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modified version proved unacceptable to the strong convictions of
Callisthenes. He did not react ostentatiously but instead he simply
endeavoured to exchange kisses with his king without performing the
obsequious bow. When one of the courtiers commented on this out loud,
Alexander refused to accept the kiss. Not put off, the philosopher simply
walked away, commenting that he was merely poorer by one kiss.146
Such passive resistance did not deter Alexander and his closest circle
from continuing the experiment of propagating among Europeans,
especially as in this semi-private party almost all those present did comply
with the king’s wishes. The next step was to repeat this experiment at a
larger event with also the participation of Asians, who naturally bowed to
Alexander in the prescribed way. This time, however, resistance was much
more visible. Perhaps whilst taking part in a debate with other Greek
intellectuals, Callisthenes spoke out openly in defence of traditional
religious beliefs that forbade the boundary between man and god to be
crossed. The philosopher even claimed that by introducing proskynesis
Alexander was breaking a unwritten law or custom ( nomos) of the
Macedonian monarchy which was, according to his idealised theory now
being approved by many of those listening, to never make such decisions
without previously obtaining the assent of his subjects. Knowing that
Callisthenes’s arguments were expressing the views of the silent majority
among the Macedonians, who in this unpopular philosopher had found an
unexpected champion, Alexander desisted from further efforts regarding
the introduction of proskynesis and would never return to this issue. To
make matters worse, one of the hetairoi had laughed out loud at the sight
of an Asian performing the obeisance with exaggerated zeal. Alexander
was angered at the man who had laughed but, seeing the attitude of the
majority of those present, he did not force his European subjects to
perform proskynesis.147 The epilogue to this whole affair came after the
great Macedonian’s death. Then for many the deification of Alexander
seemed no less controversial than the divine status of Heracles, who after
all had also once been a mortal. It was then that some of the officers
recognised their deceased ruler as a god and performed proskynesis facing
his vacant throne.148
146 Plu., Alex. , 54.3-6 (after Chares); Arr., An. , 4.12.3-5. Bosworth 1988, p. 285; Bosworth 1995, pp. 87-88.
147 Arr., An. , 4.10.5-12.2; Curt., 8.5.9-24; Just., 12.7. Bosworth 1996a, pp. 110-112;
Briant 2002, pp. 105-106.
148 Diod., 18.61.1; Polyaen., 4.8.2. Bosworth 1996a, p. 112.
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291
It was during that same stay in Bactra that a plot against the king was
discovered. The danger lay in the fact that it was hatched by people who
had constant access to the king, even at times when he was at his most
vulnerable, that is, at night. For the conspirators were ‘royal boys’,
alternatively called by modern historians ‘pages’. These were boys from
good Macedonian homes who performed services around the king
normally carried out by servants. Moreover, they guarded his bedroom
door at night. The pages guaranteed the loyalty of their families to the king
while at the same time they familiarised themselves with the functioning
of the court and state in preparation for important careers in adult life. The
leader of the conspirators was a page called Hermolaus, who, as so
frequently happens in such cases, was driven to plotting for personal
reasons. During a hunt Hermolaus killed a boar that had been marked out
for the king to slay. This angered Alexander greatly. He ordered the boy to
be flogged and had his horse confiscated. 149 The significance of this
seemingly minor incident became more important in the context of
Alexander’s adoption of Achaemenid customs. Hunting played an
important role in Persian royal ideology, which in turn owed a great deal
to the neo-Assyrian tradition. Of course the beast the monarch most
willingly hunted was the lion. The Great King frequently hunted in special
reserves. One of these was Bazeira, and that was where Alexander took
part in a great hunt. It was a Greek and Macedonian custom to hunt on foot
but in Asia Alexander followed the Persian example and hunted on
horseback. The killing of an animal designated for the king was considered
a very serious offence, punishable even by death. It was only permissible
(and moreover obligatory) when such an animal posed an immediate
danger to the monarch. It was in such a situation that Craterus once killed
a lion, a scene immortalised in a relief and inscription at Delphi by his son.
On the other hand, legend has it that for killing the king’s beast
Alexander’s bodyguard Lysimachus was cast into a lion’s den.150
In such a context the whipping of Hermolaus was not an exceptionally
harsh punishment. Nevertheless the page evidently did feel that his system
of values had been dishonoured to an extent that required revenge. Much
more interesting, however, is the fact that in his plot Hermolaus was not
only helped by his homosexual lover but also by several other pages who
would have been quite unaffected by the wrong committed against the
149 Arr., An. , 4.13.1-2; Curt., 8.6.2-7. Heckel 1992, pp. 237-244; Bosworth 1995,
pp. 90-94.
150 Curt., 8.1.14-18; Sen., Dial. , 5.17.2; Plin., Nat. , 8.54; Paus., 9.1.5; Just., 15.3; V.
Max., 9.3 ext. 1. Heckel 1992, pp. 268-271; Briant 1993a; Pelagia 2000, pp. 177-
184.
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ringleader. The sources do not provide us with a straightforward answer as
to why this was so. When asked why he had started a conspiracy,
Hermolaus gave a whole set of arguments that had already been
expounded by Cleitus and Callisthenes, that is, including a protest against
orientalization, growing absolutism and the murder of distinguished
Macedonian officers. The words in this supposed speech actually belong
to Curtius Rufus and to his version of events but the arguments too closely
reflect the genuine feelings of Macedonians known from other incidents
for them to be dismissed as meaningless rhetoric. A page’s career was
short, for it ended once he reached the age of maturity and entered military
service – presumably more often than not in the Companion cavalry. The
conspirators of 327 would have had been pages for just two or three years
and therefore were in all probability part of the group of 50 boys from
good Macedonian homes who had joined Alexander’s army at the end of
331 (Chapter V.4). At a young age people are frequently idealistic. For
some of the boys Alexander’s absolutism, which had been developing over
the years, as well as the willing adoption of Persian customs, would have
been shocking enough to drive them into secret opposition. It is also
possible that some of the boys may have disliked Alexander for not
appointing their fathers to high positions, though that alone would not
have been a sufficient reason to join a conspiracy.151
saved the king was his fondness for alcohol. That fateful night Alexander
attended a banquet that lasted till morning. It is said he did initially intend
to retire early but was urged by a Syrian female soothsayer to stay. Thus
the plan was foiled and the conspirators had to wait another seven days
before it was their turn again to guard the king’s chamber at night. But
before that happened one of the conspirators lost his nerve and together
with his brother reported the entire conspiracy to Alexander. For this
information the conspirator was pardoned and his brother was rewarded
with 50 talents, which in those times was equivalent to 1,000 years of
average pay. The remaining conspirators were immediately arrested and
under torture they all confessed. For such a serious offence they were
stoned to death.152
The uncovering of this plot also led to the arrest of Callisthenes. He
owed his position as court historian at Alexander’s side thanks to the
recommendation of his relative, Aristotle. Already at the start of the
151 Curt., 8.7; Arr., An. , 4.14.2. Schachermeyr 1973, p. 388; Lane Fox 1973, pp.
327-328; Hamilton 1974, p. 107; Bosworth 1996a, pp. 112-113; Badian 2000, p.
70; Heckel 2009a, p. 79.
152 Arr., An. , 4.13.5-14.3; Curt., 8.6.10-8.20.
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293
expedition Callisthenes was a well-known historian, the author of a book
on the Sacred War.153 A gifted writer, he glorified his king with great skill
and in that respect for some time he fulfilled Alexander’s expectations.
Among other things he had formulated daring concepts of the sea bowing
before Alexander at Pamphylia and the king’s divine father. Successive
books from Callisthenes’s history were first read by the king himself and
then sent on to Greece, thus helping to create Alexander’s legend in his
lifetime. It is for these reasons that the king tolerated this philosopher for
so long, even though with his very serious and stern manner as well as
strongly independent views he did not have the makings of a courtier.154
The line Callisthenes refused to cross was to treat a living mortal, even one
as exceptional as Alexander, as a god. In this philosopher’s strict
interpretation of principles such a boundary would be crossed by
performing proskynesis. It was during Alexander’s painfully unsuccessful
attempt to introduce this custom at court that Callisthenes’s opposition
became open. Henceforth the philosopher’s days were numbered. The king
now only waited for an appropriate opportunity to rid himself of this
intellectual with too many principles for a royal court.155
Alexander had the foresight and patience to plan and prepare his
revenge long in advance of dealing the decisive blow. In the Callisthenes’s
case the first step was to deprive him of support among the Macedonian
military elite, whose champion he had become after effectively protesting
against proskynesis. During a banquet Alexander asked Callisthenes to
deliver a eulogy of Macedonians. The philosopher’s speech was rewarded
by those attending with applause and a garland of flowers. But then
Alexander quoted a verse from Euripides’s The Bacchantes: ‘When a wise
man has a good cause to argue, eloquence is easy’ and asked the
philosopher if he could speak equally convincingly about Macedonian
vices. Being, like most intellectuals, vain, Callisthenes could not but take
up the challenge. He delivered a second speech displaying no less
oratorical skill than in the first. The delivering of such palinodes was a
typical rhetorical exercise but there was no reason why Macedonian
officers should have known that. Therefore they easily believed the
malicious rumours spread by Alexander about Callisthenes really
despising the Macedonians. Besides, for the simple minded soldier such
153 D.L., 5.5; Just., 12.6.17; Suda, s.v. Kallisq◊nhj. Brown 1966, pp. 225-227;
Rubinsohn 1993, pp. 1312-1314.
154 Brown 1949, pp. 227-236; Rubinsohn 1993, pp. 1315, 1319.
155 Plu., Alex. , 54.3; Arr., An. , 4.14.1.
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Chapter V
accusations were all the more plausible on account of the philosopher’s
aloof behaviour.156
Even under torture none of the pages implicated Callisthenes as a
fellow conspirator. Moreover, Alexander himself was fully aware of the
philosopher’s innocence as is clear from what Plutarch states to be his
letters written to Attalus, Craterus and Alcetas. Nonetheless, the general
hysteria after uncovering of a conspiracy to kill the king was so strong that
it was very easy to include Callisthenes on the list of suspects. He was
accused of indirectly inspiring Hermolaus, if only by teaching that fame
was most easily obtained by killing the greatest of men. It was also
remembered that the philosopher had once delivered a speech before
Philotas praising the tyrannicides. Thus Callisthenes was arrested soon
after the execution of the pages, subjected to torture and nailed to a
cross.157 A contributing factor to his downfall was the scheming of another
philosopher, Anaxarchus of Abdera, who was competing against him for
Alexander’s favour.158
The imprisonment and execution of Callisthenes unfortunately also had
a negative effect felt by modern historians. He had been an invaluable
eyewitness to Alexander’s expedition. His no longer existing work was the
primary historical source regarding Alexander used by the majority of later
ancient authors. The loss of this observer of Alexander’s expedition could
not be replaced by other participants such as Ptolemy and Aristobulus,
whose accounts were limited to recording only the court’s official version
of events written decades after they had occurred. Callisthenes’ account
was written immediately as events unfolded when neither the lapsing of
time nor political considerations (as in Ptolemy’s case) could distort the
picture. 159 Just as Callisthenes’s writing had promoted the image of
Alexander the great leader who spread Greek civilization to the East, so
too Callisthenes’s death to a large extent contributed to the birth of
Alexander’s darker legend, the one of Alexander the tyrant, drunkard and
violent hothead.160
156 Plu., Alex. , 53; Philostr., VA, 7.2; E., Ba. , 267, after Kovacs (Loeb). Brown 1949, p. 245; Balsdon 1950, p. 372; Schachermeyr 1973, pp. 390-392; Green 1974,
pp. 377-378; Hamilton 1999, pp. 147-148.
157 Plu., Alex. , 55.3-9; Arr., An. , 4.14.3; Curt., 8.8.21; D.L., 5.5. Bosworth 1995, p.
100; Hamilton 1999, p. 156; Badian 2000, pp. 71-72.
158 Borza 1981.
159 Brunt 1995, pp. 16-18; Bosworth 1996, pp. 62-77.
160 Tarn 1948, ii, pp. 297-298; Brown 1949, pp. 225-226, 245-247; Wardman 1955,
p. 96; Schachermeyr 1973, p. 609.
CHAPTER VI:
EXPEDITION TO INDIA
1. From Sogdiana to the Indus
Alexander’s initial plans for an expedition to India have been dated no
later than in summer of 328. To the 4th-century Western (Greek) world
India was not only a
country about which very little was know but even
one whose inhabitants were frequently idealised as ‘noble barbarians’ on a
par with the Scythians and Ethiopians. Persian perceptions, however, were
different. The Indus Valley had for a time, probably during Darius I’s
reign, been part of the Achaemenid Empire. According to Herodotus it
was its 20th tax district. The name Hinduš appears in the monumental
Achaemenid inscriptions listed among other countries ( bumi) of the
empire and its inhabitants are presented on reliefs as subjects of the Great
King. These facts, however, say more about persistence of themes in
Persian monumental art than about how long India was part of the
Achaemenid Empire. Persian conquests in India did not turn out to be
permanent and by the 4th century the Persian administrative system of
satrapies had ceased to function there if indeed it had ever been installed.
On the other hand, the presence of Indian troops at the Battle of
Gaugamela indicates that ties between Indian rulers and the Great King
persisted right up to the end of the Achaemenid Empire. A more durable
Persian presence in India – or in the territory of today’s Pakistan to be
more precise – was its cultural influence on the local population from the
development of the Kharoshti script, which originated from the
Achaemenid Empire’s official Aramaic alphabet, to the Persian monetary
standard as well as to the political customs that the Macedonian
conquerors would encounter.1 In the 4th century northern India was divided
up into a large number of kingdoms, principalities, oligarchic republics
1 Hdt., 3.94, 4.44; Arr., An. , 3.8.4, 3.8.6; Curt., 4.9.2; Plin., Nat. , 6.98. Tarn 1948, I, pp. 85-86; Schachermeyr 1973, pp. 413-416; Dani 1986, pp. 43-44; Vogelsang
1992, p. 227; Briant 1996, pp. 152-153, 185-188, 774-778; Karttunen 1997, pp. 19,
26-30, 37-38; Badian 1998, p. 221; Hahn 2000, pp. 11-13.
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and tribal territories. The largest of these states, the Kingdom of Magadha,