on the coast, they retired with him into the interior of Asia. He assigned to them lands in the distant region of Sogdiana, where their descendants had ever since remained; bilingual and partially dis-hellenized, yet still attached to their traditions and origin. Delighted to find themselves once more in commerce with Greeks, they poured forth to meet and welcome the army, tendering all that they possessed. Alexander, when he heard who they were and what was their parentage, desired the Milesians in his army to determine how they should be treated. But as these Milesians were neither decided nor unanimous, Alexander announced that he would determine for himself. Having first occupied the city in person with a select detachment, he posted his army all round the walls, and then gave orders not only to plunder it, but to massacre the entire population—men, women, and children. They were slain without arms or attempt at resistance, resorting to nothing but prayers and suppliant manifestations. Alexander next commanded the walls to be levelled, and the sacred groves cut down, so that no habitable site might remain, nor any thing except solitude and sterility.[484] Such was the revenge taken upon these unhappy victims for the deeds of their ancestors in the fourth or fifth generation before. Alexander doubtless considered himself to be executing the wrath of Apollo against an accursed race who had robbed the temple of the god.[485] The Macedonian expedition had been proclaimed to be undertaken originally for the purpose of revenging upon the contemporary Persians the ancient wrongs done to Greece by Xerxes; so that Alexander would follow out the same sentiment in revenging upon the contemporary Branchidæ the acts of their ancestors—yet more guilty than Xerxes, in his belief. The massacre of this unfortunate population was in fact an example of human sacrifice on the largest scale, offered to the gods by the religious impulses of Alexander, and worthy to be compared to that of the Carthaginian general Hannibal, when he sacrificed 3000 Grecian prisoners on the field of Himera, where his grandfather Hamilkar had been slain seventy years before.[486]

[484] Curtius, vii. 23; Plutarch de Serâ Numinis Vindictâ, p. 557 B; Strabo xi. p. 518: compare also xiv. p. 634, and xvii. p. 814. This last-mentioned passage of Strabo helps us to understand the peculiarly strong pious fervor with which Alexander regarded the temple and oracle of Branchidæ. At the time when Alexander went up to the oracle of Ammon in Egypt, for the purpose of affiliating himself to Zeus Ammon, there came to him envoys from Miletus, announcing that the oracle at Branchidæ, which had been silent ever since the time of Xerxes, had just begun to give prophecy, and had certified the fact that Alexander was the son of Zeus, besides many other encouraging predictions.

The massacre of the Branchidæ by Alexander was described by Diodorus, but was contained in that part of the seventeenth book which is lost; there is a great lacuna in the MSS. after cap. 83. The fact is distinctly indicated in the table of contents prefixed to Book xvii.

Arrian makes no mention of these descendants of the Branchidæ in Sogdiana, nor of the destruction of the town and its inhabitants by Alexander. Perhaps neither Ptolemy nor Aristobulus, said anything about it. Their silence is not at all difficult to explain, nor does it, in my judgment, impeach the credibility of the narrative. They do not feel under obligation to give publicity to the worst acts of their hero.

[485] The Delphian oracle pronounced, in explaining the subjugation and ruin of Krœsus king of Lydia, that he had thereby expiated the sin of his ancestor in the fifth generation before (Herodot. i. 91: compare vi. 86). Immediately before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, the Lacedæmonians called upon the Athenians to expel the descendants of those who had taken part in the Kylonian sacrilege, 180 years before; they addressed this injunction with a view to procure the banishment of Perikles, yet still τοῖς θεοῖς πρῶτον τιμωροῦντες (Thucyd. i. 125-127).

The idea that the sins of fathers were visited upon their descendants, even to the third and fourth generation, had great currency in the ancient world.

[486] Diodor. xiii. 62. See Vol. X. Ch. lxxxi. p 413 of this History.

Alexander then continued his onward progress, first to Marakanda (Samarcand), the chief town of Sogdiana—next, to the river Jaxartes, which he and his companions, in their imperfect geographical notions, believed to be the Tanais, the boundary between Asia, and Europe.[487] In his march, he left garrisons in various towns,[488] but experienced no resistance, though detached bodies of the natives hovered on his flanks. Some of these bodies, having cut off a few of his foragers, took refuge afterwards on a steep and rugged mountain, conceived to be unassailable. Thither however Alexander pursued them, at the head of his lightest and most active troops. Though at first repulsed, he succeeded in scaling and capturing the place. Of its defenders, thirty thousand in number, three fourths were either put to the sword, or perished in jumping down the precipices. Several of his soldiers were wounded with arrows, and he himself received a shot from one of them through his leg.[489] But here, as elsewhere, we perceive that nearly all the Orientals whom Alexander subdued were men little suited for close combat hand to hand,—fighting only with missiles.

[487] Pliny, H. N. vi. 16. In the Meteorologica of Aristotle (i. 13, 15-18) we read that the rivers Bahtrus, Choaspes, and Araxes flowed from the lofty mountain Parnasus (Paropamisus?) in Asia; and that the Araxes bifurcated, one branch forming the Tanais, which fell into the Palus Mæotis. For this fact he refers to the γῆς περιόδοι current in his time. It seems plain that by the Araxes Aristotle must mean the Jaxartes. We see, therefore, that Alexander and his companions, in identifying the Jaxartes with the Tanais, only followed the geographical descriptions and ideas current in their time. Humboldt remarks several cases in which the Greek geographers were fond of supposing bifurcation of rivers (Asie Centrale, vol. ii. p. 291).

[488] Arrian, iv. 1, 5.

[489] Arrian, iii. 30, 17.

Here, on the river Jaxartes, Alexander projected the foundation of a new city to bear his name; intended partly as a protection against incursions from the Scythian Nomads on the other side of the river, partly as a facility for himself to cross over and subdue them, which he intended to do as soon as he could find opportunity.[490] He was however called off for the time by the news of a wide-spread revolt among the newly-conquered inhabitants both of Sogdiana and Baktria. He suppressed the revolt with his habitual vigor and celerity, distributing his troops so as to capture five townships in two days, and Kyropolis or Kyra, the largest of the neighboring Sogdian towns (founded by the Persian Cyrus), immediately afterwards. He put all the defenders and inhabitants to the sword. Returning then to the Jaxartes, he completed in twenty days the fortifications of his new town of Alexandria (perhaps at or near Khodjend), with suitable sacrifices and festivities to the gods. He planted in it some Macedonian veterans and Grecian mercenaries, together with volunteer settlers from the natives around.[491] An army of Scythian Nomads, showing themselves on the other side of the river, piqued his vanity to cross over and attack them. Carrying over a division of his army on inflated skins, he defeated them with little difficulty, pursuing them briskly into the desert. But the weather was intensely hot, and the army suffered much from thirst; while the little water to be found was so bad, that it brought upon Alexander a diarrhœa which endangered his life.[492] This chase, of a few miles on the right bank of the Jaxartes (seemingly in the present Khanat of Kokand), marked the utmost limit of Alexander’s progress northward.

[490] Arrian, iv. 1, 3

[491] Arrian, iv. 3, 17; Curtius, vii. 6, 25.

[492] Arrian. iv. 5, 6; Curtius, vii. 9.

Shortly afterwards, a Macedonian detachment, unskilfully conducted, was destroyed in Sogdiana by Spitamenes and the Scythians: a rare misfortune, which Alexander avenged by overrunning the region[493] near the river Polytimêtus (the Kohik), and putting to the sword the inhabitants of all the towns which he took. He then recrossed the Oxus, to rest during the extreme season of winter at Zariaspa in Baktria, from whence his communications with the West and with Macedonia were more easy, and where he received various reinforcements of Greek troops.[494] Bessus, who had been here retained as a prisoner, was now brought forward amidst a public assembly; wherein Alexander, having first reproached him for his treason to Darius, caused his nose and ears to be cut off—and sent him in this condition to Ekbatana, to be finally slain by the Medes and Persians.[495] Mutilation was a practice altogether Oriental and non-Hellenic: even Arrian, admiring and indulgent as he is towards his hero, censures this savage order, as one among many proofs how much Alexander had taken on Oriental dispositions. We may remark that his extreme wrath on this occasion was founded partly on disappointment that Bessus had frustrated his toilsome efforts for taking Darius alive—partly on the fact that the satrap had committed treason against the king’s person, which it was the policy as well as the feeling of Alexander to surround with a circle of Deity.[496] For as to traitors against Persia, as a cause and country, Alexander had never discouraged, and had sometimes signally recompensed them. Mithrines, the governor of Sardis, who opened to him the gates of that almost impregnable fortress immediately after the battle of the Granikus—the traitor who perhaps, next to Darius himself, had done most harm to the Persian cause—obtained from him high favor and promotion.[497]

[493] Arrian, iv. 6, 11; Curtius, vii. 9, 22. The river, called by the Macedonians Polytimetus (Strabo, xi. p. 518), now bears the name of Kohik or Zurufshan. It rises in the mountains east of Samarkand, and flowing westward on the north of that city and of Bokhara. It does not reach so far as the Oxus; during the full time of the year, it falls into a lake called Karakul; during the dry months, it is lost in the sands, as Arrian states (Burnes’s Travels, vol. ii. ch. xi. p. 299. ed. 2nd.).

[494] Arrian, iv. 7, 1; Curtius, vii. 10, 12.

[495] Arrian, iv. 7, 5.

[496] After describing the scene at Rome, when the Emperor Galba was deposed and assassinated in the forum, Tacitus observes—“Plures quam centum et viginti libellos præmia exposcentium, ob aliquam notabilem illà die operam, Vitellius posteà invenit, omnesque conquiri et interfici jussit: non honore Galbæ, sed tradito principibus more, munimentum ad præsens, in posterum ultionem” (Tacitus, Hist. i. 44).

[497] Arrian, i. 17, 3; iii. 16, 8. Curtius, iii. 12, 6; v. 1, 44.

The rude but spirited tribes of Baktria and Sogdiana were as yet but imperfectly subdued, seconded as their resistance was by wide spaces of sandy desert, by the neighborhood of the Scythian Nomads, and by the presence of Spitamenes as a leader. Alexander, distributing his army into five divisions, traversed the country and put down all resistance, while he also took measures for establishing several military posts, or new towns in convenient places.[498] After some time the whole army was reunited at the chief place of Sogdiana—Marakanda—where some halt and repose was given.[499]

[498] Curtius (vii. 10, 15) mentions six cities (oppida) founded by Alexander in these regions; apparently somewhere north of the Oxus, but the sites cannot be made out. Justin (xii. 5) alludes to twelve foundations in Baktria and Sogdiana.

[499] Arrian, iv. 16, 4; Curtius, vii. 10, 1. “Sogdiana regio magnâ ex parte deserta est; octingenta ferè stadia in latitudinem vastæ solitudines tenent.”

Respecting the same country (Sogdiana and Baktria), Mr. Erskine observes (Introduction to the Memoirs of Sultan Baber, p. xliii.):—“The face of the country is extremely broken, and divided by lofty hills; even the plains are diversified by great varieties of soil,—some extensive districts along the Kohik river, nearly the whole of Ferghana (along the Jaxartes), the greater part of Kwarizm along the branches of the Oxus, with the large portions of Balkh, Badakshan, Kesh, and Hissar, being of uncommon fertility; while the greater part of the rest is a barren waste, and in some places a sandy desert. Indeed the whole country north of the Oxus has a decided tendency to degenerate into desert, and many of its most fruitful spaces are nearly surrounded by barren sands; so that the population of all these districts still, as in the time of Baber, consists of the fixed inhabitants of the cities and fertile lands, and of the unsettled and roving wanderers of the desert, who dwell in tents of felt, and live on the produce of their flocks.”

During this halt at Marakanda (Samarcand) the memorable banquet occurred wherein Alexander murdered Kleitus. It has been already related that Kleitus had saved his life at the battle of the Granikus, by cutting off the sword arm of the Persian Spithridates when already uplifted to strike him from behind. Since the death of Philotas, the important function of general of the Companion-cavalry had been divided between Hephæstion and Kleitus. Moreover, the family of Kleitus had been attached to Philip, by ties so ancient, that his sister, Lanikê, had been selected as the nurse of Alexander himself when a child. Two of her sons had already perished in the Asiatic battles. If, therefore, there were any man who stood high in the service, or was privileged to speak his mind freely to Alexander, it was Kleitus.

In this banquet at Marakanda, when wine, according to the Macedonian habit, had been abundantly drunk, and when Alexander, Kleitus, and most of the other guests were already nearly intoxicated, enthusiasts or flatterers heaped immoderate eulogies upon the king’s past achievements.[500] They exalted him above all the most venerated legendary heroes; they proclaimed that his superhuman deeds proved his divine paternity, and that he had earned an apotheosis like Herakles, which nothing but envy could withhold from him during his life. Alexander himself joined in these boasts, and even took credit for the later victories of the reign of his father, whose abilities and glory he depreciated. To the old Macedonian officers, such an insult cast on the memory of Philip was deeply offensive. But among them all, none had been more indignant than Kleitus, with the growing insolence of Alexander—his assumed filiation from Zeus Ammon, which put aside Philip as unworthy—his preference for Persian attendants, who granted or refused admittance to his person—his extending to Macedonian soldiers the contemptuous treatment habitually endured by Asiatics, and even allowing them to be scourged by Persian hands and Persian rods.[501] The pride of a Macedonian general in the stupendous successes of the last five years, was effaced by his mortification when he saw that they tended only to merge his countrymen amidst a crowd of servile Asiatics, and to inflame the prince with high-flown aspirations transmitted from Xerxes or Ochus. But whatever might be the internal thoughts of Macedonian officers, they held their peace before Alexander, whose formidable character and exorbitant self-estimation would tolerate no criticism.

[500] Arrian, iv. 8, 7.

[501] Plutarch, Alexand. 51. Nothing can be more touching than the words put by Plutarch into the mouth of Kleitus—Ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ νῦν χαίρομεν, Ἀλέξανδρε, τοιαῦτα τέλη τῶν πόνων κομιζόμενοι, μακαρίζομεν δὲ τοὺς ἤδη τεθνηκότας πρὶν ἐπιδεῖν Μηδικαῖς ῥάβδοις ξαινομένους Μακεδόνας, καὶ Περσῶν δεομένους ἵνα τῷ βασιλεῖ προσέλθωμεν.

At the banquet of Marakanda, this long suppressed repugnance found an issue, accidental indeed and unpremeditated, but for that very reason all the more violent and unmeasured. The wine, which made Alexander more boastful and his flatterers fulsome to excess, overpowered altogether the reserve of Kleitus. He rebuked the impiety of those who degraded the ancient heroes in order to make a pedestal for Alexander. He protested against the injustice of disparaging the exalted and legitimate fame of Philip; whose achievements he loudly extolled, pronouncing them to be equal, and even superior to those of his son. For the exploits of Alexander, splendid as they were, had been accomplished, not by himself alone, but by that unconquerable Macedonian force which he had found ready made to his hands;[502] whereas those of Philip had been his own—since he had found Macedonia prostrate and disorganized, and had had to create for himself both soldiers, and a military system. The great instruments of Alexander’s victories had been Philip’s old soldiers, whom he now despised—and among them Parmenio, whom he had put to death.

[502] Arrian, iv. 8, 8. οὔκουν μόνον γε (Ἀλέξανδρον) καταπρᾶξαι αὐτὰ, ἀλλὰ τὸ γὰρ πολὺ μέρος Μακεδόνων εἶναι τὰ ἔργα, etc.

Remarks such as these, poured forth in the coarse language of a half-intoxicated Macedonian veteran, provoked loud contradiction from many, and gave poignant offence to Alexander; who now for the first time heard the open outburst of disapprobation, before concealed and known to him only by surmise. But wrath and contradiction, both from him and from others, only made Kleitus more reckless in the outpouring of his own feelings, now discharged with delight after having been so long pent up. He passed from the old Macedonian soldiers to himself individually. Stretching forth his right hand towards Alexander, he exclaimed—“Recollect that you owe your life to me; this hand preserved you at the Granikus. Listen to the outspoken language of truth, or else abstain from asking freemen to supper, and confine yourself to the society of barbaric slaves.” All these reproaches stung Alexander to the quick. But nothing was so intolerable to him as the respectful sympathy for Parmenio, which brought to his memory one of the blackest deeds of his life—and the reminiscence of his preservation at the Granikus, which lowered him into the position of a debtor towards the very censor under whose reproof he was now smarting. At length wrath and intoxication together drove him into uncontrollable fury. He started from his couch, and felt for his dagger to spring at Kleitus; but the dagger had been put out of reach by one of his attendants. In a loud voice and with the Macedonian word of command, he summoned the body guards and ordered the trumpeter to sound an alarm. But no one obeyed so grave an order, given in his condition of drunkenness. His principal officers, Ptolemy, Perdikkas and others, clung round him, held his arms and body, and besought him to abstain from violence; others at the same time tried to silence Kleitus and hurry him out of the hall, which had now become a scene of tumult and consternation. But Kleitus was not in a humor to confess himself in the wrong by retiring; while Alexander, furious at the opposition now, for the first time, offered to his will, exclaimed, that his officers held him in chains as Bessus had held Darius, and left him nothing but the name of a king. Though anxious to restrain his movements, they doubtless did not dare to employ much physical force; so that his great personal strength, and continued efforts, presently set him free. He then snatched a pike from one of the soldiers, rushed upon Kleitus, and thrust him through on the spot, exclaiming, “Go now to Philip and Parmenio”.[503]

[503] Arrian, iv. 8; Curtius, viii. 1; Plutarch, Alexand. 50, 51; Justin, xii. 6.

The description given by Diodorus was contained in the lost part of his seventeenth book; the table of contents, prefixed thereunto, notes the incident briefly.

All the authors describe in the same general way the commencement, progress, and result, of this impressive scene in the banqueting hall of Marakanda; but they differ materially in the details. In giving what seems to me the most probable account, I have borrowed partly from all, yet following mostly the account given by Arrian from Ptolemy, himself present. For Arrian’s narrative down to sect. 14 of c. 8 (before the words Ἀριστόβουλος δὲ) may fairly be presumed to be derived from Ptolemy.

Both Plutarch and Curtius describe the scene in a manner more dishonorable to Alexander than Arrian; and at the same time (in my judgment) less probable. Plutarch says that the brawl took its rise from a poet named Pierion singing a song which turned into derision those Macedonians who had been recently defeated in Sogdiana; that Alexander and those around him greatly applauded this satire; that Kleitus protested against such an insult to soldiers, who, though unfortunate, had behaved with unimpeachable bravery; that Alexander then turned upon Kleitus saying, that he was seeking an excuse for himself by extenuating cowardice in others; that Kleitus retorted by reminding him of the preservation of his life at the Granikus. Alexander is thus made to provoke the quarrel by aspersing the courage of Kleitus, which I think noway probable; nor would he be likely to encourage a song of that tenor.

Curtius agrees with Arrian in ascribing the origin of the mischief to the extravagant boasts of Alexander and his flatterers, and to their depreciation of Philip. He then tells us that Kleitus, on hearing their unseemly talk, turned round and whispered to his neighbor some lines out of the Andromachê of Euripides (which lines Plutarch also ascribes to him, though at a later moment); that Alexander, not hearing the words, asked what had been said, but no one would tell him; at length Kleitus himself repeated the sentiment in language of his own. This would suit a literary Greek; but an old Macedonian officer half intoxicated, when animated by a vehement sentiment, would hardly express it by whispering a Greek poetical quotation to his neighbor. He would either hold his tongue, or speak what he felt broadly and directly. Nevertheless Curtius has stated two points very material to the case, which do not appear in Arrian. 1. It was Alexander himself, not his flatterers, who vilipended Philip; at least the flatterers only did so after him, and following his example. The topic would be dangerous for them to originate, and might easily be carried too far. 2. Among all the topics touched upon by Kleitus, none was so intolerable as the open expression of sympathy, friendship, and regret for Parmenio. This stung Alexander in the sorest point of his conscience; he must have known that there were many present who sympathized with it; and it was probably the main cause which worked him up to phrenzy. Moreover we may be pretty sure that Kleitus, while expatiating upon Philip, would not forget Philip’s general in chief and his own old friend, Parmenio.

I cannot believe the statement of Aristobulus, that Kleitus was forced by his friends out of the hall, and afterward returned to it of his own accord, to defy Alexander once more. It seems plain from Arrian that Ptolemy said no such thing. The murderous impulse of Alexander was gratified on the spot, and without delay, as soon as he got clear from the gentle restraint of his surrounding friends.

No sooner was the deed perpetrated, than the feelings of Alexander underwent an entire revolution. The spectacle of Kleitus, a bleeding corpse on the floor,—the marks of stupefaction and horror evident in all the spectators, and the reaction from a furious impulse instantaneously satiated—plunged him at once into the opposite extreme of remorse and self-condemnation. Hastening out of the hall, and retiring to bed, he passed three days in an agony of distress, without food or drink. He burst into tears and multiplied exclamations on his own mad act; he dwelt upon the name of Kleitus and Lanikê with the debt of gratitude which he owed to each, and denounced himself as unworthy to live after having requited such services with a foul murder.[504] His friends at length prevailed on him to take food, and return to activity. All joined in trying to restore his self-satisfaction. The Macedonian army passed a public vote that Kleitus had been justly slain, and that his body should remain unburied; which afforded opportunity to Alexander to reverse the vote, and to direct that it should be buried by his own order.[505] The prophets comforted him by the assurance that his murderous impulse had arisen, not from his own natural mind, but from a maddening perversion intentionally brought on by the god Dionysus, to avenge the omission of a sacrifice due to him on the day of the banquet, but withheld.[506] Lastly, the Greek sophist or philosopher, Anaxarchus of Abdera, revived Alexander’s spirits by well-timed flattery, treating his sensibility as nothing better than generous weakness; reminding him that in his exalted position of conqueror and Great King, he was entitled to prescribe what was right and just, instead of submitting himself to laws dictated from without.[507] Kallisthenes the philosopher was also summoned, along with Anaxarchus, to the king’s presence, for the same purpose of offering consolatory reflections. But he is said to have adopted a tone of discourse altogether different, and to have given offence rather than satisfaction to Alexander.

[504] Arrian, iv. 9, 4; Curtius, viii. 2, 2.

[505] Curtius, viii. 2, 12. “Quoque minus cædis puderet, jure interfectum Clitum Macedones decernunt; sepulturâ quoque prohibituri, ni rex humari jussisset.”

In explanation of this monstrous verdict of the soldiers, we must recollect that the safety of the whole army (now at Samarcand, almost beyond the boundary of inhabited regions, ἔξω τῆς οἰκουμένης) was felt to depend on the life of Alexander. Compare Justin, xii. 6, 15.

[506] Arrian, iv. 9, 6. Alexander imagined himself to have incurred the displeasure of Dionysus by having sacked and destroyed the city of Thebes, the supposed birth-place and favorite locality of that god (Plutarch, Alex. 13).

The maddening delusion brought upon men by the wrath of Dionysus is awfully depicted in the Bacchæ of Euripides. Under the influence of that delusion, Agavê, mother of Pentheus, tears her son in pieces and bears away his head in triumph, not knowing what is in her hands. Compare also Eurip. Hippolyt. 440-1412.

[507] Arrian, iv. 9, 10; Plutarch. Alex. 52.

To such remedial influences, and probably still more to the absolute necessity for action, Alexander’s remorse at length yielded. Like the other emotions of his fiery soul, it was violent and overpowering while it lasted. But it cannot be shown to have left any durable trace on his character, nor any effects justifying the unbounded admiration of Arrian; who has little but blame to bestow on the murdered Kleitus, while he expresses the strongest sympathy for the mental suffering of the murderer.

After ten days,[508] Alexander again put his army in motion, to complete the subjugation of Sogdiana. He found no enemy capable of meeting him in pitched battle; yet Spitamenes, with the Sogdians and some Scythian allies, raised much hostility of detail, which it cost another year to put down. Alexander underwent the greatest fatigue and hardships in his marches through the mountainous parts of this wide, rugged, and poorly supplied country, with rocky positions, strong by nature, which his enemies sought to defend. One of these fastnesses, held by a native chief named Sisymithres, seemed almost unattackable, and was indeed taken rather by intimidation than by actual force.[509] The Scythians, after a partial success over a small Macedonian detachment, were at length so thoroughly beaten and overawed, that they slew Spitamenes and sent his head to the conqueror as a propitiatory offering.[510]

[508] Curtius, viii. 2, 13—“decem diebus ad confirmandum pudorem apud Maracanda consumptis”, etc.

[509] Curtius, viii. 2, 20-30.

[510] Arrian, iv. 17, 11. Curtius (viii. 3) gives a different narrative of the death of Spitamenes.

After a short rest at Naütaka during the extreme winter, Alexander resumed operations, by attacking a strong post called the Sogdian Rock, whither a large number of fugitives had assembled, with an ample supply of provision. It was a precipice supposed to be inexpugnable; and would seemingly have proved so, in spite of the energy and abilities of Alexander, had not the occupants altogether neglected their guard, and yielded at the mere sight of a handful of Macedonians who had scrambled up the precipice. Among the captives, taken by Alexander on this rock, were the wife and family of the Baktrian chief Oxyartes; one of whose daughters, named Roxana, so captivated Alexander by her beauty that he resolved to make her his wife.[511] He then passed out of Sogdiana into the neighboring territory Parætakênê, where there was another inexpugnable site called the Rock of Choriênes, which he was also fortunate enough to reduce.[512]

[511] Arrian, iv. 18, 19.

[512] Arrian, iv. 21. Our geographical knowledge does not enable us to verify these localities, or to follow Alexander in his marches of detail.

From hence Alexander went to Baktra. Sending Kraterus with a division to put the last hand to the reduction of Parætakênê, he himself remained at Baktra, preparing for his expedition across the Hindoo-Koosh to the conquest of India. As a security for the tranquillity of Baktria and Sogdiana during his absence, he levied 30,000 young soldiers from those countries to accompany him.[513]

[513] Curtius, viii. 5, 1; Arrian, iv. 22, 2.

It was at Baktra that Alexander celebrated his marriage with the captive Roxana. Amidst the repose and festivities connected with that event, the Oriental temper which he was now acquiring displayed itself more forcibly than ever. He could no longer be satisfied without obtaining prostration, or worship, from Greeks and Macedonians as well as from Persians; a public and unanimous recognition of his divine origin and superhuman dignity. Some Greeks and Macedonians had already rendered to him this homage. Nevertheless to the greater number, in spite of their extreme deference and admiration for him, it was repugnant and degrading. Even the imperious Alexander shrank from issuing public and formal orders on such a subject; but a manœuvre was concerted, with his privity, by the Persians and certain compliant Greek sophists or philosophers, for the purpose of carrying the point by surprise.

During a banquet at Baktra, the philosopher Anaxarchus, addressing the assembly in a prepared harangue, extolled Alexander’s exploits as greatly surpassing those of Dionysus and Herakles. He proclaimed that Alexander had already done more than enough to establish a title to divine honors from the Macedonians; who, (he said) would assuredly worship Alexander after his death, and ought in justice to worship him during his life, forthwith.[514]

[514] Arrian, iv. 10, 7-9. Curtius (viii. 5, 9-13) represents the speech proposing divine honors to have been delivered, not by Anaxarchus, but by another lettered Greek, a Sicilian named Kleon. The tenor of the speech is substantially the same, as given by both authors.

This harangue was applauded, and similar sentiments were enforced, by others favorable to the plan; who proceeded to set the example of immediate compliance, and were themselves the first to tender worship. Most of the Macedonian officers sat unmoved, disgusted at the speech. But though disgusted they said nothing. To reply to a speech doubtless well-turned and flowing, required some powers of oratory; moreover, it was well known that whoever dared to reply stood marked out for the antipathy of Alexander. The fate of Kleitus, who had arraigned the same sentiments in the banqueting hall of Marakanda, was fresh in the recollection of every one. The repugnance which many felt, but none ventured to express, at length found an organ in Kallisthenes of Olynthus.

This philosopher, whose melancholy fate imparts a peculiar interest to his name, was nephew of Aristotle, and had enjoyed through his uncle an early acquaintance with Alexander during the boyhood of the latter. At the recommendation of Aristotle, Kallisthenes had accompanied Alexander in his Asiatic expedition. He was a man of much literary and rhetorical talent, which he turned towards the composition of history—and to the history of recent times.[515] Alexander, full of ardor for conquest, was at the same time anxious that his achievements should be commemorated by poets and men of letters;[516] there were seasons also when he enjoyed their conversation. On both these grounds, he invited several of them to accompany the army. The more prudent among them declined, but Kallisthenes obeyed, partly in hopes of procuring the reconstitution of his native city Olynthus, as Aristotle had obtained the like favor for Stageira.[517] Kallisthenes had composed a narrative (not preserved) of Alexander’s exploits, which certainly reached to the battle of Arbela, and may perhaps have gone down farther. The few fragments of this narrative remaining seem to betoken extreme admiration, not merely of the bravery and ability, but also of the transcendent and unbroken good fortune, of Alexander—marking him out as the chosen favorite of the gods. This feeling was perfectly natural under the grandeur of the events. Insofar as we can judge from one or two specimens, Kallisthenes was full of complimentary tribute to the hero of his history. But the character of Alexander himself had undergone a material change during the six years between his first landing in Asia and his campaign in Sogdiana. All his worst qualities had been developed by unparalleled success and by Asiatic example. He required larger doses of flattery, and had now come to thirst, not merely for the reputation of divine paternity, but for the actual manifestations of worship as towards a god.

[515] Kallisthenes had composed three historical works—1. Hellenica—from the year 387-357 B. C. 2. History of the sacred war—from 357-346 B. C. 3. Τὰ κατ᾽ Ἀλέξανδρον. His style is said by Cicero to have been rhetorical; but the Alexandrine critics included him in their Canon of Historians. See Didot, Fragm. Hist. Alex. Magn. p. 6-9.

[516] See the observation ascribed to him expressing envy towards Achilles for having been immortalized by Homer (Arrian, i. 12, 2).

[517] It is said that Ephorus, Xenokrates, and Menedemus, all declined the invitation of Alexander (Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, p. 1043). Respecting Menedemus, the fact can hardly be so: he must have been then too young to be invited.

To the literary Greeks who accompanied Alexander, this change in his temper must have been especially palpable and full of serious consequence; since it was chiefly manifested, not at periods of active military duty, but at his hours of leisure, when he recreated himself by their conversation and discourses. Several of these Greeks—Anaxarchus, Kleon, the poet Agis of Argos—accommodated themselves to the change, and wound up their flatteries to the pitch required. Kallisthenes could not do so. He was a man of sedate character, of simple, severe, and almost unsocial habits—to whose sobriety the long Macedonian potations were distasteful. Aristotle said of him, that he was a great and powerful speaker, but that he had no judgment; according to other reports, he was a vain and arrogant man, who boasted that Alexander’s reputation and immortality were dependent on the composition and tone of his history.[518] Of personal vanity,—a common quality among literary Greeks,—Kallisthenes probably had his full share. But there is no ground for believing that his character had altered. Whatever his vanity may have been, it had given no offence to Alexander during the earlier years, nor would it have given offence now, had not Alexander himself become a different man.

[518] Arrian, iv. 10, 2; Plutarch, Alex. 53, 54. It is remarkable that Timmæus denounced Kallisthenes as having in his historical work flattered Alexander to excess (Polybius, xii. 12). Kallisthenes seems to have recognized various special interpositions of the gods, to aid Alexander’s successes—see Fragments 25 and 36 of the Fragmenta Callisthenis in the edition of Didot.

In reading the censure which Arrian passes on the arrogant pretensions of Kallisthenes, we ought at the same time to read the pretensions raised by Arrian on his own behalf as an historian (i. 12, 7-9)—καὶ ἐπὶ τῷδε οὐκ ἀπαξιῶ ἐμαυτὸν τῶν πρώτων ἐν τῇ φωνῇ τῇ Ἑλλάδι, εἴπερ καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος τῶν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις, etc. I doubt much whether Kallisthenes pitched his self-estimation so high. In this chapter, Arrian recounts, that Alexander envied Achilles for having been fortunate enough to obtain such a poet as Homer for panegyrist; and Arrian laments that Alexander had not, as yet, found an historian equal to his deserts. This, in point of fact, is a reassertion of the same truth which Kallisthenes stands condemned for asserting—that the fame even of the greatest warrior depends upon his commemorators. The boastfulness of a poet is at least pardonable, when he exclaims, like Theokritus, Idyll. xvi. 73—

Ἔσσεται οὗτος ἀνὴρ, ὃς ἐμεῦ κεχρήσετ᾽ ἀοιδοῦ, Ῥέξας ἢ Ἀχιλεὺς ὅσσον μέγας, ἢ βαρὺς Αἴας Ἐν πεδίῳ Σιμόεντος, ὅθι Φρυγὸς ἠρίον ῎Ιλου.

On occasion of the demonstration led up by Anaxarchus at the banquet, Kallisthenes had been invited by Hephæstion to join in the worship intended to be proposed towards Alexander; and Hephæstion afterwards alleged, that he had promised to comply.[519] But his actual conduct affords reasonable ground for believing that he made no such promise; for he not only thought it his duty to refuse the act of worship, but also to state publicly his reasons for disapproving it; the more so, as he perceived that most of the Macedonians present felt like himself. He contended that the distinction between gods and men was one which could not be confounded without impiety and wrong. Alexander had amply earned,—as a man, a general, and a king,—the highest honors compatible with humanity; but to exalt him into a god would be both an injury to him, and an offence to the gods. Anaxarchus (he said) was the last person from whom such a proposition ought to come, because he was one of those whose only title to Alexander’s society was founded upon his capacity to give instructive and wholesome counsel.[520]

[519] Plutarch, Alex. 55.

[520] Arrian, iv. 11. ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ τε καὶ παιδεύσει Ἀλεξάνδρῳ συνόντα.

Kallisthenes here spoke out, what numbers of his hearers felt. The speech was not only approved, but so warmly applauded by the Macedonians present, especially the older officers,—that Alexander thought it prudent to forbid all farther discussion upon this delicate subject. Presently the Persians present, according to Asiatic custom, approached him and performed their prostration; after which Alexander pledged, in successive goblets of wine, those Greeks and Macedonians with whom he had held previous concert. To each of them the goblet was handed, and each, after drinking to answer the pledge, approached the king, made his prostration, and then received a salute. Lastly, Alexander sent the pledge to Kallisthenes, who, after drinking like the rest, approached him, for the purpose of receiving the salute, but without any prostration. Of this omission Alexander was expressly informed by one of the Companions; upon which he declined to admit Kallisthenes to a salute. The latter retired, observing, “Then I shall go away, worse off than others as far as the salute goes.”[521]

[521] Arrian, iv. 12, 7. φιλήματι ἔλαττον ἔχων ἄπειμι.

Kallisthenes was imprudent, and even blamable, in making this last observation, which without any necessity or advantage, aggravated the offence already given to Alexander. He was more imprudent still, if we look simply to his own personal safety in standing forward publicly to protest against the suggestion for rendering divine honors to that prince, and in thus creating the main offence which even in itself was inexpiable. But here the occasion was one serious and important, so as to convert the imprudence into an act of genuine moral courage. The question was, not about obeying an order given by Alexander, for no order had been given—but about accepting or rejecting a motion made by Anaxarchus; which Alexander, by a shabby, preconcerted manœuvre, affected to leave to the free decision of the assembly, in full confidence that no one would be found intrepid enough to oppose it. If one Greek sophist made a proposition, in itself servile and disgraceful, another sophist could do himself nothing but honor by entering public protest against it; more especially since this was done (as we may see by the report in Arrian) in terms no way insulting, but full of respectful admiration, towards Alexander personally. The perfect success of the speech is in itself a proof of the propriety of its tone;[522] for the Macedonian officers would feel indifference, if not contempt towards a rhetor like Kallisthenes, while towards Alexander they had the greatest deference short of actual worship. There are few occasions on which the free spirit of Greek letters and Greek citizenship, in their protest against exorbitant individual insolence, appears more conspicuous and estimable than in the speech of Kallisthenes.[523] Arrian disapproves the purpose of Alexander, and strongly blames the motion of Anaxarchus; nevertheless, such is his anxiety to find some excuse for Alexander, that he also blames Kallisthenes for unseasonable frankness, folly, and insolence, in offering opposition. He might have said with some truth, that Kallisthenes would have done well to withdraw earlier (if indeed he could have withdrawn without offence) from the camp of Alexander, in which no lettered Greek could now associate without abnegating his freedom of speech and sentiment, and emulating the servility of Anaxarchus. But being present, as Kallisthenes was, in the hall at Baktra when the proposition of Anaxarchus was made, and when silence would have been assent—his protest against it was both seasonable and dignified; and all the more dignified for being fraught with danger to himself.

[522] Arrian, iv. 12, 1. ἀνιᾶσαι μὲν μεγαλωστὶ Ἀλέξανδρον, Μακεδόσι δὲ πρὸς θυμοῦ εἰπεῖν....

Curtius, viii. 5, 20. “Æquis auribus Callisthenes velut vindex publicæ libertatis audiebatur. Expresserat non assensionem modo, sed etiam vocem, seniorum præcipuè quibus gravis erat inveterati moris externa mutatio.”

[523] There was no sentiment more deeply rooted in the free Grecian mind, prior to Alexander’s conquests, than the repugnance to arrogant aspirations on the part of the fortunate man, swelling himself above the limits of humanity—and the belief that such aspirations were followed by the Nemesis of the gods. In the dying speech which Xenophon puts into the mouth of Cyrus the Great, we find—“Ye gods, I thank you much, that I have been sensible of your care for me, and that I have never in my successes raised my thoughts above the measure of man” (Cyropæd. viii. 7, 3). Among the most striking illustrations of this sentiment is, the story of Solon and Crœsus (Herodot. i. 32-34).

I shall recount in the next chapter examples of monstrous flattery on the part of the Athenians, proving how this sentiment expired with their freedom.

Kallisthenes knew that danger well, and was quickly enabled to recognize it in the altered demeanor of Alexander towards him. He was, from that day, a marked man in two senses: first, to Alexander himself, as well as to the rival sophists and all promoters of the intended deification,—for hatred, and for getting up some accusatory pretence such as might serve to ruin him; next, to the more free-spirited Macedonians, indignant witnesses of Alexander’s increased insolence, and admirers of the courageous Greek who had protested against the motion of Anaxarchus. By such men he was doubtless much extolled; which praises aggravated his danger, as they were sure to be reported to Alexander. The pretext for his ruin was not long wanting.

Among those who admired and sought the conversation of Kallisthenes, was Hermolaus, one of the royal pages—the band, selected from noble Macedonian families, who did duty about the person of the king. It had happened that this young man, one of Alexander’s companions in the chase, on seeing a wild boar rushing up to attack the king, darted his javelin, and slew the animal. Alexander, angry to be anticipated in killing the boar, ordered Hermolaus to be scourged before all the other pages, and deprived him of his horse.[524] Thus humiliated and outraged—for an act not merely innocent, but the omission of which, if Alexander had sustained any injury from the boar, might have been held punishable—Hermolaus became resolutely bent on revenge.[525] He enlisted in the project his intimate friend Sostratus, with several others among the pages, and it was agreed among them to kill Alexander in his chamber, on the first night when they were all on guard together. The appointed night arrived, without any divulgation of their secret; yet the scheme was frustrated by the accident, that Alexander continued till daybreak drinking with his officers, and never retired to bed. On the morrow, one of the conspirators, becoming alarmed or repentant, divulged the scheme to his friend Charikles, with the names of those concerned. Eurylochus, brother to Charikles, apprised by him of what he had heard, immediately informed Ptolemy, through whom it was conveyed to Alexander. By Alexander’s order, the persons indicated were arrested and put to the torture;[526] under which they confessed that they had themselves conspired to kill him, but named no other accomplices, and even denied that any one else was privy to the scheme. In this denial they persisted, though extreme suffering was applied to extort the revelation of new names. They were then brought up and arraigned as conspirators before the assembled Macedonian soldiers. There their confession was repeated. It is even said that Hermolaus, in repeating it, boasted of the enterprise as legitimate and glorious; denouncing the tyranny and cruelty of Alexander us having become insupportable to a freeman. Whether such boast was actually made or not, the persons brought up were pronounced guilty, and stoned to death forthwith by the soldiers.[527]

[524] Plutarch, Alexand. 54. He refers to Hermippus, who mentions what was told to Aristotle by Strœbus, the reader attendant on Kallisthenes.

[525] Arrian, iv. 13; Curtius, viii. 6, 7.

[526] Arrian, iv. 13, 13.

[527] Arrian, iv, 14, 4. Curtius expands this scene into great detail; composing a long speech for Hermolaus, and another for Alexander (viii. 6, 7, 8).

He says that the soldiers who executed these pages, tortured them first, in order to manifest zeal for Alexander (viii. 8, 20).

The pages thus executed were young men of good Macedonian families, for whose condemnation accordingly, Alexander had thought it necessary to invoke—what he was sure of obtaining against any one—the sentence of the soldiers. To satisfy his hatred against Kallisthenes—not a Macedonian, but only a Greek citizen, one of the surviving remnants of the subverted city of Olynthus—no such formality was required.[528] As yet, there was not a shadow of proof to implicate this philosopher; for obnoxious as his name was known to be, Hermolaus and his companions had, with exemplary fortitude, declined to purchase the chance of respite from extreme torture by pronouncing it. Their confessions,—all extorted by suffering, unless confirmed by other evidence, of which we do not know whether any was taken—were hardly of the least value, even against themselves; but against Kallisthenes, they had no bearing whatever; nay, they tended indirectly, not to convict, but to absolve him. In his case, therefore, as in that of Philotas before, it was necessary to pick up matter of suspicious tendency from his reported remarks and conversations. He was alleged[529] to have addressed dangerous and inflammatory language to the pages, holding up Alexander to odium, instigating them to conspiracy, and pointing out Athens as a place of refuge; he was moreover well known to have been often in conversation with Hermolaus. For a man of the violent temper and omnipotent authority of Alexander, such indications were quite sufficient as grounds of action against one whom he hated.

[528] “Quem, si Macedo esset (Callisthenem), tecum introduxissem, dignissimum te discipulo magistrum: nunc Olynthio non idem juris est” (Curtius. viii. 8, 19—speech of Alexander before the soldiers addressing Hermolaus especially).

[529] Plutarch, Alexand. 55; Arrian, iv. 10, 4.

On this occasion, we have the state of Alexander’s mind disclosed by himself, in one of the references to his letters given by Plutarch. Writing to Kraterus and to others immediately afterwards, Alexander distinctly stated that the pages throughout all their torture had deposed against no one but themselves. Nevertheless, in another letter, addressed to Antipater in Macedonia, he used these expressions—“The pages were stoned to death by the Macedonians; but I myself shall punish the sophist, as well as those who sent him out here, and those who harbor in their cities conspirators against me.”[530] The sophist Kallisthenes had been sent out by Aristotle, who is here designated; and probably the Athenians after him. Fortunately for Aristotle, he was not at Baktra, but at Athens. That he could have had any concern in the conspiracy of the pages, was impossible. In this savage outburst of menace against his absent preceptor, Alexander discloses the real state of feeling which prompted him to the destruction of Kallisthenes; hatred towards that spirit of citizenship and free speech, which Kallisthenes not only cherished, in common with Aristotle and most other literary Greeks, but had courageously manifested in his protest against the motion for worshipping a mortal.

[530] Plutarch, Alex. 55. Καίτοι τῶν περὶ Ἑρμόλαον οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ διὰ τῆς ἐσχάτης ἀνάγκης Καλλισθένους κατεῖπεν. Ἀλλὰ καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος ~αὐτὸς εὐθὺς γράφων~ Κρατερῷ καὶ Ἀττάλῳ καὶ Ἀλκέτᾳ φησὶ τοὺς παῖδας βασανιζομένους ὁμολογεῖν, ὡς αὐτοὶ ταῦτα πράξειαν, ~ἄλλος δὲ οὐδεὶς συνειδείη~. Ὕστερον δὲ γράφων πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον, καὶ τὸν Καλλισθένην συνεπαιτιασάμενος, Οἱ μὲν παῖδές, φησιν, ὑπὸ τῶν Μακεδόνων κατελεύσθησαν, ~τὸν δὲ σοφιστὴν ἐγὼ κολάσω~, καὶ ~τοὺς ἐκπέμψαντας αὐτὸν~, καὶ τοὺς ὑποδεχομένους ταῖς πόλεσι τοὺς ἐμοὶ ἐπιβουλεύοντας ... ἄντικρυς ἔν γε τούτοις ἀποκαλυπτόμενος πρὸς Ἀριστοτέλην, etc.

About the hostile dispositions of Alexander towards Aristotle, see Dio Chrysostom, Orat. 64. de Fortunâ, p. 598.

Kraterus was at this time absent in Sogdiana, engaged in finishing the suppression of the resistance (Arrian, iv. 22, 1). To him, therefore, Alexander would naturally write.

This statement, from the pen of Alexander himself, distinctly contradicts and refutes (as I have before observed) the affirmation of Ptolemy and Aristobulus as given by Arrian (iv. 14, 1)—that the pages deposed against Kallisthenes.

Kallisthenes was first put to the torture and then hanged.[531] His tragical fate excited a profound sentiment of sympathy and indignation among the philosophers of antiquity.[532]

[531] Arrian, iv. 14, 5. Curtius also says—“Callisthenes quoque tortus interiit, initi consilii in caput regis innoxius, sed haudquaquam aulæ et assentantium accommodatus ingenio (viii. 8, 21).” Compare Plutarch, Alex. 55.

This is the statement of Ptolemy; who was himself concerned in the transactions, and was the officer through whom the conspiracy of the pages had been revealed. His partiality might permit him to omit or soften what was discreditable to Alexander, but he may be fully trusted when he records an act of cruelty. Aristobulus and others affirmed that Kallisthenes was put in chains and carried about in this condition for some time; after which he died of disease and a wretched state of body. But the witnesses here are persons whose means of information we do not know to be so good as those of Ptolemy; besides that, the statement is intrinsically less probable.

[532] See the language of Seneca, Nat. Quæst. vi. 23; Plutarch, De Adulator. et Amici Discrimine, p. 65; Theophrast. ap. Ciceron. Tusc. Disp. iii. 10.

Curtius says that this treatment of Kallisthenes was followed by a late repentance on the part of Alexander (viii. 8, 23). On this point there is no other evidence—nor can I think the statement probable.

The halts of Alexander were formidable to friends and companions; his marches, to the unconquered natives whom he chose to treat as enemies. On the return of Kraterus from Sogdiana, Alexander began his march from Baktra (Balkh) southward to the mountain range Paropamisus or Caucasus (Hindoo-Koosh); leaving however at Baktra Amyntas, with a large force of 10,000 foot and 3500 horse, to keep these intractable territories in subjugation.[533] His march over the mountains occupied ten days; he then visited his newly-founded city Alexandria in the Paropamisadæ. At or near the river Kophen (Kabool river), he was joined by Taxiles, a powerful Indian prince, who brought as a present twenty-five elephants, and whose alliance was very valuable to him. He then divided his army, sending one division under Hephæstion and Perdikkas, towards the territory called Peukelaôtis (apparently that immediately north of the confluence of the Kabool river with the Indus); and conducting the remainder himself in an easterly direction, over the mountainous regions between the Hindoo-Koosh and the right bank of the Indus. Hephæstion was ordered, after subduing all enemies in his way, to prepare a bridge ready for passing the Indus by the time when Alexander should arrive. Astes, prince of Peukelaôtis, was taken and slain in the city where he had shut himself up; but the reduction of it cost Hephæstion a siege of thirty days.[534]

[533] Arrian, iv. 22, 4.

[534] Arrian, iv. 22, 8-12.

Alexander, with his own half of the army, undertook the reduction of the Aspasii, the Guræi, and the Assakeni, tribes occupying mountainous and difficult localities along the southern slopes of the Hindoo-Koosh; but neither they nor their various towns mentioned—Arigæon, Massaga, Bazira, Ora, Dyrta, etc., except perhaps the remarkable rock of Aornos,[535] near the Indus—can be more exactly identified. These tribes were generally brave, and seconded by towns of strong position as well as by a rugged country, in many parts utterly without roads.[536] But their defence was conducted with little union, no military skill, and miserable weapons; so that they were no way qualified to oppose the excellent combination and rapid movements of Alexander, together with the confident attack and very superior arms, offensive, as well as defensive, of his soldiers. All those who attempted resistance were successively attacked, overpowered and slain. Even those who did not resist, but fled to the mountains, were pursued, and either slaughtered or sold for slaves. The only way of escaping the sword was to remain, submit, and await the fiat of the invader. Such a series of uninterrupted successes, all achieved with little loss, it is rare in military history to read. The capture of the rock of Aornos was peculiarly gratifying to Alexander, because it enjoyed the legendary reputation of having been assailed in vain by Herakles—and indeed he himself had deemed it, at first sight, unassailable. After having thus subdued the upper regions (above Attock or the confluence of the Kabul river) on the right bank of the Indus, he availed himself of some forests alongside to fell timber and build boats. These boats were sent down the stream, to the point where Hephæstion and Perdikkas were preparing the bridge.[537]

[535] Respecting the rock called Aornos, a valuable and elaborate article, entitled “Gradus ad Aornon” has been published by Major Abbott in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. iv. 1854. This article gives much information, collected mainly by inquiries on the spot, and accompanied by a map, about the very little known country west of the Indus, between the Kabool river on the south, and the Hindoo-Koosh on the north.

Major Abbott attempts to follow the march and operations of Alexander, from Alexandria ad Caucasum to the rock of Aornos (p. 311 seq.). He shows highly probable reason for believing that the Aornos described by Arrian is the Mount Mahabunn, near the right bank of the Indus (lat. 34° 20´), about sixty miles above its confluence with the Kabool river. “The whole account of Arrian of the rock Aornos is a faithful picture of the Mahabunn. It was the most remarkable feature of the country. It was the refuge of all the neighboring tribes. It was covered with forest. It had good soil sufficient for a thousand ploughs, and pure springs of water everywhere abounded. It was 4125 feet above the plain, and fourteen miles in circuit. The summit was a plain where cavalry could act. It would be difficult to offer a more faithful description of the Mahabunn. The side on which Alexander scaled the main summit had certainly the character of a rock. But the whole description of Arrian indicates a table mountain” (p. 341). The Mahabunn “is a mountain table, scarped on the east by tremendous precipices, from which descends one large spur down upon the Indus between Sitana and Umb” (p. 340).

To this similarity in so many local features, is to be added the remarkable coincidence of name, between the town Embolima, where Arrian states that Alexander established his camp for the purpose of attacking Aornos—and the modern names Umb and Balimah (between the Mahabunn and the Indus)—“the one in the river valley, the other on the mountain immediately above it” (p. 344). Mount Mahabunn is the natural refuge for the people of the neighborhood from a conqueror, and was among the places taken by Nadir Shah (p. 338).

A strong case of identity is thus made out between this mountain and the Aornos described by Arrian. But undoubtedly it does not coincide with the Aornos described by Curtius, who compares Aornos to a Meta (the conical goal of the stadium), and says that the Indus washed its base,—that at the first assault several Macedonian soldiers were hurled down into the river. This close juxtaposition of the Indus has been the principal feature looked for by travellers who have sought for Aornos; but no place has yet been found answering the conditions required. We have here to make our election between Arrian and Curtius. Now there is a general presumption in Arrian’s favor, in the description of military operations, where he makes a positive statement; but in this case, the presumption is peculiarly strong, because Ptolemy was in the most conspicuous and difficult command for the capture of Aornos, and was therefore likely to be particular in the description of a scene where he had reaped much glory.

[536] Arrian, iv. 30, 13. ἡ στρατιὰ αὐτῷ ὡδοποίει τὸ πρόσω ἰοῦσα, ἄπορα ἄλλως ὄντα τὰ ταύτῃ χωρία, etc.

The countries here traversed by Alexander include parts of Kafiristan, Swart, Bajore, Chitral, the neighborhood of the Kameh and other affluents of the river Kabul before it falls into the Indus near Attock. Most of this is Terra Incognita even at present; especially Kafiristan, a territory inhabited by a population said to be rude and barbarous, but which has never been conquered—nor indeed ever visited by strangers. It is remarkable, that among the inhabitants of Kafiristan,—as well as among those of Badakshan, on the other or northern side of the Hindoo-Koosh—there exist traditions respecting Alexander, together with a sort of belief that they themselves are descended from his soldiers. See Ritter’s Erdkunde, part vii. book iii. p. 200 seq.; Burnes’s Travels, vol. iii. ch. 4. p. 186, 2nd ed.; Wilson, Ariana Antiqua, p. 194 seq.

[537] Arrian, iv. 30, 16; v. 7, 2.

Such fatiguing operations of Alexander, accomplished amidst all the hardships of winter, were followed by a halt of thirty days, to refresh the soldiers before he crossed the Indus, in the early spring of 326 B. C.[538] It is presumed, probably enough, that he crossed at or near Attock, the passage now frequented. He first marched to Taxila, where the prince Taxilus at once submitted, and reinforced the army with a strong contingent of Indian soldiers. His alliance and information was found extremely valuable. The whole neighboring territory submitted, and was placed under Philippus as satrap, with a garrison and depôt at Taxila. He experienced no resistance until he reached the river Hydaspes (Jelum), on the other side of which the Indian prince Porus stood prepared to dispute the passage; a brave man, with a formidable force, better armed than Indians generally were, and with many trained elephants; which animals the Macedonians had never yet encountered in battle. By a series of admirable military combinations, Alexander eluded the vigilance of Porus, stole the passage of the river at a point a few miles above, and completely defeated the Indian army. In spite of their elephants, which were skilfully managed, the Indians could not long withstand the shock of close combat, against such cavalry and infantry as the Macedonian. Porus, a prince of gigantic stature, mounted on an elephant, fought with the utmost gallantry, rallying his broken troops and keeping them together until the last. Having seen two of his sons slain, himself wounded and perishing with thirst, he was only preserved by the special directions of Alexander. When Porus was brought before him, Alexander was struck with admiration at his stature, beauty, and undaunted bearing.[539] Addressing him first, he asked, what Porus wished to be done for him. “That you should treat me as a king,” was the reply of Porus. Alexander, delighted with these words, behaved towards Porus with the utmost courtesy and generosity; not only ensuring to him his actual kingdom, but enlarging it by new additions. He found in Porus a faithful and efficient ally. This was the greatest day of Alexander’s life; if we take together the splendor and difficulty of the military achievement, and the generous treatment of his conquered opponent.[540]

[538] The halt of thirty days is mentioned by Diodorus, xvii. 86. For the proof that these operations took place in winter, see the valuable citation from Aristobulus given in Strabo (xv. p. 691).

[539] Arrian. v. 19, 1. Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ ὡς προσάγοντα ἐπύθετο, προσιππεύσας πρὸ τῆς τάξεως σὺν ὀλίγοις τῶν ἑταίρων ἀπαντᾷ τῷ Πώρῳ, καὶ ἐπιστήσας τὸν ἵππον, τό τε μέγεθος ἐθαύμαζεν ὑπὲρ πέντε πήχεις μάλιστα ξυμβαῖνον, ~καὶ τὸ κάλλος τοῦ Πώρου~, καὶ ὅτι οὐ δεδουλωμένος τῇ γνώμῃ ἐφαίνετο, etc.

We see here how Alexander was struck with the stature and personal beauty of Porus, and how much these visual impressions contributed to determine, or at least to strengthen, his favorable sympathies towards the captive prince. This illustrates what I have observed in the last chapter, in recounting his treatment of the eunuch Batis after the capture of Gaza; that the repulsive appearance of Batis greatly heightened Alexander’s indignation. With a man of such violent impulses as Alexander, these external impressions were of no inconsiderable moment.

[540] These operations are described in Arrian, v. 9. v. 19 (we may remark that Ptolemy and Aristobulus, though both present, differed on many points, v. 14); Curtius, viii. 13, 14; Diodor. xvii. 87, 88. According to Plutarch (Alex. 60), Alexander dwelt much upon the battle in his own letters.

There are two principal points—Jelum and Julalpoor—where high roads from the Indus now cross the Hydaspes. Each of these points have been assigned by different writers, as the probable scene of the crossing of the river by Alexander. Of the two Jelum (rather higher up the river than Julalpoor) seems the more probable. Burnes points out that near Jelum the river is divided into five or six channels with islands (Travels, vol. ii. ch. 2. p. 50, 2nd ed.). Captain Abbott (in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, Dec. 1848) has given an interesting memoir on the features and course of the Hydaspes a little above Jelum, comparing them with the particulars stated by Arrian, and showing highly plausible reasons in support of this hypothesis—that the crossing took place near Jelum.

Diodorus mentions a halt of thirty days, after the victory (xvii. 89), which seems not probable. Both he and Curtius allude to numerous serpents, by which the army was annoyed between the Akesines and the Hydraotes (Curtius, ix. 1, 11).

Alexander celebrated his victory by sacrifices to the gods, and festivities on the banks of the Hydaspes; where he also gave directions for the foundation of two cities—Nikæa, on the eastern bank; and Bukephalia, on the western, so named in commemoration of his favorite horse, who died here of age and fatigue.[541] Leaving Kraterus to lay out and erect these new establishments, as well as to keep up communication, he conducted his army onward in an easterly direction towards the river Akesines (Chenab).[542] His recent victory had spread terror around; the Glaukæ, a powerful Indian tribe, with thirty-seven towns and many populous villages, submitted, and were placed under the dominion of Porus; while embassies of submission were also received from two considerable princes—Abisares, and a second Porus, hitherto at enmity with his namesake. The passage of the great river Akesines, now full and impetuous in its current, was accomplished by boats and by inflated hides, yet not without difficulty and danger. From thence he proceeded onward in the same direction, across the Punjab—finding no enemies, but leaving detachments at suitable posts to keep up his communications and ensure his supplies—to the river Hydraotes or Ravee; which, though not less broad and full than the Akesines, was comparatively tranquil, so as to be crossed with facility.[543] Here some free Indian tribes, Kathæans and others, had the courage to resist. They first attempted to maintain themselves in Sangala by surrounding their town with a triple entrenchment of waggons. These being attacked and carried, they were driven within the walls, which they now began to despair of defending, and resolved to evacuate by night. But the project was divulged to Alexander by deserters, and frustrated by his vigilance. On the next day, he took the town by storm, putting to the sword 17,000 Indians, and taking (according to Arrian) 70,000 captives. His own loss before the town was less than 100 killed, and 1200 wounded. Two neighboring towns, in alliance with Sangala, were evacuated by their terrified inhabitants. Alexander pursued, but could not overtake them, except 500 sick or weakly persons, whom his soldiers put to death. Demolishing the town of Sangala, he added the territory to the dominion of Porus, then present, with a contingent of 5000 Indians.[544]

[541] Arrian states (v. 19, 5) that the victory over Porus was gained in the month Munychion of the archon Hegemon at Athens—that is, about the end of April, 326 B. C. This date is not to be reconciled with another passage, v. 9, 6—where he says that the summer solstice had already passed, and that all the rivers of the Punjab were full of water, turbid and violent.

This swelling of the rivers begins about June; they do not attain their full height until August. Moreover, the description of the battle, as given both by Arrian and by Curtius, implies that it took place after the rainy season had begun (Arrian, v. 9, 7; v. 12, 5. Curtius, viii. 14, 4).

Some critics have proposed to read Metageitnion (July-August) as the month, instead of Munychion; an alteration approved by Mr. Clinton and received into the text by Schmieder. But if this alteration be admitted, the name of the Athenian archon must be altered also; for Metageitnion of the archon Hegemon would be eight months earlier (July-August, 327 B. C.); and at this date Alexander had not as yet crossed the Indus, as the passage of Aristobulus (ap. Strabo. xv. p. 691) plainly shows—and as Droysen and Mützel remark. Alexander did not cross the Indus before the spring of 326 B. C. If, in place of the archon Hegemon, we substitute the next following archon Chremês (and it is remarkable that Diodorus assigns the battle to this later archonship, xvii. 87), this would be July-August 326 B. C.; which would be a more admissible date for the battle than the preceding month of Munychion. At the same time, the substitution of Metageitnion is mere conjecture; and seems to leave hardly time enough for the subsequent events. As far as an opinion can be formed, it would seem that the battle was fought about the end of June or beginning of July 326 B. C. after the rainy season had commenced; towards the close of the archonship of Hegemon, and the beginning of that of Chremes.

[542] Arrian, v. 20; Diodor. xvii. 95. Lieut. Wood (Journey to the source of the Oxus, p. 11-39) remarks that the large rivers of the Punjab change their course so often and so considerably, that monuments and indications of Alexander’s march in that territory cannot be expected to remain, especially in ground near rivers.

[543] Arrian, v. 20.

[544] Arrian, v, 23, 24; Curtius, ix. 1, 15.

Sangala was the easternmost of all Alexander’s conquests. Presently his march brought him to the river Hyphasis (Sutledge), the last of the rivers in the Punjab—seemingly at a point below its confluence with the Beas. Beyond this river, broad and rapid, Alexander was informed that there lay a desert of eleven days’ march, extending to a still greater river called the Ganges; beyond which dwelt the Gandaridæ, the most powerful, warlike, and populous, of all the Indian tribes, distinguished for the number and training of their elephants.[545] The prospect of a difficult march, and of an enemy esteemed invincible, only instigated his ardor. He gave orders for the crossing. But here for the first time his army, officers as well as soldiers, manifested symptoms of uncontrollable weariness; murmuring aloud at these endless toils, and marches they knew not whither. They had already over-passed the limits where Dionysus and Herakles were said to have stopped: they were travelling into regions hitherto unvisited either by Greeks or by Persians, merely for the purpose of provoking and conquering new enemies. Of victories they were sated; of their plunder, abundant as it was, they had no enjoyment;[546] the hardships of a perpetual onward march, often excessively accelerated, had exhausted both men and horses; moreover, their advance from the Hydaspes had been accomplished in the wet season, under rains more violent and continued than they had ever before experienced.[547] Informed of the reigning discontent, Alexander assembled his officers and harangued them, endeavoring to revive in them that forward spirit and promptitude which he had hitherto found not inadequate to his own.[548] But he entirely failed. No one indeed dared openly to contradict him. Kœnus alone hazarded some words of timid dissuasion; the rest manifested a passive and sullen repugnance, even when he proclaimed that those who desired might return, with the shame of having deserted their king, while he would march forward with the volunteers only. After a suspense of two days, passed in solitary and silent mortification—he still apparently persisted in his determination, and offered the sacrifice usual previous to the passage of a river. The victims were inauspicious; he bowed to the will of the gods; and gave orders for return, to the unanimous and unbounded delight of his army.[549]

[545] Curtius, ix. 2, 3; Diodor. xvii. 93; Plutarch, Alex. 62.

[546] Curtius, ix. 3, 11 (speech of Kœnus). “Quoto cuique lorica est? Quis equum habet? Jube quæri, quam multos servi ipsorum persecuti sint, quid cuique supersit ex prædâ. Omnium victores, omnium inopes sumus.”

[547] Aristobulus ap. Strabo. xv. p. 691-697. ὕεσθαι συνεχῶς. Arrian, v, 29, 8; Diodor. xvii. 93. χειμῶνες ἄγριοι κατεῤῥάγησαν ἐφ᾽ ἡμέρας ἑβδομήκοντα, καὶ βρονταὶ συνεχεῖς καὶ κεραυνοὶ κατέσκηπτον, etc.

[548] In the speech which Arrian (v. 25, 26) puts into the mouth of Alexander, the most curious point is, the geographical views which he promulgates. “We have not much farther now to march (he was standing on the western bank of the Sutledge) to the river Ganges, and the great Eastern Sea which surrounds the whole earth. The Hyrkanian (Caspian) Sea joins on to this great sea on one side, the Persian Gulf on the other; after we have subdued all those nations which lie before us eastward towards the Great Sea, and northward towards the Hyrkanian Sea, we shall then sail by water first to the Persian Gulf, next round Libya to the pillars of Herakles; from thence we shall march back all through Libya, and add it to all Asia as parts of our empire.” (I here abridge rather than translate).

It is remarkable, that while Alexander made so prodigious an error in narrowing the eastern limits of Asia, the Ptolemaic geography, recognized in the time of Columbus, made an error not less in the opposite direction, stretching it too far to the East. It was upon the faith of this last mistake, that Columbus projected his voyage of circumnavigation from Western Europe, expecting to come to the eastern coast of Asia from the West, after no great length of voyage.

[549] Arrian, v. 28, 7. The fact that Alexander, under all this insuperable repugnance of his soldiers, still offered the sacrifice preliminary to crossing—is curious as an illustration of his character, and was specially attested by Ptolemy.

To mark the last extremity of his eastward progress, he erected twelve altars of extraordinary height and dimension on the western bank of the Hyphasis, offering sacrifices of thanks to the gods, with the usual festivities, and matches of agility and force. Then, having committed all the territory west of the Hyphasis to the government of Porus, he marched back, repassed the Hydraotes and Akesines, and returned to the Hydaspes near the point where he had first crossed it. The two new cities—Bukephalia and Nikæa—which he had left orders for commencing on that river, had suffered much from the rains and inundations during his forward march to the Hyphasis, and now required the aid of the army to repair the damage.[550] The heavy rains continued throughout most of his return march to the Hydaspes.[551]

[550] Arrian, v. 29, 8; Diodor. xvii. 95.

[551] Aristobulus ap. Strab. xv. p. 691—until the rising of Arkturus. Diodorus says, 70 days (xvii. 73), which seems more probable.

On coming back to this river, Alexander received a large reinforcement both of cavalry and infantry, sent to him from Europe, together with 25,000 new panoplies, and a considerable stock of medicines.[552] Had these reinforcements reached him on the Hyphasis, it seems not impossible that he might have prevailed on his army to accompany him in his farther advance to the Ganges and the regions beyond. He now employed himself, assisted by Porus and Taxilus, in collecting and constructing a fleet for sailing down the Hydaspes and thence down to the mouth of the Indus. By the early part of November, a fleet of nearly 2000 boats or vessels of various sizes having been prepared, he began his voyage.[553] Kraterus marched with one division of the army, along the right bank of the Hydaspes—Hephæstion on the left bank with the remainder, including 200 elephants; Nearchus had the command of the fleet in the river, on board of which was Alexander himself. He pursued his voyage slowly down the river, to the confluence of the Hydaspes with the Akesines—with the Hydraotes—and with the Hyphasis—all pouring, in one united stream, into the Indus. He sailed down the Indus to its junction with the Indian Ocean. Altogether this voyage occupied nine months,[554] from November 326 B. C. to August 325 B. C. But it was a voyage full of active military operations on both sides of the river. Alexander perpetually disembarked to attack, subdue, and slaughter all such nations near the banks as did not voluntarily submit. Among them were the Malli and Oxydrakæ, free and brave tribes, who resolved to defend their liberty, but, unfortunately for themselves, were habitually at variance, and could not now accomplish any hearty co-operation against the common invader.[555] Alexander first assailed the Malli with his usual celerity and vigor, beat them with slaughter in the field, and took several of their towns.[556] There remained only their last and strongest town, from which the defenders were already driven out and forced to retire to the citadel.[557] Thither they were pursued by the Macedonians, Alexander being among the foremost, with only a few guards near him. Impatient because the troops with their scaling-ladders did not come up more rapidly, he mounted upon a ladder that happened to be at hand, attended only by Peukestes and one or two others, with an adventurous courage even transcending what he was wont to display. Having cleared the wall by killing several of its defenders, he jumped down into the interior of the citadel, and made head for some time, nearly alone, against all within. He received however a bad wound from an arrow in the breast, and was on the point of fainting, when his soldiers burst in, rescued him, and took the place. Every person within, man, woman, and child, was slain.[558]

[552] Diodor. xvii. 95; Curtius, ix. 3, 21.

[553] The voyage was commenced a few days before the setting of the Pleiades (Aristobulus, ap. Strab. xv. p. 692).

For the number of the ships, see Ptolemy ap. Arrian, vi. 2, 8.

On seeing crocodiles in the Indus, Alexander was at first led to suppose that it was the same river as the Nile, and that he had discovered the higher course of the Nile, from whence it flowed into Egypt. This is curious, as an illustration of the geographical knowledge of the time (Arrian, vi. 1, 3).

[554] Aristobulus ap. Strab. xv. p. 692. Aristobulus said that the downward voyage occupied ten months; this seems longer than the exact reality. Moreover Aristobulus said that they had no rain during all the voyage down, through all the summer months: Nearchus stated the contrary (Strabo, l. c.).

[555] Curtius, ix. 4, 15; Diodor. xvii 98.

[556] Arrian, vi. 7, 8.

[557] This last stronghold of the Malli is supposed, by Mr. Cunningham and others, to have been the modern city of Multan. The river Ravee or Hydraotes is said to have formerly run past the city of Multan into the Chenab or Akesines.

[558] Arrian, vi. 9, 10, 11. He notices the great discrepancy in the various accounts given of this achievement and dangerous wound of Alexander.

Compare Diodor. xvii. 98, 99; Curtius, ix. 4, 5; Plutarch, Alex. 63.

The wound of Alexander was so severe, that he was at first reported to be dead to the great consternation and distress of the army. However, he became soon sufficiently recovered to show himself, and to receive their ardent congratulations, in the camp established at the point of junction between the Hydraotes (Ravee) and Akesines (Chenab).[559] His voyage down the river, though delayed by the care of his wound, was soon resumed and prosecuted, with the same active operations by his land-force on both sides to subjugate all the Indian tribes and cities within accessible distance. At the junction of the river Akesines (Punjnud) with the Indus, Alexander directed the foundation of a new city, with adequate docks and conveniences for ship-building, whereby he expected to command the internal navigation.[560] Having no farther occasion now for so large a land-force, he sent a large portion of it, under Kraterus, westward (seemingly through the pass now called Bolan) into Karmania.[561] He established another military and naval post at Pattala, where the Delta of the Indus divided; and he then sailed, with a portion of his fleet, down the right arm of the river to have the first sight of the Indian Ocean. The view of ebbing and flowing tide, of which none had had experience on the scale there exhibited, occasioned to all much astonishment and alarm.[562]

[559] Arrian, xi. 13.

[560] Arrian, xi. 15, 5.

[561] Arrian, xi. 17, 6; Strabo, xv. p. 721.

[562] Arrian, xi. 18, 19; Curtius, ix. 9. He reached Pattala towards the middle or end of July, περὶ κυνὸς ἐπιτολήν (Strabo, xv. p. 692).

The site of Pattala has been usually looked for near the modern Tatta. But Dr. Kennedy, in his recent ‘Narrative of the Campaign of the Army of the Indus in Scinde and Kabool’ (ch. v. p. 104), shows some reasons for thinking that it must have been considerably higher up the river than Tatta; somewhere near Sehwan. “The delta commencing about 130 miles above the sea, its northern apex would be somewhere midway between Hyderabad and Sehwan; where local traditions still speak of ancient cities destroyed, and of greater changes having occurred than in any other part of the course of the Indus.”

The constant changes in the course of the Indus, however (compare p. 73 of his work), noticed by all observers, render every attempt at such identification conjectural—see Wood’s Journey to the Oxus, p. 12.

The fleet was now left to be conducted by the admiral Nearchus, from the mouth of the Indus round by the Persian Gulf to that of the Tigris: a memorable nautical enterprise in Grecian antiquity. Alexander himself (about the month of August) began his march by land westward through the territories of the Arabitæ and the Oritæ, and afterwards through the deserts of Gedrosia. Pura, the principal town of the Gedrosians, was sixty days’ march from the boundary of the Oritæ.[563]

[563] Arrian, vi. 24, 2; Strabo, xv. p. 723.

Here his army, though without any formidable opposing enemy, underwent the most severe and deplorable sufferings; their march being through a sandy and trackless desert, with short supplies of food and still shorter supplies of water, under a burning sun. The loss in men, horses, and baggage-cattle from thirst, fatigue, and disease was prodigious; and it required all the unconquerable energy of Alexander to bring through even the diminished number.[564] At Pura the army obtained repose and refreshment, and was enabled to march forward into Karmania, where Kraterus joined them with his division from the Indus, and Kleander with the division which had been left at Ekbatana. Kleander, accused of heinous crimes in his late command, was put to death or imprisoned: several of his comrades were executed. To recompense the soldiers for their recent distress in Gedrosia, the king conducted them for seven days in drunken bacchanalian procession through Karmania, himself and all his friends taking part in the revelry; an imitation of the jovial festivity and triumph with which the god Dionysus had marched back from the conquest of India.[565]

[564] Arrian, vi. 25, 26; Curtius. ix. 10; Plutarch, Alex. 66.

[565] Curtius, ix. 10; Diodor. xvii. 106; Plutarch, Alex. 67. Arrian (vi. 28) found this festal progress mentioned in some authorities, but not in others. Neither Ptolemy nor Aristobulus mentioned it. Accordingly Arrian refuses to believe it. There may have been exaggerations or falsities as to the details of the march; but as a general fact, I see no sufficient ground for disbelieving it. A season of excessive license to the soldiers, after their extreme suffering in Gedrosia, was by no means unnatural to grant. Moreover, it corresponds to the general conception of the returning march of Dionysus in antiquity, while the imitation of that god was quite in conformity with Alexander’s turn of sentiment.

I have already remarked, that the silence of Ptolemy and Aristobulus is too strongly insisted on, both by Arrian and by others, as a reason for disbelieving affirmations respecting Alexander.

Arrian and Curtius (x. 1) differ in their statements about the treatment of Kleander. According to Arrian, he was put to death; according to Curtius, he was spared from death, and simply put in prison, in consequence of the important service which he had rendered by killing Parmenio with his own hand; while 600 of his accomplices and agents were put to death.

During the halt in Karmania Alexander had the satisfaction of seeing his admiral Nearchus,[566] who had brought the fleet round from the mouth of the Indus to the harbor called Harmozeia (Ormuz), not far from the entrance of the Persian Gulf; a voyage of much hardship and distress, along the barren coasts of the Oritæ, the Gedrosians, and the Ichthyophagi.[567] Nearchus, highly commended and honored, was presently sent back to complete his voyage as far as the mouth of the Euphrates; while Hephæstion also was directed to conduct the larger portion of the army, with the elephants and heavy baggage, by the road near the coast from Karmania into Persis. This road, though circuitous, was the most convenient, as it was now the winter season;[568] but Alexander himself, with the lighter divisions of his army, took the more direct mountain road from Karmania to Pasargadæ and Persepolis. Visiting the tomb of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire, he was incensed to find it violated and pillaged. He caused it to be carefully restored, put to death a Macedonian named Polymachus as the offender, and tortured the Magian guardians of it for the purpose of discovering accomplices, but in vain.[569] Orsines, satrap of Persis, was however accused of connivance in the deed, as well as of various acts of murder and spoliation: according to Curtius, he was not only innocent, but had manifested both good faith and devotion to Alexander;[570] in spite of which he became a victim of the hostility of the favorite eunuch Bagoas, who both poisoned the king’s mind with calumnies of his own, and suborned other accusers with false testimony. Whatever may be the truth of the story, Alexander caused Orsines to be hanged; naming as satrap Peukestes, whose favor was now high, partly as comrade and preserver of the king in his imminent danger at the citadel of the Malli,—partly from his having adopted the Persian dress, manners, and language more completely than any other Macedonian.[571]

[566] Nearchus had begun his voyage about the end of September, or beginning of October (Arrian, Indic. 21; Strabo, xv. p. 721).

[567] Arrian, vi. 28, 7; Arrian, Indica, c. 33-37.

[568] Arrian, vi. 28, 12-29, 1.

[569] Plutarch, Alex. 69; Arrian, vi. 29, 17; Strabo, xv. p. 730.

[570] Arrian, vi. 30, 2; Curtius, x. 1, 23-38. “Hic fuit exitus nobilissimi Persarum, nec insontis modo, sed eximiæ quoque benignitatis in regem.” The great favor which the beautiful eunuch Bagoas (though Arrian does not mention him) enjoyed with Alexander, and the exalted position which he occupied, are attested by good contemporary evidence, especially the philosopher Dikæarchus—see Athenæ. xiii. p. 603; Dikæarch. Fragm. 19. ap. Hist. Græc. Fragm. Didot, vol. ii. p. 241. Compare the Fragments of Eumenes and Diodotus (Ælian, V. H. iii. 23) in Didot, Fragm. Scriptor. Hist. Alex. Magni, p. 121; Plutarch De Adul. et Amic. Discrim. p. 65.

[571] Arrian, vi. 30; Curtius, x. 1, 22-30.

It was about February, in 324 B. C.,[572] that Alexander marched out of Persis to Susa. During this progress, at the point where he crossed the Pasitigris, he was again joined by Nearchus, who having completed his circumnavigation from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Euphrates, had sailed back with the fleet from the latter river and come up the Pasitigris.[573] It is probable that the division of Hephæstion also rejoined him at Susa, and that the whole army was there for the first time brought together, after the separation in Karmania.

[572] Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. B. C. 325, also Append. p. 232) places the arrival of Alexander in Susiana, on his return march, in the month of February B. C. 325; a year too early, in my opinion. I have before remarked on the views of Mr. Clinton respecting the date of Alexander’s victory over Porus on the Hydaspes, where he alters the name of the month as it stands in the text of Arrian (following Schmieder’s conjecture), and supposes that battle to have occurred in August B. C. 327 instead of April B. C. 326. Mr. Clinton antedates by one year all the proceedings of Alexander subsequent to his quitting Baktria for the last time in the summer of B. C. 327. Dr. Vincent’s remark—“that the supposition of two winters occurring after Alexander’s return to Susa is not borne out by the historians” (see Clinton. p. 232), is a perfectly just one; and Mitford has not replied to it in a satisfactory manner. In my judgment, there was only an interval of sixteen months (not an interval of twenty-eight months, as Mr. Clinton supposes) between the return of Alexander to Susa and his death at Babylon (Feb. 324 B. C. to June 323 B. C.).

[573] Arrian, vii. 5. 9; Arrian, Indica, c. 42. The voluntary death of Kalanus the Indian Gymnosophist must have taken place at Susa (where Diodorus places it—xvii. 107), and not in Persis; for Nearchus was seemingly present at the memorable scene of the funeral pile (Arrian, vii. 3, 9)—and he was not with Alexander in Persis.

In Susa and Susiana Alexander spent some months. For the first time since his accession to the throne, he had now no military operations in hand or in immediate prospect. No enemy was before him, until it pleased him to go in quest of a new one;—nor indeed could any new one be found, except at a prodigious distance. He had emerged from the perils of the untrodden East, and had returned into the ordinary localities and conditions of Persian rule, occupying that capital city from whence the great Achæmenid kings had been accustomed to govern the Western as well as the Eastern portions of their vast empire. To their post, and to their irritable love of servility, Alexander had succeeded; but bringing with him a restless energy such as none of them except the first founder Cyrus had manifested—and a splendid military genius, such as was unknown alike to Cyrus and to his successors.

In the new position of Alexander, his principal subjects of uneasiness were, the satraps and the Macedonian soldiers. During the long interval (more than five years) which had elapsed since he marched eastward from Hyrkania in pursuit of Bessus, the satraps had necessarily been left much to themselves. Some had imagined that he would never return; an anticipation noway unreasonable, since his own impulse towards forward march was so insatiate that he was only constrained to return by the resolute opposition of his own soldiers; moreover his dangerous wound among the Malli, and his calamitous march through Gedrôsia, had given rise to reports of his death, credited for some time even by Olympias and Kleopatra in Macedonia.[574] Under these uncertainties, some satraps stood accused of having pillaged rich temples, and committed acts of violence towards individuals. Apart from all criminality, real or alleged, several of them, also, had taken into pay bodies of mercenary troops, partly as a necessary means of authority in their respective districts, partly as a protection to themselves in the event of Alexander’s decease. Respecting the conduct of the satraps and their officers, many denunciations and complaints were sent in; to which Alexander listened readily and even eagerly, punishing the accused with indiscriminate rigor, and resenting especially the suspicion that they had calculated upon his death.[575] Among those executed, were Abulites, satrap of Susiana, with his son Oxathres; the latter was even slain by the hands of Alexander himself, with a sarissa[576]—the dispensation of punishment becoming in his hands an outburst of exasperated temper. He also despatched peremptory orders to all the satraps, enjoining them to dismiss their mercenary troops without delay.[577] This measure produced considerable effect on the condition of Greece—about which I shall speak in a subsequent chapter. Harpalus, satrap of Babylon (about whom also more, presently), having squandered large sums out of the revenues of the post upon ostentatious luxury, became terrified when Alexander was approaching Susiana, and fled to Greece with a large treasure and a small body of soldiers.[578] Serious alarm was felt among all the satraps and officers, innocent as well as guilty. That the most guilty were not those who fared worst, we may see by the case of Kleomenes in Egypt, who remained unmolested in his government, though his iniquities were no secret.[579]

[574] Plutarch, Alexand. 68.

[575] Arrian, vii. 4, 2-5; Diodor. xvii. 108; Curtius, x. 1, 7. “Cœperat esse præceps ad repræsentanda supplicia, item ad deteriora credenda” (Curtius, x. 1, 39).

[576] Plutarch, Alex. 68.

[577] Diodor. xvii. 106-111.

[578] Among the accusations which reached Alexander against this satrap, we are surprised to find a letter addressed to him (ἐν τῇ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἐπιστολῇ) by the Greek historian Theopompus; who set forth with indignation the extravagant gifts and honors heaped by Harpalus upon his two successive mistresses—Pythionikê and Glykera; celebrated Hetæræ from Athens. These proceedings Theopompus describes as insults to Alexander (Theopompus ap. Athenæ. xiii. p. 586-595; Fragment. 277, 278 ed. Didot).

The satyric drama called Ἀγὴν, represented before Alexander at a period subsequent to the flight of Harpalus, cannot have been represented (as Athenæus states it to have been) on the banks of the Hydaspes, because Harpalus did not make his escape until he was frightened by the approach of Alexander returning from India. At the Hydaspes, Alexander was still on his outward progress; very far off, and without any idea of returning. It appears to me that the words of Athenæus respecting this drama—ἐδίδαξε Διονυσίων ὄντων ἐπὶ τοῦ ~Ὑδάσπου~ τοῦ ποταμοῦ (xiii, p. 595)—involve a mistake or misreading; and that it ought to stand ἐπὶ τοῦ ~Χοάσπου~ τοῦ ποταμοῦ. I may remark that the words Medus Hydaspes in Virgil, Georg. iv. 211, probably involve the same confusion. The Choaspes was the river, near Susa; and this drama was performed before Alexander at Susa during the Dionysia of the year 324 B. C., after Harpalus had fled. The Dionysia were in the month Elaphebolion; now Alexander did not fight Porus on the Hydaspes until the succeeding month Munychion at the earliest—and probably later. And even if we suppose (which is not probable) that he reached the Hydaspes in Elaphebolion, he would have no leisure to celebrate dramas and a Dionysiac festival, while the army of Porus was waiting for him on the opposite bank. Moreover it is no way probable that, on the remote Hydaspes, he had any actors or chorus, or means of celebrating dramas at all.

[579] Arrian, vii. 18, 2; vii. 23, 9-13.

Among the Macedonian soldiers, discontent had been perpetually growing, from the numerous proofs which they witnessed that Alexander had made his election for an Asiatic character, and abnegated his own country. Besides his habitual adoption of the Persian costume and ceremonial, he now celebrated a sort of national Asiatic marriage at Susa. He had already married the captive Roxana, in Baktria; he next took two additional wives—Statira, daughter of Darius—and Parysatis, daughter of the preceding king Ochus. He at the same time caused eighty of his principal friends and officers, some very reluctantly, to marry (according to Persian rites) wives selected from the noblest Persian families, providing dowries for all of them.[580] He made presents besides, to all those Macedonians who gave in their names as having married Persian women. Splendid festivities[581] accompanied these nuptials, with honorary rewards distributed to favorites and meritorious officers. Macedonians and Persians, the two imperial races, one in Europe, the other in Asia, were thus intended to be amalgamated. To soften the aversion of the soldiers generally towards these Asiatising marriages,[582] Alexander issued proclamation that he would himself discharge their debts, inviting all who owed money to give in their names with an intimation of the sums due. It was known that the debtors were numerous; yet few came to enter their names. The soldiers suspected the proclamation as a stratagem, intended for the purpose of detecting such as were spendthrifts, and obtaining a pretext for punishment: a remarkable evidence how little confidence or affection Alexander now inspired, and how completely the sentiment entertained towards him was that of fear mingled with admiration. He himself was much hurt at their mistrust, and openly complained of it; at the same time proclaiming that paymasters and tables should be planted openly in the camp, and that any soldier might come and ask for money enough to pay his debts, without being bound to give in his name. Assured of secrecy, they now made application in such numbers that the total distributed was prodigiously great; reaching, according to some, to 10,000 talents—according to Arrian, not less than 20,000 talents or £4,600,000 sterling.[583]

[580] Arrian, vii. 4, 6-9. By these two marriages, Alexander thus engrafted himself upon the two lines of antecedent Persian Kings. Ochus was of the Achæmenid family, but Darius Codomannus, father of Statira, was not of that family; he began a new lineage. About the overweening regal state of Alexander, outdoing even the previous Persian kings, see Phylarchus ap. Athenæ. xii. p. 539.

[581] Chares ap. Athenæ. xii. p. 538.

[582] Arrian, vii. 6, 3. καὶ τοὺς γάμους ἐν τῷ νόμῳ τῷ Περσικῷ ποιηθέντας οὐ πρὸς θυμοῦ γενέσθαι τοῖς πολλοῖς αὐτῶν, οὐδὲ τῶν γημάντων ἐστὶν οἷς, etc.

[583] Arrian, vii. 5; Plutarch, Alexand. 70; Curtius, x. 2, 9; Diodor. xvii. 109.

Large as this donative was, it probably gave but partial satisfaction, since the most steady and well-conducted soldiers could have received no benefit, except in so far as they might choose to come forward with fictitious debts. A new modification moreover was in store for the soldiers generally. There arrived from the various satrapies—even from those most distant, Sogdiana, Baktria, Aria, Drangiana, Arachosia, etc.—contingents of young and fresh native troops, amounting in total to 30,000 men; all armed and drilled in the Macedonian manner. From the time when the Macedonians had refused to cross the river Hyphasis and march forward into India, Alexander saw, that for his large aggressive schemes it was necessary to disband the old soldiers, and to organize an army at once more fresh and more submissive. He accordingly despatched orders to the satraps to raise and discipline new Asiatic levies, of vigorous native youths; and the fruit of these orders was now seen.[584] Alexander reviewed the new levies, whom he called the Epigoni, with great satisfaction. He moreover incorporated many native Persians, both officers and soldiers, into the Companion-cavalry, the most honorable service in the army; making the important change of arming them with the short Macedonian thrusting-pike in place of the missile Persian javelin. They were found such apt soldiers, and the genius of Alexander for military organization was so consummate, that he saw himself soon released from his dependence on the Macedonian veterans; a change evident enough to them as well as to him.[585]

[584] Diodor. xvii. 108. It must have taken some time to get together and discipline these young troops; Alexander must therefore have sent the orders from India.

[585] Arrian, vii. 6.

The novelty and success of Nearchus in his exploring voyage had excited in Alexander an eager appetite for naval operations. Going on board his fleet in the Pasitigris (the Karun, the river on the east side of Susa), he sailed in person down to the Persian Gulf, surveyed the coast as far as the mouth of the Tigris, and then sailed up the latter river as far as Opis. Hephæstion meanwhile, commanding the army, marched by land in concert with this voyage, and came back to Opis, where Alexander disembarked.[586]

[586] Arrian, vii. 7.

Sufficient experiment had now been made with the Asiatic levies, to enable Alexander to dispense with many of his Macedonian veterans. Calling together the army, he intimated his intention of sending home those who were unfit for service either from age or wounds, but of allotting to them presents at departure sufficient to place them in an enviable condition, and attract fresh Macedonian substitutes. On hearing this intimation, all the long-standing discontent of the soldiers at once broke out. They felt themselves set aside as worn out and useless,—and set aside, not to make room for younger men of their own country, but in favor of those Asiatics into whose arms their king had now passed. They demanded with a loud voice that he should dismiss them all—advising him by way of taunt to make his future conquests along with his father Ammon. These manifestations so incensed Alexander, that he leaped down from the elevated platform on which he had stood to speak, rushed with a few of his guards among the crowd of soldiers, and seized or caused to be seized thirteen of those apparently most forward, ordering them immediately to be put to death. The multitude were thoroughly overawed and reduced to silence, upon which Alexander remounted the platform and addressed them in a speech of considerable length. He boasted of the great exploits of Philip, and of his own still greater: he affirmed that all the benefit of his conquests had gone to the Macedonians, and that he himself had derived from them nothing but a double share of the common labors, hardships, wounds, and perils. Reproaching them as base deserters from a king who had gained for them all these unparalleled acquisitions, he concluded by giving discharge to all—commanding them forthwith to depart.[587]

[587] Arrian, vii. 9, 10; Plutarch, Alex. 71; Curtius, x. 2; Justin, xii. 11.

After this speech—teeming (as we read it in Arrian) with that exorbitant self-exaltation which formed the leading feature in his character—Alexander hurried away into the palace, where he remained shut up for two days without admitting any one except his immediate attendants. His guards departed along with him, leaving the discontented soldiers stupefied and motionless. Receiving no farther orders, nor any of the accustomed military indications,[588] they were left in the helpless condition of soldiers constrained to resolve for themselves, and at the same time altogether dependent upon Alexander whom they had offended. On the third day, they learnt that he had convened the Persian officers, and had invested them with the chief military commands, distributing the newly arrived Epigoni into divisions of infantry and cavalry, all with Macedonian military titles, and passing over the Macedonians themselves as if they did not exist. At this news, the soldiers were overwhelmed with shame and remorse. They rushed to the gates of the palace, threw down their arms, and supplicated with tears and groans for Alexander’s pardon. Presently he came out, and was himself moved to tears by seeing their prostrate deportment. After testifying his full reconciliation, he caused a solemn sacrifice to be celebrated, coupled with a multitudinous banquet of mixed Macedonians and Persians. The Grecian prophets, the Persian magi and all the guests present, united in prayer and libation for fusion, harmony, and community of empire, between the two nations.[589]

[588] See the description given by Tacitus (Hist. ii. 29) of the bringing round of the Vitellian army,—which had mutinied against the general Fabius Valens:—“Tum Alphenus Varus, præfectus castrorum, deflagrante paulatim seditione, addit consilium—vetitis obire vigilias centurionibus, omisso tubæ sono, quo miles ad belli munia cietur. Igitur torpere cuncti, circumspectare inter se attoniti, et id ipsum, quod nemo regeret, paventes; silentio, patientiâ, postremo precibus et lacrymis veniam quærebant. Ut vero deformis et fiens, et præter spem incolumis, Valens processit, gaudium, miseratio, favor; versi in lætitiam (ut est vulgus utroque immodicum) laudantes gratantesque, circumdatum aquilis signisque, in tribunal ferunt.”

Compare also the narrative in Xenophon (Anab. i. 3) of the embarrassment of the Ten Thousand Greeks at Tarsus, when they at first refused to obey Klearchus and march against the Great King.

[589] Arrian, vii. 11.

This complete victory over his own soldiers was probably as gratifying to Alexander as any one gained during his past life; carrying as it did a consoling retribution for the memorable stoppage on the banks of the Hyphasis, which he had neither forgotten nor forgiven. He selected 10,000 of the oldest and most exhausted among the soldiers to be sent home under Kraterus, giving to each full pay until the time of arrival in Macedonia, with a donation of one talent besides. He intended that Kraterus, who was in bad health, should remain in Europe as viceroy of Macedonia, and that Antipater should come out to Asia with a reinforcement of troops.[590] Pursuant to this resolution, the 10,000 soldiers were now singled out for return, and separated from the main army. Yet it does not appear that they actually did return, during the ten months of Alexander’s remaining life.

[590] Arrian, vii. 12, 1-7; Justin, xii. 12. Kraterus was especially popular with the Macedonian soldiers, because he had always opposed, as much as he dared, the Oriental transformation of Alexander (Plutarch, Eumenes, 6).

Of the important edict issued this summer by Alexander to the Grecian cities, and read at the Olympic festival in July—directing each city to recall its exiled citizens—I shall speak in a future chapter. He had now accomplished his object of organizing a land force, half Macedonian, half Asiatic. But since the expedition of Nearchus, he had become bent upon a large extension of his naval force also; which was indeed an indispensable condition towards his immediate projects of conquering Arabia, and of pushing both nautical exploration and aggrandizement from the Persian Gulf round the Arabian coast. He despatched orders to the Phenician ports, directing that a numerous fleet should be built; and that the ships should then be taken to pieces, and conveyed across to Thapsakus on the Euphrates, from whence they would sail down to Babylon. At that place, he directed the construction of other ships from the numerous cypress trees around—as well as the formation of an enormous harbor in the river at Babylon, adequate to the accommodation of 1000 ships of war. Mikkalus, a Greek of Klazomenæ, was sent to Phenicia with 500 talents, to enlist, or to purchase, seamen for the crews. It was calculated that these preparations (probably under the superintendence of Nearchus) would be completed by the spring, for which period contingents were summoned to Babylon for the expedition against Arabia.[591]

[591] Arrian, vii. 19. He also sent an officer named Herakleides to the shores of the Caspian sea, with orders to construct ships and make a survey of that sea (vii. 16).

In the mean time, Alexander himself paid a visit to Ekbatana, the ordinary summer residence of the Persian kings. He conducted his army by leisurely marches, reviewing by the way the ancient regal parks of the celebrated breed called Nisæan horses now greatly reduced in number.[592] On the march, a violent altercation occurred between his personal favorite Hephæstion,—and his secretary Eumenes, the most able, dexterous, and long-sighted man in his service. Eumenes, as a Greek of Kardia, had been always regarded with slight and jealousy by the Macedonian officers, especially by Hephæstion; Alexander now took pains to reconcile the two, experiencing no difficulty with Eumenes, but much with Hephæstion.[593] During his stay at Ekbatana, he celebrated magnificent sacrifices and festivities, with gymnastic and musical exhibitions, which were farther enlivened, according to the Macedonian habits, by banquets and excessive wine-drinking. Amidst these proceedings, Hephæstion was seized with a fever. The vigor of his constitution emboldened him to neglect all care or regimen, so that in a few days the disease carried him off. The final crisis came on suddenly, and Alexander was warned of it while sitting in the theatre; but though he instantly hurried to the bedside, he found Hephæstion already dead. His sorrow for this loss was unbounded, manifesting itself in excesses suitable to the general violence of his impulses, whether of affection or of antipathy. Like Achilles mourning for Patroklus, he cast himself on the ground near the dead body, and remained there wailing for several hours; he refused all care, and even food, for two days; he cut his hair close, and commanded that all the horses and mules in the camp should have their manes cut close also; he not only suspended the festivities, but interdicted all music and every sign of joy in the camp; he directed that the battlements of the walls belonging to the neighboring cities should be struck off; he hung, or crucified, the physician Glaukias, who had prescribed for Hephæstion; he ordered that a vast funeral pile should be erected at Babylon, at a cost given to us as 10,000 talents (£2,300,000), to celebrate the obsequies; he sent messengers to the oracle of Ammon, to inquire whether it was permitted to worship Hephæstion as a god. Many of those around him, accommodating themselves to this passionate impulse of the ruler, began at once to show a sort of worship towards the deceased, by devoting to him themselves and their arms; of which Eumenes set the example, conscious of his own personal danger, if Alexander should suspect him of being pleased at the death of his recent rival. Perdikkas was instructed to convey the body in solemn procession to Babylon, there to be burnt in state when preparations should be completed.[594]

[592] Arrian, vii. 13, 2; Diodor. xvii. 110. How leisurely the march was may be seen in Diodorus.

The direction of Alexander’s march from Susa to Ekbatana, along a frequented and good road which Diodorus in another place calls a royal road (xix. 19), is traced by Ritter, deriving his information chiefly from the recent researches of Major Rawlinson. The larger portion of the way lay along the western side of the chain of Mount Zagros, and on the right bank of the river Kerkha (Ritter, Erdkunde, part ix. b. 3. p. 329, West Asia).

[593] Arrian, vii. 13, 1; Plutarch, Eumenes, 2.

[594] Arrian, vii. 14; Plutarch, Alexand. 72; Diodor. xvii. 110. It will not do to follow the canon of evidence tacitly assumed by Arrian, who thinks himself authorized to discredit all the details of Alexander’s conduct on this occasion, which transgress the limits of a dignified, though vehement sorrow.

When Masistius was slain, in the Persian army commanded by Mardonius in Bœotia, the manes of the horses were cut, as token of mourning: compare also Plutarch, Pelopidas, 33; and Euripid. Alkestis, 442.

Alexander stayed at Ekbatana until winter was at hand, seeking distraction from his grief in exaggerated splendor of festivals and ostentation of life. His temper became so much more irascible and furious, that no one approached him without fear, and he was propitiated by the most extravagant flatteries.[595] At length he roused himself and found his true consolation, in gratifying the primary passions of his nature—fighting and man-hunting.[596] Between Media and Persis, dwelt the tribes called Kossæi, amidst a region of lofty, trackless, inaccessible mountains. Brave and predatory, they had defied the attacks of the Persian kings. Alexander now conducted against them a powerful force, and in spite of increased difficulties arising from the wintry season, pushed them from point to point, following them into the loftiest and most impenetrable recesses of their mountains. These efforts were continued for forty days, under himself and Ptolemy, until the entire male population was slain; which passed for an acceptable offering to the manes of Hephæstion.[597]

[595] See the curious extracts from Ephippus the Chalkidian,—seemingly a contemporary, if not an eye-witness (ap. Athenæ. xii. p. 537, 538)—εὐφημία δὲ καὶ σιγὴ κατεῖχε πάντας ὑπὸ δέους τοὺς παρόντας· ἀφόρητος γὰρ ἦν (Alexander) καὶ φονικός· ἐδόκει γὰρ εἶναι μελαγχολικὸς, etc.

[596] I translate here, literally, Plutarch’s expression—Τοῦ δὲ πένθους παρηγορίᾳ τῷ πολέμῳ χρώμενος, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ θήραν καὶ ~κυνηγέσιον ἀνθρώπων~ ἐξῆλθε, καὶ τὸ Κοσσαίων ἔθνος κατεστρέψατο, ~πάντας ἡβηδὸν ἀποσφάττων~. Τοῦτο δὲ Ἡφαιστίωνος ἐναγισμὸς ἐκαλεῖτο (Plutarch, Alexand. 72: compare Polyænus, iv. 3, 31).

[597] Arrian, vii. 15; Plutarch, Alex. 72; Diodor. xvii. 111. This general slaughter, however, can only be true of portions of the Kossæan name; for Kossæans occur in after years (Diodor. xix. 19.).

Not long afterwards, Alexander commenced his progress to Babylon; but in slow marches, farther retarded by various foreign embassies which met him on the road. So widely had the terror of his name and achievements been spread, that several of these envoys came from the most distant regions. There were some from the various tribes of Lybia—from Carthage—from Sicily and Sardinia—from the Illyrians and Thracians—from the Lucanians, Bruttians, and Tuscans, in Italy—nay, even (some affirmed) from the Romans, as yet a people of moderate power.[598] But there were other names yet more surprising—Æthiopians, from the extreme south, beyond Egypt—Scythians from the north, beyond the Danube—Iberians and Gauls, from the far west, beyond the Mediterranean Sea. Legates also arrived from various Grecian cities, partly to tender congratulations and compliments upon his matchless successes, partly to remonstrate against his sweeping mandate for the general restoration of the Grecian exiles.[599] It was remarked that these Grecian legates approached him with wreaths on their heads, tendering golden wreaths to him,—as if they were coming into the presence of a god.[600] The proofs which Alexander received even from distant tribes with names and costumes unknown to him, of fear for his enmity and anxiety for his favor, were such as had never been shown to any historical person, and such as entirely to explain his superhuman arrogance.

[598] Pliny, H. N. iii. 9. The story in Strabo, v. p. 232, can hardly apply to Alexander the Great. Livy (ix. 18) conceives that the Romans knew nothing of Alexander even by report, but this appears to me not credible.

On the whole, though the point is doubtful, I incline to believe the assertion of a Roman embassy to Alexander. Nevertheless, there were various false statements which afterwards became current about it—one of which may be seen in Memnon’s history of the Pontic Herakleia ap. Photium, Cod. 224; Orelli Fragment. Memnon, p. 36. Kleitarchus (contemporary of Alexander), whom Pliny quotes, can have had no motive to insert falsely the name of Romans, which in his time was nowise important.

[599] Arrian, vii. 15; Justin, xii. 13; Diodor. xvii. 113. The story mentioned by Justin in another place (xxi. 6) is probably referable to this season of Alexander’s career. A Carthaginian named Hamilkar Rhodanus, was sent by his city to Alexander; really as an emissary to acquaint himself with the king’s real designs, which occasioned to the Carthaginians serious alarm—but under color of being an exile tendering his services. Justin says that Parmenio introduced Hamilkar—which must, I think, be an error.

[600] Arrian, vii. 19, 1; vii. 23, 3.

In the midst of this exuberant pride and good fortune, however, dark omens and prophecies crowded upon him as he approached Babylon. Of these the most remarkable was, the warning of the Chaldean priests, who apprised him, soon after he crossed the Tigris, that it would be dangerous for him to enter that city, and exhorted him to remain outside of the gates. At first he was inclined to obey; but his scruples were overruled, either by arguments from the Greek sophist Anaxarchus, or by the shame of shutting himself out from the most memorable city of the empire, where his great naval preparations were now going on. He found Nearchus with his fleet, who had come up from the mouth of the river,—and also the ships directed to be built in Phenicia, which had come down the river from Thapsakus, together with large numbers of seafaring men to serve aboard.[601] The ships of cypress-wood, and the large docks, which he had ordered to be constructed at Babylon, were likewise in full progress. He lost no time in concerting with Nearchus the details of an expedition into Arabia and the Persian Gulf, by his land-force and naval force coöperating. From various naval officers, who had been sent to survey the Persian Gulf and now made their reports, he learned that though there were no serious difficulties within it or along its southern coast, yet to double the eastern cape which terminated that coast—to circumnavigate the unknown peninsula of Arabia—and thus to reach the Red Sea—was an enterprise perilous at least, if not impracticable.[602] But to achieve that which other men thought impracticable, was the leading passion of Alexander. He resolved to circumnavigate Arabia as well as to conquer the Arabians, from whom it was sufficient offence that they had sent no envoys to him. He also contemplated the foundation of a great maritime city in the interior of the Persian Gulf, to rival in wealth and commerce the cities of Phenicia.[603]

[601] Arrian, vii. 19, 5-12; Diodor. xvii. 112.

[602] Arrian, vii. 20, 15; Arrian, Indica, 43. To undertake this circumnavigation, Alexander had despatched a ship-master of Soli in Cyprus, named Hiero; who becoming alarmed at the distance to which he was advancing, and at the apparently interminable stretch of Arabia towards the south, returned without accomplishing the object.

Even in the time of Arrian, in the second century after the Christian era, Arabia had never been circumnavigated, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea—at least so far as his knowledge extended.

[603] Arrian, vii. 19, 11.

Amidst preparations for this expedition—and while the immense funeral pile destined for Hephæstion was being built—Alexander sailed down the Euphrates to the great dyke called Pallakopas, about ninety miles below Babylon; a sluice constructed by the ancient Assyrian kings, for the purpose of being opened when the river was too full, so as to let off the water into the interminable marshes stretching out near the western bank. The sluice being reported not to work well, he projected the construction of a new one somewhat farther down. He then sailed through the Pallakopas in order to survey the marshes, together with the tombs of the ancient Assyrian kings which had been erected among them. Himself steering his vessel, with the kausia on his head, and the regal diadem above it,[604] he passed some time among these lakes and swamps, which were so extensive that his fleet lost the way among them. He stayed long enough also to direct, and even commence, the foundation of a new city, in what seemed to him a convenient spot.[605]

[604] Arrian, vii. 22, 2, 3; Strabo, xvi. p. 741.

[605] Arrian, vii. 21, 11. πόλιν ἐξῳκοδόμησέ τε καὶ ἐτείχισε.

On returning to Babylon, Alexander found large reinforcements arrived there—partly under Philoxenus, Menander, and Menidas, from Lydia and Karia—partly 20,000 Persians, under Peukestes the satrap. He caused these Persians to be incorporated in the files of the Macedonian phalanx. According to the standing custom, each of these files was sixteen deep, and each soldier was armed with the long pike or sarissa wielded by two hands; the lochage, or front-rank man, being always an officer receiving double pay, of great strength and attested valor—and those second and third in the file, as well as the rearmost man of all, being likewise strong and good men, receiving larger pay than the rest. Alexander, in his new arrangement, retained the three first ranks and the rear rank unchanged, as well as the same depth of file; but he substituted twelve Persians in place of the twelve Macedonians who followed after the third-rank man; so that the file was composed first of the lochage and two other chosen Macedonians, each armed with the sarissa—then of twelve Persians armed in their own manner with bow or javelin—lastly, of a Macedonian with his sarissa bringing up the the rear.[606] In this Macedonico-Persian file, the front would have only three projecting pikes, instead of five, as the ordinary Macedonian phalanx presented; but then, in compensation, the Persian soldiers would be able to hurl their javelins at an advancing enemy, over the heads of their three front-rank men. The supervening death of Alexander prevented the actual execution of this reform, interesting as being his last project for amalgamating Persians and Macedonians into one military force.

[606] Arrian, vii. 23, 5. Even when performing the purely military operation of passing these soldiers in review, inspecting their exercise, and determining their array,—Alexander sat upon the regal throne, surrounded by Asiatic eunuchs; his principal officers sat upon couches with silver feet, near to him (Arrian, vii. 24, 4). This is among the evidences of his altered manners.

Besides thus modifying the phalanx, Alexander also passed in review his fleet, which was now fully equipped. The order was actually given for departing, so soon as the obsequies of Hephæstion should be celebrated. This was the last act which remained for him to fulfil. The splendid funeral pile stood ready—two hundred feet high, occupying a square area, of which the side was nearly one furlong, loaded with mostly decorations from the zeal, real and simulated, of the Macedonian officers. The invention of artists was exhausted, in long discussions with the king himself, to produce at all cost an exhibition of magnificence singular and stupendous. The outlay (probably with addition of the festivals immediately following) is stated at 12,000 talents, or £2,760,000 sterling.[607] Alexander awaited the order from the oracle of Ammon, having sent thither messengers to inquire what measure of reverential honor he might properly and piously show to his departed friend.[608] The answer was now brought back, intimating that Hephæstion was to be worshipped as a Hero—the secondary form of worship, not on a level with that paid to the gods. Delighted with this divine testimony to Hephæstion, Alexander caused the pile to be lighted, and the obsequies celebrated, in a manner suitable to the injunctions of the oracle.[609] He farther directed that magnificent chapels or sacred edifices should be erected for the worship and honor of Hephæstion, at Alexandria in Egypt,—at Pella in Macedonia,—and probably in other cities also.[610]

[607] Diodorus, xvii. 115; Plutarch, Alex. 72.

[608] Arrian, vii. 23, 8.

[609] Diodor. xvii. 114, 115: compare Arrian, vii. 14, 16; Plutarch, Alexand. 75.

[610] Arrian, vii. 23, 10-13; Diod. xviii. 4. Diodorus speaks indeed, in this passage, of the πυρὰ or funeral pile in honor of Hephæstion, as if it were among the vast expenses included among the memoranda left by Alexander (after his decease) of prospective schemes. But the funeral pile had already been erected at Babylon, as Diodorus himself had informed us.

What Alexander left unexecuted at his decease, but intended to execute if he had lived, was the splendid edifices and chapels in Hephæstion’s honor—as we see by Arrian, vii. 23, 10. And Diodorus must be supposed to allude to these intended sacred buildings, though he has inadvertently spoken of the funeral pile. Kraterus, who was under orders to return to Macedonia, was to have built one at Pella.

The Olynthian Ephippus had composed a book περὶ τῆς Ἡφαιστίωνος καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου ταφῆς, of which there appear four or five citations in Athenæus. He dwelt especially on the luxurious habits of Alexander, and on his unmeasured potations—common to him with other Macedonians.

Respecting the honors intended for Hephæstion at Alexandria, he addressed to Kleomenes, the satrap of Egypt, a despatch which becomes in part known to us. I have already stated that Kleomenes was among the worst of the satraps; having committed multiplied public crimes, of which Alexander was not uninformed. The regal despatch enjoined him to erect in commemoration of Hephæstion a chapel on the terra firma of Alexandria, with a splendid turret on the islet of Pharos; and to provide besides that all mercantile written contracts, as a condition of validity, should be inscribed with the name of Hephæstion. Alexander concluded thus: “If on coming I find the Egyptian temples and the chapels of Hephæstion completed in the best manner, I will forgive you for all your past crimes; and in future, whatever magnitude of crime you may commit, you shall suffer no bad treatment from me.”[611] This despatch strikingly illustrates how much the wrong doings of satraps were secondary considerations in his view, compared with splendid manifestations towards the gods and personal attachments towards friends.

[611] Arrian, vii. 23, 9-14. Καὶ Κλεομένει ἀνδρὶ κακῷ, καὶ πολλὰ ἀδικήματα ἀδικήσαντι ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, ἐπιστέλλει ἐπιστολήν.... Ἢν γὰρ καταλάβω ἐγὼ (ἔλεγε τὰ γράμματα) τὰ ἱερὰ τὰ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ καλῶς κατεσκευασμένα καὶ τὰ ἡρῷα τὰ Ἡφαιστίωνος, εἴτε τι πρότερον ἡμάρτηκας, ἀφήσω σε τούτων, καὶ τολοιπόν, ὁπήλικον ἂν ἁμάρτῃς, οὐδὲν πείσῃ ἐξ ἐμοῦ ἄχαρι.—In the oration of Demosthenes against Dionysodoras (p. 1285), Kleomenes appears as enriching himself by the monopoly of corn exported from Egypt: compare Pseudo-Aristot. Œconom. c. 33. Kleomenes was afterwards put to death by the first Ptolemy, who became king of Egypt (Pausanias, i. 6, 3).

The intense sorrow felt by Alexander for the death of Hephæstion—not merely an attached friend, but of the same age and exuberant vigor as himself—laid his mind open to gloomy forebodings from numerous omens, as well as to jealous mistrust even of his oldest officers. Antipater especially, no longer protected against the calumnies of Olympias by the support of Hephæstion,[612] fell more and more into discredit; whilst his son Kassander, who had recently come into Asia with a Macedonian reinforcement, underwent from Alexander during irascible moments much insulting violence. In spite of the dissuasive warning of the Chaldean priests,[613] Alexander had been persuaded to distrust their sincerity, and had entered Babylon, though not without hesitation and uneasiness. However, when, after having entered the town, he went out of it again safely on his expedition for the survey of the lower Euphrates, he conceived himself to have exposed them as deceitful alarmists, and returned to the city with increased confidence, for the obsequies of his deceased friend.[614]

[612] Plutarch, Alex. 74; Diodor. xvii. 114.

[613] Arrian, vii. 16, 9; vii. 17, 6. Plutarch, Alex. 73. Diodor. xvii. 112.

[614] Arrian, vii. 22, 1. Αὐτὸς δὲ ~ὡς ἐξελέγξας δὴ~ τῶν Χαλδαίων μαντείαν, ὅτι οὐδὲν πεπονθὼς εἴη ἐν Βαβυλῶνι ἄχαρι (ἀλλ᾽ ἔφθη γὰρ ἐλάσας ἔξω Βαβυλῶνος πρίν τι παθεῖν) ἀνέπλει αὖθις κατὰ τὰ ἕλη ~θαῤῥῶν~, etc.

The uneasiness here caused by these prophecies and omens, in the mind of the most fearless man of his age, is worthy of notice as a psychological fact, and is perfectly attested by the authority of Aristobulus and Nearchus. It appears that Anaxarchus and other Grecian philosophers encouraged him by their reasonings to despise all prophecy, but especially that of the Chaldæan priests; who (they alleged) wished to keep Alexander out of Babylon in order that they might continue to possess the large revenues of the temple of Belus, which they had wrongfully appropriated; Alexander being disposed to rebuild that ruined temple, and to re-establish the suspended sacrifices to which its revenues had been originally devoted (Arrian, vii. 17; Diodor. xvii. 112). Not many days afterwards, Alexander greatly repented of having given way to these dangerous reasoners, who by their sophistical cavils set aside the power and the warnings of destiny (Diodor. xvii. 116).

The sacrifices connected with these obsequies were on the most prodigious scale. Victims enough were offered to furnish a feast for the army, who also received ample distributions of wine. Alexander himself presided at the feast, and abandoned himself to conviviality like the rest. Already full of wine, he was persuaded by his friend Medius to sup with him, and to pass the whole night in yet farther drinking, with the boisterous indulgence called by the Greeks Kômus or Revelry. Having slept off his intoxication during the next day, he in the evening again supped with Medius, and spent a second night in the like unmeasured indulgence.[615] It appears that he already had the seeds of fever upon him, which was so fatally aggravated by this intemperance that he was too ill to return to his palace. He took the bath, and slept in the house of Medius; on the next morning, he was unable to rise. After having been carried out on a couch to celebrate sacrifice (which was his daily habit), he was obliged to lie in bed all day. Nevertheless he summoned the generals to his presence, prescribing all the details of the impending expedition, and ordering that the land-force should begin its march on the fourth day following, while the fleet, with himself aboard, would sail on the fifth day. In the evening, he was carried on a couch across the Euphrates into a garden on the other side, where he bathed and rested for the night. The fever still continued, so that in the morning, after bathing and being carried out to perform the sacrifices, he remained on his couch all day, talking and playing at dice with Medius; in the evening, he bathed, sacrificed again, and ate a light supper, but endured a bad night with increased fever. The next two days passed in the same manner, the fever becoming worse and worse; nevertheless Alexander still summoned Nearchus to his bedside, discussed with him many points about his maritime projects, and repeated his order that the fleet should be ready by the third day. On the ensuing morning the fever was violent; Alexander reposed all day in a bathing-house in the garden, yet still calling in the generals to direct the filling up of vacancies among the officers, and ordering that the armament should be ready to move. Throughout the two next days, his malady became hourly more aggravated. On the last day of the two, Alexander could with difficulty support the being lifted out of bed to perform the sacrifice; even then, however, he continued to give orders to the generals about the expedition. On the morrow, though desperately ill, he still made the effort requisite for performing the sacrifice; he was then carried across from the garden-house to the palace, giving orders that the generals and officers should remain in permanent attendance in and near the hall. He caused some of them to be called to his bedside; but though he knew them perfectly, he had by this time become incapable of utterance. One of his last words spoken is said to have been, on being asked to whom he bequeathed his kingdom, “To the strongest;” one of his last acts was, to take the signet ring from his finger, and hand it to Perdikkas.[616]

[615] Arrian, vii. 24, 25. Diodorus states (xvii. 117) that Alexander, on this convivial night, swallowed the contents of a large goblet called the cup of Herakles, and felt very ill after it; a statement repeated by various other writers of antiquity, and which I see no reason for discrediting, though some modern critics treat it with contempt. The royal Ephemerides, or Court Journal, attested only the general fact of his long potations and the long sleep which followed them: see Athenæus, x. p. 434.

To drink to intoxication at a funeral, was required as a token of respectful sympathy towards the deceased—see the last words of the Indian Kalanus before he ascended the funeral pile—Plutarch, Alexander, 69.

[616] These last two facts are mentioned by Arrian (vii. 26, 5) and Diodorus (xvii. 117), and Justin (xii. 15): but they found no place in the Court Journal. Curtius (x. v. 4) gives them with some enlargement.

For two nights and a day he continued in this state, without either amendment or repose. Meanwhile, the news of his malady had spread through the army, filling them with grief and consternation. Many of the soldiers, eager to see him once more, forced their way into the palace, and were admitted unarmed. They passed along by the bedside, with all the demonstrations of affliction and sympathy: Alexander knew them, and made show of friendly recognition as well as he could; but was unable to say a word. Several of the generals slept in the temple of Serapis, hoping to be informed by the god in a dream whether they ought to bring Alexander into it, as a suppliant to experience the divine healing power. The god informed them in their dream, that Alexander ought not to be brought into the temple—that it would be better for him to be left where he was. In the afternoon he expired—June 323 B. C.—after a life of thirty-two years and eight months—and a reign of twelve years and eight months.[617]

[617] The details, respecting the last illness of Alexander, are peculiarly authentic, being extracted both by Arrian and by Plutarch, from the Ephemerides Regiæ, or short Court Journal; which was habitually kept by his secretary Eumenes, and another Greek named Diodotus (Athenæ. x. p. 434): see Arrian, vii. 25, 26; Plutarch, Alex. 76.

It is surprising that throughout all the course of this malady no mention is made of any physician as having been consulted. No advice was asked; if we except the application to the temple of Serapis, during the last day of Alexander’s life. A few months before, Alexander had hanged or crucified the physician who attended Hephæstion in his last illness. Hence it seems probable that he either despised or mistrusted medical advice, and would not permit any to be invoked. His views must have been much altered since his dangerous fever at Tarsus, and the successful treatment of it by the Akarnanian physician Philippus.

Though the fever (see some remarks from Littré attached to Didot’s Fragm. Script. Alex. Magn. p. 124) which caused Alexander’s death is here a plain fact satisfactorily made out, yet a different story was circulated some time afterwards, and gained partial credit (Plutarch De Invidiâ, p. 538), that he had been poisoned. The poison was said to have been provided by Aristotle,—sent over to Asia by Antipater through his son Kassander,—and administered by Iollas (another son of Antipater), Alexander’s cupbearer (Arrian, vii. 27, 2; Curtius, x. 10, 17; Diodor. xvii. 118; Justin, xii. 13). It is quite natural that fever and intemperance (which latter moreover was frequent with Alexander) should not be regarded as causes sufficiently marked and impressive to explain a decease at once so unexpected and so momentous. There seems ground for supposing, however, that the report was intentionally fomented, if not originally broached, by the party-enemies of Antipater and Kassander—especially by the rancorous Olympias. The violent enmity afterwards displayed by Kassander against Olympias, and all the family of Alexander helped to encourage the report. In the life of Hyperides in Plutarch, (Vit. X. Oratt. p. 849) it is stated, that he proposed at Athens public honors to Iollas for having given the poison to Alexander. If there is any truth in this, it might be a stratagem for casting discredit on Antipater (father of Iollas), against whom the Athenians entered into the Lamian war, immediately after the death of Alexander.

The death of Alexander, thus suddenly cut off by a fever in the plenitude of health, vigor, and aspirations, was an event impressive as well as important, in the highest possible degree, to his contemporaries far and near. When the first report of it was brought to Athens, the orator Demades exclaimed:—“It cannot be true: if Alexander were dead, the whole habitable world would have smelt of his carcass.”[618] This coarse but emphatic comparison illustrates the immediate, powerful, and wide-reaching impression produced by the sudden extinction of the great conqueror. It was felt by each of the many remote envoys who had so recently come to propitiate this far-shooting Apollo—by every man among the nations who had sent these envoys—throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, as then known,—to affect either his actual condition or his probable future.[619] The first growth and development of Macedonia, during the twenty-two years preceding the battle of Chæroneia, from an embarrassed secondary State into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment of contemporaries, and admiration for Philip’s organizing genius. But the achievements of Alexander, during his twelve years of reign, throwing Philip into the shade, had been on a scale so much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious reverse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure, not only of human expectation, but almost of human belief. The Great King (as the king of Persia was called by excellence) was, and had long been, the type of worldly power and felicity, even down to the time when Alexander crossed the Hellespont. Within four years and three months from this event, by one stupendous defeat after another, Darius had lost all his Western Empire, and had become a fugitive eastward of the Caspian Gates, escaping captivity at the hands of Alexander only to perish by those of the satrap Bessus. All antecedent historical parallels—the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Crœsus, the expulsion and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the mutability of human condition,—sank into trifles compared with the overthrow of this towering Persian colossus. The orator Æschines expressed the genuine sentiment of a Grecian spectator, when he exclaimed (in a speech delivered at Athens shortly before the death of Darius):—“What is there among the list of strange and unexpected events, that has not occurred in our time? Our lives have transcended the limits of humanity; we are born to serve as a theme for incredible tales to posterity. Is not the Persian king—who dug through Athos and bridged the Hellespont,—who demanded earth and water from the Greeks,—who dared to proclaim himself, in public epistles, master of all mankind from the rising to the setting sun—is not he now struggling to the last, not for dominion over others, but for the safety of his own person?”[620]

[618] Plutarch, Phokion, 22; Demetrius Phaler. De Elocution. s. 300. Οὐ τέθνηκεν Ἀλέξανδρος, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι—ὦζε γὰρ ἂν ἡ οἰκουμένη τοῦ νεκροῦ.

[619] Dionysius, despot of the Pontic Herakleia, fainted away with joy when he heard of Alexander’s death, and erected a statue of Εὐθυμία or Comfort (Memn. Heracl. Fragm. ap. Photium, Cod. 224. c. 4).

[620] Æschines adv. Ktesiph. p. 524. c. 43. Τοιγάρτοι τί τῶν ἀνελπίστων καὶ ἀπροσδοκήτων ἐφ᾽ ἡμῶν οὐ γέγονεν! οὐ γὰρ βίον γ᾽ ἡμεῖς ἀνθρώπινον βεβιώκαμεν, ἀλλ᾽ εἰς παραδοξολογίαν τοῖς ἐσομένοις μεθ᾽ ἡμᾶς ἔφυμεν. Οὐχ ὁ μὲν τῶν Περσῶν βασιλεὺς, ὁ τὸν Ἄθων διορύξας καὶ τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ζεύξας, ὁ γῆν καὶ ὕδωρ τοὺς Ἕλληνας αἰτῶν, ὁ τολμῶν ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς γράφειν ὅτι δεσπότης ἐστὶν ἁπάντων ἀνθρώπων ἀφ᾽ ἡλίου ἀνιόντος μέχρι δυομένου, νῦν οὐ περὶ τοῦ κύριος ἑτέρων εἶναι διαγωνίζεται, ἀλλ᾽ ἤδη περὶ τῆς τοῦ σώματος σωτηρίας;

Compare the striking fragment, of a like tenor, out of the lost work of the Phalerean Demetrius—Περὶ τῆς τύχης—Fragment. Histor. Græcor. vol. ii. p. 368.

Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander’s career even in the middle of 330 B. C., more than seven years before his death. During the following seven years, his additional achievements had carried astonishment yet farther. He had mastered, in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, not merely all the eastern half of the Persian empire, but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits. Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed all that immense treasure and military force which had once rendered the Great King so formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.[621]

[621] Herodot. vii. 56.

Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old—the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome;[622] two years younger than the age at which Timour first acquired the crown, and began his foreign conquests.[623] His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock of military experience; and what was still more important, his appetite for farther conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or danger, as complete, as it had been when he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his future achievements, with such increased means and experience, were likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known;[624] and if his life had been prolonged, he would probably have accomplished it. Nowhere (so far as our knowledge reaches) did there reside any military power capable of making head against him; nor were his soldiers, when he commanded them, daunted or baffled by any extremity of cold, heat, or fatigue. The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain[625] that Alexander, had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans or Samnites, would have failed and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion cannot be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army, the same cannot be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the Macedonian Companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul, annually changed, would have been found a match for Alexander in military genius and combinations; nor, even if personally equal, would he have possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose—nor the same unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort. I do not think that even the Romans could have successfully resisted Alexander the Great; though it is certain that he never throughout all his long marches encountered such enemies as they, nor even such as Samnites and Lucanians—combining courage, patriotism, discipline, with effective arms both for defence and for close combat.[626]

[622] Cicero, Philippic. v. 17, 48.

[623] See Histoire de Timour-Bec, par Cherefeddin Ali, translated by Petit de la Croix, vol. i. p. 203.

[624] This is the remark of his great admirer Arrian, vii. 1, 6.

[625] Livy, ix. 17-19. A discussion of Alexander’s chances against the Romans—extremely interesting and beautiful, though the case appears to me very partially set forth. I agree with Niebuhr in dissenting from Livy’s result; and with Plutarch in considering it as one of the boons of fortune to the Romans, that Alexander did not live long enough to attack them (Plutarch de Fortunâ Romanor. p. 326).

Livy however had great reason for complaining of those Greek authors (he calls them “levissimi ex Græcis”) who said that the Romans would have quailed before the terrible reputation of Alexander, and submitted without resistance. Assuredly his victory over them would have been dearly bought.

[626] Alexander of Epirus is said to have remarked, that he, in his expeditions into Italy, had fallen upon the ἀνδρωνῖτις or chamber of the men; while his nephew (Alexander the Great), in invading Asia, had fallen upon the γυναικωνῖτις or chamber of the women (Aulus Gellius, xvii. 21; Curtius, viii. 1, 37).

Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous courage—sometimes indeed both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him—we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingences. Amidst constant success, these precautionary combinations were never discontinued. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects. Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity, by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force—as an individual warrior, and as organizer and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing compression which he personifies in Athênê. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against enemies; in which category indeed were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In his Indian campaigns, amidst tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that not only those who stand on their defence, but also those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains, are alike pursued and slaughtered.

Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a soldier and a general, some authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of imperial government, and for intentions highly favorable to the improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander’s future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever-repeated aggression and conquest, not to be concluded until he had traversed and subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal dominion—conceived not metaphorically, but literally, and conceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the time—was the master-passion of his soul. At the moment of his death, he was commencing fresh aggression in the south against the Arabians, to an indefinite extent;[627] while his vast projects against the western tribes in Africa and Europe, as far as the pillars of Herakles, were consigned in the orders and memoranda confidentially communicated to Kraterus.[628] Italy, Gaul, and Spain, would have been successively attacked and conquered; the enterprises proposed to him when in Baktria by the Chorasmian prince Pharasmanes, but postponed then until a more convenient season, would have been next taken up, and he would have marched from the Danube northward round the Euxine and Palus Mæotis against the Scythians and the tribes of Caucasus.[629] There remained moreover the Asiatic regions east of the Hyphasis, which his soldiers had refused to enter upon, but which he certainly would have invaded at a future opportunity, were it only to efface the poignant humiliation of having been compelled to relinquish his proclaimed purpose. Though this sounds like romance and hyperbole, it was nothing more than the real insatiate aspiration of Alexander, who looked upon every new acquisition mainly as a capital for acquiring more.[630] “You are a man like all of us, Alexander—except that you abandon your home (said the naked Indian to him[631]) like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardship yourself, and inflicting hardship upon others.” Now, how an empire thus boundless and heterogeneous, such as no prince has ever yet realized, could have been administered with any superior advantages to subjects—it would be difficult to show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining—of keeping satraps and tribute-gatherers in authority as well as in subordination—of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in regions distant by months of march[632]—would occupy the whole life of a world-conqueror, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited to peace and stability, if we give him credit for such purposes in theory.

[627] Arrian, vii. 28, 5.

[628] Diodor. xviii. 4.

[629] Arrian, iv. 15, 11.

[630] Arrian, vii. 19, 12. Τὸ δὲ ἀληθὲς, ὥς γέ μοι δοκεῖ, ἄπληστος ἦν τοῦ κτᾶσθαί τι ἀεὶ Ἀλέξανδρος. Compare vii. 1, 3-7; vii. 15, 6, and the speech made by Alexander to his soldiers on the banks of the Hyphasis, when he was trying to persuade them to march forward, v. 26 seq. We must remember that Arrian had before him the work of Ptolemy, who would give, in all probability, the substance of this memorable speech from his own hearing.

[631] Arrian, vii. 1, 8. σὺ δὲ ἄνθρωπος ὢν, παραπλήσιος τοῖς ἄλλοις, πλήν γε δὴ, ὅτι πολυπράγμων καὶ ἀτάσθαλος, ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκείας τοσαύτην γῆν ἐπεξέρχῃ, πράγματα ἔχων τε καὶ παρέχων ἄλλοις.

[632] Arrian, vii. 4, 4, 5.

But even this last is more than can be granted. Alexander’s acts indicate that he desired nothing better than to take up the traditions of the Persian empire; a tribute-levying and army-levying system, under Macedonians, in large proportion, as his instruments; yet partly also under the very same Persians who had administered before, provided they submitted to him. It has indeed been extolled among his merits that he was thus willing to re-appoint Persian grandees (putting their armed force however under the command of a Macedonian officer)—and to continue native princes in their dominions, if they did willing homage to him, as tributary subordinates. But all this had been done before him by the Persian kings, whose system it was to leave the conquered princes undisturbed, subject only to the payment of tribute, and to the obligation of furnishing a military contingent when required.[633] In like manner Alexander’s Asiatic empire would thus have been composed of an aggregate of satrapies and dependent principalities, furnishing money and soldiers; in other respects, left to the discretion of local rule, with occasional extreme inflictions of punishment, but no systematic examination or control.[634] Upon this, the condition of Asiatic empire in all ages, Alexander would have grafted one special improvement: the military organization of the empire, feeble under the Achæmenid princes, would have been greatly strengthened by his genius, and by the able officers formed in his school, both for foreign aggression and for home control.[635]

[633] Herodot. iii. 15. Alexander offered to Phokion (Plutarch, Phok. 18) his choice between four Asiatic cities, of which (that is, of any one of them) he was to enjoy the revenues; just as Artaxerxes Longimanus had acted towards Themistokles, in recompense for his treason. Phokion refused the offer.

[634] See the punishment of Sisamnes by Kambyses (Herodot. v. 25).

[635] The rhetor Aristeides, in his Encomium on Rome, has some good remarks on the character and ascendancy of Alexander, exercised by will and personal authority, as contrasted with the systematic and legal working of the Roman empire (Orat. xiv. p. 332-360, vol. i. ed. Dindorf).

The Persian empire was a miscellaneous aggregate, with no strong feeling of nationality. The Macedonian conqueror who seized its throne was still more indifferent to national sentiment. He was neither Macedonian nor Greek. Though the absence of this prejudice has sometimes been mounted to him as a virtue, it only made room, in my opinion, for prejudices yet worse. The substitute for it was an exorbitant personality and self-estimation, manifested even in his earliest years, and inflamed by extraordinary success into the belief in divine parentage; which, while setting him above the idea of communion with any special nationality, made him conceive all mankind as subjects under one common sceptre to be wielded by himself. To this universal empire the Persian king made the nearest approach,[636] according to the opinions then prevalent. Accordingly Alexander, when victorious, accepted the position and pretensions of the overthrown Persian court as approaching most nearly to his full due. He became more Persian than either Macedonian or Greek. While himself adopting, as far as he could safely venture, the personal habits of the Persian court, he took studied pains to transform his Macedonian officers into Persian grandees, encouraging and even forcing intermarriages with Persian women according to Persian rites. At the time of Alexander’s death, there was comprised, in his written orders given to Kraterus, a plan for the wholesale transportation of inhabitants, both out of Europe into Asia, and out of Asia into Europe, in order to fuse these populations into one by multiplying intermarriages and intercourse.[637] Such reciprocal translation of peoples would have been felt as eminently odious, and could not have been accomplished without coercive authority.[638] It is rash to speculate upon unexecuted purposes; but, as far as we can judge, such compulsory mingling of the different races promises nothing favorable to the happiness of any of them, though it might serve as an imposing novelty and memento of imperial omnipotence.

[636] Xenoph. Cyropæd. viii. 6, 21; Anabas. i. 7, 6; Herodot. vii. 8, 13: compare Arrian, v. 26, 4-10.

[637] Diodor. xviii. 4. Πρὸς δὲ τούτοις πόλεων συνοικισμοὺς καὶ σωμάτων μεταγωγὰς ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίας εἰς τὴν Εὐρώπην, καὶ κατὰ τοὐναντίον ἐκ τῆς Εὐρώπης εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν, ὅπως τὰς μεγίστας ἠπείρους ταῖς ἐπιγαμίαις καὶ ταῖς οἰκειώσεσιν εἰς κοινὴν ὁμόνοιαν καὶ συγγενικὴν καταστήσῃ.

[638] See the effect produced upon the Ionians by the false statement of Histiæus (Herodot. vi. 3) with Wesseling’s note—and the eagerness of the Pæonians to return (Herod. v. 98; also Justin, viii. 5).

Antipater afterwards intended to transport the Ætolians in mass from their own country into Asia, if he had succeeded in conquering them (Diodor. xviii. 25). Compare Pausanias (i. 9, 8-10) about the forcible measures used by Lysimachus, in transporting new inhabitants, at Ephesus and Lysimacheia.

In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander was Hellenic to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose, no one could be less Hellenic. The acts attesting his Oriental violence of impulse, unmeasured self-will,[639] and exaction of reverence above the limits of humanity—have been already recounted. To describe him as a son of Hellas, imbued with the political maxims of Aristotle, and bent on the systematic diffusion of Hellenic culture for the improvement of mankind[640]—is, in my judgment, an estimate of his character contrary to the evidence. Alexander is indeed said to have invited suggestions from Aristotle as to the best mode of colonizing; but his temper altered so much, after a few years of Asiatic conquest, that he came not only to lose all deference for Aristotle’s advice, but even to hate him bitterly.[641] Moreover, though the philosopher’s full suggestions have not been preserved, yet we are told generally that he recommended Alexander to behave to the Greeks as a leader or president, or limited chief—and to the Barbarians (non-Hellenes) as a master;[642] a distinction substantially coinciding with that pointed out by Burke in his speeches at the beginning of the American war, between the principles of government proper to be followed by England in the American colonies, and in British India. No Greek thinker believed the Asiatics to be capable of that free civil polity[643] upon which the march of every Grecian community was based. Aristotle did not wish to degrade the Asiatics below the level to which they had been accustomed, but rather to preserve the Greeks from being degraded to the same level. Now Alexander recognized no such distinction as that drawn by his preceptor. He treated Greeks and Asiatics alike, not by elevating the latter, but by degrading the former. Though he employed all indiscriminately as instruments, yet he presently found the free speech of Greeks, and even of Macedonians, so distasteful and offensive, that his preferences turned more and more in favor of the servile Asiatic sentiment and customs. Instead of hellenizing Asia, he was tending to asiatize Macedonia and Hellas. His temper and character, as modified by a few years of conquest, rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recommended by Aristotle towards the Greeks—quite as unfit as any of the Persian kings, or as the French Emperor Napoleon, to endure that partial frustration, compromise, and smart from free criticism, which is inseparable from the position of a limited chief. Among a multitude of subjects more diverse-colored than even the army of Xerxes, it is quite possible that he might have turned his power towards the improvement of the rudest portions. We are told (though the fact is difficult to credit, from his want of time) that he abolished various barbarisms of the Hyrkanians, Arachosians, and Sogdians.[644] But Macedonians as well as Greeks would have been pure losers by being absorbed into an immense Asiatic aggregate.

[639] Livy, ix. 18. “Referre in tanto rege piget superbam mutationem vistis, et desideratas humi jacentium adulationes, etiam victis Macedonibus graves, nedum victoribus: en fœda supplicia, et inter vinum et epulas cædes amicorum, et vanitatem ementiendæ stirpis. Quid si vini amor in dies fieret acrior? quid si trux et præfervida ira? (nec quidquam dubium inter scriptores refero) nullane hæc damna imperatoriis virtutibus ducimus?”

The appeal here made by Livy to the full attestation of these points in Alexander’s character deserves notice. He had doubtless more authorities before him than we possess.

[640] Among other eulogists of Alexander, it is sufficient to name Droysen—in his two works, both of great historical research—Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen—and Geschichte des Hellenismus oder der Bildung des Hellenischen Staaten Systemes (Hamburg, 1843). See especially the last and most recent work, p. 27 seqq., p. 651 seqq.—and elsewhere passim.

[641] Plutarch, Alex. 55-74.

[642] Plutarch, Fortun. Alex. M. p. 329. Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τὸ ἔργον παρέσχεν· οὐ γὰρ, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης συνεβούλευεν αὐτῷ, τοῖς μὲν Ἕλλησιν ἡγεμονικῶς, τοῖς δὲ βαρβάροις δεσποτικῶς χρώμενον ... ἀλλὰ κοινὸς ἥκειν θεόθεν ἁρμοστὴς καὶ διαλλακτὴς τῶν ὅλων νομίζων, οὓς τῷ λόγῳ μὴ συνῆγε, τοῖς ὅπλοις βιαζόμενος, εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνενεγκὼν τὰ παντάχοθεν, etc.

Strabo (or Eratosthenes, see Strabo, i. p. 66) and Plutarch understand the expression of Aristotle erroneously—as if that philosopher had meant to recommend harsh and cruel treatment of the non-Hellenes, and kind treatment only towards Greeks. That Aristotle could have meant no such thing, is evident from the whole tenor of his treatise on Politics. The distinction really intended is between a greater and a less measure of extra-popular authority—not between kind and unkind purposes in the exercise of authority. Compare Tacitus, Annal. xii. 11—the advice of the Emperor Claudius to the Parthian prince Meherdates.

[643] Aristot. Politic. i. 1, 5; vii. 6, 1. See the memorable comparison drawn by Aristotle (Polit. vii. 6) between the Europeans and Asiatics generally. He pronounces the former to be courageous and energetic, but wanting in intelligence or powers of political combination; the latter to be intelligent and clever in contrivance, but destitute of courage. Neither of them have more than a “one-legged aptitude” (φύσιν μονόκωλον); the Greek alone possesses both the courage and intelligence united. The Asiatics are condemned to perpetual subjection; the Greeks might govern the world could they but combine in one political society.

[644] Plutarch, Fortun. Alex. M. p. 328. The stay of Alexander in these countries was however so short, that even with the best will he could not have enforced the suppression of any inveterate customs.

Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in Asia.[645] So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable, unless we either reckon up simple military posts, or borrow from the list of foundations really established by his successors. Except Alexandria in Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to have attained any great development. Nearly all were planted among the remote, warlike, and turbulent peoples eastward of the Caspian Gates. Such establishments were really fortified posts to hold the country in subjection: Alexander lodged in them detachments from his army; but none of these detachments can well have been large, since he could not afford materially to weaken his army, while active military operations were still going on and while farther advance was in contemplation. More of these settlements were founded in Sogdiana than elsewhere; but respecting the Sogdian foundations, we know that the Greeks whom he established there, chained to the spot only by fear of his power, broke away in mutiny immediately on the news of his death.[646] Some Greek soldiers in Alexander’s army on the Jaxartes or the Hydaspes, sick and weary of his interminable marches, might prefer being enrolled among the colonists of a new city on one of these unknown rivers, to the ever-repeated routine of exhausting duty.[647] But it is certain that no volunteer emigrants would go forth to settle at distances such as their imaginations could hardly conceive. The absorbing appetite of Alexander was conquest, to the East, West, South, and North; the cities which he planted were established, for the most part, as garrisons to maintain his most distant and most precarious acquisitions. The purpose of colonization was altogether subordinate; and that of hellenizing Asia, so far as we can see, was not even contemplated, much less realized.

[645] Plutarch, Fortun. Al. M. p. 328. Plutarch mentions, a few lines afterwards, Seleukeia in Mesopotamia, as if he thought that it was among the cities established by Alexander himself. This shows that he has not been exact in distinguishing foundations made by Alexander, from those originated by Seleukus and the other Diadochi.

The elaborate article of Droysen (in the Appendix to his Geschichte des Hellenismus, p. 588-651), ascribes to Alexander the largest plans of colonization in Asia, and enumerates a great number of cities alleged to have been founded by him. But in regard to the majority of these foundations, the evidence upon which Droysen grounds his belief that Alexander was the founder, appears to me altogether slender and unsatisfactory. If Alexander founded so many cities as Droysen imagines, how does it happen that Arrian mentions only so comparatively small a number? The argument derived from Arrian’s silence, for rejecting what is affirmed by other ancients respecting Alexander, is indeed employed by modern authors (and by Droysen himself among them), far oftener than I think warrantable. But if there be any one proceeding of Alexander more than another, in respect of which the silence of Arrian ought to make us suspicious—it is the foundation of a new colony; a solemn act, requiring delay and multiplied regulations, intended for perpetuity, and redounding to the honor of the founder. I do not believe in any colonies founded by Alexander, beyond those comparatively few which Arrian mentions, except such as rest upon some other express and good testimony. Whoever will read through Droysen’s list, will see that most of the names in it will not stand this test. The short life, and rapid movements, of Alexander, are of themselves the strongest presumption against his having founded so large a number of colonies.

[646] Diodor. xvii. 99; xviii. 7. Curtius, ix. 7, 1. Curtius observes (vii. 10, 15) respecting Alexander’s colonies in Sogdiana—that they were founded “velut fræni domitarum gentium; nunc originis suæ oblita serviunt, quibus imperaverunt.”

[647] See the plain-spoken outburst of the Thurian Antileon, one of the soldiers in Xenophon’s Ten Thousand Greeks, when the army reached Trapezus (Xenoph. Anabas. v. 1, 2).

This process of hellenizing Asia—in so far as Asia was ever hellenized—which has often been ascribed to Alexander, was in reality the work of the Diadochi who came after him; though his conquests doubtless opened the door and established the military ascendency which rendered such a work practicable. The position, the aspirations, and the interests of these Diadochi—Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleukus, Lysimachus, etc.—were materially different from those of Alexander. They had neither appetite nor means for new and remote conquest; their great rivalry was with each other; each sought to strengthen himself near home against the rest. It became a matter of fashion and pride with them, not less than of interest, to found new cities immortalizing their family names. These foundations were chiefly made in the regions of Asia near and known to Greeks, where Alexander had planted none. Thus the great and numerous foundations of Seleukus Nikator and his successors covered Syria, Mesopotamia, and parts of Asia Minor. All these regions were known to Greeks, and more or less tempting to new Grecian immigrants—not out of reach or hearing of the Olympic and other festivals, as the Jaxartes and the Indus were. In this way a considerable influx of new hellenic blood was poured into Asia during the century succeeding Alexander,—probably in great measure from Italy and Sicily, where the condition of the Greek cities became still more calamitous—besides the numerous Greeks who took service as individuals under these Asiatic kings. Greeks, and Macedonians speaking Greek, became predominant, if not in numbers, at least in importance, throughout most of the cities in Western Asia. In particular, the Macedonian military organization, discipline, and administration, was maintained systematically among these Asiatic kings. In the account of the battle of Magnesia, fought by the Seleukid king Atiochus the Great against the Romans in 190 B. C., the Macedonian phalanx, constituting the main force of his Asiatic army, appears in all its completeness, just as it stood under Philip and Perseus in Macedonia itself.[648]

[648] Appian, Syriac. 32.

When it is said however that Asia became hellenized under Alexander’s successors, the phrase requires explanation. Hellenism, properly so called—the aggregate of habits, sentiments, energies, and intelligence, manifested by the Greeks during their epoch of autonomy[649]—never passed over into Asia; neither the highest qualities of the Greek mind, not even the entire character of ordinary Greeks. This genuine Hellenism could not subsist under the overruling compression of Alexander, nor even under the less irresistible pressure of his successors. Its living force, productive genius, self-organizing power, and active spirit of political communion, were stifled, and gradually died out. All that passed into Asia was a faint and partial resemblance of it, carrying the superficial marks of the original. The administration of the Greco-Asiatic kings was not hellenic (as it has been sometimes called), but completely despotic, as that of the Persians had been before. Whoever follows their history, until the period of Roman dominion, will see that it turned upon the tastes, temper, and ability of the prince, and on the circumstances of the regal family. Viewing their government as a system, its prominent difference as compared with their Persian predecessors, consisted in their retaining the military traditions and organization of Philip and Alexander, an elaborate scheme of discipline and manœuvring, which would not be kept up without permanent official grades and a higher measure of intelligence than had ever been displayed under the Achæmenid kings, who had no military school or training whatever. Hence a great number of individual Greeks found employment in the military as well as in the civil service of these Greco-Asiatic kings. The intelligent Greek, instead of a citizen of Hellas, became the instrument of a foreign prince; the details of government were managed to a great degree by Greek officials, and always in the Greek language.

[649] This is the sense in which I have always used the word Hellenism, throughout the present Work.

With Droysen, the word Hellenismus—Das Hellenistische Staatensystem—is applied to the state of things which followed upon Alexander’s death; to the aggregate of kingdoms into which Alexander’s conquests become distributed, having for their point of similarity the common use of Greek speech, a certain proportion of Greeks both as inhabitants and as officers, and a partial streak of Hellenic culture.

I cannot but think that such an employment of the word is misleading. At any rate, its sense must be constantly kept in mind, in order that it may not be confounded with hellenism in the stricter meaning.

Moreover, besides this, there was the still more important fact of the many new cities founded in Asia by the Seleukidæ and the other contemporary kings. Each of these cities had a considerable infusion of Greek and Macedonian citizens, among the native Orientals located there, often brought by compulsion from neighboring villages. In what numerical ratio these two elements of the civic population stood to each other, we cannot say. But the Greeks and Macedonians were the leading and active portion, who exercised the greatest assimilating force, gave imposing effect to the public manifestations of religion, had wider views and sympathies, dealt with the central government, and carried on that contracted measure of municipal autonomy which the city was permitted to retain. In these cities the Greek inhabitants, though debarred from political freedom, enjoyed a range of social activity suited to their tastes. In each, Greek was the language of public business and dealing; each formed a centre of attraction and commerce for an extensive neighborhood; all together, they were the main hellenic or quasi-hellenic element in Asia under the Greco-Asiatic kings, as contrasted with the rustic villages, where native manners, and probably native speech, still continued with little modification. But the Greeks of Antioch, or Alexandria, or Seleukeia, were not like citizens of Athens or Thebes, nor even like men of Tarentum or Ephesus. While they communicated their language to Orientals, they became themselves substantially orientalized. Their feelings, judgments, and habits of action, ceased to be hellenic. Polybius, when he visited Alexandria, looked with surprise and aversion on the Greeks there resident, though they were superior to the non-hellenic population, whom he considered worthless.[650] Greek social habits, festivals, and legends, passed with the hellenic settlers into Asia; all becoming amalgamated and transformed so as to suit a new Asiatic abode. Important social and political consequences turned upon the diffusion of the language, and upon the establishment of such a common medium of communication throughout Western Asia. But after all, the hellenized Asiatic was not so much a Greek as a foreigner with Grecian speech, exterior varnish, and superficial manifestations; distinguished fundamentally from those Greek citizens with whom the present history has been concerned. So he would have been considered by Sophokles, by Thucydides, by Sokrates.

[650] Strabo, xvii. p. 797, ὁ γοῦν Πολύβιος, γεγονὼς ἐν τῇ πόλει (Alexandria), βδελύττεται τὴν ταύτῃ κατάστασιν, etc.

The Museum of Alexandria (with its library) must be carefully distinguished from the city and the people. It was an artificial institution, which took its rise altogether from the personal taste and munificence of the earlier Ptolemies, especially the second. It was one of the noblest and most useful institutions recorded in history, and forms the most honorable monument of what Droysen calls the hellenistic period, between the death of Alexander and the extension of the Roman empire into Asia. But this Museum, though situated at Alexandria, had no peculiar connection with the city or its population; it was a College of literary Fellows (if we may employ a modern word) congregated out of various Grecian towns. Eratosthenes, Kallimuchus, Aristophanes, Aristarchus, were not natives of Alexandria.

Thus much is necessary in order to understand the bearing of Alexander’s conquests, not only upon the hellenic population, but upon hellenic attributes and peculiarities. While crushing the Greeks as communities at home, these conquests opened a wider range to the Greeks as individuals abroad; and produced—perhaps the best of all their effects—a great increase of intercommunication, multiplication of roads, extension of commercial dealing, and enlarged facilities for the acquisition of geographical knowledge. There already existed in the Persian empire an easy and convenient royal road (established by Darius son of Hystaspes and described as well as admired by Herodotus) for the three months’ journey between Sardis and Susa; and there must have been another regular road from Susa and Ekbatana to Baktria, Sogdiana, and India. Alexander, had he lived, would doubtless have multiplied on a still larger scale the communications both by sea and land between the various parts of his world-empire. We read that among the gigantic projects which he was contemplating when surprised by death, one was, the construction of a road all along the northern coast of Africa, as far as the Pillars of Herakles.[651] He had intended to found a new maritime city on the Persian Gulf, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and to incur much outlay for regulating the flow of water in its lower course. The river would probably have been thus made again to afford the same conveniences, both for navigation and irrigation, as it appears to have furnished in earlier times under the ancient Babylonian kings. Orders had been also given for constructing a fleet to explore the Caspian Sea. Alexander believed that sea to be connected with the Eastern Ocean,[652] and intended to make it his point of departure for circumnavigating the eastern limits of Asia, which country yet remained for him to conquer. The voyage already performed by Nearchus, from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Euphrates, was in those days a splendid maritime achievement; to which another still greater was on the point of being added—the circumnavigation of Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea; though here we must remark, that this same voyage (from the mouth of the Indus round Arabia into the Red Sea) had been performed in thirty months, a century and a half before, by Skylax of Karyanda, under the orders of Darius son of Hystaspes;[653] yet, though recorded by Herodotus, forgotten (as it would appear) by Alexander and his contemporaries. This enlarged and systematic exploration of the earth, combined with increased means of communication among its inhabitants, is the main feature in Alexander’s career which presents itself as promising real consequences beneficial to humanity.

[651] Diodor. xviii. 4. Pausanias (ii. 1. 5) observes that Alexander wished to cut through Mount Mimas (in Asia. Minor), but that this was the only one, among all his undertakings, which did not succeed. “So difficult is it (he goes on) to put force upon the divine arrangements”, τὰ θεῖα βιάσασθαι. He wished to cut through the isthmus between Teos and Klazomenæ, so as to avoid the navigation round the cliffs of Mimas (σκόπελον νιφόεντα Μίμαντος—Aristophan. Nub. 274) between Chios and Erythræ. Probably this was among the projects suggested to Alexander, in the last year of his life. We have no other information about it.

[652] Arrian, v. 26, 2.

[653] Herodot. iv. 44: compare iii. 102. That Arrian had not present to his memory this narrative of Herodotus, is plain from the last chapter of his Indica; though in his history of Alexander he alludes several times to Herodotus. Some authors have concluded from Arrian’s silence that he disbelieved the fact: if he had disbelieved it, I think that he would have mentioned the statement of Herodotus nevertheless, with an intimation that he did not think it worthy of credit. Moreover, Arrian’s disbelief (even granting that such was the state of his mind) is not to be held as a conclusive disproof of the story. I confess that I see no sufficient reason for discrediting the narrative of Herodotus—though some eminent modern writers are of an opposite opinion.

We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the extension of science, that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of 800 talents in money, placing under his directions several thousand men, for the purpose of prosecuting zoological researches.[654] These exaggerations are probably the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that Philip, and Alexander in the early part of his reign, may have helped Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and specimens for observation—from esteem towards him personally, rather than from interest in his discoveries. The intellectual turn of Alexander was towards literature, poetry, and history. He was fond of the Iliad especially, as well as of the Attic tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies of Æschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and the histories of Phlistus.[655]

[654] Pliny, H. N. viii. 17; Athenæus, ix. p. 398. See Schneider’s Preface to his edition of Aristotle’s Historiæ De Animalibus, p. xxxix. seq.

[655] Plutarch, Alexand. 8.

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Chapter XCIV