1. The previous book, the sixteenth of my history as a whole, began with the accession to the throne of Philip, the son of Amyntas; it covered both Philip’s career in its entirety down to his death, and the history of other kings, peoples, and cities during the twenty-four years of Philip’s reign. [2] In this book I shall begin the sequential narrative of events with the accession of Alexander, and cover his career down to his death, as well as contemporary events elsewhere in the known parts of the world.* It seems to me that this is the best way to make events memorable, when they are presented topically and with their ends joined to their beginnings.*
[3] In just a few years, Alexander achieved great things. In fact, thanks to his intelligence and courage, there is no other king, of all those whose memory has been preserved from ancient times, whose accomplishments come close to those of Alexander. [4] In just twelve years, he conquered much of Europe* and almost all of Asia, so it is not surprising that the glory that accrued to him equalled that of the heroes and demigods of old. But there is no need for me to anticipate in this preface any of Alexander’s accomplishments, because the particular events themselves will sufficiently reveal the grandeur of his glory. [5] Being descended on his father’s side from Heracles and on his mother’s from the Aeacidae,* he innately possessed the qualities and abilities that were the foundation of his ancestors’ fame. I shall now turn to the events of the period in question, presenting one by one the years that belong in the book.*
2. In the year of the Archonship of Euaenetus in Athens, the Romans appointed as their consuls Lucius Furius and Gaius Manius.* In this year:
Having inherited the Macedonian throne, the first thing Alexander did was punish his father’s murderers as they deserved,* and then he devoted himself to seeing to his father’s funeral. He proved to be a far better ruler than anyone had expected, [2] seeing that he was still very young. In fact, since his age was leading some people to think slightingly of him, he first won the Macedonians’ loyalty with the appropriate promises—saying, that is, that only the name of the king had changed, and that everything would be managed just as it had been during his father’s time—and then, by treating their embassies courteously, he encouraged the Greeks to preserve his father’s legacy to him of their goodwill. [3] As for the troops, he accustomed them to respond readily to his commands by conducting frequent manoeuvres and tactical training exercises.
Attalus, however, was waiting in the wings to seize the throne, and Alexander decided to do away with him. Attalus was the brother of Philip’s last wife Cleopatra,* and in fact Cleopatra had produced a child* for Philip just a few days before the king’s death. [4] Attalus had been sent on ahead to Asia as joint commander with Parmenion of the expeditionary force; he had won the affection of the soldiers with his generosity and cordiality, and had become very popular in the army. Alexander had good reasons, then, to be concerned about the possibility that Attalus might link up with his opponents among the Greeks and claim the throne. [5] So he chose one of his friends, a man called Hecataeus, and sent him to Asia with sufficient soldiers and instructions to bring Attalus back alive, preferably, but if this was impossible, to murder him at the earliest opportunity. [6] So Hecataeus sailed over to Asia, joined Parmenion and Attalus, and waited for a chance to carry out his mission.
3. The realization that many of the Greeks were restive and heading towards rebellion caused Alexander a great deal of anxiety. [2] In Athens, Demosthenes was maintaining his anti-Macedonian stance and the news of Philip’s death had been greeted with joy. The Athenians were not prepared to yield the leadership of Greece to the Macedonians. They entered into secret negotiations with Attalus and agreed to work with him, and they encouraged many of the Greek cities to espouse the cause of freedom. [3] Then the Aetolians voted to restore those of the Acarnanians who had known exile thanks to Philip. The Ambraciots, led by Aristarchus, threw out the garrison that had been installed by Philip, and changed their constitution to a democracy. [4] Likewise, the Thebans voted to expel the garrison on the Cadmea* from the city and not to recognize Alexander’s leadership of Greece. The Arcadians were the only ones in Greece who had never acknowledged Philip’s leadership* and now they were refusing to submit to Alexander as well. [5] Elsewhere in the Peloponnese, the Argives, Eleans, Lacedaemonians, and a few others had set their sights on independence.* And several of the tribes who lived north of Macedon were resolved to rebel, so that unrest was widespread among the barbarians there. [6] Nevertheless, despite all the problems and threats that beset the kingdom, Alexander, though barely an adult,* unexpectedly and rapidly resolved all the difficulties. Some he won over by persuasive diplomacy, others were brought to heel by fear, and a few were forcibly subdued and compelled to recognize his authority.
4. He dealt first with the Thessalians.* He reminded them of their ancient kinship, based on their common descent from Heracles, and he stirred their hopes partly by speaking courteously to them, but mainly by making them great promises, and thereby got them to acknowledge, with an official vote of the Thessalian Confederacy, the leadership that he had inherited from his father.* [2] Next, he won a similar degree of loyalty from the tribes on his borders, and then he went to Thermopylae, convened a meeting of the Amphictyonic Council, and persuaded them to pass an official decree appointing him Leader of the Greeks. [3] He treated the Ambraciot ambassadors who came to him courteously and convinced them that their bid for independence had been only a few days premature, since he had been going to give them it of his own accord.
[4] In order to intimidate those who remained restive, he took to the field at the head of the Macedonian army in formidable battle array. A series of forced marches brought him to Boeotia, and he made camp not far from the Cadmea, much to the terror of the Thebans in the city. [5] When the Athenians heard of the king’s march to Boeotia, they started to take him seriously for the first time, and indeed the young man’s energy and his forcefulness in action tended to overawe all his enemies. [6] So the Athenians voted to fetch their property into the city from the countryside and to give their best attention to the state of the city walls, but they also sent ambassadors to Alexander, asking him to pardon their tardiness in acknowledging his leadership.
[7] Demosthenes was attached to this embassy, but he did not attend the meeting with Alexander. He went as far as Cithaeron,* but then turned back to Athens, perhaps out of fear, given his anti-Macedonian stance, or perhaps because he wanted to retain the good opinion of the Persian king. [8] After all, we are told that he received a great deal of money from the Persians, to support his anti-Macedonian measures. This, apparently, is what Aeschines was referring to when he taunted Demosthenes in one of his speeches with venality, and said: ‘It’s true that at the moment his debts have been drowned by Persian gold, but even that will not be enough, because no amount of money has ever satisfied a crook.’* [9] Anyway, Alexander responded graciously to the ambassadors and relieved the Athenians’ fears.
He next summoned the Greek ambassadors and delegates to a meeting in Corinth. Once the delegates were in session in the customary fashion,† he gave a speech and his arguments were so reasonable that he persuaded the Greeks to vote him General Plenipotentiary of Greece and to support his expedition to punish the Persians for their crimes against the Greeks.* Once he had gained this appointment, he returned with his troops to Macedon.
5. Now that I have covered Greece, I shall move on to what was happening in Asia. Immediately after Philip’s death, Attalus embarked on a course of revolution and agreed to cooperate with the Athenians against Alexander, but later he changed his mind. He had in his keeping the letter he had received from Demosthenes* and he sent it off to Alexander along with expressions of goodwill, in an attempt to have the charges against him dropped. [2] But Hecataeus murdered Attalus, as ordered by the king,* and then the restiveness and rebelliousness of the Macedonian expeditionary force in Asia came to an end, though this was not just because of Attalus’ murder, but also because Parmenion was squarely Alexander’s man.
[3] Since I am about to write about the Persian kingdom, I must backtrack a few years and take up the narrative at an earlier point. During Philip’s reign in Macedon, the Persian king was Ochus, who was a brutal and harsh ruler to his subjects. His cruel nature made him an object of loathing, and the chiliarch, Bagoas (physically a eunuch, and temperamentally corrupt and belligerent), had a doctor poison Ochus, and he placed on the throne the youngest of Ochus’ sons, Arses.* [4] He also killed the brothers of the new king, who were still very young, the idea being that the young man would be more open to Bagoas’ guidance if there was no one else to advise him. But when young Arses showed that he was appalled by these atrocities and was clearly intending to punish the criminal responsible for them, Bagoas struck before he could put his plans into action, and killed Arses and his children, in the third year of his reign.*
[5] Since the royal house was now extinct, there being no one of royal blood to succeed to the throne, Bagoas selected one of his friends, Darius by name, and helped him gain the kingdom.* Darius was the son of Arsanes and the grandson of Ostanes, who was the brother of Artaxerxes, a former Persian king.* [6] Bagoas came to an unusual end, one that is worth recording. Behaving with his usual savagery, he planned to poison Darius, but the king got wind of the plot; he invited Bagoas to join him, as if this were no more than a friendly gesture, and offered him the cup, leaving him no choice but to drink the poison.
6. If Darius was thought to be qualified for the kingship, this was because he was known to be by far the bravest man in Persis. Once, during Artaxerxes’ reign, when the king was at war with the Cadusians,* one of the Cadusians, renowned as a spirited and fearless warrior, issued a general challenge to anyone in the Persian army who was prepared to fight him in single combat, and no one was brave enough to respond except Darius, who stepped up and slew the man who had issued the challenge. As a result, he was handsomely rewarded by the king and was hailed by the Persians as the first among them for courage. [2] It was because of this display of valour that he was considered to be qualified for kingship, and he took power at about the same time that Alexander succeeded to the throne on the death of Philip. [3] This was the man delivered up by Fortune to be Alexander’s opposite number and to defy his prowess, and in fact it took many major battles to decide which of them was the best. But all this will become clear when we come to the particular events, and I shall now turn to sequential narrative.
7. Philip was still alive when Darius came to the throne, and Darius’ desire at the time was to divert the coming war back to Macedon, but when Philip died he stopped worrying, because he thought that Alexander was too young to cause him any trouble. [2] But when, as a result of his forcefulness and energy, Alexander gained the supreme leadership of the Greeks and the young king’s calibre became known far and wide, Darius had to face reality, and he began to give serious attention to his armed forces. He built a great many triremes, mustered significant numbers of troops, and appointed outstanding men as his officers. One of these was Memnon of Rhodes, a man of particular courage and an exceptional strategist. [3] The king gave Memnon five thousand mercenaries and ordered him to go to the city of Cyzicus and try to take it. So Memnon proceeded with these forces across Mount Ida.
[4] According to some of the mythologers, this mountain was named after Ida, the daughter of Melisseus.* It is the tallest mountain in the Hellespontine region, and in the middle of the range there is a wonderful cave, in which the goddesses are supposed to have been judged by Alexander.* [5] The Idaean Dactyls* are also said to have lived on this mountain, who were the first to work iron, once they had been taught how to do so by the Mother of the Gods. There is a singular and strange phenomenon associated with this mountain: [6] at the time of the rising of the Dog Star,* the surrounding air is so still on the highest peak of the mountain that the swirling of the winds is left far below, and the sun can be seen rising while it is still night, with its rays not concentrated† into a circular shape, but with its fire scattered here and there, so that it looks as though the horizon is lined with many bonfires. [7] Then, a short while later, these fires draw together and form a single mass with a diameter of three plethra. And finally, once day has dawned, the sun regains its usual size and the day continues as normal.
[8] Anyway, after crossing the mountain, Memnon launched a surprise attack on Cyzicus and very nearly took it.* After his failure, he plundered Cyzicene farmland and seized a lot of booty. [9] Meanwhile, Parmenion took the city of Grynium by main force and sold the inhabitants into slavery. He then put Pitane under siege,* but Memnon appeared and the Macedonians broke off the siege, seeing that they were no match for him. [10] Some time later, a force of Macedonians and mercenaries under the command of Callas fought a battle against the Persians in the Troad;* they lost the battle—they were greatly outnumbered—and retreated to Rhoeteum. That was how things stood in Asia.
8. Having quelled unrest in Greece, Alexander marched against Thrace, where the tribes were restive, and many of them submitted to him in fear. Then he attacked Paeonia, Illyris, and the neighbouring regions,* where a number of the barbarian tribes had rebelled, but he overcame them and in fact made all the barbarians in the region his subjects. [2] He was still occupied with this task when messengers arrived with news that rebelliousness was widespread in Greece, and that many of the Greek cities—Thebes above all—had already embarked on a course of insurrection. The news prompted him to prioritize putting an end to the unrest in Greece and he returned to Macedon.
[3] In an attempt to force the garrison on the Cadmea out of the city, the Thebans had the acropolis under siege—but Alexander suddenly appeared* at the head of his full levy and encamped near the city. [4] Before his arrival, in addition to surrounding the Cadmea with deep trenches and solid palisades, so that neither help nor supplies could reach the garrison, [5] the Thebans had also sent for help from the Arcadians, Argives, and Eleans. They sent emissaries to Athens as well, to ask for an alliance, and when Demosthenes gave them a whole lot of weaponry, paid for out of his own pocket,* they were able to equip those of their men who were unarmed.
[6] As for the states the Thebans had asked for help: the Peloponnesians sent soldiers to the isthmus, but they then waited there to see what would happen, because Alexander was expected to arrive any day, and although the Athenians, on Demosthenes’ proposal, voted to send help to Thebes, they did not actually dispatch the men, preferring to wait and see how the scales of the war fell. [7] Seeing all the ways in which the Thebans were getting ready for the siege, the commander of the Cadmea garrison, Philotas, strengthened his fortifications and made sure that he was well supplied with ordnance.
9. Alexander’s unexpected arrival from Thrace with his full levy meant that the Thebans’ allies had only a half-hearted presence, and the enemy forces were left with an obvious and undeniable superiority. Nevertheless, when the leading men of Boeotia met in council and debated the war, the unanimous opinion was that they should fight for their independence. The decree was passed by the assembly, and everyone was firmly committed and ready to risk conflict. [2] For a while, though, Alexander did nothing; he was giving the Thebans time to reflect and change their minds, and he could not believe that a single city would dare to fight such a large army.
[3] On this occasion, Alexander had more than thirty thousand foot and at least three thousand horse, and all of them were battle-hardened veterans of Philip’s campaigns who had scarcely suffered a single reverse. These were men whose abilities and determination were such that Alexander was planning to overthrow the Persian empire with them. [4] If the Thebans had bowed to circumstances and entered into negotiations with the Macedonians with a view to reaching an agreement and ending hostilities, Alexander would have welcomed their petition and would have agreed to everything he was asked, because he wanted to be rid of the troubles in Greece so that his hands would be free for the war against the Persians. But, as things were, it seemed to him that the Thebans were treating him with contempt, and so he decided to destroy the city utterly and to use this act of terror as a way of checking the momentum of those who were feeling bold enough to rebel.
[5] Once he had got his army ready for the battle, he had a herald proclaim that he would welcome any of the Thebans who wanted to come over to his side and benefit from the peace that the Greeks were enjoying in common. But the Thebans, giving as good as they got, posted their herald on a high tower and had him proclaim in turn that they would welcome anyone who wanted to join the Great King* and themselves in the work of freeing the Greeks and ending the tyrannical regime in Greece. [6] This cut Alexander to the quick. He flew into a towering rage and decided to see that the Thebans were punished with ultimate force. In a fury he saw to the construction of siege engines and did everything else that was necessary to prepare for the coming battle.
10. When the Greeks learnt how much danger the Thebans were in, although they were appalled by the fact that the city was threatened with imminent disaster, they held back from sending help because of the feeling that it was the Thebans’ own precipitate and ill-advised stance that had condemned them to certain destruction. [2] As for the Thebans, it was not the danger that concerned them—they had the courage to accept that willingly—but they were disturbed by certain oracles and portents they had received from the gods.
In the first place, a fine spider’s web appeared in the sanctuary of Demeter, which was not just as big as a himation,* but also was surrounded by an iridescent sheen like a rainbow in the sky. [3] When they consulted the Delphic oracle about it, they received the following reply:
This sign is intended by the gods for all men,
But especially for the Boeotians and their neighbours.
And the national oracle of Thebes* gave them this reply:
The woven web is bad for one but good for another.
[4] This sign appeared about three months before Alexander came to Thebes, and then, at the time of his arrival, the statues in the agora visibly dripped sweat and were covered with great gouts of it. And that was not all. The officers of the confederacy received reports from a number of people that a sound very like a bellow was coming from the marsh at Onchestus,* and that at Dirce a blood-coloured ripple was running over the surface of the water. [5] And others arrived from Delphi and reported that there was blood on the roof of the temple which the Thebans had built with Phocian spoils.*
The professional interpreters of signs said that the meaning of the web was that the gods were departing from the city,* while its many hues meant that there would be a storm of various troubles; that the sweating statues meant overwhelming disaster, and that the appearance of blood in several places meant that a great slaughter would take place in the city. [6] Since the gods were clearly predicting catastrophe for the city, the advice of the experts was that the Thebans should not commit themselves to deciding the war on the battlefield, but should rely on negotiation, as an alternative, safer way to settle matters.
Despite all this, the Thebans’ resolve remained solid. In fact, so far from despairing, their determination led them to remind one another of their success at Leuctra and in other battles where, to everyone’s surprise, they had gained victory against the odds by their valour.* So the Thebans hurtled, with a confidence that was brave rather than sensible, towards the total destruction of their city.
11. Meanwhile, Alexander took only three days to get everything ready for the assault on the city. He divided his forces into three. The first division was to assault the palisades which had been built in front of the city, the second was to confront the Thebans, and the third was to stay in reserve and in readiness to take over the fighting from any section of the army that was hard pressed. [2] The Thebans posted their cavalry behind the palisade, and deployed their freed slaves, resident exiles, and resident foreigners against those who were assaulting the wall, while they themselves made ready to engage Alexander and his Macedonians, who greatly outnumbered them, in front of the city. [3] The women and children crowded into the sanctuaries and besought the gods to save the city at this hour of peril.
When the Macedonians approached and each division of the army encountered its opposite number, the trumpets sounded the signal for engagement, and both sides together screamed out their battle-cries and hurled their javelins at the enemy. [4] Soon all the javelins were spent, and then everyone fell to fighting with swords and a brutal struggle took place. Because of their numbers and the weight of their phalanx, the Macedonians were exerting a virtually irresistible force, but the Thebans had the advantage in terms of physical fitness, especially because of their constant training in the gymnasia. Their self-confidence gave them an edge as well, and they stood their ground.
[5] On both sides, consequently, many men were wounded and many died from the frontal wounds they received. As the soldiers clashed and fought, the mingled sounds arose of groans and shouts and cries of encouragement, with the Macedonians urging their comrades to live up to the valour they had displayed in the past, and the Thebans exhorting one another to free their women, children, and parents from the threat of enslavement, to prevent their country and all their homes falling to Macedonian aggression, and to remember the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea,* and the valour they had displayed on those occasions to universal acclaim. For a long time, then, the courage displayed by both sides was so extraordinary that the battle hung in the balance.
12. After a while, however, seeing that the Macedonians were flagging in the battle, while the Thebans were still fighting keenly for their freedom, Alexander ordered the reserves to take over. Falling suddenly on the weary Thebans, the Macedonians pressed them hard and took many lives. [2] But the Thebans refused to give up; on the contrary, their desire to win led them to scorn every danger. Their valour induced them even to cry out to the Macedonians ‘See! You’re admitting your inferiority to us!’, and although the invariable reaction when enemy reserves join the fray is to fear them for their freshness, on this occasion the Thebans proved to be the exception: when Alexander had those of his men who were falling back from exhaustion replaced, the danger roused the Thebans to an even greater degree of fortitude. [3] Their will to win was undaunted.
It came to Alexander’s attention, however, that one of the postern gates had been left unguarded, and he sent Perdiccas with sufficient manpower to seize it and break into the city. [4] Perdiccas promptly carried out his orders, and the Macedonians slipped into the city through the gateway. The Thebans, meanwhile, had beaten back the first Macedonian phalanx, and were lined up steadfastly against the second, with good hopes of victory. When they found out that a part of the city was in enemy hands, however, they immediately withdrew inside the walls. [5] But just as the infantry were racing inside the city, the cavalry were doing the same, and they trampled and killed a lot of their own men. Moreover, they rode into the city in such disarray that some of them fell foul of their own weapons in the streets and trenches and died like that. And then the soldiers of the garrison on the Cadmea poured down from the acropolis and engaged the Thebans, who in their disorganized state were slaughtered in droves.
13. Given the circumstances of the city’s fall, many dramas of all kinds were enacted within the walls. Because of the arrogance of the proclamation by the herald, the Macedonians treated the Thebans more harshly than is customary in war; howling out curses, they flung themselves on the hapless creatures and killed everyone they came across without mercy. [2] But the Thebans’ desire to gain their freedom never wavered. So far from trying to save their lives, whenever any of them encountered one of the enemy he engaged him, inviting him to strike. As the city fell, no Theban was seen begging the Macedonians to spare his life, and no Theban debased himself by falling and grasping the knees of the victors.* [3] But no instance of courage elicited mercy from the enemy, and there were not enough hours of daylight for them to slake the savagery of their vengeance. The entire city was sacked; children of both sexes were hauled away, pitifully calling out to their mothers by name; in short, since every member of every household was taken along with the property, the enslavement of the city was total.
[4] Some Thebans were still alive. Fainting from their wounds, they engaged the enemy, taking some of them with them as they died, or, supporting themselves on the stumps of their spears, they sought out their attackers and fought to the death with no thought of personal safety, but only of winning freedom. [5] A great slaughter took place and corpses were piled everywhere in the city; it would have been impossible for anyone not to have been moved by the sight to pity the misfortunes of these miserable men. For there were even Greeks in Alexander’s army—Thespiaeans, Plataeans, Orchomenians, and others who were enemies of the Thebans*—and they entered the city along with him and demonstrated their hatred by the suffering they caused the wretched Thebans. [6] The city therefore witnessed terrible scenes: Greeks were being slaughtered without mercy by fellow Greeks, men murdered by their close kin, and no hand was stayed by hearing the same language spoken.* By the time night fell, the houses had been plundered, and those who had taken refuge in the sanctuaries—the children, the womenfolk, and the elderly—were being hauled away and brutalized.
14. More than six thousand Thebans lost their lives, more than thirty thousand were taken prisoner, and an unbelievable amount of property was carried off. After burying the Macedonian dead, of whom there were more than five hundred, Alexander convened the Greek delegates and left it up to the common council of the Greeks* to decide how Thebes should be treated. [2] Once the council was in session, some of those who were hostile towards the Thebans proceeded to recommend that they should be punished severely because they had taken the side of the barbarians against the Greeks. They pointed out that, at the time of Xerxes’ invasion,* the Thebans had actually joined the Persian army and fought against Greece, and that they were the only Greeks to be honoured as benefactors by Persian kings and whose ambassadors were allowed to be seated in the royal presence. [3] By listing a number of other similar examples, they aroused the feelings of the delegates against the Thebans so successfully that in the end they voted to destroy the city, to sell the prisoners, to declare any and all Theban exiles liable to summary arrest throughout Greece, and to make it illegal for any Greek to shelter a Theban. [4] So, in accordance with the will of the council,* Alexander razed the city to the ground, much to the terror of the other Greek rebels; and he also collected 440 talents of silver by selling the captives.
15. He next sent representatives to Athens to demand the extradition of the ten politicians who had been his main opponents—the most eminent being Demosthenes and Lycurgus. The Assembly met and Alexander’s envoys were introduced. When the Athenian people heard what the envoys had to say, they were thrown into an agony of indecision. They wanted to preserve the city’s reputation, but at the same time the destruction of Thebes had frightened them and, with the misfortunes of their neighbours before them as an object lesson, they were terrified of the awful consequences of refusal.
[2] After a number of speakers had addressed the Assembly, Phocion the Good, a political opponent of Demosthenes, said that the men whose extradition was being demanded should imitate the daughters of Leos and Hyacinthus and go to their deaths willingly,* in order to keep irremediable disaster from the city of their birth, and he called men who refused to die for the good of the city weaklings and cowards. But the Athenians were disgusted by what he was saying and booed him off the speaker’s platform. [3] Then a carefully worded speech by Demosthenes aroused sympathy in them for their politicians, and they made it clear that they wanted to keep them alive.
In the end, Demades—who, it is said, was given five talents of silver by Demosthenes to help him make up his mind*—advised the people to save the threatened men, and read out an artfully devised decree, which included a plea for the men’s lives and a promise that they would be punished in accordance with the law, if they were found to deserve it. [4] The Athenians approved Demades’ proposal. They ratified the decree and made him one of the members of an embassy they sent to Alexander, with instructions also to raise the issue of the Theban refugees and ask the king for permission to take them in. [5] And on this embassy Demades achieved everything he set out to do, thanks to his eloquence: he persuaded Alexander to release the men from the charges against them and to grant the Athenians all their other requests.
16. Alexander then returned with his troops to Macedon. He set up a meeting with the army officers and his most senior Friends, with the agenda being the invasion of Asia: when should the campaign be undertaken and how should the war be managed? [2] Antipater and Parmenion together recommended that, before setting his hand to such major exploits, he should first father an heir, but Alexander was an impatient man who could brook no delay under any circumstances, and he argued against them.* He said that it would be a disgrace if the man who had been chosen by the Greeks to take command of the war and had inherited his father’s invincible army should sit at home celebrating marriages and waiting for children to be born. [3] He showed them where their true interests lay and spoke so well that he got them to look forward to the struggles ahead.
Then he performed magnificent sacrifices to the gods at Dium in Macedon, and held the theatrical contests in honour of Zeus and the Muses that his predecessor, Archelaus,* had instituted. [4] It was a nine-day festival, with each day named after one of the Muses. He had a pavilion made, large enough to hold a hundred couches, and he invited to the banquet his Friends and officers, and also the representatives of the Greek cities. All the arrangements were magnificent, a great many people enjoyed the fare and the entertainments, and he distributed to the entire army the sacrificial animals and everything else they might need to enjoy the celebrations. It was a time of rest and recreation for his troops.
17. In the year of the Archonship of Ctesicles in Athens, the Romans appointed as their consuls Gaius Sulpicius and Lucius Papirius.
Alexander led his army to the Hellespont and transported it over from Europe to Asia. [2] He sailed himself with sixty warships to the Troad,* and when he touched land he hurled his spear from his ship and it stuck in the earth. Then he leapt ashore, the first of the Macedonians to do so, and declared that he accepted Asia as a spear-won gift from the gods. [3] After honouring the tombs of the heroes, especially Achilles and Ajax, with offerings and other appropriate marks of respect, he carried out a precise count of the army that had accompanied him.*
The numbers came out as follows. The infantry consisted of 12,000 Macedonians, 7,000 auxiliaries, and 5,000 mercenaries, all under the command of Parmenion. [4] Then there were 7,000 Odrysians, Triballians, and Illyrians, and 1,000 archers and Agrianes,* so that the infantry totalled 32,000. The cavalry consisted of 1,800 Macedonians under the command of Philotas, the son of Parmenion, 1,800 Thessalians under the command of Callas, the son of Harpalus, and 600 men from elsewhere in Greece, under the command of Erigyius.* Then there were nine hundred Thracians,† scouts, and Paeonians, under the command of Cassander,* so that the cavalry totalled 4,500.* This was the strength of the army that crossed with Alexander from Europe to Asia. [5] And 12,000 foot and 1,500 horse were left behind in Macedon under Antipater’s command.
[6] Before leaving the Troad, Alexander paid a visit to the sanctuary of Athena.* Now, the sacrificer, Aristander,† had noticed a statue of Ariobarzanes, the former satrap of Phrygia, lying on the ground in front of the temple,* and this was just one of a number of favourable omens that occurred. So he asked to see the king and assured him of victory in a cavalry battle, especially if it happened to take place in Phrygia. [7] And he added that, in the course of a battle, Alexander would kill an eminent Persian governor with his own hands. These were the predictions vouchsafed to him by the gods, he said, and especially by Athena, who would help Alexander achieve success.
18. Alexander thanked the soothsayer for his predictions and performed a magnificent sacrifice to Athena. He dedicated his own shield to the goddess and replaced it with the best of the shields that had been presented to the temple, and it was with this shield that he fought his first battle, which was decided by his valour, and gained a famous victory. But this happened a few days later.
[2] The Persian satraps and generals had been too slow off the mark to impede the Macedonians’ passage from Europe, but they met and discussed how to conduct the war against Alexander. Memnon of Rhodes, famous for his strategic brilliance, argued that they should not fight him directly, but should destroy the farmland so that shortage of provisions would prevent the Macedonians from advancing further; and he also argued that they should send both land and naval forces to Macedon, and make Europe rather than Asia the theatre of war. [3] Memnon’s was the best advice, as subsequent events made clear, but he failed to win over the rest of the Persian high command, who thought the course of action he was recommending was beneath Persian dignity. [4] So, given that the prevailing view was that they should fight, the Persians mustered their forces from every quarter, until they greatly outnumbered the Macedonians,* and then they advanced to Hellespontine Phrygia. They made camp by the Granicus river, with the bed of the river as their forward defence.
19. When Alexander found out that the Persian forces had mustered, he advanced rapidly and halted within sight of the enemy, with the Granicus between the two camps. [2] This elicited no response from the barbarians, who had occupied the high ground; their plan was to fall on the enemy as they were crossing the river, when they thought it would be easy to gain the upper hand, since the Macedonian phalanx would be out of formation. [3] But Alexander boldly led his men at daybreak across the river, and before the enemy could react he had drawn up his forces in good order, ready for battle.*
The Persians posted their numerous cavalry, which they had decided was to bear the brunt of the fighting, all along the Macedonian front. [4] Memnon of Rhodes and the satrap Arsamenes, each with their own cavalry units, were in command of the left wing. Arsites and the Paphlagonian cavalry were deployed next to them, and then Spithrobates, the satrap of Ionia, with the Hyrcanian cavalry.* The right wing consisted of a thousand Medes, two thousand horsemen commanded by Rheomithres, and another two thousand Bactrians. Cavalry units from elsewhere, consisting of large numbers of men picked for their skill, occupied the centre. In all, the Persians had more than ten thousand cavalry. [5] Their infantry numbered at least a hundred thousand, but they were posted in the rear and did nothing, since the plan was that the cavalry would crush the Macedonians on their own.
[6] The cavalry of both sides set to with a will and battle was joined. On the Macedonian left, the Thessalians, under the command of Parmenion, stoutly withstood the assault of the units posted opposite them. On the right wing, Alexander had the elite cavalry under his command, and he was the first to mount a charge against the Persians. Once he was among them, he began to wreak havoc.
20. But the Persians were no mean fighters. For this contest of barbarian fervour against Macedonian calibre, Fortune had gathered together in one place the bravest men to decide the battle. [2] There was Spithrobates, for example, a man of exceptional courage, the satrap of Ionia, a Persian by birth and the son-in-law of King Darius. At the head of a large force of cavalry, and with forty Kinsmen* by his side, all men of outstanding ability, he attacked the Macedonians and began to press hard on his adversaries. Men were falling dead or wounded before his forceful onslaught, [3] and since the Macedonians were finding it hard to stand up to the pressure, Alexander turned his horse towards the Persian satrap and rode at him.
The Persian regarded this opportunity for single combat as a gift from the gods. There was a chance that, through his valour, Asia would be freed from the terrible fears that beset it, and it might be his own hands that would bring Alexander’s bold enterprise to an end and redeem the glory of the Persians from shame. Before Alexander could do anything, Spithrobates hurled his javelin at him, and then fell on him with such vehemence and thrust his spear with such force that he drove it through Alexander’s shield and the right shoulder strap, and pierced his breastplate.* [4] The weapon was impeding his arm, so Alexander shook it off, spurred his horse, and with the help of the force of his forward motion he drove his lance into the middle of the satrap’s chest.
[5] Seeing the extraordinary bravery that this feat had entailed, the nearby ranks on both sides cried out in admiration, but in fact the tip of the lance broke off on the satrap’s breastplate and the broken end of the shaft ricocheted off. The Persian then drew his sword and attacked Alexander, but the king took a firm grip on his sword† and quickly thrust at Spithrobates’ face. He drove the blow home and the Persian fell, [6] but just then Rhosaces, his brother, rode up and slashed his sword down on to Alexander’s head. The blow came very close to taking Alexander’s life: it split open his helmet and lightly grazed his skin. [7] Rhosaces aimed another blow at the same gash—but Cleitus ‘the Black’ rode up and sliced off the Persian’s arm.
21. The Kinsmen crowded around the two fallen men, and at first tried to pick off Alexander with their javelins, but then they closed in and risked being killed in their efforts to kill him. [2] Despite the difficulty and terrible danger of his situation, Alexander refused to succumb to the enemy, for all their numbers. He was struck twice on his breastplate, once on his helmet, and three times on the shield that he had found hanging in the temple of Athena, but still he did not give in; energized by his self-confidence, he rose to every challenge. [3] And then several more of the senior Persian officers also fell around him—the most distinguished of them being Atizyes, Pharnaces, who was Darius’ brother-in-law, and Mithrobouzanes, the commander of the Cappadocian contingent.
[4] With a number of officers dead and every division of the Persian army proving inferior to the Macedonians, the first to be forced to retreat were those facing Alexander, and then all the others did the same. By common consent, the prize for valour was awarded to Alexander and responsibility for the victory was largely attributed to him. But in second place came the Thessalian cavalry, who gained a great reputation for martial prowess, thanks to the brilliant use to which they had put their squadrons and the exceptional valour with which they had fought.
[5] Once the Persian cavalry had fled the field, the infantry divisions engaged one another. The fighting was soon over, however. The barbarians had been demoralized and disheartened by the rout of their cavalry, and they quickly turned to flight. [6] In all, the Persians lost more than ten thousand foot and at least two thousand horse, and more than twenty thousand men were taken prisoner. After the battle, Alexander gave his dead a magnificent funeral, hoping that this honour would increase the eagerness of his men to face the dangers of battle. [7] Then he took his army and marched through Lydia, where he gained the city of Sardis, along with its citadels and treasuries, when the satrap, Mithrines, surrendered it to him of his own accord.
22. Since the Persians who survived the battle—the general, Memnon, was one of them—took refuge in Miletus, Alexander made camp close to the city and every day launched continuous assaults on the walls in relays. [2] At first, the defenders found it easy to repulse the attacks from the walls, because a great many men had congregated inside the city, and they had plenty of artillery pieces and everything else they might need for a siege. [3] But when Alexander began to make a more determined use of his siege engines to breach the walls and increased the intensity of his assaults by land and sea at once, and the Macedonians began to force their way into the city through stretches of collapsed wall, then the defenders were overpowered and turned to flight.
[4] The Milesians hastened to abase themselves before Alexander, carrying olive-branches as suppliants, and they surrendered themselves and their city to him. As for the Persians, some were killed by the Macedonians, and some escaped from the city, but all the rest were captured. [5] Alexander treated the Milesians generously,* but the others were all sold into slavery. Since the fleet was now redundant and was hugely expensive, he disbanded it,* apart from a few ships (including a contingent of twenty from his Athenian allies), which were used to transport siege devices.
23. Some historians claim that the disbanding of the fleet was sound strategical thinking on Alexander’s part, since he was expecting Darius’ imminent arrival and the major land battle that would ensue, and also because he thought that the Macedonians would fight with more fervour if he deprived them of all hope of escape. [2] He employed the same tactic, they say, at the battle of the Granicus river, when he placed his army with the river at its rear, so that any thoughts of flight would be brought up short by the certainty that they would be killed in the river bed by their pursuers. And they point out that some years later Agathocles, the king of Syracuse, copied this tactic of Alexander’s and thereby won a major battle that he had not been expected to win. [3] He took only a small force with him over to Libya, and what he did was burn the ships, which deprived his men of all hope of escape and compelled them to fight valiantly, with the result that, when it came to battle with the Carthaginians, he defeated an army of theirs that numbered many tens of thousands.*
[4] After the fall of Miletus, most of the Persians and their mercenaries, and the most effective of the leading men, gathered in Halicarnassus. This city, where the residence of the Carian rulers is to be found, and well-appointed citadels, was the largest in Caria. [5] At this juncture, Memnon sent his wife* and children to Darius. His thinking was, first, that entrusting them to Darius was an excellent way of providing for their safety, and, second, that since the king now had good hostages, he would be more inclined to confer the supreme command on him. And this proved to be true, [6] because before very long Darius wrote to the coastal cities, telling them all to take their orders from Memnon. So, now that he had the supreme command, it was Memnon who was getting everything ready in Halicarnassus that he would need to withstand a siege.
24. King Alexander had the siege engines and grain taken to Halicarnassus by sea, while he marched with his whole army towards Caria, winning the cities on his route over to his side by treating them well. He was particularly generous to the Greek cities, which were given their independence and made exempt from paying tribute: after all, as Alexander remarked at the time, the freedom of the Greeks was the reason he had embarked on the war against the Persians in the first place.
[2] While he was en route, an elderly woman called Ada came to meet him, a member of the ruling family of Caria. She presented her petition, on her right to her family’s traditional rulership of Caria, and asked for his help.* He decreed that she was to be entrusted with the rulership of Caria,* and his help for her also gained him the loyal support of the Carians. [3] All the cities immediately sent emissaries, honoured Alexander with golden crowns, and guaranteed to cooperate with him in everything.
Alexander made camp not far from Halicarnassus and set about the siege with a will, attempting to cow the defenders into submission. [4] At first, he launched continuous assaults on the walls in relays and the fighting went on day after day. Later, he brought up a variety of siege engines, and once his men, with the help of protective sheds, had filled in the trenches that lay in front of the city, he set about employing battering rams to try to demolish the towers and the curtain walls between the towers. And then, once he had brought down a stretch of wall, his subsequent efforts were focused on getting his men to break into the city over the rubble with hand-to-hand fighting.
[5] At first, Memnon found it easy to repel the Macedonians’ assaults on the walls, since there were plenty of soldiers in the city. As for the siege engines, one night he slipped out of the city with a large body of men and tried to set fire to the contraptions. [6] Fierce fighting broke out in front of the city, in which the Macedonians had the superior abilities, but the Persians had the advantage of numbers and their situation was better, in the sense that they were helped by their comrades on the walls, who used their bolt-shooting catapults to kill and wound the Macedonians.
25. The air rang with the noise of the trumpets on both sides blaring out the signal for engagement, and the simultaneous cries of the soldiers applauding the feats of valour displayed by either side. [2] Some were trying to put out the flames that were rising into the sky among the siege engines; some were fighting the enemy hand to hand, and there were many casualties; some were building counter-walls behind those which were collapsing, far more sturdy constructions than the originals. [3] Memnon’s officers formed a first line of defence and offered great rewards to any of their men who fought valiantly, so that on both sides the determination to win was formidable. [4] The scene before a spectator’s eyes would therefore have been one of men falling with frontal wounds and being carried unconscious from the field, while others stood over their fallen comrades and fought fiercely to secure their safety; and of yet others who were on the point of giving up in the face of the overwhelming danger, but gained fresh heart and renewed confidence when urged on by their officers. [5] In the end, some of the Macedonians who fell died right by the city gates, among them an officer, a man of noble rank called Neoptolemus.*
Next, after two towers had totally collapsed and two curtain walls had been brought down, some of the men in Perdiccas’ command, who were drunk, recklessly attacked the walls of the acropolis even though it was night-time. But when Memnon noticed the attackers’ ineptitude, he sallied forth and, thanks to his far superior numbers, repulsed them and killed a good number of them. [6] Once they realized what had happened, the Macedonians emerged in force from their camp. The fighting grew intense and when Alexander arrived, the Persians were overcome and driven back inside the city. Alexander had his herald request a truce to recover the bodies of those of his men who had fallen in front of the wall, and Ephialtes and Thrasybulus, the Athenians who were fighting on the Persian side, advised Memnon not to give up the bodies for burial, but Memnon allowed the truce.
26. Next, at a meeting of the leading men, Ephialtes argued that there was no point in waiting for the city to fall and for them to be made prisoners, and proposed that the officers in command of the mercenaries should bear the brunt of the fighting and attack the enemy. [2] Memnon recognized Ephialtes’ impulse towards valour, and since he placed great confidence in him because of his martial spirit and physical strength, he gave him permission to do as he wanted. [3] Ephialtes therefore put together a force of two thousand picked men, half of whom were given lighted torches, while the rest were to engage the enemy, and suddenly opened all the city gates. It was daybreak and, emerging from the city with his men, he had some of them set fire to the siege engines—the flames leapt up straight away—[4] while he led the rest, who were formed into a deep and closely packed phalanx, in an attack on the Macedonians who were coming to try to save the contraptions.
When Alexander realized what was happening, he posted the foremost fighters among his Macedonian troops in front, with a body of picked men to relieve them, and then behind these he posted a third division, all men of exceptional valour. Then he led this unit into battle, with himself at their head, and the enemy, who had thought that their numbers would deter opposition, found themselves having to fight. Alexander also dispatched men to put out the fires and save the siege engines.
[5] A great shout arose from both sides at once and the trumpets sounded the signal for battle. The soldiers fought with such skill and extraordinary determination that a ferocious struggle ensued. The Macedonians managed to stop the fire from spreading, [6] but Ephialtes and his men were winning the fight. He was by far the strongest man on the field and everyone who came up against him lost his life. The Macedonians were also losing many men to the relentless volleys of missiles fired from the top of the recently built counter-wall, where the defenders had built a wooden tower a hundred cubits high and filled it with bolt-shooting catapults. [7] Many Macedonians died and the rest were beginning to fall back under the onslaught of the countless missiles that were raining down on them, and when Memnon brought his reinforcements into play in large numbers, even Alexander had no real response.
27. At this point, just as the men from the city were gaining the upper hand, the scales of battle unexpectedly tipped† the other way. What happened was that the oldest of the Macedonians—men who had marched with Philip and had won many battles—had been excused from the battle because of their age, [2] but now felt impelled by the critical situation to help. They had far more pride and experience of warfare than their younger comrades, and they sharply rebuked them for their cowardly failure to stand firm in battle. They adopted a close formation with their shields overlapping and checked the enemy, who were already anticipating victory. [3] And in the end they killed Ephialtes and a lot of his men, and forced the rest to retreat into the city for safety.
[4] The Macedonians burst into the city along with the men they were pursuing, but night had fallen, so Alexander ordered the trumpeter to sound the recall and they returned to camp. [5] The governors and satraps on Memnon’s side met and decided to abandon Halicarnassus. They garrisoned the acropolis with their best men and an adequate supply of provisions, and sailed with all the rest of the men and the matériel to Cos. [6] At daybreak, when Alexander learnt what had happened, he razed the city to the ground and surrounded the acropolis with a wall and a trench, both of a considerable size.* Then he dispatched a division of the army to the interior, with senior officers in command, who were tasked with subduing the neighbouring peoples. And in a vigorous campaign, they reduced the entire region up to Greater Phrygia while maintaining their men from the enemy’s farmland.
[7] Meanwhile, Alexander subdued the entire coastline up to Cilicia.* In the course of this campaign, he added substantially to the number of towns under his sway. He also took a number of strongly defended hill-forts by force, following determined assaults, and the way one of these places fell to him was unusual. The adventure was so remarkable, in fact, that its story demands to be told. 28. In the borderlands of Lycia there was a great rock fortress of exceptional strength, inhabited by people called the Marmares,* and, as Alexander marched past this place, the Marmares attacked the Macedonians who were bringing up the rear. They inflicted serious casualties and stole many of the captives and the draught animals, [2] and in response, Alexander put the place under siege. He focused all his efforts on taking it, but the Marmares were an exceptionally courageous people and they bravely endured the siege, trusting in the natural impregnability of their fortress.
After two days of continuous assaults, however, it became clear that Alexander was not going to give up until the fortress had fallen to him. [3] At first, the elders of the Marmares advised the younger men to lay down their arms and make peace with the king on whatever terms they could obtain. The younger men, however, would not hear of it; none of them had the slightest desire to outlive his country’s freedom. As a next alternative, then, the elders recommended that the young men should kill the children, the womenfolk, and the elderly, and then, since they had the strength to save themselves, break out at night through the enemy lines and find refuge in the nearby hill country.
[4] The young men agreed and told everyone to go home and spend time with their families, eating their greatest delicacies and drinking their finest wines, while waiting for the terrible event. But then the young men—there were about six hundred of them—changed their minds and decided that, rather than killing their families with their own hands, they would set fire to the houses, and then leave the city and retreat into the hills. [5] This was the plan they put into effect, and each of them turned their homes into their family’s tombs, while they themselves slipped through the lines of the enemy encampment under cover of darkness and escaped into the nearby hill country.
These were the events that took place in this year.
29. In the year of the Archonship of Nicostratus in Athens, in Rome Caeso Valerius and Lucius Papirius were the next to be appointed to the consulate. In this year:
Darius sent a large amount of money to Memnon and appointed him commander-in-chief for the war. [2] Memnon raised a large force of mercenaries, manned three hundred ships, and fought a dynamic campaign. He won Chios over to his side and then sailed to Lesbos, where Antissa, Methymna, Pyrrha, and Eresus fell to him without any difficulty. The siege of Mytilene, however, which was a sizeable town with plentiful resources and defenders, took many days and cost him many men, but it did at last fall to him. [3] And once news of Memnon’s blitzkrieg got around, most of the Cycladic islands rushed to send embassies to him.
When word reached Greece that Memnon was intending to sail to Euboea with his fleet, the reaction in the Euboean cities was terror, but those Greeks who had sided with the Persians, such as the Spartiates, were excited by the prospect of political change. [4] With the help of bribes, Memnon got many of the Greeks to make common cause with the Persians. Nevertheless, Fortune put an end to his glorious progress: he caught a fatal disease and died, and his death also spelled the end of Darius’ empire, 30. Because the king had been expecting Memnon to make Europe rather than Asia the sole theatre of war.
When Darius heard of Memnon’s death,* he summoned his Friends for a meeting, with the agenda being to decide between two alternatives: should they fight the Macedonians by sending an army under the command of generals to the coast, or should the king go there with his entire levy? [2] Some of the Friends argued that the king should be present in person on the battlefield, because then the mass of Persians would fight with greater resolution, but Charidemus of Athens disagreed. This was a man who was widely admired for his martial spirit and strategic brilliance, and who had fought alongside King Philip and been the prime mover of all his victories and his chief counsellor,* and he warned Darius against staking his throne on a risky gamble; instead, he said, Darius should focus on stopping the great bulk of Asia that constituted his empire from falling apart, and should send against the enemy a general of proven ability. [3] In his view, a force of a hundred thousand would be enough, as long as a third of them were Greek mercenaries, and he gave the impression that he was guaranteeing personally to bring the enterprise to a successful conclusion.
[4] At first, the king agreed with Charidemus’ plan, but some of his Friends vigorously opposed it, and thanks to them the king came to suspect Charidemus of aspiring to command just so that he could betray the Persian empire to the Macedonians. This made Charidemus furious, and he lashed out at the Persians, rebuking them as little better than women. But Darius found this even more offensive and, blinded by his anger to any sense of where his best interests lay, he seized Charidemus by the belt (which is the Persian method of arrest)* and turned him over to his attendants for execution. [5] But as he was being taken away to his death, Charidemus called out that before long the king would regret what he was doing—that he would be paid back for punishing him in this unjust manner and would see the downfall of his kingdom.
So Charidemus died and his great prospects for the future came to nothing thanks to his inopportune frankness. [6] As for the king, as soon as he had calmed down again, he regretted his action and came to think that he had made a very serious mistake. But, of course, it was impossible for him, even with the Persian king’s power, to undo what he had done. [7] Henceforth, in his dreams he was obsessed by the calibre of the Macedonians and, haunted by visions of Alexander’s forcefulness, he set about finding a general who deserved to inherit Memnon’s command. But there was no such person, and he had no choice but to march west himself to fight for his kingdom.
31. He immediately set about summoning his forces from all quarters*—they were ordered to meet him in Babylon—and selecting the most competent of his Friends and Kinsmen, who were either assigned commands suited to their talents or ordered to fight by his side. [2] So the day arrived for the army to set out. All the troops were there in Babylon—more than forty thousand foot and at least ten thousand horse. This was the size of the army with which Darius left Babylon and advanced into Cilicia. He also had with him his wife and children*—a son and two daughters—and his mother.
[3] Going back to before Memnon’s death: the news of the submission of Chios and the cities of Lesbos, and the fall of Mytilene, on top of the information that Memnon was planning to take three hundred triremes and his infantry forces to campaign in Macedon and that most of the Greeks were poised to rebel, had put Alexander under a great deal of stress. [4] When news arrived of Memnon’s death, therefore, he was hugely relieved. A few days later, however, he fell quite seriously ill and was in a lot of pain. He called for his doctors, [5] but they were all reluctant to recommend treatment, except for Philip of Acarnania, who promised that a course of risky but quick-acting medicines would make him better. [6] Philip’s suggestion was very welcome to the king, because he had heard that Darius and his troops had set out from Babylon. So the doctor treated him with his potion and, aided by Alexander’s robust constitution and Fortune, he very quickly cured the king of his illness. Alexander rewarded Philip magnificently for having so rapidly cured him of a dangerous illness, and counted him from then on as one of his most trusted friends.*
32. Alexander’s mother wrote him a letter containing plenty of useful advice, including the recommendation that he should be on his guard against Alexander the Lyncestian, a man of exceptional bravery and high ambition, who accompanied the king and enjoyed his confidence as one of his Friends. [2] Since there were many other plausible pieces of evidence that combined to support the charge, Alexander was arrested and awaited his trial in prison.*
When Alexander found out that Darius was only a few days’ march away, he sent Parmenion with his forces to seize the pass, the so-called Gates,† and when Parmenion reached the place, he drove off the Persians who were occupying the pass and secured it for himself. [3] Darius wanted to make his army more mobile, so he left the supply train and the non-combatants in Damascus in Syria, and when he heard that Alexander had already occupied the hills, he advanced rapidly towards him, feeling sure that he would not dare to fight on level ground. [4] The natives of the region scorned the small size of Alexander’s force and were overawed by the huge size of the Persian army, so they had nothing to do with Alexander and supported Darius. They set about zealously supplying the Persians with provisions and other resources, and saw this decision of theirs as a way of predicting victory for the barbarians. Meanwhile, Alexander cowed the inhabitants of the city of Issus into submission and took it.
33. When the scouts told him that Darius was thirty stades away and was approaching in terrifying force with his troops drawn up for battle, Alexander regarded it as a gift from heaven that he had an opportunity to bring the Persian empire to an end by winning just a single battle.* He delivered a speech that effectively aroused his men’s ardour for the decisive battle, and then deployed his regiments of foot and squadrons of horse in formations that suited the terrain with which he was faced; the cavalry he placed in front of the entire army, with the phalanx of foot soldiers behind, to act as reserves. [2] He himself faced the enemy at the head of the right wing, with the best of the cavalry under his command, while the Thessalian cavalry, by far the most valiant and experienced unit in the army, occupied the left wing.
[3] When the two armies were within missile range, the Persians let fly at Alexander with such a quantity of missiles that they collided with one another—such was the density of the objects flying through the air—and their deadliness was impaired. [4] On both sides, the trumpets sounded the signal for engagement, and the Macedonians were the first to give throat to their fearful battle-cry, but then the Persians responded in kind and all the surrounding hills rang with the sound; the noise was so great that it swamped the shout that had gone before, since fifty thousand men were crying out with one voice.
[5] Alexander looked everywhere for Darius, and as soon as he spotted him he led the horsemen in his command in a charge straight at him, since he wanted not just to defeat the Persians, but also to make sure that it was he who was responsible for victory. [6] All the other cavalry units also engaged one another at the same time, and the loss of life was terrible, but the prowess of the fighters was such that the battle remained indecisive, with the balance shifting back and forth, now favouring one side and now the other. [7] Every javelin thrown or sword thrust found its mark, since the numbers of men involved made them easy targets. Many men therefore fell with frontal wounds, fighting desperately until their last breaths, preferring death to dishonour.
34. The officers in command of each unit led from the front and by their example stiffened the resolve of their men. The scene before a spectator’s eyes would therefore have been one of men wounding and being wounded in countless different ways, and struggles of every imaginable kind erupting on the field in the pursuit of victory. [2] When the Persian Oxathres, a brother of Darius who was renowned for his courage, saw that Alexander was making for Darius in a seemingly unstoppable charge, he resolved to share his brother’s fate. [3] He collected the best of the horsemen in his command and with them at his side he swooped down on Alexander. Certain that this demonstration of brotherly love would bring him great fame among the Persians, he fought in front of Darius’ chariot, engaging the enemy fearlessly, and such was his skill that many fell dead before him. [4] But Alexander had the advantage in terms of valour, and soon a great pile of corpses was heaped up around Darius’ chariot. For in his longing to break through to the Persian king every Macedonian contended passionately with his comrades and gave no thought to personal safety.
[5] Many eminent and high-ranking Persians fell in this battle, including Atizyes,* Rheomithres, and Tasiaces,* the satrap of Egypt. There were many casualties on the Macedonian side too, and Alexander himself was wounded in the thigh as the enemy crowded around him. [6] The horses yoked to Darius’ chariot received multiple wounds, and they were so startled by the number of corpses piling up around them that they attempted to shake off their bits,* and almost bore Darius off into the midst of the enemy. In the utmost peril, Darius grabbed hold of the reins himself; he was compelled to forgo the dignity that came with his pre-eminence and to contravene the custom that had long been established for Persian kings. [7] Another chariot was brought up for him by his minions, and in the confusion caused by his changing over from one to the other, even while he was being assaulted by the enemy, Darius became gripped by panic fear, and the Persians, seeing that their king was unnerved, turned to flight. And before long the rout became general, as every successive unit of cavalry did the same.
[8] The terrain over which they fled consisted of narrow defiles and rough ground, with the result that they impeded and trampled one another, and many men died without having been injured by the enemy. They became packed together, some unarmed and some still with their arms and armour, so that men were dying impaled on the swords of those who had them drawn. Most of them, however, escaped on to level ground, where they rode at a furious pace for towns that were friendly to them, where they found refuge. [9] The Macedonian phalanx and the Persian infantry were only briefly involved in the fighting, in the sense that the defeat of the cavalry became a harbinger, so to speak, of total victory, and soon all the barbarians were in flight. With so many thousands of men fleeing through narrow defiles, it did not take long for the whole region to be littered with corpses.
35. After dark it was easy for the Persians to scatter here and there, and the Macedonians called off their pursuit and turned to plundering. They focused especially on the king’s pavilions because of the vast wealth they contained, [2] and the upshot was that a great deal of silver, not a little gold, and a huge quantity of valuable fabrics were carried off from the king’s hoard. Much treasure was also seized from high-ranking Persians, especially from the king’s Friends and Kinsmen, [3] since, in the traditional Persian fashion, the wives of the Kinsmen and Friends, as well as those of the royal household, had accompanied the army,* riding on gilded chariots, [4] and each of these women was so excessively rich and pampered that they never went anywhere without jewellery and other valuables galore.
The women who were taken prisoner suffered terribly. [5] Previously, given their pampered way of life, they had scarcely been able to bring themselves to travel on richly appointed wagons and never exposed any part of their bodies, but now they were evicted from their tents clad only in their undergarments. Bewailing their lot and tearing at their clothes,* they appealed to the gods and fell at the knees of the victors. [6] Ripping off the jewellery they were wearing with trembling hands, they fled with loosened hair over stony ground and huddled together, calling for help from those who were already in need of help themselves. [7] Some of their captors dragged the wretched women away by the hair, while others tore off their clothes and pawed at their naked bodies; they struck the women with the butts of their spears and acted as though Fortune had granted them the right to abuse the most precious and renowned of the barbarians’ possessions.
36. The more decent Macedonians looked on this reversal of fortune with compassion and took pity on the hapless women for their suffering. Everything that made them respectable and grand† had been taken far from them, while all that was alien and hostile was near at hand, and they were being forced† into a wretched and humiliating captivity. [2] It was above all Darius’ family—his mother, wife, two nubile daughters, and a son who was still a child—who moved those present to tears and compassion; [3] in their case it was perfectly natural for those witnessing the reversal of their fortune and the magnitude of the disaster they were suddenly facing to sympathize with them for the calamity that had befallen them. [4] For they had no idea whether Darius was alive among the survivors or had died in the general destruction, and they could see armed men from the enemy camp plundering their pavilion, who did not know who their prisoners were and frequently behaved inappropriately because of their ignorance. The women had come to the realization that the whole of Asia had been captured along with them, and when they met the wives of the satraps and were appealed to for help, so far from having the power to assist any of them, they themselves fell to imploring the others to help them cope with their own misfortunes.
[5] The Royal Pages* took over Darius’ pavilion and prepared the king’s bath and evening meal. They lit a great blaze of torches and waited for Alexander, wanting him to find, on his return from the pursuit, all Darius’ possessions laid out ready for him, as a portent of his gaining control of all Asia. [6] More than a hundred thousand Persian infantry lost their lives in this battle, along with at least ten thousand cavalry, while on the Macedonian side about three hundred infantry died and about 150 cavalry. So that was the outcome of the battle at Issus in Cilicia.
37. As for the two kings, Darius turned to flight after his disastrous defeat and galloped away at a furious pace on one after another of his swiftest horses in relay, [2] while Alexander set out in pursuit with his best horsemen, including the Companion Cavalry. Darius’ aim was to escape from Alexander’s clutches and gain the upper satrapies, while Alexander’s was to make Darius his prisoner. But after carrying on the pursuit for two hundred stades, Alexander turned back. He reached his camp in the middle of the night, and once he had bathed and recovered from the weariness all the stress had induced, he turned to relaxation and food.
[3] Someone came to Darius’ wife and mother with the news that Alexander had returned from the pursuit, and told them that he had stripped Darius’ corpse of his arms and armour. At this, a great cry of anguish burst from the women, and the rest of the prisoners, who were similarly affected by the news, also began howling out their grief. When Alexander heard how the women were suffering, he sent Leonnatus, one of his Friends, to quieten and calm Sisyngambris and her entourage—to assure them that Darius was still alive and that Alexander would treat them with all due respect. The king wanted to speak to them the following morning, Leonnatus said, and he added that his behaviour towards them would leave them in no doubt of his kindness. [4] And at this abrupt and altogether unexpected piece of good fortune, the captive women acclaimed Alexander as a god, and stopped their weeping and wailing.
[5] Early the next day, Alexander took one of his Friends, Hephaestion—there was no friend he valued more, in fact—and went to pay the women a visit. He and Hephaestion were both wearing similar clothes, but Hephaestion was taller and better-looking than Alexander, so Sisyngambris took him to be the king and did obeisance to him. The others who were there gestured to her, indicating with their hands which one was Alexander, and Sisyngambris, embarrassed by her mistake, made a fresh start and began to do obeisance to Alexander. [6] He interrupted her, however, and said: ‘Don’t worry, mother. He is Alexander too.’* In addressing the elderly woman as ‘mother’, he was using this affectionate term to indicate that a time of misfortune had given way to a time of kindliness. And no sooner had he assured Sisyngambris that she would be his second mother* than he put this verbal promise into practice.
38. What he did was furnish her with the trappings of royalty and restore her former dignity with the appropriate honours. He not only granted her the full complement of staff that had been given her by Darius, but assigned her additional attendants as well from his own staff, at least as many again as she already had. He also promised to see to the marriages of her daughters, making a better selection of husbands than Darius had, and to bring up her son as his own and show him royal honour.* [2] He called the boy over and kissed him, and seeing that the boy showed no fear and was basically perfectly calm, he remarked to Hephaestion that, at the age of six, the boy was displaying courage beyond his years and was far braver than his father. As for Darius’ wife and her dignity, he promised to make sure that she would never have to submit to anything that would compromise her former happy state.*
[3] This was far from all he said, and the compassion and kindness of his words reduced the women to unquenchable tears, such was the jolt of joy they felt on hearing him. He gave them his right hand to guarantee his promises, and earned not only the thanks of those who benefited from his kindness, but also the praise of his companions in arms for his extraordinary clemency. [4] It is my opinion, in short, that of all Alexander’s many fine deeds, none was greater than this, and none is more deserving of preservation in the historical record. [5] Sieges, battles, and military successes in general are more commonly due to Fortune than ability, but when a man who has been raised to power shows pity to those he has defeated, this is due entirely to the cast of his mind. [6] I mean, most men are made proud by their successes, which are due to luck, and at the time of their success are too proud to remember that weakness is the collective lot of humankind. That is why a great many men are clearly incapable of enduring success, as though it were too heavy a burden. [7] So, although Alexander lived many generations before our time, his noble qualities mean that he should meet from future generations too the praise that is his due.
39. Meanwhile, Darius reached Babylon and collected the survivors of the battle of Issus. Despite the terrible defeat he had suffered, he was not downcast, and in fact in a letter to Alexander he advised him to remember, at this time of success, that he was only human, and offered him a large amount of money in exchange for the prisoners. He also said that he would cede all of Asia west of the Halys river to Alexander if he were prepared to enter into a treaty of friendship. [2] At the meeting of his Friends that Alexander convened, he concealed the genuine letter and presented to the council another one, written by himself, the tone of which suited him better,* and sent Darius’ envoys away empty-handed.
[3] Darius therefore gave up trying to come to terms with Alexander by letter and set about preparing thoroughly for war. He re-equipped those who had lost their arms and armour in the course of the rout, recruited further troops and assigned them to regiments, and sent for the armies of the upper satrapies, which had remained unused earlier because of the speed of the previous campaign.* [4] In fact, thanks to the determined way he went about getting his army ready for war, he ended up with double the number of the troops that had taken to the field at Issus. He gathered a force of eight hundred thousand foot and two hundred thousand horse, and had a great many scythe-bearing chariots as well.
These were the events that took place in this year.
40. In the year of the Archonship of Niceratus in Athens, the Romans appointed as their consuls Marcus Atilius and Marcus Valerius, and the 112th Olympic festival was celebrated, with Grylus of Chalcis the victor.* In this year:
Following his victory at Issus, Alexander buried the dead, including those Persians who had displayed impressive valour. Then he carried out magnificent sacrifices to the gods and rewarded those of his men who had fought with distinction during the battle, giving each man what he deserved. [2] Then, after his troops had rested for several days, he advanced towards Egypt.*
In Phoenicia, he accepted the submission of all the other cities, whose inhabitants readily gave him a favourable reception, except for Tyre. When Alexander asked to sacrifice to Tyrian Heracles, the Tyrians rather foolishly prevented him from entering the city.* [3] This made Alexander angry and he threatened them with war, but the Tyrians were undismayed by the prospect of a siege. In the first place, they wanted to please Darius and show him how unwavering their loyalty to him was, and they anticipated being rewarded magnificently for the good they were doing him—namely, drawing Alexander into a long and hazardous siege and buying Darius time to get ready. In the second place, they felt they could rely on the natural defences of their island and the armament they had there, and on the Carthaginians, who were originally their colonists.
[4] Alexander could see that the city could hardly be besieged by sea because of the artillery mounted on the walls and the existence of the Tyrian fleet, and also that it was virtually unassailable by land because it lay four stades off the mainland. Nevertheless, he decided to risk all and to do all in his power to ensure that the Macedonian army was not treated with contempt by a single, unexceptional city.* [5] He therefore immediately set about demolishing Old Tyre,* as it was called, and he had men in their tens of thousands carry stones with which to build a causeway, two plethra wide. He dragooned the entire populations of the neighbouring cities and the project made rapid progress because of the size of his workforce.
41. At first, the Tyrians sailed up to the causeway and mocked the king for thinking that he could get the better of Poseidon,* but later, as the causeway advanced with surprising rapidity, they voted to transfer their children, womenfolk, and elderly to Carthage,* assigned those who were young and fit to the defence of the walls, and got ready to fight at sea with their eighty triremes. [2] In the end, however, although they did manage to get a few women and children out of the city to safety in Carthage, they were overtaken by the speed at which Alexander’s large workforce was able to progress, and since they were no match for him at sea, they were compelled to endure the siege with the entire population still inside the city.
[3] The Tyrians were extremely well supplied with catapults and other anti-siege devices, and there were engineers and all other kinds of craftsmen in the city, so that they easily made a great many more. [4] With the help of these craftsmen, all kinds of appliances were made, some of which were new inventions, and the entire circuit wall of the city bristled with artillery, but especially the stretch of wall which the causeway was approaching.
[5] The danger increased as the causeway began to come within missile range, and the gods sent the combatants certain omens. For instance, the waves brought an incredibly large sea-creature* right up to the construction zone, and although it did no damage to the causeway by bumping into it, it stayed there for quite a while with part of its body pressed up against it before swimming off into the sea, and all who saw the marvel were filled with awe. [6] The portent brought out the superstitious sides of both the Macedonians and the Tyrians, and under the influence of wishful thinking both sides interpreted it as indicating that Poseidon would come to their aid.
[7] There were other strange and significant events too, designed to dismay and terrify the masses. Once, at mealtime in the Macedonian camp, the loaves of bread had a bloody appearance when broken open. Then a Tyrian reported that he had seen Apollo in a dream and that the god had told him he was going to leave the city. [8] It was widely believed that the man had made the story up in order to curry favour with Alexander, and on this assumption the younger Tyrians set out to stone him to death. He was spirited away by the authorities, however, and avoided their vengeance by seeking refuge in the temple of Heracles as a suppliant. Still, in their superstitious awe, the Tyrians tied the cult statue of Apollo to its pedestal with golden chains, supposing that this was the way to prevent the departure of the god from the city.
42. Alarmed by the advance of the causeway, the Tyrians next filled many of their smaller boats with bolt-shooters, catapults, archers, and slingers. They sailed up to the men who were working on the causeway, and succeeded in injuring a good number of them and killing quite a few as well, [2] since missiles of all kinds were flying repeatedly at men who were unarmed and in close proximity to one another. The workers made easy targets, then, and, since they had no protection, every single missile was effective. In fact, it was not only the men’s fronts that were struck by missiles, but, since they were working face to face on the narrow causeway, their backs were vulnerable too. They were caught in a crossfire, with no way to protect themselves.*
[3] Alexander had not been expecting this and he urgently needed to redress the situation. He manned all his ships, took command of them himself, and sailed at speed for the Tyrian harbour, to cut off the Phoenician ships and prevent their return. [4] The possibility that he might gain control of their harbours* and seize the city while it was empty of soldiers worried the barbarians, and they set out at full speed back to Tyre. Both sides displayed an astonishing degree of determination and rowed furiously, but the Macedonians were already close to the harbours and the Phoenicians almost lost all their men. But they forced their way in and saved the city, though they lost the ships that were bringing up the rear.
[5] Having failed at this critical venture, Alexander renewed his efforts over the causeway and used a large number of ships as a screen to make it safe for the labourers to go about their work. But just as the construction zone was drawing close to the city and its fall seemed inevitable, a fierce north-westerly arose and did a great deal of damage to the causeway. [6] The unlucky destruction of his construction frustrated Alexander and he almost regretted that he had undertaken the siege, but he was still powerfully motivated to succeed. So he cut down huge trees in the mountains and had them brought down, and by pouring rubble on to them, branches and all, he created a barrier against the force of the waves. [7] Before long he had repaired the damaged parts of the causeway and it had been brought by his workforce to within missile range. He then stationed his siege towers at the end of the causeway and began to try to bring the walls down with his stone-throwers, while using his bolt-shooters to inhibit defence from the battlements. The archers and slingers played their part in this too, and shot down many of those in the city who came to its defence.
43. The Tyrians, however, had metal-workers and engineers, and they constructed ingenious counter-measures. To defend against the bolts fired by catapults, they made multi-spoked wheels which, once they were set spinning by a certain contraption, broke or deflected some of the missiles and reduced the impact of all of them. And by getting the boulders hurled by the stone-throwers to land on soft and yielding materials, they lessened the force imparted by the power of the apparatus.
[2] While this assault was going on from the causeway, Alexander took his entire fleet and sailed around the city to inspect the walls, making it clear that he was going to besiege the city by land and sea at once. [3] The Tyrians now judged it too risky to come out against him with their fleet, and they had three ships anchored at the mouth of the harbour—but before returning to his camp Alexander sailed up and sank all three of them.
Wanting to make themselves doubly secure behind their walls, the Tyrians set about building a second wall inside the outer one at a distance of five cubits; this second wall was ten cubits thick and the space between the two walls was filled with rubble and earth. [4] But Alexander yoked his triremes together, mounted all kinds of siege engines on them, and brought down a plethron-long stretch of wall. The Macedonians poured through this breach into the city, [5] but the Tyrians fired volley after volley of missiles and gradually forced them back. And then, that night, the Tyrians rebuilt the collapsed part of the wall.
Now that the causeway had reached the wall and the city had become a peninsula, the fighting at the wall became frequent and intense. [6] With the threat right before their eyes, and imagining how disastrous it would be if the city fell, the Tyrians faced danger without caring about their personal safety. [7] As a matter of fact, when the Macedonians began to bring up towers as high as the walls which made it possible for them to lay down gangplanks, with which they boldly pressed their attack on the battlements, the Tyrians, relying on their engineers’ inventiveness, developed a number of devices to counter the assaults on the walls. [8] For instance, they made long barbed tridents out of metal, and used them at close range against the men who were standing on the towers. The tridents, which had ropes attached, would get stuck in the attackers’ shields and the defenders would take hold of the ropes and pull. [9] This left the attackers the choice either of letting go of their shields and exposing themselves to being shot down by the many missiles that were being fired at them, or of holding on to their shields out of shame and falling to their deaths from the lofty towers. [10] Others cast fishing nets over the Macedonians who were fighting their way along the gangplanks, pinioning their arms, and then, with a downward tug, bundled them off the planks and down to the ground.
44. Another ingenious device the Tyrians invented to counteract Macedonian daring enabled them to inflict terrible torments on the best of the enemy fighters, in such a way that they could do nothing to alleviate them. What they did was make shields out of bronze and iron, fill them with sand, light a strong fire under them, and heat them continuously until the sand was red-hot. [2] Then, with the help of a certain contraption, they tossed the heated sand on to the boldest of the enemy fighters. This was agony for those on whom the sand fell, because the sand trickled down inside their breastplates and undergarments, searing their flesh with its great heat, and there was no relief from the awful thing that was happening to them. [3] Sounding just like men on the rack, they screamed out their entreaties, but no one could help them, and before dying they were driven mad by the terrible pain, because there was no escape from their appalling suffering.
[4] At the same time, the Phoenicians were also hurling fire on to the attackers, firing javelins at them, throwing stones, and overwhelming the valour of their opponents with a hail of missiles. Not only were they cutting the cords of the rams with scythe-bearing poles, which made the devices powerless and ineffective, but they were also using fire-throwing machines to hurl great red-hot lumps of iron into the mass of the enemy, where the men were so tightly packed together that they could not fail to hit a target, and with crows* and iron grapples they were snatching from their perches those who were standing at the breast walls of the towers. [5] They had so many men available that they were able to put all their apparatuses to work, and they inflicted heavy casualties on their assailants.
45. The situation was absolutely terrifying and the fighting unbearably horrific, but still the Macedonians refused to give up. Whenever men fell, others stepped over their bodies without being deterred by what was happening to their comrades. [2] Alexander had the stone-throwers set up in appropriate places and he began to batter the walls with the great boulders that they hurled, while with the bolt-shooters on the wooden towers he was firing missiles of all different kinds at the defenders, wreaking havoc among those who were standing on the walls. [3] The Tyrians responded with devices of their own. In front of the walls they set up wheels of marble and when they set these spinning by means of certain mechanisms they broke or deflected the catapult projectiles that were being fired at them and made them ineffective when they struck.* [4] Moreover, they sewed up skins and hides, folded double and stuffed with seaweed, for the missiles from the stone-throwers to land on, and the soft and yielding material reduced the impact of the boulders.
[5] In short, the Tyrians did all they could to mount a strong defence and, since they were well supplied with instruments of defence, they met the enemy with confidence; in fact, they even left the wall and their posts inside the towers and pressed forward on to the very gangplanks, matching their skills against the valour of the enemy. [6] As a result of their grappling with the enemy and engaging them at close quarters, the defence of the city became a ferocious struggle. Some of the Tyrians were even using axes to hack off any part of an opponent’s body that presented itself, and this was the point at which one of the leading Macedonians, Admetus by name, a man of exceptional courage and great bodily strength, who had been bravely resisting the Tyrians, was killed instantly, dying a hero’s death, when he was struck square in the head by an axe.
[7] Seeing that the Macedonians were coming off worst in the battle, Alexander had the trumpet recall his troops. In any case, night had fallen. At first, he thought it better to call off the siege and march on towards Egypt, but then the idea of yielding all the glory of the siege to the Tyrians made him change his mind back again, and even though he secured the agreement of only one of his Friends, Amyntas the son of Andromenes, he committed himself again to the siege.*
46. In a speech to the Macedonians Alexander challenged them to match his own courage, and then, once he had got all his ships ready for battle, he launched a determined assault on the walls by land and sea at once. He had noticed that the wall in the location of the Tyrian harbour facilities was relatively weak, so this was the stretch against which he sent his triremes, yoked together and carrying the most formidable of his siege engines. [2] At this juncture, he did something that required such daring that even those who saw it could scarcely believe their eyes. He dropped a gangplank from the wooden tower on to the city walls and crossed over to the wall by himself, unconcerned about the envy of Fortune and uncowed by the fearsome Tyrians. With his fearlessness on display before the army that had defeated the Persians, he ordered the Macedonians to follow his lead. Any of the enemy who came within his reach he either killed with his spear or sword, or he knocked them over with the rim of his shield, and the high confidence that had been sustaining the enemy drained away.
[3] Meanwhile, a long stretch of wall in another part of the city had been battered down, and the city’s fall was secured as the Macedonians poured in through this breach and as Alexander and his men gained the wall by crossing over the gangplank. Nevertheless, the Tyrians fought a defensive battle, and with cries of encouragement to one another they barricaded the streets, but only a few of them survived the fighting, and more than seven thousand were cut down. [4] Alexander sold the children and women into slavery and crucified all the men of military age, who numbered at least two thousand. There was such a vast crowd of prisoners that, even though a great many people had been taken to Carthage,* there were still more than thirteen thousand left.
[5] This is a measure of the catastrophe that befell the Tyrians as a result of the siege, which lasted seven months and which they resisted with more courage than wisdom. [6] After having the golden chains and fetters removed from the statue of Apollo, the king said that the god should be called ‘the Apollo of Alexander’. He also performed magnificent sacrifices to Heracles, rewarded those who had fought with distinction, and buried his dead with splendid ceremonies. He installed as the king of Tyre a man called Ballonymus, and some of his particulars demand to be recorded, because of the extraordinary reversal of fortune that was involved.
47. Once the former king, Straton,* had been deposed (he had been on good terms with Darius), Alexander gave Hephaestion permission to place on the throne of Tyre whichever of his friends he chose to nominate. [2] At first, Hephaestion favoured the man in whose house he was staying, where he had enjoyed pleasant lodging, and proposed that he should be put in charge of the city. There was no one in Tyre who was richer or more admired, but the man refused the offer because he had no family connection to the former kings. [3] Hephaestion left it up to him to nominate one of the king’s relatives, and his host said that there was someone of royal descent who was basically a sound man and a good one, but he was extremely poor.
[4] Hephaestion agreed that the throne should be given to this man, and his host, the man to whom the decision had been entrusted, went off to find his nominee, taking the royal apparel with him. He found him watering a garden as a hired labourer, dressed in plain work clothes, [5] and told him about his change of station. Then he dressed him in all the appropriate finery, including the royal robes, conducted him to the agora, and proclaimed him king of Tyre. [6] The general populace was happy to have him as king and marvelled at the vicissitudes of fortune. And so, by becoming one of Alexander’s friends and gaining the kingship of Tyre, he serves as a case study for people who are unaware of the sudden changes that Fortune can bring about.
Now that I have covered Alexander’s deeds, it is time to move elsewhere. 48. In Europe, Agis, the king of the Lacedaemonians, hired the eight thousand mercenaries who had survived the battle of Issus and, as a favour to Darius, committed himself to rebellion. [2] Once he had received from Darius both ships and a large sum of money, he sailed to Crete, where he subdued most of the cities and forced them to join the Persian side.
Amyntas, who had been banished from Macedon and had made his way up country to Darius, fought for the Persians in Cilicia,* and after surviving the battle of Issus he went to Tripolis in Phoenicia with four thousand mercenaries. This was before Alexander arrived in Phoenicia. The entire Persian fleet was there, and Amyntas commandeered enough ships for his own troops and burnt the rest. [3] He sailed over to Cyprus, where he gained more men and ships, and then sailed over to Pelusium. Once he had made himself master of the city, he announced that he had been sent by King Darius to take command in Egypt because the satrap who had been responsible for the country had died fighting in Cilicia, at Issus. [4] He sailed up river to Memphis and at first things went well: he defeated the local forces in a battle in front of the city. But then, after his men had turned to looting, the Egyptians emerged from the city and attacked Amyntas’ troops while they were out of formation, plundering farms in the countryside, and they killed not only Amyntas, but every single one of his men as well. [5] So Amyntas met his end in the midst of the great enterprise he had undertaken, a failure when he had had every expectation of success.
Some of the other leading men and generals who escaped from the battle of Issus with their men, and continued to pin their hopes on the Persians, did much the same as Amyntas. [6] That is, some of them too seized critical cities and held them for Darius, while others won over tribes and, once they had equipped themselves with troops, provided whatever services were appropriate for the situation.*
The delegates of the Greek states* voted to send an embassy of fifteen men to take a golden crown to Alexander, as a prize for valour awarded by the Greeks to express their shared joy at his victory in Cilicia. [7] Meanwhile, Alexander marched to Gaza, which had a Persian garrison, and took the city by storm after a siege of two months.
49. In the year of the Archonship of Aristophanes in Athens, Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius were elected consuls in Rome. In this year:
Once King Alexander had ordered affairs in Gaza, he sent Amyntas with ten ships to Macedon to recruit men of military age who were fit for service,* while he made his way to Egypt with his entire army. All the cities there capitulated without a fight; [2] the harshness of Persian rule, and the disrespect with which they had treated temples, made the Macedonians welcome to the Egyptians. After settling matters in Egypt, Alexander paid a visit to the temple of Ammon,* because he had a question for the god. When he was about halfway there, he was met by emissaries from Cyrene, bringing him a crown and magnificent gifts, which included three hundred warhorses and five superb four-horse chariots. [3] He made the envoys welcome and concluded a treaty of alliance and friendship with them, before carrying on to the temple with his travelling companions.
When he reached the part of the country that was uninhabited and waterless, he loaded up with water and set out to cross it. It was an endless expanse of sand, and within four days all their water had been used up and they began to suffer terribly from thirst. [4] Everyone was getting desperate—but suddenly the heavens opened and a heavy downpour began, bringing their shortage of water to an unexpected end. In fact, because they had been rescued when they had given up hope, they decided that what had happened was due to divine providence. [5] After taking on water from a hollow in the ground, they once more had enough to see them through four days, and that is how long it took them to complete their crossing of the desert.† At one point, there was so much sand that they were uncertain of their route, but the guides told Alexander about some crows that were cawing to their right, as a way of showing where the road was that led to the temple. [6] Alexander took this as an omen and pressed on urgently, believing that the god was indicating his pleasure at his visit. First he came to the Bitter Lake, and then after another hundred stades he passed the Communities of Ammon, and from there it took him only one more day of travel to reach the sanctuary.
50. The place where this sanctuary is located is surrounded by sandy, waterless desert—a completely hostile environment for humans. But the place itself, which forms a square with sides of about fifty stades, is drenched with the water of numerous fine springs, and there are abundant trees there of all kinds, especially fruit-bearing species. The ambient temperature of the air is spring-like, and since the oasis is surrounded by torrid regions, it is the only place where the inhabitants can get relief and find a moderate climate. [2] It is said that the sanctuary was founded by Danaus of Egypt.* The land, which is consecrated to the god,* is inhabited to the south and west by Ethiopians, to the north by a tribe of Libyan nomads, and in the direction of the interior by a tribe called the Nasamonians.
[3] The people of Ammon live in villages, and in the middle of their land there is a fortress, surrounded by three defensive walls. The innermost circuit of the fortress contains the royal court buildings of the ancient rulers of the land; the next contains the women’s quarters, the residences of the children, womenfolk, and relatives of the rulers, the soldiers’ guardrooms,† the god’s precinct, and the sacred spring which is used to purify offerings to the god; and the outermost circuit contains the barracks of the king’s bodyguard and their guardrooms. [4] At no great distance from the fortress there is a second temple of Ammon, in the shade of many tall trees. Near this temple there is a spring which is called the Spring of the Sun because of its behaviour: its water changes temperature according to the time of day, in a paradoxical fashion.* [5] At daybreak, the water that comes up is warm, but as the day advances it cools down in proportion to the passing of the hours, until its coldness peaks in the heat of midday. Then, and once more in proportion with the passing of time, the coldness wanes towards evening, and after nightfall the water continues to warm up again until midnight, after which the heat again wanes, until at dawn the water has regained its original state.
[6] The cult statue of Ammon is encrusted with emeralds and other jewels and it responds in a most peculiar fashion to questions that are put to it. It is carried around on a golden boat by eighty priests who walk, with the god on their shoulders, not in accordance with their own volition, but in whichever direction is indicated by an inclination of the god’s head.* [7] Throughout this process, the priests are followed by a train of girls and women, singing paeans and a traditional hymn of praise of the god.
51. Once Alexander had been led inside the temple by the priests and had contemplated the god, the elderly man who spoke for the god approached and said: ‘Greetings, my son! And you may take it that this greeting comes from the god too.’ [2] In response, Alexander said: ‘I thank you, father, and from now on I shall be called your son.* But tell me if you will grant me dominion over the whole world.’ The priest approached the precinct, and when the men lifted the god on to their shoulders and moved around according to certain traditional cues,† he declared to Alexander that the god was certainly granting his request. And then Alexander said: ‘I have one final question for you, lord Ammon. Have I caught all my father’s murderers, or have some escaped?’ [3] But the prophet cried out in a loud voice: ‘Sacrilege! The one who begot him* is invulnerable to human schemes, but all the murderers of Philip have been punished. The greatness of the deeds that he accomplishes will serve as proof of his divine parentage. For up until now he has never known defeat, and from now on he shall be invincible for ever!’ [4] Alexander was delighted with these responses, and he honoured the god with magnificent dedications in the temple before returning to Egypt.
52. Having decided to found a great city in Egypt,* he told the men to whom he entrusted responsibility for the task to build it between the lake and the sea. [2] He skilfully established the dimensions of the site and designed the layout of the streets,* and gave orders that the city was to be called Alexandria after him.* The city was in an excellent location near the harbour of Pharos, and he laid out the streets so cleverly that the city breathed with the etesian winds.* Since these winds blow over a very large expanse of open sea and cool the air in the city, he was making sure that the inhabitants had a tempered climate and good health. [3] He also designed the outer wall of the city, which was exceptionally tall and incredibly secure, because, lying as the city does between a great lake and the sea, there are only two ways to approach it from a landward direction, and both of them are narrow and easily guarded. In outline, the city resembles a military cloak,* and it has a central street of unbelievable size and beauty which more or less divides the city in two. This main street, forty stades long and a plethron wide, runs from gate to gate, and has been embellished all along its length by sumptuous edifices, both private houses and temples.
[4] Alexander also ordered the construction of a palace, the size and grandeur of which are astounding. But the palace is not only Alexander’s work, because almost all the later rulers of Egypt, right up until the present day, have spent large amounts of money on extensions. [5] In fact, the city as a whole has made such progress in recent years that many people reckon it to be the greatest in the world,* and it is true that it leaves the rest a long way behind in terms of its beauty, size, financial liquidity, and everything that contributes to graceful living. [6] It has a larger population than any other city, and I know this because when I visited Egypt the men who kept the census returns of the inhabitants told me that, not counting slaves, there were three hundred thousand people living there, and I was also told that the king’s annual revenues from Egypt amounted to more than six thousand talents. [7] Be that as it may, Alexander made some of his Friends responsible for the building of Alexandria, and once he had seen to the reorganization of Egypt* he returned with his army to Syria.
53. By the time he heard of Alexander’s arrival, Darius had already mustered his forces from all over the empire and equipped himself with everything he would need for battle. The swords and spears that he made, for instance, were much longer than the kinds he had used before, because it was widely held that the extra length of his weaponry had given Alexander a clear advantage in Cilicia. Darius also built two hundred scythe-bearing chariots, which were designed to overawe and terrify the enemy. [2] On each of them long scythes (three spans long,* in fact), which were attached to the yoke, projected beyond the two trace horses and had their curved edges turned towards the front, and moreover there were another two blades attached to the linchpins of the axles, in line with each other, which were like the others in having their cutting edges turned towards the front, but were longer and broader.†
[3] After equipping all his troops with first-rate weaponry and appointing talented officers, Darius left Babylon with an army of more than eight hundred thousand foot and at least two hundred thousand horse. He travelled with the Tigris on his right and the Euphrates on his left, through land which was fertile enough to provide the animals with plenty of fodder and even such a large force of soldiers with sufficient food. [4] His intention was to fight near Nineveh,* since the plains there were perfect for a pitched battle: there was plenty of open ground for an army of the size he had collected. After making camp near a village called Arbela,* he drilled his troops every day. He had them continually out on manoeuvres and exercises, so that they would learn to obey orders, because his chief concern was to see that no confusion arose during the battle, given that he had gathered together a large number of peoples, who spoke different languages.
54. Now, Darius had earlier sent emissaries to Alexander to discuss bringing hostilities to an end, on the basis of his offering to cede to Alexander the land west of the Halys river and promising twenty thousand talents of silver as well.* [2] Alexander had refused, however, and so now Darius sent further ambassadors. He thanked Alexander for his good treatment of his mother and the other captives, and invited him to become one of his Friends and to take all the land west of the Euphrates for himself, along with thirty thousand talents of silver and one of his two daughters for a wife. In short, he was suggesting that, by marrying his daughter, Alexander should become a full partner in his kingdom, with the rank of one of his sons.
[3] Alexander called all his Friends to a meeting. He explained the available alternatives and asked each of them to speak his mind freely. [4] The issue was so important, however, that no one else dared to offer any advice, and Parmenion was the first to speak. ‘If I were Alexander,’ he said, ‘I would accept the offer and make peace.’ [5] And in response Alexander said: ‘Yes, I too would accept the offer, if I were Parmenion!’*
To cut a long story short, Alexander continued in the same proud vein and rejected the arguments that the Persians were advancing. Preferring glory to the gifts that were being offered him, he replied to the ambassadors that, just as the universe could not maintain its orderly arrangement if there were two suns, so the earth could not remain free of unrest and strife if two kings were in power. [6] So he told them to offer Darius a choice: if he desired supremacy, he would have to fight Alexander for it, to decide who would be the sole ruler of the empire, but if he cared nothing for glory and preferred a life of wealth and indolent luxury, all he had to do was leave supreme command to Alexander, while Darius would rule over other kings, once Alexander in his goodness had ceded him the power to do so.* [7] Alexander then brought the meeting to an end and advanced with his troops towards the enemy encampment. Meanwhile, however, Darius’ wife died* and Alexander buried her with full honour.
55. When Darius heard Alexander’s response, he realized that there was no chance of a diplomatic settlement, and he continued to drill his forces every day and train them in battlefield obedience. He dispatched one of his Friends, Mazaeus, with a body of crack troops to seize the ford and guard the river crossing, and he sent others to scorch with fire the farmland on the route the enemy was bound to take. His original plan was to use the bed of the river as a first line of defence against the approach of the Macedonians, [2] but when Mazaeus saw that the river was too deep to cross and had too strong a current, he did not bother to guard it,* but joined those who were burning the farmland. He laid waste to a great deal of land, until he judged that shortage of food would make it impossible for the enemy to pass that way.
[3] When Alexander reached the Tigris crossing and was told about the ford by some of the local inhabitants, he had his troops cross over, which proved to be not merely difficult, but extremely dangerous. [4] The water came up over the men’s chests, and many of them, as they attempted the crossing, found that the strength of the current was threatening to sweep them away and make them lose their footing. The buffeting of the water on their shields carried a lot of men off and put their lives in the greatest danger. [5] But Alexander devised a measure to counteract the force of the current. He got his men to link arms and to press close to their neighbours so that, all together, they formed a kind of barrage. [6] Since the crossing had been hazardous and the Macedonians had barely come out of it alive, Alexander let his men take their ease for the rest of the day, and then the next day he drew them up in formation, advanced towards the enemy, and made camp close to the Persian position.
56. With his mind dwelling on the size of the Persian army and the momentous nature of the coming battle, and because he was aware that the fateful moment was at hand, Alexander spent a sleepless night, worrying over what lay ahead. He finally fell asleep around the time of the morning watch, and slept so soundly that the next day he could not be woken up. [2] At first his Friends were pleased about this, thinking that, being well rested, the king would have more energy for the coming battle. But as time passed and sleep still continued to claim him, Parmenion, who was the most senior of his Friends, took it upon himself to give the order for the troops to prepare for battle.
[3] When he still did not wake up, his Friends came and finally managed to rouse him. They all expressed astonishment at how soundly he had slept and asked the reason for it, and Alexander said that Darius had relieved all his stress by assembling his forces in one place, [4] because this meant that everything would be decided in a single day, and there would be an end to their troubles and the dangers they had faced for so long. And so, once he had effectively encouraged his marshals and inspired them with confidence for the coming battle, he led his army in formation towards the barbarians, with the cavalry units ahead of the infantry.
57. On the right wing, Alexander stationed the Royal Squadron, under the command of Cleitus ‘the Black’.* Next came the rest of his Friends,* under the command of Philotas, the son of Parmenion, and then the other seven cavalry units,* also commanded by Philotas. [2] Behind them was stationed the infantry battalion called the Silver Shields,* distinguished by their gleaming shields and their calibre; Nicanor, the son of Parmenion, was their commanding officer. Next came the Elimiote Battalion, as it is called,* under the command of Coenus, and then the units from Orestis and Lyncestis, under the command of Perdiccas. The next battalion was led by Meleager, and the one after that by Polyperchon, who had the Stymphaeans under him. [3] Philip, the son of Balacrus, held the command of the next unit, and the one after that was led by Craterus. The position next to the cavalry units that I have already mentioned was filled by a brigade made up of cavalry from Achaea and elsewhere in the Peloponnese, who formed a single contingent, along with men from Phthiotis and Malis, and from Locris and Phocis, with Erigyius of Mytilene in command. [4] Then came the Thessalians, whose courage and horsemanship were by far the best in the army, under the command of Philip. Next to them were stationed the Cretan archers and the Achaean mercenaries.*
[5] On both wings, Alexander had the units form up slantwise,* so that the enemy would not be able to use their superior numbers to outflank the relatively few Macedonians. [6] He came up with a plan to counter the threat of the scythed chariots, and gave orders that, as the chariots approached, the infantrymen who made up the phalanx were to take up a tight formation with overlapping shields and beat their shields with their pikes. The idea was that the noise would frighten the horses and make them turn tail, and if any of the chariots did manage to get through, his men were to open up gaps in the line, through which the chariots might pass without endangering the Macedonians.* Alexander took personal command of the right wing, which on his orders took up an oblique formation, and his intention was that it would be he who was responsible for the decisive victory.*
58. Darius deployed his troops according to the region from which the tribes and peoples came and posted himself opposite Alexander. Then he gave the order to advance. When the two armies were close to each other, the trumpeters on both sides gave the signal for battle, and the men charged at one another with shrill cries. [2] At first, the scythed chariots, bearing down at a furious pace, sowed fear and panic in the Macedonian lines—and Mazaeus, the cavalry commander, made the chariot charge even more fearsome by having squadrons of horse in close formation ride along with the chariots. [3] But when all the phalangites overlapped their shields and began to beat on them with their pikes, as Alexander had ordered, the huge racket they created frightened the horses [4] and most of the chariots turned around and bore hard with irresistible force against their own lines.
Some of the chariots did get through to the phalanx, however, and the Macedonians opened up sizeable gaps through which the chariots sped. Some of these were stopped by a hail of javelins, while others rode through and escaped, but some were moving so fast and using the blades of their scythes so effectively that death in many different forms ensued. [5] Such were the sharpness and the destructive force of the tempered blades that many men had their arms sliced off, shields and all. Quite a few others were decapitated, and their heads fell to the ground with eyes still open and facial expressions unchanged, and in some cases the blades lethally tore open men’s sides and brought a swift death.
59. When the armies were close to each other, the airborne missiles began to be used up as the bows, slings, and javelins went about their business, and then it came to close combat. [2] The cavalry were the first to engage, and specifically the Macedonians who were fighting on the right wing, but Darius, who was in command of his left wing, had the Kinsmen Cavalry by his side, a single regiment of a thousand chosen for their prowess and loyalty. [3] With the king as a witness of their valour, they willingly braved the missiles that were raining down on them in large numbers. They were supported by the Apple-bearers,* a large regiment made up of men of exceptional valour; by the Mardians and Cossaeans,* distinguished for their exceptional physical strength and their nobility of spirit; [4] and also by the Palace Guard and the best fighters among the Indians. With a loud cry, these men hurled themselves against the Macedonians, and there were so many of them, and they fought so ferociously, that they started to gain the upper hand.
[5] On the right wing, Mazaeus, who had the pick of the cavalry under him, killed many of his opponents straight away, in the first charge. Then he sent a picked force of two thousand Cadusian and a thousand Scythian horsemen to ride around the enemy’s wing to their camp and take the baggage.* [6] They rapidly carried out their orders, and when they burst into the Macedonian camp, some of the prisoners snatched up weapons and helped them plunder the baggage. The entire camp resounded with shouts and was plunged into confusion by the unexpectedness of the attack.
[7] All the rest of the female prisoners flew from their quarters to the barbarians, but not Darius’ mother, Sisyngambris. She paid no attention when the others called out to her, but kept quiet and stayed composedly where she was, since she did not trust accidents of Fortune, and also because she felt grateful to Alexander and did not want to sully that sense of gratitude. [8] Eventually, after taking a great deal of the baggage, the Scythians rode back to Mazaeus and told him of their success. Meanwhile, some of the cavalry deployed in Darius’ part of the field had got the better of the Macedonians ranged opposite them, whom they outnumbered, and had forced them to flee.
60. This defeat was a second success for the Persians, and Alexander decided that it was up to him to remedy the situation, so he took the best of his cavalry, including the Royal Squadron, and rode straight for Darius. [2] The Persian king stood his ground and fired javelins at his attackers from his chariot, and alongside him there were many others fighting too. The kings were focused only on each other, however, and Alexander aimed his javelin at Darius, but missed him and hit the driver standing next to him instead, who toppled off the chariot and on to the ground. [3] A loud cry arose from the vicinity of Darius, and men who were some way off, thinking that it was the king himself who had fallen, turned to flight. Their neighbours then followed their lead, and, ever so gradually,† Darius’ wing began to crumble. When his other side was exposed too, as men fell away, Darius became alarmed and turned to flight.* [4] So the Persian left wing was in flight, with the dust from the cavalry rising high into the air and Alexander’s men in close pursuit—but there was so much dust and it was so thick that it was impossible to see which way Darius had gone, and only the groans of the wounded could be heard, and the thudding of horses’ hoofs, and the continuous cracking of whips.*
[5] Meanwhile, Mazaeus, the commander of the right wing, who had a large force of first-rate cavalry under him, was pressing hard on the Macedonian left, but Parmenion, with the Thessalian cavalry and the rest of his troops, managed to stand his ground. [6] At first, in fact, in a dazzling display of martial prowess, he gained the upper hand, thanks to the skill of the Thessalians, but then Mazaeus bore down on him, making good use of the large numbers of men at his disposal and the weight of his formation, and began to get the better of the enemy cavalry. [7] Many lives were lost on the Macedonian side and it was becoming hard for them to resist the pressure exerted by the barbarians, so Parmenion sent some of his horsemen to Alexander, asking him to respond rapidly with help. These men lost no time in carrying out their orders, but they found that Alexander had been drawn far from the field in his pursuit of the enemy.* They returned empty-handed, then, [8] but Parmenion brought all his experience to bear in deploying the Thessalian squadrons, and after he had inflicted many casualties on the barbarians, whose morale had plummeted, especially with the flight of Darius, he finally managed to turn them.
61. Mazaeus† was no slouch in military matters and he made good use of the great quantity of dust. He did not retreat along with the rest of the barbarians, but set out in the opposite direction and, with his route concealed by the thickness of the dust cloud, he not only escaped without trouble himself, but he also brought all of those who were with him to safety in the villages to the rear of the Macedonian position. [2] But in the end, with the entire Persian army in flight and the Macedonians mopping up any stragglers they came across, the whole region around the plain was covered with corpses. [3] So in this battle, counting cavalry and infantry together, the Persians lost more than ninety thousand men,* while the Macedonian dead numbered only about five hundred, although a great many men were injured. The wounded included one of the most distinguished of Alexander’s marshals, Hephaestion, the commander of the bodyguards,* who had been wounded by a spear thrust in the arm, and several governors and senior officers, including Perdiccas, Coenus, and Menidas. So that was the outcome of the battle of Arbela.
62. In the year of the Archonship of Aristophon in Athens, in Rome Gaius Domitius and Aulus Cornelius were the next to be appointed to the consulate. In this year:
When news of the battle of Arbela reached Greece many of the cities, disturbed by the growth of Macedonian power, decided to make a bid for freedom while the Persian empire still remained.* [2] Their thinking was that Darius would help them by providing them with ample money for a large force of mercenaries, and that Alexander would be unable to divide his forces—[3] and that if they just stood by and watched as the Persians were defeated, they would be isolated and freedom would no longer be a viable issue.
[4] The Greeks were also encouraged to rebel by the concurrent outbreak of unrest in Thrace, [5] when Memnon, the military commander of the region, who had an army at his disposal and no shortage of ambition, persuaded the Thracians to rise up against Alexander.* Soon he had the command of a great many men, and since he made no secret of his warlike intentions, [6] Antipater raised his full levy, marched through Macedon to Thrace, and set about fighting him.
Antipater’s preoccupation with this business seemed to the Lacedaemonians to be an opportunity to prepare for war, and they called on the Greeks to join them in a bid for freedom. [7] The Athenians did nothing, because they had been especially favoured by Alexander, more than any other Greek state,* but most of the Peloponnesians and some others joined together and signed up for war. They recruited the best men of fighting age, according to the capacity of the cities, and raised an army of at least twenty thousand infantry and about two thousand cavalry. [8] The Lacedaemonians had overall command, and they set out at full strength for the decisive battle, with their king, Agis, as the commander-in-chief.
63. When Antipater found out that the Greeks had banded together, he brought the Thracian war to an end on the best terms he could arrange and marched into the Peloponnese with his entire army. He acquired further troops from his Greek allies* and ended up with a force of at least forty thousand. [2] A great battle took place, and Agis died on the field, but the Lacedaemonians resolutely fought on and held out for a long time. When their allies were overcome, however, the Lacedaemonians too retreated back to Sparta. [3] They and their allies lost more than 5,300 men in the battle, while Antipater’s losses came to 3,500.
[4] Agis’ death came about under unusual circumstances. After putting on a dazzling display of martial prowess, in the course of which he received many frontal wounds, he was being carried back to Sparta by his men when he was overtaken by the enemy. He gave up hope of saving himself, but he ordered the rest of his troops to race away—to stay alive for the good of their city. Then he armed himself, raised himself on to one knee, and defended himself against the enemy. He even managed to kill a few of them, but he died in a hail of javelins. He had been king for nine years.
[5] Having covered events in Europe, I shall turn next to Asia. 64. Following his defeat in the battle of Arbela, Darius fled to the upper satrapies, the idea being that these regions were far enough away for him to gain a breathing space and sufficient time to raise another army. At first, he went to Ecbatana in Media and stayed there, making it the collection point for the survivors of the battle and arming those who had lost their weapons. [2] He also requisitioned troops from the nearby tribes, and wrote to the satraps and governors in Bactria and the upper satrapies, asking them to remain loyal to him.
[3] Once Alexander had buried his dead, he followed up his victory with an offensive against Arbela, where he found abundant stores of food, plenty of valuables and precious objects of eastern workmanship, and three thousand talents of silver. Realizing that the air thereabouts would be befouled by the thousands of corpses, he quickly broke camp and made his way with his entire army to Babylon. [4] The Babylonians welcomed him enthusiastically and provided the Macedonians in their billets with sumptuous fare, and Alexander let his men rest and recover from the ordeals they had been through. Given the vast quantity of provisions there and the hospitality of the local people, he stayed in the city for more than thirty days.*
[5] Next, he entrusted the security of the Babylonian acropolis* to Agathon of Pydna and formed a unit of seven hundred Macedonian soldiers to support him. Apollodorus of Amphipolis and Menes of Pella were his choices as the military governors of, respectively, Babylonia and the other satrapies up to Cilicia, and he gave them a thousand talents of silver with which to recruit as many mercenaries as possible. [6] To Mithrines, who had betrayed the acropolis of Sardis to him, he gave Armenia, and with the money he had captured he made a present of six mnas to every Macedonian cavalryman, five to every allied cavalryman, and two to every phalangite; and he paid all the mercenaries two months’ wages.
65. After Alexander had left Babylon, he was met en route by fresh troops from Antipater: 500 Macedonian horse and 6,000 foot; 600 horse from Thrace; 3,500 Trallians;* 4,000 foot and almost 1,000 horse from the Peloponnese; and from Macedon fifty sons of the king’s Friends, who had been sent out by their fathers to serve as the king’s bodyguards.* [2] Once these men had been added to the army, Alexander carried on and five days later he reached the district of Sittacene. Since the land there was blessed with everything he might need in ample quantities, he stayed there for quite a few days, not just because he wanted to rest his men, who needed a break from marching, but also because he intended to give some thought to the organization of his army. He wanted to promote some officers, so that the army would be strengthened by having plenty of talented men in senior positions. [3] By carrying out these plans—that is, by giving a great deal of thought to deciding who were the best men for the job,† and by promoting many junior† officers to positions of great responsibility—he moved all his officers up the ranks and bound them to him with strong ties of affection.* [4] He also rethought the normal deployment of the troops and came up with a number of improvements to increase their effectiveness.* Having raised to exceptional levels the loyalty of his men towards their leader and their obedience to his commands, and aroused their fighting spirit to an extraordinary degree, he felt ready for the battles that remained.
[5] He met no resistance on his journey to Susiane. The satrap, Abouleutes, surrendered the city to him and Alexander took over the famous royal palace of Susa. Some historians claim that Abouleutes was obeying orders issued by Darius to his most trusted subordinates, and they say that the Persian king did this so that Alexander would be preoccupied by all these major distractions and by his acquisition of world-famous cities and rich treasuries, while Darius bought time by his flight to prepare for war.
66. Once he had control of the city, Alexander found in the royal treasuries more than forty thousand talents of uncoined gold and silver. [2] For many years, the Persian kings had kept this money safe without touching it, leaving it as a last resort against the vicissitudes of Fortune. As well as this bullion, there were nine thousand talents of minted gold in the form of darics.*
[3] A curious thing happened while Alexander was taking possession of this money. He was seated on the royal throne, which happened to be disproportionately large for his body, and when one of his slaves saw that his feet were a long way off the footstool that went with the throne, he picked up the table that Darius had used and placed it under Alexander’s dangling feet. [4] Now that he was comfortable, Alexander thanked the slave for his thoughtfulness—but among the people standing near the throne was a certain eunuch, who was so affected by the way everything had changed that tears came to his eyes. [5] When Alexander noticed this, he asked him: ‘Why are you crying? Did you see something that troubled you?’ And the eunuch replied: ‘I am your slave now, but previously I belonged to Darius, and since I am by nature devoted to my masters, it upset me to see the item of furniture that was most precious to him being treated as something of no worth.’
[6] This reply gave Alexander a sense of the completeness of the change that had come over the Persian empire, and it occurred to him that he had acted arrogantly, and in a way that was totally at odds with his moderate treatment of the captive women. [7] He called over the slave who had placed the table under his feet and told him to take it away again. At this, Philotas, who was standing near by, said: ‘But this was not arrogance, because the order was not given by you. This was the outcome of the foresight and wishes of some benign deity.’ And Alexander, taking what Philotas had said as an omen, ordered the slave to leave the table standing at the foot of the throne.
67. Alexander arranged for Darius’ mother, daughters, and son to have tutors in the Greek language, and left them in Susa when he set out with his troops. Three days later he reached the Tigris river.* [2] This river, which rises in the mountains inhabited by the Uxians,* passes for the first thousand stades of its course through regions which are rugged and fractured by deep ravines, but then it flows through level terrain, with its current gradually decreasing in strength, and after another six hundred stades, by which time it is in Persis, it issues into the sea. [3] Alexander crossed the river and marched into Uxiana. The farmland there is extremely fertile and well watered, and produces a wide variety of crops in abundance, and so, at the time when the ripe fruits are being dried, the traders who ply the waters of the Tigris* bring down to Babylonia all kinds of enjoyable sweets.
[4] Alexander found that the pass was guarded by Madetes, a Kinsman of Darius,* with a large number of men, and, on inspection, he could see how difficult it would be to seize it. The cliffs were unscalable, but a native of the region, an Uxian, who knew these parts, assured Alexander that he would guide his men along a narrow and dangerous path to a position above the enemy. [5] Alexander trusted him and dispatched him along with an adequate number of men, while he himself first cleared as much of a pathway as he could and then sent wave after wave of troops to attack the men stationed at the pass. The fighting was intense and the barbarians who were defending the pass were distracted by it, so that the appearance of the troops Alexander had dispatched took them by surprise. In terror, the Persians turned to flight, and Alexander gained control not only of the pass, but before long of all the Uxian towns as well.
68. His destination on leaving Uxiana was Persis,* and four days later he arrived at the so-called Susian Rocks, which had already been occupied by Ariobarzanes with twenty-five thousand foot and three hundred horse. [2] Alexander thought it would be possible for him to force his way through, and he advanced, making his way through narrow defiles and over broken ground. He met no trouble at first, but the Persians were allowing the Macedonians to get a certain distance into the pass, and when they were right in the middle of the badlands, they launched a surprise assault. They rolled many boulders down, as big as wagons, and since the Macedonians were bunched together, a lot of them lost their lives when the boulders suddenly struck. Meanwhile, a good number of the Persians were hurling their javelins down from the cliffs, and with the Macedonians packed closely together they could not fail to make a hit. Still others threw stones from close at hand at those Macedonians who continued to push forward. The broken terrain gave the barbarians a considerable advantage, and the numbers of dead and wounded were mounting.
[3] Alexander could do nothing to alleviate the dreadful situation and, seeing that his own losses were considerable, while not one of the enemy was dead or even injured, he had the trumpet recall his men from the fray. [4] He pulled back three hundred stades* from the pass and made camp. When he asked the local inhabitants whether there was some other way through, they all claimed that there was no other direct route, but only a circuitous route of several days. But Alexander could not stand the shame of leaving his dead unburied, and at the same time he could not countenance the idea of asking for permission to recover them, since that entailed an admission of defeat.* He therefore ordered all the prisoners to be brought up for questioning.
[5] Among the prisoners who appeared before him was a man who was bilingual in Greek and Persian. He said that he was a Lycian by birth, that he had been captured in war, and that for quite a few years he had been a shepherd in these mountains. He knew the land well, he said, and could guide the army through thickly wooded parts to a position behind those who were guarding the pass. [6] The king promised the man a fortune, and with him as guide he did manage to cross the mountain under cover of darkness. The going was very difficult: they had to tramp through thick snow and find a way through terrain that was nothing but cliffs and was fractured by deep ravines and numerous chasms. [7] But when they came within sight of the enemy’s pickets, they cut down those who had been assigned the forward position, made prisoners of the men in the second line of defence, and forced the third to turn and flee. Alexander then gained control of the pass, and killed most of Ariobarzanes’ men.
69. Alexander next set out for Persepolis. While he was en route a letter came from Tiridates, who was responsible for the city.* In the letter Tiridates wrote that if Alexander could get there ahead of those who were coming to defend Persepolis for Darius, the city would be his because Tiridates would surrender it to him. [2] Alexander therefore led his men on at a fast pace, bridged the Araxes river, and brought his men over to the other side.
As he marched onward, he encountered the kind of weird and terrible sight that is guaranteed to arouse condemnation of the men who carry out such crimes, and pity and compassion for the victims of wrongdoing for which there is no remedy. [3] What happened was that he came across a band of men bearing suppliant branches, and they were Greeks, the descendants of Greeks whom earlier Persian kings had evicted from their homes and resettled.* There were about eight hundred of them, most of them elderly, and all of them had been mutilated, with either their hands or their feet or their ears and noses cut off. [4] They were professionals and craftsmen, experts in their fields, and all their extremities had been cut off except those they needed for their work. The sight of the dignified bearing of these elderly men, and the ways in which their bodies had been abused, aroused pity in everyone, but especially in Alexander, who felt such compassion for the wretches that he was unable to hold back his tears.
[5] The pitiful men all cried out at once, asking Alexander to relieve their suffering, and the king called their leaders forward. Treating them with the respect that one would expect from a man with his nobility of spirit, he promised to do his best to see them restored to their homes. [6] But they met and talked things over, and decided that it would be better for them to stay where they were rather than return to Greece. Their thinking was that, if they were restored to Greece, they would become separated into small groups, and, as they went around in public in the cities, they would come to feel that the atrocious way they had been treated by Fortune was something of which they should be ashamed. If they continued to live together, however, as companions in misfortune, each of them would find that their shared experience of misery would alleviate his own misery. [7] So they arranged another meeting with Alexander, at which they explained their preference and asked him to give them the kind of assistance that would enable them to put this plan into effect.
[8] Alexander agreed that they had made the right decision, and gave each man three thousand drachmas, five sets of male apparel and five of female apparel, two teams of oxen, fifty sheep, and fifty medimnoi of wheat.* He also made them exempt from paying any of the royal taxes, and told his governors to see that they suffered no wrong from anyone. [9] With these benefactions, then, which were typical of his sense of justice, he alleviated the suffering of these wretched men.
70. Arguing that there was no city in Asia that was more inimical to the Macedonians than Persepolis, the capital of the Persian empire,* Alexander gave his men permission to plunder it all except for the palace. [2] There was no wealthier city on earth, and over the course of many years the private houses had been filled with every token of prosperity, so the Macedonians went at it with a will. They killed all the men and plundered the houses; many of the houses belonged to ordinary people, but they were crammed with all kinds of furniture and finery. [3] Much silver was therefore carried off from them, and quite a lot of gold was stolen too, and the rewards of victory also included a great deal of valuable clothing, some dyed with sea purple,* some with gold embroidery. But the great palace, famed throughout the world, was slated for violation and utter destruction.
[4] After a full day of looting the Macedonians still could not satisfy their rapacity. [5] In fact, during this orgy of plundering, their greed exceeded all bounds, so that they even fought with one another, and many of those who had taken most of the booty for themselves were killed. Some men cut the most valuable of the finds in two with their swords and carried off their own portions; others, driven mad by their lust, cut off the hands of those who were trying to make off with disputed property. [6] The women they manhandled and hauled away, finery and all, treating the prisoners of war as slaves. Persepolis had exceeded all other cities in prosperity, and now to the same degree it exceeded them all in misery.
71. Alexander made his way to the citadel and helped himself to the treasure that had been deposited there. The citadel was stuffed with silver and gold, because the treasure had been added to continuously from the time of Cyrus, the first Persian king, up until the time of Alexander’s arrival. In fact, it was found to contain the equivalent of 120,000 silver talents, once the gold-to-silver ratio* was taken into account. [2] Alexander wanted to take some of the money with him to meet the costs of the war, and to deposit the rest in Susa and keep it under guard there, so he requisitioned a large number of mules from Babylon, Mesopotamia, and Susa, some to work as pack animals and some to draw carts in teams, and three thousand pack camels as well, and used them to convey all the treasure to the places he had selected. He sent for animals from so far away [3] because, given the bitter state of enmity between him and the local inhabitants, he did not trust them. Their hostility was also why he was planning to destroy Persepolis utterly.*
The Persepolis palace was such a superb piece of work that I think a brief description of it would not be out of place. [4] Three circuit walls* enclose the remarkable citadel. The first, which was built on a foundation on which no expense was spared, had a height of sixteen cubits and was enhanced by battlements. [5] The second is structurally the same as the first, except that it is twice as tall. The third circuit wall is oblong in shape, has a height of sixty cubits, and is made out of a hard stone which can never be worn down. [6] Each of its sides has a gateway with bronze gates, flanked by bronze poles twenty cubits high. The poles were designed to be impressive, but the gates were made for security.
[7] Four plethra away,* in the eastern part of the citadel, there is the mountain called the Mountain of the Kings, where the kings’ graves are to be found. The rock has been hollowed out until it is honeycombed with chambers, in which the dead kings are laid to rest. No pathway has been cut up to these chambers: the corpses are hoisted up by machines and the sarcophagi inserted into them. [8] It was in this citadel that the several richly appointed residences of the kings and generals were to be found, and treasuries for keeping the royal hoard safe.
72. Alexander held a triumphal festival to celebrate his victories, at which he performed magnificent sacrifices to the gods and feasted his friends sumptuously. They were enjoying themselves in a companionable atmosphere, but at a certain point, when the celebrations were quite advanced and they were getting more and more drunk, a fit of madness gained thorough possession of their addled minds. [2] It was brought on when one of the women present—Thais, an Athenian by birth*—suggested to Alexander that it would crown all his fine achievements in Asia if he were to join them in a revel* and set fire to the palace, with the hands of women seeing to the swift extinction of this source of Persian glory.
[3] Now, the audience for this suggestion by Thais consisted of young men whose minds had been inflamed and robbed of reason by drink, and so, as was only to be expected, someone called on them to form a procession and light torches, and urged them to pay the Persians back for their crimes against Greek temples.* [4] Others chimed in with their approval and said that, if there was one person on earth who should properly carry out such a deed, it was Alexander. Once the king had been stirred into action by their words, they all leapt to their feet, abandoning the celebrations and calling on one another to honour Dionysus with a triumphal revel.
[5] Soon a large number of brands had been gathered, and since female musicians had been invited to the party, the sound of singing and of reed and wind pipes accompanied the king as he led them out for the revel, with Thais the courtesan taking command of the operation. [6] She was the first, after the king, to hurl her blazing brand into the palace. Before long, everyone else had done likewise, and so great was the conflagration that not just the palace, but the whole area around it caught fire. It was truly astonishing that it took just one woman, a fellow citizen of those whom Xerxes had wronged, to repay the Persian king in kind, so many years later, for his impious treatment of the Athenian acropolis, and that she should have done so for fun.*
73. After this, Alexander made the rounds of the cities of Persis, subduing some by force and winning others over by his clemency. Then he set out against Darius. [2] The Persian king’s intention had been to gather the armies of Bactria and the upper satrapies, but he had run out of time and was fleeing to Bactra* with a force of thirty thousand Persians and Greek mercenaries. But in the course of his retreat he was seized and murdered by Bessus, the satrap of Bactria. [3] Alexander was in hot pursuit with his cavalry, and Darius was not long dead when Alexander came upon his corpse and granted him a kingly funeral. [4] Some historians, however, say that Darius was still breathing when Alexander found him. According to this version, Alexander commiserated with him for his downfall, and when Darius implored him to avenge his death, Alexander agreed and set out after Bessus. The satrap was a long way ahead, however, and found refuge in Bactria, so Alexander gave up his pursuit and turned back.
That was how things stood in Asia. [5] In Europe, the calamitous defeat of the Lacedaemonians in a major battle* forced them to approach Antipater for terms. He passed the right of deciding their fate on to the common council of the Greeks,* and after the Greek delegates had convened in Corinth and had heard speech after speech for this position or that, they decided to refer the matter to Alexander for him to resolve.* [6] Antipater took the fifty most eminent Spartiates as hostages, and the Lacedaemonians sent envoys to Asia to beg Alexander to forgive their mistakes.
74. At the beginning of the following year, Cephisophon became Archon in Athens, and Gaius Valerius and Marcus Claudius were elected consuls in Rome. In this year:
In his flight from Alexander, trying to avoid falling into his hands, Bessus and his many companions (who included Nabarzanes and Barxaes)* reached Bactria. Bessus had been the satrap of Bactria under Darius, a position that had made him a familiar figure to the Bactrians, and he now called upon them to make a bid for freedom. [2] The land would give them valuable help, he argued, since it was not an easy place to invade, and it supported a large enough population for them to secure their independence. He announced that he would take command of the war and designated himself king,* with the approval of the general populace. Then he set about enlisting troops, having arms and armour made in quantity, and assiduously making sure that he had everything else that he would need to face the impending crisis.
[3] Alexander could see that the Macedonians were counting Darius’ death as the end of the expedition and were impatient to go back home, so he convened an army assembly,* at which he delivered a speech that effectively raised their morale and made them willing to continue with what remained of the campaign. He also convened the contingents supplied by the Greek cities, thanked them for all they had done and released them from service. He gave every cavalryman a talent, and every infantryman ten mnas, in addition to paying them their outstanding wages and giving them enough extra to see them through their return journey until they reached their homes. [4] But he gave three talents to any of them who chose to stay in the army under his command. He rewarded the soldiers so generously not just because it was his nature to be magnanimous, but also because he had gained a great deal of money in the course of his pursuit of Darius. [5] Eight thousand talents had been handed over to him by Darius’ treasurers, but that was not all, because his disbursements to his troops, including jewellery and goblets, amounted to thirteen thousand talents, and it was suspected that more was stolen and embezzled.
75. Alexander set out for Hyrcania, and on the third day he made camp near a city called Hecatontapylus.* This is a prosperous city, where everything that makes life pleasant is to be found in great abundance, so he rested his troops there for a while. [2] Then, 150 stades further on, he encamped near a huge rock, which had a wonderful cave at its base, out of which flowed a great river called the Stiboetes. The current of this river is very rapid and turbulent for three stades, and then it divides into two around a rock shaped like a woman’s breast, at the base of which there is a vast chasm in the ground. The river falls down into this chasm with a great roar, foaming from being dashed against the rock, and then flows underground for three hundred stades before issuing once more into the open air.*
[3] Alexander entered Hyrcania with his army and subdued all the cities there up to the Caspian Sea, which some call the Hyrcanian Sea. It is said that in this sea there are spawned large numbers of great snakes, and all kinds of fish as well, which are quite different in appearance from those found in our part of the world. [4] He crossed Hyrcania and came to the Prosperous Villages, as they are called—deservedly so, because their farmland is far more productive than anywhere else.* [5] Each vine, for instance, is said to produce a metrētēs of wine, and some fig trees to produce ten medimnoi of dried figs. The grain that is left over at harvest time and falls to the ground is said to sprout without having to be sown and to bring a bounteous crop to maturity.
[6] There is also a tree in this region, the leaves of which drip honey; it resembles an oak in appearance, and the honey, which people collect, is extremely pleasant.* [7] There is also a winged creature there, called an anthrēdōn, which is smaller than a bee, but otherwise extremely similar,† since it roams the mountains, gathering pollen from all kinds of flowers, and then it constructs combs of wax in the hollow rocks and lightning-blasted trees where it lives, and makes a liquid of exceptional sweetness, which is almost as good as the honey found in our part of the world.*
76. While Alexander was in the process of adding the Hyrcanians and their neighbours to his dominion, he also received the surrender of many of the senior Persians who had fled with Darius. He treated them decently and acquired such a reputation for clemency [2] that the Greek mercenaries who had served with Darius, who numbered about 1,500 and were exceptional soldiers, immediately surrendered. They obtained his pardon and were enrolled in the army at the same rate of pay as the rest of the mercenaries.
[3] Alexander marched along the coastline of Hyrcania and entered the territory of the Mardians.* They were men of spirit, and they scorned the growing power of the king. So far from granting him a meeting or any token of respect, [4] eight thousand of them occupied the passes and confidently awaited the approach of the Macedonians. Alexander attacked, and in the battle that ensued he killed most of them and chased the rest into the hill country. [5] He then proceeded to put their farmland to the torch.
Seeing that the slaves who were driving the royal horses were some distance away from the king, some of the barbarians attacked them and made off with Bucephalas, the best of Alexander’s horses. [6] It had been a gift from Demaratus of Corinth,* and it had been with the king in every battle he had fought in Asia. While it was still unharnessed, it would allow itself to be mounted only by its groom, but once it had on the royal livery, it no longer accepted even the groom, and submitted only to Alexander, and only for him would it lower its body to facilitate mounting.
[7] Furious at the loss of such an excellent creature, Alexander ordered his men to begin clearing the land of trees, and he had people who spoke the local language tell the Mardians that if they did not return the horse, they would see their land utterly devastated and the inhabitants slaughtered to a man. [8] He immediately set about carrying out these threats, and the terrified barbarians returned the horse. They sent along with it gifts of the greatest value, and also fifty men to beg forgiveness. The most important of these men Alexander took as hostages.
77. On his return to Hyrcania, the queen of the Amazons paid him a visit.* Her name was Thallestris, and the land between the Phasis river and the Thermodon was her domain.* She was a woman of exceptional beauty and physical strength, and her martial prowess had won the admiration of her compatriots. She left most of her army on the border with Hyrcania and came to Alexander with three hundred Amazons in full armour. [2] The king expressed surprise both at their unexpected visit and at the impressive bearing of the women, and when he asked Thallestris why she had come, she said that she wanted to conceive his child. [3] She explained that his achievements proved that there was no man on earth to compare with him, and that since her strength and courage made her superior to other women, it was likely that any child with two such outstanding parents would surpass all others in valour. The king was charmed, and in the end he granted her request. They spent thirteen days together, and then he honoured her with valuable gifts and sent her back home.
[4] After the conquest of Hyrcania, it seemed to Alexander that by now he had done what he set out to do and that his hold on his kingdom was incontestable. He began, then, to imitate the luxurious Persian lifestyle and the extravagance of eastern kings. The first thing he did was introduce into his court ushers of eastern origin,* and then he formed a bodyguard for himself consisting of the most eminent easterners, including Darius’ brother, Oxathres. [5] He also took to wearing the Persian diadem,* and dressed in white clothes with no coloured border, a Persian sash, and everything else except trousers and kandys.* He had his companions wear purple-bordered robes, and he equipped the horses with Persian tack. [6] As if that were not enough, he also installed concubines in his retinue, just as Darius had; there were as many of them as the days of the year, and they were outstandingly beautiful, as might be expected given that they had been selected from all the women of Asia. [7] Every evening, these women paraded around the king’s bed, for him to choose the one who would spend the night with him. But in fact Alexander made little use of such practices, and largely stuck to his former habits, since he had no desire to offend Macedonian sensibilities. 78. His behaviour still found many critics, but he bribed them into acquiescence.
When Alexander found out that Satibarzanes, the satrap of Areia, had killed the soldiers he had left with him and was cooperating with Bessus—and had, in fact, decided to join Bessus in resisting the Macedonians—he marched against him.* Satibarzanes mustered his forces in Chortacana,* which was the most notable city in those parts and was endowed with exceptional natural strength, [2] but at the approach of the king the size of his army and the reputation of the Macedonians as fighters filled him with consternation. He therefore took two thousand men and rode off to Bessus, to ask him to send help as soon as possible, and he told the rest of his men to take refuge in a mountain range called [. . .],† the broken terrain of which offered plenty of places where men who lacked the courage to face their enemies in battle could find refuge.
[3] They did as he had told them and took refuge on a certain rock, tall and easily defensible, but the king, with his usual determination, put them under a close siege and forced them to surrender. [4] He followed this success by gaining the submission of all the cities in the satrapy. This took him no more than thirty days, and then he left Areia† and went to the main city of Drangiane, where he halted and rested his men.
79. It was around this time that Alexander found himself compelled to commit a despicable act, one that was alien to his fundamental goodness. What happened was that one of his Friends, a man called Dimnus, who disapproved of some of what the king was doing,* became angry enough to form a conspiracy against him. [2] He persuaded Nicomachus, his boyfriend, to join the conspiracy, but Nicomachus, who was very young,* told his brother Cebalinus about it, and Cebalinus, terrified that one of the conspirators might warn the king before he did, decided to turn informer himself.
[3] He went to the court, fell in with Philotas, and told him about the plot. He asked him to inform the king without delay, but Philotas, who may have been in on the plot, or may just have been careless, failed to do anything about the information he had received. Although he saw Alexander and took part in a long and wide-ranging conversation, he made no mention at all of what Cebalinus had told him. [4] After leaving Alexander, he told Cebalinus that he had not found a suitable opportunity to divulge the plot to the king, but he assured him that he would be meeting with the king alone the next day, and would tell him everything. But Philotas did the same thing the next day as well, so Cebalinus, who was worried about the danger he would find himself in if the king got the news from someone else, went behind Philotas’ back and approached one of the Royal Pages. He gave him a detailed account of all that had happened and asked him to tell the king as soon as possible.
[5] The page took Cebalinus into the armoury and hid him there, and then went in to see the king, whom he found bathing. He passed on the information Cebalinus had given him, and said that he had Cebalinus hidden and in his care. The king was astounded. He immediately had Dimnus arrested, and once he was in possession of all the facts, he sent for Cebalinus and Philotas. [6] While everyone was being interrogated and the investigation was still ongoing, Dimnus committed suicide. As for Philotas, although he admitted that he had been careless, he denied any involvement in the conspiracy, and the king left the decision in his case up to the Macedonians.
80. After a great deal of discussion, the Macedonians condemned Philotas to death. The others who were accused along with him were also condemned, and they included Parmenion, who was regarded as the foremost of Alexander’s Friends.* He was not there, but it was believed that he was actually the prime mover of the conspiracy, and that his son Philotas had been acting as his agent. [2] Philotas was tortured, and then, once he had confessed to the plot, he was put to death in the Macedonian manner,* as were the others who had been condemned along with him. Another similar case was that of Alexander the Lyncestian. Accused of plotting against the king, he had been held in prison for three years,* with the decision in his case delayed because of his kinship to Antigonus.* But now he was brought to trial before the Macedonians, and when he failed to find anything to say in his defence, he was put to death.
[3] Alexander saw to the assassination of Parmenion, Philotas’ father, by sending men out on dromedaries,* so that they would get to him before the news of Philotas’ death. Parmenion had been the governor of Media, and had been entrusted with the royal treasuries in Ecbatana, which held 180,000 talents. [4] Alexander also withdrew from their units any Macedonians who had ever criticized him, and those who were angry at Parmenion’s death, and anyone who had ever written anything detrimental to his interests in their letters to relatives back in Macedon, and formed them into a single regiment called the Refractory Regiment, so that the rest of the Macedonians would not be corrupted by their inappropriate talk and the bluntness with which they spoke.*
81. Once all this was behind him and he had made his arrangements for Drangiane, Alexander set out with his troops to launch an offensive against the people who were formerly known as the Ariaspians,† but were now called the Benefactors. The change of name came about as follows. Cyrus, the man who engineered the Persian takeover of the Median empire, once became trapped in the course of a campaign in an uninhabited region and found himself in extreme danger because of lack of provisions. In fact, for want of anything else to eat, his men were compelled to resort to cannibalism. But he was saved in the nick of time when the Arimaspians brought thirty thousand carts laden with food. Exemption from taxes was just one of the ways he rewarded them, and he revoked the name by which they had formerly been known and called them the Benefactors instead. [2] So now, when Alexander marched into their territory, they made him welcome, and he honoured them with appropriate gifts.*
Their neighbours, the Gedrosians, did the same and they too received suitable tokens of Alexander’s favour in return. He made Tiridates the governor of these two peoples. [3] While he was busy with these arrangements, messengers arrived with the news that Satibarzanes had returned to Areia from Bactria with a large force of cavalry, and had stirred the local people into rebellion.* Alexander’s response to the news was to send a division of his army under the command of Erigyius and Stasanor to deal with Satibarzanes, while he conquered Arachosia, the subjection of which took only a few days.*
82. At the beginning of the following year, Euthycritus became Archon in Athens, in Rome Lucius Platius and Lucius Papirius were the next to be appointed to the consulate, and the 113th Olympic festival was celebrated.† In this year:*
Alexander marched against the Paropanisadae, as they are called. [2] Their country lies right under the Greater and Lesser Bear constellations;* it is entirely blanketed with snow, and the extreme cold makes it a hostile environment for other peoples. Most of the country consists of a treeless plain, which is divided among a large number of villages. [3] The houses in these villages have vaulted brick roofs contracted to a peak.† In the middle of the roof there is an aperture through which smoke escapes, and since the building is closed on all sides,* the inhabitants are very well protected. [4] Because of the amount of snow, the natives spend most of the year inside their homes, with their food ready at hand. They bank up earth around their vines and fruit trees, leave them like that for the duration of winter, and then remove the earth at the time of new growth. [5] Nowhere is there anything green or cultivated to be seen; being gripped by snow and ice, the land is all white and sparkling. This means that no birds settle there, nor is it trodden by any wild animals; every part of the country is inhospitable and inaccessible.*
[6] Even though the army had all these difficulties to contend with, Alexander overcame the obstacles put in his way by the country with typically Macedonian boldness and grit. [7] One result of this was that many soldiers and non-combatants from the baggage train could not keep up and were abandoned, and others were blinded by the glare of the snow and the harshness of the reflected light.* [8] It was impossible to see anything clearly in the distance; it was only when smoke revealed the presence of villages that the Macedonians found that they were close to where some natives lived. That was how they managed to capture the villages. The amount of booty they took recompensed the soldiers for the ordeals they had been through, and before long the king had subdued the entire native population.
83. Next, Alexander drew near Mount Caucasus (or Mount Paropanisus, as it is also known) and made camp.* It took him sixteen days to cross this mountain range from one side to the other, and in the pass which leads to India he founded a city called Alexandria.* Deep in the Caucasus there is a rock with a perimeter of ten stades and a height of four stades, with a cave in it which the local inhabitants identify as the cave of Prometheus, and they also point out where the eagle that features in the story had its nest, and the marks of the chains.* [2] Alexander founded other towns as well,* a day’s march away from Alexandria,† and populated them with seven thousand barbarians, three thousand of his camp followers, and volunteers from the mercenary contingents. [3] Then he led his army into Bactria, because he had learnt that Bessus had assumed the diadem and was gathering his forces.
That was how things stood with Alexander. [4] The generals who had been sent to Areia found that the rebels had gathered a substantial army, and had as their general Satibarzanes, who was a skilled strategist and a man of exceptional courage. They made camp near the enemy. There was a lot of skirmishing, and for a while there were only limited engagements, [5] but then they fought a pitched battle. The barbarians were holding their own, but then the rebel commander, Satibarzanes, pulled the helmet from his head so that everyone could see who he was, and offered to fight any of the senior officers among the Macedonians in single combat. [6] Erigyius accepted the challenge and a titanic clash took place, which Erigyius won. At the death of their general the barbarians lost heart, and once they had received a guarantee of safety they surrendered to the king.
[7] After proclaiming himself king, Bessus sacrificed to the gods and invited his Friends to the celebratory banquet. In the course of the celebrations, Bessus and one of his companions, a man called Bagodaras, got into an argument.* The quarrel heated up until Bessus lost his temper and made it plain that he wanted to kill Bagodaras, but his Friends persuaded him to think better of it. [8] Although he was out of immediate danger, Bagodaras still fled that night to Alexander, and the fact that Alexander made him safe and promised to reward him for his defection tempted the most senior of Bessus’ generals. They formed a conspiracy, seized Bessus, and brought him to Alexander. [9] The king rewarded them generously and handed Bessus over to the brother and the other kinsmen of Darius for punishment.* After subjecting him to every imaginable kind of abuse and torture, they chopped him up into little pieces and disposed of the remnants here and there.
A major gap occurs in all the manuscripts at this point, covering the end of the year 328/7 and the beginning of 327/6 (the Archonship of Hegemon in Athens). We know from the Table of Contents that was at some point drawn up for each of Diodorus’ books that fifteen full chapters are missing. We have lost his account of the difficult conquest of Bactria and Sogdiana, Alexander’s increasing orientalization and its unpopularity (and probably his deification), and the early phases of Alexander’s Indian campaign. Some famous incidents took place during these months: Alexander’s marriage to Sogdianian Rhoxane; the drunken killing of Cleitus the Black; the Pages’ Conspiracy and the arrest of Callisthenes.
84. . . . Once a truce had been arranged on these terms, the queen,* who was astounded at Alexander’s generosity, sent him fabulous gifts and promised to be his loyal subject. In accordance with the terms of the truce, the mercenaries immediately left the city* and made camp about eighty stades away. They met with no interference and had no idea what was going to happen. [2] But Alexander was unyielding in his hostility towards them. He had kept his army in a state of readiness, and now he followed the barbarians and launched a surprise attack, intending to slaughter them.* The mercenaries’ immediate response was to shout out that fighting them contravened the truce oaths, and they invoked the gods who were being wronged by Alexander’s sacrilege; but Alexander shouted back at the top of his voice that he may have allowed them to leave the city, but that did not mean that the Macedonians would treat them as friends for ever.
[3] Undismayed by the severity of the danger, the mercenaries closed ranks and had the entire company adopt a circular formation (with the children and women corralled in the centre), so that they could securely defend against their attackers in every direction. The courage and calibre of these men, who fought with desperate fury, made the fighting so fierce that, in combination with the Macedonians’ determination to match and surpass barbarian valour, the battle became a scene of horror. [4] With the fighters engaging one another at close quarters, there were all kinds of ways for men to be killed or wounded. The Macedonians tore through the barbarians’ shields with their pikes and drove the iron heads into their lungs, while the mercenaries hurled their lances into the close-packed ranks of the enemy, who were so close that they could not miss.
[5] The number of mercenaries who were being wounded or killed was mounting—and the women began to take up the weapons of those who had fallen and fight alongside the men. The severity of the danger and the ferocity of the action forced them to find resources of courage untypical of their kind. Some of them even wore armour and stood in line next to their husbands, while others, lacking arms or armour, dashed forward, grabbed hold of their opponents’ shields, and impeded them very effectively. [6] In the end, overwhelmed by the superior numbers of the Macedonians, all the mercenaries and the women fighters were cut down, preferring death and glory to a cowardly clinging to life. Alexander separated out all those who had no military function and were unarmed, and the surviving women too, and gave them into the care of the cavalry.
85. After the successful assault of a number of other cities, and the killing of those who offered resistance, he came to the rock called Aornus, where the surviving natives had fled for refuge, trusting in its incredible strength. [2] It is said that, long ago, Heracles* planned to put the rock under siege, but refrained after receiving warning signs from the gods, including several severe earthquakes. But the effect of this story on Alexander was just to make him even more determined to besiege the stronghold and to pit his reputation against that of the god.
[3] The rock had a circumference of a hundred stades and a height of sixteen, and its surface was all smooth and rounded. Its southern flank was washed by the Indus, the greatest river in India, and its other flanks were protected by deep ravines with sheer sides. [4] After inspecting the place and seeing how rugged it was, Alexander despaired of taking it by force, but then an old man came to him, accompanied by his two sons. [5] The old man was extremely poor and had lived thereabouts for a long time—his home being a cave with three crude beds cut into the rock, where he spent the nights with his sons—so that he had come to know the area very well. He approached Alexander, explained his situation, and offered to guide the king through the rough hills and to a favourable point in relation to the position of the barbarians who had occupied the rock.
[6] Alexander promised to reward him generously, and after the old man had taken him there, the first thing he did was occupy the defile that led to the rock, thereby trapping the barbarians and denying them any hope of relief, since there was no other way out. Then, taking advantage of the great workforce at his disposal, he filled in the ravine at the base of the rock, which allowed him to draw near it and put it under a close siege. He assaulted it continuously for seven days and seven nights, with his men working in relays. [7] At first, the barbarians had the upper hand, because they held the higher ground, and many of Alexander’s men lost their lives as they pushed their way recklessly forward. But once the ravine had been filled in and the bolt-shooting catapults and other siege devices were in place—and once it had also become clear that the king was not going to give up—the Indians became terrified. Alexander cleverly foresaw what would happen, and he withdrew† the men who had been guarding the defile, so as to allow anyone who wanted to leave the rock to do so. And indeed the barbarians did abandon the rock by night, out of fear of Macedonian martial skill and the king’s determination.
86. So Alexander overcame the Indians by employing the ruse of inciting needless alarm, and took the rock without further loss of life. He gave the guide his promised reward, and then broke camp and led his troops away. [2] Coincidentally, an Indian called Aphrices was close by with an army of twenty thousand men and fifteen elephants,* but some of his men killed him and brought his head to Alexander, doing him a good turn in return for their lives. [3] The king took these men into his service, and rounded up the elephants, which were roaming free in the countryside.
Alexander next reached the Indus river, where he found that his thirty-oared ships were ready and that the river had been bridged. He rested his men for thirty days and then, after performing magnificent sacrifices to the gods, he led them across the river—and into an unusual adventure. [4] The king, Taxiles, had died. He had been succeeded by his son, Mophis, who had already made contact with Alexander while he was in Sogdiana, and had promised his support if Alexander would help him against his Indian enemies. And Mophis followed this up now by sending emissaries to Alexander and offering to surrender his kingdom to him.
[5] However, when Alexander was forty stades away, Mophis drew up his troops, seemingly for battle, deployed his elephants, and marched forward to meet him, with his Friends by his side. At the approach of this sizeable army in battle array, Alexander assumed that the Indian’s promises had been a deception, so that he would find the Macedonians unprepared when he launched his attack, and he ordered his trumpeters to give the signal for battle, formed up his men, and advanced to confront the Indians. [6] But when Mophis saw all the tumult in the Macedonian camp, he guessed what had happened. He left his army and rode forward with just a few men, and once he had corrected the Macedonians’ misapprehension, he surrendered himself and his troops to the king. [7] Alexander was very relieved, and returned his kingdom to him; he changed his name to Taxiles,* and from then on treated him as a friend and ally.
These were the events that took place in this year.
87. In the year of the Archonship of Chremes in Athens, the Romans appointed as their consuls Publius Cornelius and Aulus Postumius. In this year:
While he was in Taxiles’ realm, Alexander brought his army back up to strength and then marched against Porus, whose kingdom bordered that of Taxiles. [2] Porus had an army of more than fifty thousand foot, about three thousand horse, more than a thousand chariots, and 130 elephants, and he also had the support of another of the neighbouring kings, who was called Embisarus and who had almost as large an army as Porus. [3] When Alexander heard that Embisarus was four hundred stades away, he decided to attack Porus before his ally showed up, and he halted close to the Indians.*
[4] As soon as Porus found out that the enemy was near by, he drew up his men for battle. He divided the cavalry between the two wings, and posted the elephants in a terrifying array at regular intervals along the front. In the gaps between the elephants, he posted the remainder of his men, the heavy infantry, whose job it was to support the creatures and to make sure that they could not be attacked from the sides by the enemy’s javelins. [5] The overall effect of the arrangement was to make his army look like a city, with the elephants in the position of towers and the soldiers between them resembling the curtain walls. Alexander took good note of the enemy’s arrangements and disposed his men accordingly, in response to the formation he was facing.
88. In the first phase of the battle, almost all the Indians’ chariots were destroyed by Alexander’s cavalry. But then the elephants began to make good use of their great height and massive strength. Some of Alexander’s men were trampled in the dirt, armour and all, and died with their bones crushed; others were grasped by the elephants’ trunks and died a terrible death when they were raised up high and dashed back down to the ground. Many were transfixed by the elephants’ tusks and lost their lives in an instant, with their bodies run clean through.
[2] But the Macedonians firmly stood their ground against the horrific danger, and the battle became evenly balanced as their pikes thinned the ranks of those who were posted between the elephants. [3] After that, the elephants began to be struck by javelins—and they were wounded so often, and were in such agony as a result, that the Indians mounted on them lost control of the creatures’ movements, and they changed direction and charged uncontrollably into their own ranks, trampling their friends. [4] There was considerable confusion, but Porus could see what was happening. He had taken the most powerful of the elephants for himself, and he gathered about him forty others which had not yet been driven wild and launched an attack. They slammed into the enemy and took many lives, not least because Porus himself was by far the strongest man in his army. He was five cubits tall, and his chest was twice as broad as that of the most muscle-bound of his soldiers. [5] He was so strong that javelins thrown by him packed almost as great a punch as missiles fired by catapults.
The Macedonians facing Porus had found his courage too much for them, but Alexander called up his archers and light infantry and told them all to make Porus their target. [6] The men did as they had been told and soon many missiles were hurtling towards the Indian, who was so big that they could not miss. Porus fought on heroically, until the amount of blood he had lost from his many wounds made him faint, and he slumped down on the elephant and fell to the ground. [7] The rumour spread that the king was dead, and the rest of the Indians turned to flight.
89. Many Indians lost their lives in the course of their flight, but then Alexander, who had won a notable victory, had the trumpets recall his men. More than twelve thousand Indians died in the battle, and the casualties included two of Porus’ sons, his generals, and the most eminent of the leading men of his kingdom. [2] More than nine thousand men were taken prisoner as well, along with eighty elephants. Porus himself, who was still alive, was handed over to the Indians for treatment. [3] On the Macedonian side, 280 cavalry died and more than seven hundred infantry. Alexander buried his dead, rewarded those of his men who had fought with valour as they deserved, and sacrificed to Helios, the Sun, on the grounds that it was he who had made his conquest of the East possible.
[4] The hill country near by had plenty of good fir trees, along with quite a bit of cedar and pine, and a more than ample supply of other materials needed for ship-building, so Alexander built a good number of ships. [5] His plan was to get to the end of India, subduing all the inhabitants of the country on the way, and then to sail down to the Ocean.* [6] He founded two cities, one on the far side of the river at the point where he had crossed, and the other at the spot where he had defeated Porus. He had such a large workforce at his disposal that the work was soon completed. Once Porus had recovered, Alexander acknowledged his merits by restoring him to the kingship of the country he had formerly ruled. Then he let his men rest for thirty days, since there was no shortage of provisions where they were.
90. The nearby hill country was not without interest. In addition to ship-quality timber, there were also a great many snakes there, and at sixteen cubits they were exceptionally long.* There were many different species of monkey as well, of various sizes, and they themselves show the way in which they can be caught. Force is not a good way to capture them, because they are strong creatures, and canny as well, [2] but they imitate everything, so this is what the hunters do.* Some of them smear their eyes with honey, while others—this is while the animals are watching—tie on sandals or hang mirrors around their necks. Then they leave, but first they join the sandals together with straps, put out gum instead of honey, and attach nooses to the mirrors. [3] So when the animals try to do what they saw the hunters doing, they become helpless, with their eyelids stuck together, their feet bound, and their bodies immobilized. Then they become easy prey for the hunters.
[4] Alexander next cowed Sasibisares* into submission—he was the king who had failed to arrive in time to help Porus in battle—and forced him to become his vassal. Then he crossed the river with his army and marched on, through land of exceptional fertility. [5] Various kinds of tree grew there, which attained a height of seventy cubits and a girth that could hardly be encompassed by four men, and overshadowed three plethra of ground.* This land too was infested by snakes, which were small in size and variously patterned. [6] Some of them looked like sticks made of bronze, while others had thick, hairy crests. Death followed quickly from their bites, and their victims were seized by terrible pain and burst out in a bloody sweat. [7] The Macedonians, who fared badly from the bites, therefore hung hammocks in the trees to sleep in and passed restless nights. Subsequently, however, the natives told them of a root that acted as an antidote,* and they got over their fear.
91. As Alexander and his men continued on their way, he received word that King Porus, a cousin of the Porus who had been defeated, had left his kingdom and fled to the Gandaridae.* [2] Alexander responded by sending a force under Hephaestion to Porus’ kingdom, to see to its takeover by the friendly Porus. Meanwhile, he campaigned against the Adrestae, as they are called. Some of their cities fell to him by main force and some he won over by diplomacy, and then he came to the land of the Cathaeans.* [3] It was the custom among these people for wives to be cremated along with their husbands—a regulation that came into force thanks to one woman in particular, who poisoned her husband.* [4] Anyway, after a great deal of fighting, Alexander succeeded in taking their largest and strongest city, which he put to the torch. He had another of their important cities under siege when the Indians came to him as suppliants and begged him for mercy, and he brought the hostilities to an end.
The targets of his next campaign were the cities that fell within Sopeithes’ domain. These cities have an exceptionally fine legal system, because in all their measures they focus on what others will think of them. [5] One consequence of this is that, at infancy, children there are separated into categories. Those who are physically sound and have the potential to grow into fair and fit adults are brought up, while those who are physically defective are judged not to be worth rearing and are killed. [6] In keeping with this, when it comes to arranging marriages there, people are not bothered about dowries or profit in any form, but think only of beauty and physical excellence. [7] As a result, very many of the inhabitants of these cities have particularly dignified bearings. With a height of over four cubits, the beauty and stature of their king, Sopeithes, was unrivalled among his subjects. He emerged from his capital city, and surrendered himself and his kingdom to Alexander, but such was the conqueror’s sense of justice that he received it back again.* [8] And Sopeithes devoted himself to arranging for the entire army to be treated for several days to lavish banquets.
92. Alexander was given many valuable gifts by Sopeithes, including 150 impressively large and strong dogs, which were said to have some tiger in them. [2] Sopeithes wanted Alexander to recognize the quality of the dogs by seeing them in action, so he had a mature lion let into an enclosure and he set on it two of the poorest of the dogs he had given Alexander. The lion started to overpower these two, however, so he released two more, [3] and then the four dogs began to get the better of the lion. At this point, Sopeithes had a man enter the enclosure with a knife and make as if to cut off the right leg of one of the dogs. Alexander cried out, and his bodyguards dashed up and stayed the hand of the Indian, but Sopeithes promised to give him three dogs to compensate for this one, and then the handler took hold of the dog’s leg and slowly but surely cut through it. No yelp or whimper was heard from the dog, and it stayed with its jaws clamped shut in the lion’s flesh until it bled to death, still attached to the beast.
93. Meanwhile, Hephaestion arrived with the army that had accompanied him on his mission. He had successfully conquered a large chunk of India, and Alexander commended him for his valour and then entered the land ruled by Phegeus. The local inhabitants welcomed the Macedonians, and Phegeus brought Alexander a great many gifts. Alexander allowed him to retain his kingdom, and Phegeus provided very generously for the army for two days. Then Alexander marched on to the Hyphasis river,* which was seven stades wide and six fathoms deep, and had a powerful current that made it hard to cross.
[2] Phegeus told him that on the far side of the river there was a desert* that would take twelve days to cross, and that then he would come to a river called the Ganges, which was thirty-two stades wide and the deepest river in India. Beyond the Ganges, Phegeus went on, lived the Tabraesi and the Gandaridae.* The king of the Gandaridae was called Xandrames, and he had an army of twenty thousand horse, two hundred thousand foot, two thousand chariots, and four thousand elephants equipped for war. Alexander found this unbelievable, and he sent for Porus and asked him whether or not the information he was receiving was accurate. [3] Porus confirmed that it was, but added that the king of the Gandaridae was an utterly ordinary and undistinguished individual, rumoured to be the son of a barber. His father had been an attractive man and a great favourite of the queen, and when the king was murdered by his wife, the kingdom had fallen to him. [4] Although Alexander could see that it would be difficult to wage a successful campaign against the Gandaridae, he was still determined to try. His faith in the calibre of his Macedonian troops and in the oracles he had received made him confident that he would defeat the barbarians. After all, the Pythia had called him invincible, and Ammon had granted him dominion over the whole world.*
94. Alexander could see, however, that the continuous campaigning had exhausted his men. For almost eight years they had been beaten down by hard work and danger, and he was sure that he would have to find good arguments to persuade them to undertake a campaign against the Gandaridae, [2] since there had already been considerable loss of life and there was no prospect of an end to the fighting. The horses’ hoofs had been worn thin by non-stop travel,* most of the men’s weaponry had become blunt, their Greek clothing was long gone, and they were forced to make use of foreign fabrics and re-tailor Indian garments. [3] And, as luck would have it, there had been ferocious storms for seventy days,* with continuous thunder, and thunderbolts constantly crashing around them.
All this was clearly going to make it difficult for him, and he realized that the only way he was going to attain his goal was if he could improve his men’s lives to such an extent that they were won over and gave him their absolute loyalty. [4] He therefore let them plunder the farmland beside the river,† where there was plenty of booty for the taking, and while the men were busy foraging, he gathered together their wives and the children who had been born to them. He promised the women a monthly allowance of grain, and awarded the children military stipends that depended on their fathers’ ranks. [5] Then, when the soldiers came back laden with all the good things they had found in the course of their foraging, he convened a general assembly. He delivered a carefully worded speech about the expedition against the Gandaridae, but he completely failed to win the Macedonians over, and he abandoned the plan.*
95. Having decided that this spot constituted the furthest limit of the expedition, he first raised altars to the twelve gods,* each fifty cubits high, and then he marked out the circuit of a camp that was three times as large as the existing one, dug a ditch around it with a width of fifty feet and a depth of forty feet, and constructed a formidable rampart out of the earth that was excavated from the trench and heaped up on the side nearest the camp. [2] Then he ordered every infantryman to build a two-bed hut, with each bed five cubits long, and every cavalryman to build not just a hut, but also two mangers, each double the usual size; and similarly outsized versions were made of everything else that was to be left behind. His intention in doing this was not just to construct a camp fit for heroes, but to leave the natives with evidence that great men had been there, men of superhuman strength.
[3] Once he had finished with this, Alexander and his entire army retraced their route back to the Acesines river. He found some completed hulls there, and he fitted out these boats and ordered more to be made. [4] At this juncture, a number of auxiliaries and mercenaries arrived from Greece, who had been led there by their commanding officers. There were thirty thousand foot and almost six thousand horse, and they also brought with them twenty-five thousand superb suits of infantry armour and a hundred talents of medicinal herbs. All of these supplies were distributed among the men. [5] When the fleet was ready—it consisted of two hundred undecked galleys and eight hundred transports—his final act was to name the two cities that had been founded on the river: he called one Nicaea in commemoration of his victory, and the other Bucephala after the horse of his that had died in the battle with Porus.*
96. So Alexander embarked with his Friends and sailed down the river towards the southern Ocean,* while the bulk of his army marched alongside the river, led by Craterus and Hephaestion.* When they reached the junction of the Acesines and the Hydaspes, he disembarked his men and led them against the Sibi, as they are known, [2] who are said to be descended from the men who served with Heracles in the campaign against the Rock of Aornus, and to have been settled in this region by Heracles after they had failed to capture the rock.* Alexander made camp close to a splendid city, and the most eminent of the citizens came out to meet him. In their meeting with the king, in addition to giving him the magnificent gifts they had brought, they reminded him of their kinship and said that, as kin,* they would willingly support his every enterprise. [3] Alexander thanked them for their loyalty, declared their cities free, and then marched against their neighbours.
Finding that the Agalasseis had raised an army of forty thousand foot and three thousand horse, he brought them to battle and inflicted very heavy casualties on them in the course of defeating them. The survivors were sold into slavery, once Alexander had taken the nearby towns where they had fled for safety. [4] The other local peoples had also massed together, and he stormed into a great city where twenty thousand of them had sought refuge, but the Indians barricaded the streets and fought so valiantly from the houses that Alexander had a hard time of it, and quite a few Macedonian lives were lost. [5] This made the king angry, and he put the city to the torch and burnt a great many of the inhabitants to death. About three thousand survivors withdrew to the acropolis for safety, and when they came to him as suppliants to beg for mercy, he let them go free.
97. Alexander embarked once more with his Friends and sailed downstream until he came to the confluence of the rivers I have already mentioned with the Indus.* The collision of three great rivers at this one point created many fearsome eddies, which spun the boats around and threatened to destroy them. The current was so fierce and strong that the helmsmen were unable to cope, for all their skill, and two of the long ships were sunk, while many vessels ran aground. [2] The command ship became trapped in a long stretch of rapids, and the king found himself in extreme danger. With death staring him in the face, Alexander shed his clothes and, naked, clung on to anything that seemed to offer the prospect of safety. His Friends swam alongside the boat in order to catch him, since the ship was in danger of capsizing.* [3] On board the ship, there was utter chaos as the crew struggled to master the violent current, but there was nothing that human skill or strength could do against the power of the water, and Alexander made it ashore with the help of the swimmers.† It was a close-run thing, but he had beaten the odds and survived, and he sacrificed to the gods in thanks for having escaped death, and in celebration of the fact that he had fought a battle with a river, just as Achilles had.*
98. Next, he campaigned against two populous and warlike peoples, the Sydracae and the Malli, who, he found, had collected an army of more than eighty thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and seven hundred chariots. Before Alexander’s arrival, these two peoples had been enemies, but on his approach they had banded together; each gave the other ten thousand unmarried girls, and their reconciliation was confirmed by granting each other in this way the right of intermarriage. [2] Nevertheless, they failed to put a joint force in the field for a battle, because they fell out once more, this time over which of them should have overall command and withdrew into the nearby towns.
Alexander drew near the first of these towns. His intention was to take it by storm, [3] but just then one of the army diviners, a man called Demophon, approached him and said that it had been revealed to him by certain omens that the king would find himself in mortal danger from a wound received in the course of the assault. He asked Alexander, therefore, to leave this town alone for the time being and to turn his attention elsewhere. [4] Alexander told the man off for sapping the army’s morale, deployed his troops for the assault, and took the lead himself as they advanced on the town, which he was determined to capture by main force. It was taking time for the siege engines to be moved up into place, but Alexander took the lead, broke down a postern gate, and burst into the town. He cut down many of the enemy, forced the rest to retreat, and pursued them to the acropolis.
[5] The Macedonians were still busy trying to secure the outer wall, so Alexander grabbed a ladder, leant it up against the wall of the citadel, and climbed up, holding his shield over his head. He was so quick to act that he reached the top of the wall before the foremost barbarian soldiers could intercept him. [6] The Indians did not dare to come to close quarters, but fired javelins and arrows at him from a distance—such a hail of missiles that the king found himself in trouble. Some Macedonians brought up a couple of ladders and tried to climb up to the top of the wall, but the ladders broke, because they were all on them at once, and the men fell to the ground.
99. Finding himself isolated and with no hope of support, Alexander did something that was unexpected in its boldness, and well worth recording. He felt it would betray the success of his expedition if he were to retreat from the wall and back to his men without having achieved anything, so he leapt down into the citadel, fully armed but all alone. [2] The Indians ran up to attack him, but he defended himself valiantly against their onslaught. His right side was protected by a tree that had sunk its roots right by the wall, the wall itself stopped the Indians attacking him from the left, and he displayed the kind of courage that one would have expected from a king whose valour had already accomplished so much, and who was determined to end his life in a blaze of glory.
[3] His helmet and shield were struck time and again, but eventually an arrow hit him below the breast and he fell to one knee, reeling from the wound. The Indian who had shot him ran straight up, not expecting any trouble, and aimed a blow at him, but Alexander thrust his sword up and into the man’s side. The wound was fatal and the barbarian fell to the ground, but the king grabbed hold of a nearby branch, pulled himself to his feet, and challenged the Indians to fight. [4] Just then, Peucestas, one of the king’s foot guards, who had climbed up on another ladder, reached the king—he was the first to do so—and covered him with his shield. Then several others arrived, the barbarians lost heart, and Alexander was saved.* But the wounding of their king made the Macedonians furious, and once the town had fallen to them they killed everyone they came across and filled the town with corpses.
[5] Alexander was laid up for many days while he underwent treatment. For a long time resentment had been building up among the Greeks who had been settled in Bactria and Sogdiana because they had been made to live among barbarians, and now, when the rumour reached them that the king had died from his wounds, they defected from Macedon. [6] They banded together—there were about three thousand of them—and suffered terribly in the course of their journey home; later they were slaughtered by the Macedonians after Alexander’s death.*
100. When Alexander had recovered from his wound, he sacrificed to the gods to thank them for saving his life and arranged great banquets for his friends. In the course of the celebrations, an unusual incident occurred which should not go unrecorded. [2] Among the invited guests was a Macedonian called Coragus, an exceptionally strong man who had often distinguished himself in battle, and, under the influence of alcohol, he challenged Dioxippus to single combat—Dioxippus being an Athenian athlete who had won crowns in the most notable games.* [3] Naturally, the guests at the symposium stoked their rivalry, and Dioxippus accepted the challenge. Alexander named a day for the contest, and when the time came for the duel to take place, tens of thousands of men gathered to watch it. [4] The Macedonians and Alexander backed Coragus because he was one of them, while the Greeks were on Dioxippus’ side.*
The Macedonian stepped up for the competition fully armed and arrayed in expensive armour, but the Athenian was naked, with an oiled body, and carried only a moderately sized club. [5] Both men were remarkably well-built and exceptionally strong, so what was about to take place was expected to be little short of a battle between gods. Since the Macedonian’s physique and gleaming armour inspired terror, he was taken to be the image of Ares, while Dioxippus, with his exceptional strength, his athletic training, and his choice of a club as his weapon, resembled Heracles.
[6] As they closed in on each other, the Macedonian hurled his javelin, but there was still quite a gap between them, and the Greek merely leant aside a little to let it fly harmlessly past. Then the Macedonian couched his pike and advanced, but as soon as he was close the Greek struck the pike with his club and broke it. [7] After these two failures, the Macedonian resorted to his sword, and he was just drawing it when the Greek pounced. With his left hand he seized the Macedonian’s right hand, which was drawing the sword, and at the same time he used his other hand to force his opponent off balance and knock him off his feet. [8] Once he was down on the ground, the Greek stood over him, with his foot on his neck, raised his club, and looked expectantly at the spectators.
101. The crowd erupted, partly because this was not the result they had expected, and partly in appreciation of the extraordinary courage the Greek had displayed, and the king ordered him to let the Macedonian live. He then brought the performance to an end and left, fuming at the Macedonian’s defeat. [2] Dioxippus released his fallen opponent. He had won a famous victory, and he left the arena bedecked with wreaths by his fellow Greeks, who felt that he had earned glory not just for himself but for all Greeks. But Fortune did not allow the man much time to enjoy his victory.
[3] Alexander’s ill will towards Dioxippus only increased as the days went by, and eventually his Friends and all the Macedonians in his court, who resented the Greek’s success, persuaded his chamberlain to slip a golden goblet under his pillow. Then, at the next symposium, they accused him of theft and pretended to discover the goblet, thus stigmatizing him as a thief and ruining his reputation. [4] It was clear to Dioxippus that the Macedonians were ganging up against him. He left the symposium at this point, and a short while later, back in his quarters, he wrote a letter to Alexander explaining the foul trick that had been played on him and gave it to his servants to deliver. Then he committed suicide. It was rash of him to have accepted the challenge to the duel, but it was far more stupid of him to have taken his own life. [5] His folly came in for a lot of criticism from his detractors, with people saying that it was hard to have a super-strong body, but a weak mind.
[6] Alexander read the letter and was upset that the man had died. There were many occasions when he missed him for his merits—which is to say that, after neglecting the man while he was there, he missed him when he was gone. The iniquity of Dioxippus’ detractors eventually taught him to recognize the man’s true goodness, but by then it was too late.
102. Alexander ordered the army to continue its march alongside the river, shadowing the fleet, while he sailed downstream towards the Ocean. He came to land in the country of the Sambastae, as they are known, [2] who were at least as populous as any other Indian people, and just as skilled at warfare. They lived in cities which were run as democracies,* and when they heard about the approach of the Macedonians they mustered an army of sixty thousand foot, six thousand horse, and five hundred chariots. [3] But the arrival of the fleet frightened them—it was an unfamiliar and unexpected sight—and, besides, they were aware of the reputation of the Macedonians and it terrified them. So, seeing that their elders also advised them not to fight, they sent a delegation of fifty of their most distinguished men to ask Alexander to treat them mercifully. [4] The king complimented the men and agreed to a peace treaty, and the Indians showered him with valuable gifts and instituted his worship as a hero.*
The next peoples to submit to him were the Sodrae* and Massani, who lived on opposite banks of the river. He founded a riverside city here called Alexandria, and picked the ten thousand settlers who were to inhabit it.* [5] Then he came to the country of King Musicanus, where he got the king into his power, killed him, and made the people his subjects. After that, he invaded the country where Porticanus was king. He assaulted and took two towns, which he put to the torch after allowing his soldiers to plunder them. Porticanus himself escaped to the safety of a stronghold, but Alexander captured it and killed the king, who refused to surrender. He then proceeded to capture every single one of the cities which had been in Porticanus’ realm, and he left them all in ruins, in order to strike terror into Porticanus’ neighbours.
[6] Next, in the realm of King Sambus, he destroyed farmland and left a great many towns in ruins; the inhabitants were sold into slavery, but over eighty thousand of the barbarians were slaughtered as well. [7] He visited a similar catastrophe on the people known as Brahmans,* but when the survivors came to him as suppliants and begged for mercy, he granted clemency to everyone except the ringleaders, who were punished. King Sambus saved his life by fleeing with thirty elephants into the country on the other side of the Indus.
103. The last of the Brahman towns, called Harmatelia,* was confident that the courage of its citizens and the ruggedness of its location would keep it safe. Alexander sent a small force of light-armed troops there, with orders to engage the enemy and withdraw if they came out against them. [2] There were only about five hundred of them, and the inhabitants of Harmatelia scoffed at their attack on the walls. Three thousand soldiers sallied out of the town, and Alexander’s men ran away, pretending to do so out of fear. The barbarians set out in pursuit, [3] but they had not gone far when Alexander checked them and initiated a hard-fought battle in which the barbarians lost many men, killed or captured.
Quite a few of Alexander’s soldiers were also wounded, however, and found themselves in mortal danger. [4] The barbarians had smeared their weapons with a deadly poison—in fact, it was this that gave them the confidence to risk a battle. The way they made the poison was by catching and killing certain snakes, and leaving their bodies out in the sun. [5] As the heat of the sun dissolved the flesh, drops of sweat appeared on the surface, and the poison was drawn out of the flesh along with the moisture. As soon as a man was wounded, his body went numb, but this was quickly followed by severe pain, and by convulsions and juddering which racked the whole body. The skin became cold and livid, and vomiting occurred as a means of expelling black bile, while a dark foam bubbled up from the wound and gangrene set in. The gangrene spread rapidly, overran the vital parts of the body, and a terrible death followed. [6] It made no difference whether a man was wounded badly, or received only a flesh wound or a scratch.
An appalling death, then, awaited anyone who was wounded, and although Alexander found every case distressing, he was particularly upset by Ptolemy. This was the Ptolemy who later became a king, and who at that time was a great favourite of Alexander’s.* [7] Something curious and unusual occurred in Ptolemy’s case, and there were those who were inclined to attribute it to divine providence, in the sense that his abilities and his extraordinary generosity towards others had endeared him to everyone, and the help he received was no more than his decency deserved. What happened was that Alexander had a dream in which he saw a snake holding a plant in its mouth, and in the dream the snake showed him what the plant looked like, explained its virtue, and pointed out where it grew. [8] When he woke up, therefore, he tracked the plant down and ground it up.* He not only rubbed it on Ptolemy’s body, but also gave him an infusion to drink, and he did indeed cure his friend. Now that the plant’s efficacy had been recognized, everyone else received the same treatment and recovered. As for the city of Harmatelia, Alexander planned to assault it, despite its strength and size, but then the inhabitants came to him as suppliants and capitulated, and he spared them any punishment.
104. So he and his Friends reached the Ocean. He performed magnificent sacrifices to the gods on two islands that he found there,* and while pouring libations he also let a large number of golden goblets fall into the sea and sink. Finally, he built altars to Tethys and to Ocean,* and then it seemed to him that the campaign he had undertaken was at an end.
After leaving these islands, he sailed back up the Indus to a notable city called Patala.* [2] Its constitution was very similar to that of Sparta, in the sense that it had two kings from two royal houses who gained their thrones by inheritance. At times of war, the kings were in charge, but overall responsibility for the state was in the hands of the Board of Elders. [3] At Patala, Alexander burnt those of his ships that were in poor condition, and entrusted the rest of the fleet to Nearchus and some of his other Friends; their orders were to sail along the Ocean, hugging the coastline all the way, to take note of everything they saw,* and then to meet him at the mouth of the Euphrates.
[4] He himself took the army. Over the course of the next lengthy phase of the march, he used force to overcome any opposition he met, but was generous in his treatment of those who submitted to him. The Abritae,* for instance, and the inhabitants of Gedrosia he won over peacefully. [5] But after Patala, he crossed a long stretch of waterless land, much of which was also uninhabited, and then he came to the borders of Oreitis. Here he divided the army into three, with Ptolemy and Leonnatus in charge of the other two divisions. [6] Ptolemy’s job was to plunder the coastal regions, while Leonnatus did the same inland and Alexander ravaged the uplands and the hill country. The simultaneous devastation of so much land meant that there was no part of the country that was not ablaze, with its goods being plundered and its inhabitants slaughtered. [7] It did not take the soldiers long, then, to acquire a great deal of booty, nor did it take long for the number of dead to reach countless thousands. But the destruction of these peoples frightened all their neighbours into submission. [8] Alexander wanted to found a city by the sea, and finding a sheltered harbour which was close to a spot that was suitable for a new settlement, he founded a city there called Alexandria.*
105. He next entered the country of the Oreitae through the mountain passes, and before long he had made the entire population subject to him. The Oreitan way of life is fundamentally the same as the Indian; there is only one practice that is significantly different, but it is quite a strange one. [2] When someone dies there, his body is carried off for burial by his relatives, who are naked and carry spears. They place the body in some undergrowth in the countryside, and then strip it of its clothing and finery, and leave the corpse to be eaten by wild animals. They divide the dead man’s clothes among themselves, sacrifice to the chthonian heroes, and feast all the members of the dead man’s household.
[3] On his way towards Gedrosia, marching along the coast, Alexander next encountered a people who were wary of strangers and lived utterly brutish lives. [4] The inhabitants of this part of the world never cut their nails from birth to death, nor comb their hair, their skin has been burnt by the sun, and they dress in animal skins. [5] Their food is the flesh of monstrous sea-creatures that are cast up on the shore, and the houses they build have walls made of seashells and roofs made of the ribs of these creatures, which they used as beams, eighteen cubits long. And instead of tiles, they covered their roofs with the creatures’ scales.*
[6] Shortage of provisions made this stage of Alexander’s journey arduous, and then the next region he came to was completely uninhabited and lacking in everything that sustains life. As the number of men dying of hunger grew, the Macedonians lost heart and Alexander became extremely upset and concerned. The idea that men whose prowess had enabled them to conquer the world should die ingloriously in a desert, starved of all resources, appalled him. [7] He therefore dispatched lightly clad messengers to Parthyaea, Drangiane, Areia, and the other provinces that bordered the desert, who were instructed to see that dromedaries and other species† which were regularly used as pack animals arrived as soon as possible at the border with Carmania, laden with food and other supplies.* [8] These messengers raced off to the satraps of these provinces and arranged for large quantities of provisions to be transported to the appointed place. Alexander still lost a lot of men, however, first because of the desperate shortage of food, and then because during the march some of the Oreitae attacked Leonnatus’ division and inflicted heavy casualties before withdrawing safely back into their own territory.
106. Eventually, however, Alexander made it across the desert and came to a land that was inhabited and well supplied with everything he might need. Once his men had recovered, he marched on for seven days with the army adorned as though for a festival, and he turned the whole journey into a Dionysian revel, with feasting and drinking and celebrations.* [2] This revel was just over when he heard that many of his satraps and governors had been doing wrong, abusing their powers and treating their subjects with high-handed abusiveness, and he punished them as they deserved. As word spread of Alexander’s intolerance of wrongdoing among his officials, many of his governors became frightened, because they knew they had been acting in an arrogant and lawless manner. Some of them, who had mercenary forces under their command, rebelled, while others packed up their valuables and fled. [3] When Alexander found out about this, he wrote to all the generals and satraps in Asia, ordering them to disband their mercenary forces as soon as they had read the letter.
[4] Just then, while the king was staying in a coastal town called Salmous* and was in the middle of holding a dramatic contest in the theatre, there arrived in the harbour the fleet that had been given the mission of sailing along the coastline of the Ocean. The officers came straight to the theatre, hailed Alexander, and gave him an account of their adventures. [5] The Macedonians, delighted that they had arrived safely, marked the occasion with loud applause, and the whole theatre was filled with unrestrained celebration.
[6] In their report, the returning sailors said that the Ocean had astonishing tides. When it was on the ebb, a large number of sizeable islands* became visible just offshore, but when it was in flood all these islands were inundated by the substantial body of water that sped towards land, and there was enough foam to turn the surface of the water white. But the strangest adventure of all, they said, was when they encountered a large number of unbelievably enormous sea-creatures.* [7] They were terrified at first and gave up any hope of survival, since they were sure that the ships were going to be destroyed in the next instant and that they would die along with them. But when they all yelled at once and made a terrific noise by beating on their shields, and when the trumpets joined in as well, the unexpected noise frightened the monsters, and they disappeared into the depths of the sea.
107. After hearing their report, Alexander told the officers in command of the fleet to sail on to the Euphrates, while he took the army all the way up to the borders of Susiane. This was when Caranus,* an advanced Indian philosopher who stood high in Alexander’s estimation, brought his life to an end. The circumstances were unusual. [2] He had lived for seventy-three years without having experienced a day of illness, and so he decided that, since both Nature and Fortune had given him unalloyed happiness, it was time to end his life. [3] He had fallen ill and was getting worse day by day, so he asked the king to build him a great pyre. He would climb to the top of this, he said, and then Alexander should get his servants to set fire to it.
[4] At first, Alexander tried to dissuade him, but his words fell on deaf ears, so he said that he would do as Caranus asked. Word got around about what was going to happen, and when the pyre had been built, a large crowd came to witness the unusual spectacle. [5] True to his beliefs, Caranus cheerfully climbed up to the top of the pyre and was burnt to death along with it. Some of those present judged him insane, while others thought he was making a conceited display of fortitude, but there were also those who were impressed by his courage and his contempt for death. [6] Alexander gave Caranus a lavish funeral, and then went on to Susa. While he was there, he married Stateira, the eldest daughter of Darius, and gave the other daughter, Drypetis, to be Hephaestion’s wife.* He also persuaded the most illustrious of his Friends to marry, and he gave them as their wives young Persian women from the most noble families.*
108. At this juncture, thirty thousand Persians arrived in Susa. They were very young, but they had been selected for their good looks and strength. [2] They had been formed into a unit on Alexander’s orders, and for quite a long time they had been under supervisors and instructors, training them in the arts of war. All of them were decked out in costly Macedonian-style suits of armour. They made camp in front of the city and put on a demonstration for the king of their discipline and proficiency with weapons, and won high praise from him. [3] It was not just that the Macedonians had refused an order to cross the Ganges river;* they were also given to heckling him in assemblies and they thought the idea that Alexander’s father was the god Ammon was absurd. The reason, then, that Alexander had formed this unit from Persians (all drawn from one and the same age-group) was to have it act as a counterweight to the Macedonian phalanx.*
That was how things stood with Alexander. [4] Harpalus had been entrusted with the treasury in Babylon and the public revenues, but no sooner had Alexander marched into India than he turned to a life of debauchery, since he did not expect Alexander to return. Harpalus had been put in charge of a large satrapy, but what he prioritized and devoted himself to was the violation of women and illicit sex with natives. He spent a lot of the treasure on the most intemperate pleasures imaginable, and earned himself a bad name by having fish brought in large quantities all the way from the Red Sea* and instituting similarly extravagant practices. [5] Then he had the most famous courtesan in the world, a woman called Pythonice, brought to him from Athens. He honoured this woman with gifts fit for a queen while she was alive, and when she died he gave her a lavish funeral and built a costly tomb for her in Attica.* [6] Next he sent for another Athenian courtesan, called Glycera, and with her he lived a life of extraordinary luxury and extravagance. But, knowing the vicissitudes of Fortune, he made sure that his generosity towards the Athenian democracy secured him a bolt-hole there.*
On his return from India, Alexander accused a lot of the satraps of crimes and put them to death, and Harpalus was afraid of being punished. He packed up five thousand talents of silver, gathered an army of six thousand mercenaries, and left Asia.* He sailed to Attica, [7] but his plea for refuge fell on deaf ears in Athens, so he left his mercenaries at Cape Taenarum in Laconia,* returned to Athens with a portion of his money, and appealed to the people as a suppliant. Antipater and Olympias demanded his extradition,* and although Harpalus distributed a great deal of money to politicians so that they would support his appeal, he slipped away by boat and joined his mercenaries at Taenarum. [8] From there, he sailed to Crete, where he was murdered by a friend of his called Thibron. The Athenians carried out an investigation into Harpalus’ finances, and Demosthenes and some other politicians were found guilty of accepting money from him.
109. When the Olympic festival was held,* Alexander had a herald in Olympia proclaim that everyone who had been sent into exile from his homeland was to be taken back, unless they were temple-robbers or murderers. He himself selected the oldest of the Macedonians and released them from service. There were about ten thousand of them. [2] When he found out that many of them were heavily in debt, he paid off what they owed in a single day, which cost him just short of ten thousand talents.
The remaining Macedonians, however, were tending towards mutiny and, when he convened an assembly, they tried to shout him down. With no thought of the danger, Alexander’s response was to condemn their behaviour. This cowed the majority, and then he boldly leapt down from the speaker’s platform, seized the ringleaders of the disturbance with his own hands, and turned them over to his attendants for punishment. [3] The disaffection became far worse, however, and the king gave positions in the army to some of the Persians he had singled out, and began to promote them to the highest command. Then the Macedonians had a change of heart, and they repeatedly begged Alexander, with tears in their eyes, to forgive them, and eventually he was won over and made his peace with them.
110. In the Archonship of Anticles in Athens, the Romans appointed as their consuls Lucius Cornelius and Quintus Popillius. In this year:
Alexander made up the number of those he had released from service by recruiting Persians, a thousand of whom were assigned to the Household Guard, and on the whole he placed no less trust in these Persians than he did in his Macedonians. [2] Peucestas arrived around this time as well, bringing twenty thousand Persian archers and slingers,* whom Alexander added to already existing units of the army—a revolutionary innovation that enabled him to create the kind of integrated army that he aimed to have.* [3] Some of the Macedonians had sons whose mothers were female prisoners, and Alexander did an accurate count of them. There were not far short of ten thousand of them, and he set aside enough money for all of them to receive a liberal education and appointed men to teach them the appropriate subjects.
Then he gathered his troops and left Susa.* After crossing the Tigris, he halted at the Carian Villages,* as they are called, [4] and then he marched through Sittacene, which took him four days, and arrived at a place called Sambana. He stayed there for seven days, resting his men, and then three days later he reached the land occupied by the Celones. There were Boeotians living there, as they still do today, who had been uprooted during Xerxes’ expedition to Greece,* but still remembered their ancestral customs. [5] They were bilingual, for instance—scarcely distinguishable from the natives when they spoke one language, but with very many Greek words and idioms preserved in the other.
Finally, after waiting there for several days, he broke camp, but made a detour from his itinerary and went to Bagistana* to see the sights. This is a truly wonderful country, filled with fruit trees and everything else that makes life good. [6] Next he came to land that was capable of supporting vast herds of horses. It was said that in the old days there were 160,000 horses at pasture there, but when Alexander was there the number was found to be sixty thousand.* He stayed there for thirty days, and then on the seventh day after leaving he arrived at Ecbatana in Media. [7] This is a city the circuit of which is said to be two hundred and fifty stades; the royal court buildings are there, which constitute the centre of all Media, and very well-stocked treasuries as well.
He let the army rest in Ecbatana for quite a long time. While he was there, he put on a festival with theatrical competitions and held continuous symposia for his Friends. [8] Hephaestion drank to excess during these symposia—so much so that he fell ill and died. The grieving king gave Perdiccas the job of conveying the dead man’s body to Babylon, where he intended to give him a spectacular funeral.
111. Meanwhile, in Greece unrest and revolution were widespread, and turned out to be the first rumbles of the so-called Lamian War.* The cause of the war was as follows. Alexander had ordered all the satraps to discharge their mercenaries, and so they did, but that meant that the whole of Asia was overrun by all those former professional soldiers, now drifters who got their food by foraging. Subsequently, they sailed over to Cape Taenarum in Laconia,* [2] and then the last of the Persian satraps and other leading men sailed over to Taenarum as well, taking with them the money and troops they had collected, and joined forces with those who were already there.
[3] Ultimately, they chose as their supreme commander Leosthenes, a man endowed with exceptional nobility of spirit and a bitter opponent of Alexander. After secret consultations with the Athenian Council, he was given fifty talents with which to pay his troops, and enough weapons for his immediate needs. He contacted the Aetolians to see about an alliance, since they were no friends of Alexander,* and made thorough preparations for war.
[4] While Leosthenes was occupied with getting ready for what he could see was going to be a critical war, Alexander marched with his light-armed troops against the Cossaeans, who were refusing to submit to him. The Cossaeans were an exceptionally spirited people, living in the mountains of Media.* They had always relied on the ruggedness of their homeland and their courage to keep them out of the control of foreign masters. They had remained free even in the days of the Persian empire, and at the time in question Macedonian prowess caused them no alarm or loss of confidence. [5] But Alexander occupied the passes and ravaged most of the country, and came off best every time they met in battle. Many of the barbarians lost their lives, and a great many more were taken prisoner.
The Cossaeans had been utter failures on the battlefield and were finding it hard to endure the loss of all their men who had been captured. Under the circumstances, they had no choice but to accept subjugation as the price of the recovery of the prisoners. [6] So they surrendered to Alexander and gained peace on the condition that they would be his obedient subjects. It had taken Alexander a total of forty days to defeat the Cossaeans. He founded noteworthy towns in the hills, and then let his men rest.
112. After his defeat of the Cossaeans, Alexander decamped and marched on towards Babylon at a leisurely pace, halting constantly and resting his men. [2] When he was about three hundred stades from the city, the Chaldaeans (as these priests are called) sent to him a delegation of their oldest and most experienced men. These Chaldaeans are particularly famous as astrologers, and their practice is to predict the future on the basis of perpetual observation of the stars.* They had learnt through their astral divination that death awaited the king in Babylon, so they instructed their delegates to warn him of the danger and to recommend that he avoid entering the city altogether. [3] They said that he could escape the danger if he rebuilt the temple of Bel,* which had been destroyed by the Persians, but that he must desist from his intended route and bypass the city.
The leader of the Chaldaean delegation, whose name was Belephantes,* was too afraid to talk directly to the king, but he obtained a private meeting with Nearchus, one of Alexander’s Friends, at which he briefed him thoroughly and asked him to explain matters to the king. [4] Nearchus’ report of the Chaldaeans’ prophecy frightened Alexander, and he only became more troubled as he recalled their reputation for wisdom. In the end, he sent most of his Friends into the city, while taking another road himself. He avoided Babylon, made camp two hundred stades away, and stayed quietly there.
No one knew what to make of this, and many Greeks came to visit him. One of their number was the philosopher Anaxarchus, [5] and when he found out the reason for Alexander’s behaviour he forcefully advanced arguments drawn from philosophical texts,* and worked such a change in the king that he came to despise all forms of divination, and especially the kind preferred by the Chaldaeans. It was as though Alexander had been wounded in the mind and then healed by the words of the philosophers.* And so he entered Babylon with his troops. [6] As they had on his previous visit, the Babylonians made his men welcome, and the whole army gave itself over to relaxation and easy living, since everything that they might want had been made ready for them in abundance.
These were the events that took place in this year.
113. In the year of the Archonship of Agesias* in Athens, the Romans appointed as their consuls Gaius Publius and Papirius, and the 114th Olympic festival was celebrated, with Micinas of Rhodes the victor in the stade race. In the course of this year:
Envoys arrived in Babylon from almost every part of the known world. Some came to congratulate Alexander on his conquests, some to honour him with crowns, and others to conclude treaties of friendship and alliance. Many of them brought him magnificent gifts, and a few came to defend themselves against charges that had been brought against them. [2] Nor was it only the peoples and cities of Asia who were represented: many dynasts also came from Europe and Libya. From Libya came the Carthaginians, the Libyphoenicians,* and all the peoples who inhabit the coast up to the Pillars of Heracles.* From Europe came representatives of the Greek cities, the Macedonians, the Illyrians, most of the peoples who live on the Adriatic coastline, the Thracian tribes, and the Celts who were neighbours of the Thracians. This was the first time that Greeks had ever come across Celts.*
[3] When the register of the envoys was submitted to Alexander, he ordered the names according to which of them he would respond to first, which second, and so on for all of them. He met first with those whose business concerned sanctuaries, second with those who had brought gifts, third with those who were in dispute with their neighbours, fourth with those who had come on personal business, and fifth with those who were protesting the return of the exiles.* [4] The first to be granted an audience were the Eleans, and then there followed the Ammonians, the Delphians, the Corinthians, the Epidaurians, and so on, with the meetings ordered according to the importance of the sanctuary.* He did his best to give favourable replies to all the embassies and to send them away as satisfied as they might be.
114. Once he had dismissed the embassies, the king occupied himself with Hephaestion’s funeral. He was so obsessed with the arrangements that it not only eclipsed every funeral ceremony there had ever been on earth, but will never be surpassed in the future either. For he had loved Hephaestion more than† any of his other Friends, however fond he seemed to be of them, and no one could have done more to honour a man after his death than Alexander did for Hephaestion. While he was alive, he had preferred him to all his other Friends,* even though Craterus was a rival for his affection. [2] In fact, when one of the king’s companions said that Craterus and Hephaestion were equal in the king’s affection, Alexander agreed, adding that Craterus loved him as a king, but Hephaestion loved him as Alexander. And when Darius’ mother, on her first meeting with Alexander, mistakenly started to do obeisance before Hephaestion, taking him to be the king, and became flustered when she learnt of her mistake, Alexander said: ‘Don’t worry, mother. He is Alexander too.’*
[3] As Alexander’s friend, Hephaestion generally enjoyed so many privileges and was allowed so much freedom of speech that Olympias became jealous. She turned hostile towards him, and wrote him letters in which she rebuked him harshly and threatened him. To these he responded with a letter written in a reproachful tone and concluding: ‘Do, please, stop thinking badly of us, and do put an end to your anger and threats. If you don’t stop, though, it won’t particularly bother us. For you know that there is no one greater than Alexander.’*
[4] Be that as it may, as part of his preparations for the funeral ceremony, the king ordered the nearby cities to do what they could, depending on their means, to see that it was a splendid affair. He also ordered all the inhabitants of Asia to be sure to extinguish their fires—fire is sacred to the Persians—and not to re-light them until the ceremony was over. But this was the Persian custom at the death of a king, [5] and most people took the order to be a bad omen and thought that it was the gods’ way of foretelling the king’s death. There were other unusual signs as well that foreshadowed Alexander’s death, which I shall come to shortly, after my account of the funeral.
115. With the intention of ingratiating themselves to the king, every one of his officers and friends had likenesses of Hephaestion made out of all the materials that men find precious, such as ivory and gold. Meanwhile, Alexander gathered his master builders and a large number of craftsmen. He tore down a ten-stade stretch of the city wall,* and once he had collected all the baked brick and had levelled the ground where the pyre was going to stand, he built a four-sided pyre, with each side a stade in length. [2] He divided the space into thirty courses, laid out the roofs of each course with palm-tree trunks, and squared off the whole structure.
The next job was to attach the ornamentation to the facade, all the way round the outside wall. Two hundred and forty golden quinquereme prows occupied the bottom level, with two archers, four cubits in height, each kneeling on one knee on the outriggers, and five-cubit-high statues of armed marines, while the interstices were filled with stylized palm-trees made of felt. [3] The next level up, the second, consisted of carved torches, each fifteen cubits long and with a golden wreath on its handle; above the flaming ends of the torches were eagles with their wings spread and heads bowed, looking down, and at their bases were serpents looking up at the eagles. On the third level was depicted a hunting scene, involving a great many wild animals. [4] Then the fourth level consisted of a centauromachy rendered in gold,* while the fifth was made up of alternating lions and bulls, all in gold. The next part was occupied by Macedonian and barbarian arms and armour, arranged so as to signify the martial prowess of the former and the military failures of the latter. Finally, on top of these six levels stood Sirens, which had been hollowed out so that they could conceal people within them who would sing a funeral lament for the deceased. [5] The total height of the structure was more than 130 cubits.
In short, with everyone eager to contribute to the splendour of the funeral ceremony—not just officers, but also ordinary soldiers, the envoys from other states, and native Babylonians—the money spent on it is said to have amounted to more than twelve thousand talents. [6] In keeping with this grandeur, the last of the honours that Alexander ordained in the context of the funeral ceremony was that everyone was to sacrifice to Hephaestion as an adjunct deity.* And, by a happy coincidence, one of Alexander’s Friends, Philip, arrived in Babylon just then, bringing back from Ammon the god’s permission for Hephaestion to receive sacrifices as a god.* Alexander was delighted that Ammon had confirmed his opinion, and he was the first to perform the sacrifice. Since it consisted of ten thousand victims of all kinds, the accompanying feast for the army was a sumptuous affair.
116. After the funeral ceremony, the king gave himself over to diversions and filled his days with feasting. But just when his power and prosperity seemed to have peaked, Fate curtailed the span of life that had been granted him by Nature. Immediately after the funeral, even the gods began to signal his impending death, and many strange omens and signs occurred. [2] Once, for instance, when the king was being rubbed with oil and the royal robes and diadem had been laid on a chair, a Babylonian prisoner, whose fetters had come loose all by themselves, passed through the entrance of the court without the guards noticing and without anyone impeding his progress. [3] He came up to the chair, and once he had dressed himself in the royal robes and tied the diadem on his head, he sat down and remained quiet.
When the king was told what was going on, it struck him as weird and disquieting, but he approached the chair, and without giving any indication of his fear he calmly asked the man who he was and why he had acted in this way. [4] The man said not a word in reply, however, and Alexander referred the interpretation of the portent to his diviners. Their opinion was that the man should be killed, so that whatever the trouble was that was being portended would descend on his head, not Alexander’s, and that is what Alexander did.* He then recovered his clothes and sacrificed in thanks to the gods who protect men from evil, but he remained anxious. He recalled the Chaldaeans’ prediction, found fault with the philosophers who had persuaded him to enter Babylon, expressed his admiration of Chaldaean skill and acumen, and in general maligned those who used sophistical ingenuity to deny the power of Fate.
[5] A short while later, the gods sent him another omen that related to his kingship. Alexander wanted to visit the Babylonian marshes, and he and his Friends were being rowed in some skiffs when Alexander’s boat became separated from the rest. He was lost for several days, and even came to doubt that he would survive. [6] As he was passing through a narrow channel which was choked with trees, his diadem was whisked off his head by overhanging branches and then fell into the water. One of the oarsmen swam over to it and put it on his head, because he wanted to keep it safe, before swimming back to the boat. [7] Alexander was lost for three days and three nights before being rescued, and, since he was once again wearing his diadem when it might have been lost, he consulted his diviners about what it was that was being foretold.
117. The diviners told Alexander that he should perform lavish sacrifices to the gods, but then he was invited to a heavy drinking session hosted by one of his Friends, a Thessalian called Medius, who was very insistent. While he was there, he drank a great deal of undiluted wine, and ended up by filling and draining the great ‘Cup of Heracles’. [2] Suddenly, he cried out in pain, as though he had been struck a violent blow, and he was supported out of the party by his Friends. As soon as he was in the hands of his attendants, they put him to bed and kept a careful eye on him, [3] but the pain got worse. Doctors were summoned, but none of them was able to help, and Alexander continued to be racked by frequent and agonizing pains.
Eventually, Alexander realized that he was dying, and he took off his seal ring and gave it to Perdiccas. [4] When one of his Friends asked him to whom he was leaving the kingdom, he said: ‘To the strongest!’ And he added—the last words he ever spoke—that his funeral games would take the form of a great contest among all his foremost Friends.* [5] So that is how Alexander died. He had reigned for twelve years and seven months, and no king before him, nor any of those who came after him, right down to the present day, has achievements to his name that come close to Alexander’s in scale.
Some historians, however, have a different account of Alexander’s death, claiming that he was killed by a deadly poison, and I feel bound to include this version of events as well. 118. It goes like this. Antipater, who had been left behind by Alexander as his General in Europe, had fallen out with Olympias,* the king’s mother. At first, he expected no trouble from her because Alexander was paying no attention to the complaints she was making about him, but later, with the enmity between them going from bad to worse, the king, as a man who was obedient to the gods’ commandments,* seemed inclined to indulge his mother in everything, and at that point Antipater began to give many indications of his hostility towards Alexander. The final straw was the killing of Parmenion and Philotas, which induced terror in all Alexander’s friends, and Antipater then administered a deadly poison to the king through the agency of his son, who served as the king’s cup-bearer.* [2] Following Alexander’s death, Antipater was the most powerful man in Europe, and then his son Cassander succeeded to the throne, so that it would have taken real courage to mention the poison, and few historians dared to do so. Cassander’s extreme hostility towards Alexander was revealed, however, by his actions: he murdered Olympias and threw her body out unburied, and determinedly refounded Thebes,* which had been razed by Alexander.
[3] The king’s death left Sisyngambris, the mother of Darius, prostrate with grief for his death and her bereavement, and since she was approaching the end of her life anyway, she refused to take food and died four days later. [4] As for me, now that I have reached Alexander’s death, I shall next—in conformity with the programme that I announced at the beginning of the book—use the books that follow to cover, as best I can, the history of the Successors.