Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  Callisthenes sealed his fate one night at a banquet when Alexander tried to introduce a form of proskynesis acceptable to his Macedonian officers and friends. The king passed a cup of wine to his nearest dining companion, who then would bow down to a small shrine of a god conveniently located just behind the king. Each guest would then receive a kiss from Alexander and return to his place on the dining couch. When it was Callisthenes’ turn, he took the wine but did not perform proskynesis to the shrine. Alexander was busy talking with Hephaestion at the moment and did not notice, but one of his friends pointed out the omission to the king. When Alexander confronted him, Callisthenes impertinently responded that he would do without a kiss.

  Alexander had arranged the death of his greatest general and his son, then killed one of his most loyal friends in a fit of anger. Callisthenes was a fool if he thought the king would hesitate to punish a mere historian for such willful insubordination. But Alexander was also shrewd and knew he could play on Callisthenes’ vanity to hasten his doom. He therefore challenged him to offer an impromptu oration in praise of Macedonian valor. Callisthenes was only too happy to comply, lauding the glories of the sons of Macedonia while they applauded and threw garlands at his feet. But then, to test his skills in a time-honored fashion taught at all Greek schools of rhetoric, the king asked him to take the opposite stand and denounce Macedonian virtue. Callisthenes took the bait and responded with gusto, decrying the faults of his hosts with biting recriminations. As Alexander’s generals did not appreciate the nuances of Greek rhetorical performance, they took the criticisms at face value and grew furious at Callisthenes. Thus with one stroke, Alexander succeeded in alienating him from his most ardent supporters. Now all he had to do was wait for the right time to silence Callisthenes forever.

  The opportunity soon presented itself when one of the royal pages, a dull-witted young man named Hermolaus, concocted a plan to gain eternal fame by killing Alexander. The page had earlier offended Alexander when he killed a boar during a hunt ahead of the king, earning the boy a flogging. Hermolaus was humiliated and wanted revenge. Just as Pausanius had hoped to win fame by killing Philip years earlier, Hermolaus now wanted to make his mark on history as the assassin of a famous king. When he told some of his friends of his plan, the foolish youth was quickly betrayed and arrested. Alexander knew this was just a harebrained plot by a boy who should never have been a royal page in the first place, but he saw a perfect chance to rid himself of Callisthenes. Even though Hermolaus did not implicate the historian under torture, it was no trouble to entangle Callisthenes in the plot, given that he was friendly with all the pages. Before he knew it, Callisthenes was arrested and placed in chains with no objections from the old guard Macedonians he had so recently insulted. Some sources say he was immediately hanged, others that he died months later of disease, but all agree that his career as court historian met a fatal end on the borders of India. Nevertheless he had managed to prevent Alexander from permanently introducing the ritual of proskynesis among his Macedonian followers. In the end, the king decided it was not worth the trouble.

  In the late spring of the seventh year after crossing into Asia, Alexander and his army left Bactria to begin the invasion of India. He crossed the mountains to the south in ten days, much faster than his trek north two years earlier by way of the Khawak Pass. He spent several days in the Alexandria he had founded north of the Kabul valley and replaced a governor there who had ruled poorly in his absence. It is easy to see Alexander as nothing but a general and conqueror as this is how he is usually portrayed in the ancient sources, but he spent a great deal of time fretting over the administrative details of his empire. Whether he always made wise choices is debatable. He was in the habit of choosing a governor for a city or province quickly, then replacing the appointee after he built up a glaring record of mismanagement. At Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus, he chose a solid Macedonian as the new ruler of the city, but almost as an afterthought selected a Persian named Tyriespis as satrap of the region. True to form, Alexander would replace Tyriespis two years later and execute him for corruption.

  While he was still in Sogdiana, Alexander had sent messengers to the closest cities in India to summon the local kings to attend him and submit to his authority. These rulers met him as he moved east through the Kabul valley and pledged their allegiance. The ruler of the important Indian city of Taxila, just beyond the Indus River, was among them. He had no more love for Macedonians than he had for the Persians, but he saw an opportunity to use Alexander to help him defeat his enemies. To prove his sincerity to the Macedonian ruler, he presented him with twenty-five battle elephants to use in the upcoming campaign.

  At this point, Alexander divided his army in two and sent Hephaestion with a considerable force along the relatively easy road east across the Khyber Pass with orders to subdue rebellious tribes along the way, and most important, to reach the Indus River as quickly as possible and build a bridge, as he had at the Euphrates, for the rest of the army to cross. The Indian kings and a large squadron of engineers accompanied his best friend on this route. Alexander himself took the remainder of the army northeast into the mountains on a circuitous trek to pacify the highland tribes of the eastern Hindu Kush. As usual, the young king delighted in taking on the most difficult tasks.

  The expedition through the mountains took months of trudging over narrow trails and across raging streams. If there was an inaccessible fortress that refused to surrender to the Macedonians, Alexander took it, no matter how difficult. The records of this highland campaign tell the same story repeatedly—Alexander demanded the surrender of a town, the citizens refused, the Macedonians stormed the city after a great struggle, and the inhabitants were slaughtered. But there were variations in the routine from time to time. One day early in the march Alexander was shot in the shoulder with an arrow, adding to his many wounds. At another point he and his army were ambushed by tribesmen who charged out of nowhere just as the Macedonians were making camp for the evening, forcing them to withdraw to a nearby hill. But then Alexander struck back and pushed the warriors behind their city walls, having killed many of them. These were the toughest opponents the king faced on this campaign, but after four days of assaulting their city, he forced them to surrender and spared their lives on the condition they join his army as auxiliaries. They agreed, but when they tried to sneak away that night, the suspicious Alexander waylaid and killed them, then captured their city.

  As he moved east through the towering peaks and beautiful forests of the Swat valley, the king continued to seize fortresses and force the submission of local tribes. But when he arrived at the town of Bazira, he found that the soldiers and townspeople had fled to a nearby mountain called Aornus. As with the defenders at the Sogdian Rock, the natives of the region believed this refuge was a perfect defense against invaders. It was surrounded by sheer slopes several thousand feet high with only one precipitous and well-defended path to the top. On the summit was a wide plateau suitable for growing abundant grain along with plentiful wood and a perennial water supply. The local guides with Alexander said that even Hercules had been unable to take the mountain on his travels. This was just the encouragement the king needed.

  Unlike the Sogdian Rock, Aornus could not be taken by climbers but only by direct assault up the impossible path along a narrow ridge. The guides were able to lead Ptolemy and some troops to a part of the mountain that they could hold against the enemy, but the position was not secure enough for a direct attack against the main fortress. Ptolemy held the post against a fierce assault while Alexander and his engineers set to work building a road to the top. They were able to fight their way near the summit, but there was a steep ravine before the final approach that blocked their progress. The king ordered his men to cut thousands of stakes to hold the soil and began to extend a large mound of packed dirt hundreds of feet across the gap under constant fire from the defenders above. It took days of torturous effort, but at last they had constructed a narrow causeway. T
he astonished tribesmen sued for peace and offered to surrender the next day. But once again, the enemy tried to sneak away by night, only to find Alexander waiting for them. He killed many as they fled, while others fell over the cliffs, then the king stormed the walls and took possession of the mountain at last. Alexander was tremendously proud that he had managed to conquer a place that had defeated even Hercules.

  The king turned south from Aornus and continued the march toward the Indus, finding time for a wild elephant hunt along the way. But his greatest surprise during the march came when he neared the town of Nysa. The local people and even the flora seemed strangely out of place in these mountains. The Nysians placed their dead in cedar coffins in the trees—some of which Alexander accidentally set on fire—and made wine from grapes, unlike other tribes in the area. The natives met Alexander and begged him not to harm their town as they were descendants of settlers that the god Dionysus had placed there generations before. Their prolific ivy, a plant sacred to Dionysus that grew nowhere else in the mountains, was proof they were a people blessed by the god. This was just the sort of story that appealed to Alexander. They showed the king the grove of Dionysus, covered with ivy, where Alexander and his soldiers decked themselves with wreaths and sung hymns to the god of wine. Although the divinity worshiped by the people of Nysa was more likely Shiva or another Eastern deity than a misplaced Greek god, Alexander accepted the tale and treated the natives kindly, taking their presence in those remote mountains as a sign that he had now arrived at the very limits of the ancient wanderings of Dionysus. This was proof in his mind that he was nearing the edge of the earth.

  When he at last came down from the high mountains and arrived at the Indus, Alexander found that Hephaestion had finished a large pontoon bridge of boats across the wide river. On the other side was India, a mythical land barely known to the Greek world. The earliest stories of India in the West were brought back by a sailor named Scylax from Caria in Asia Minor. The first Great King Darius commissioned him almost two hundred years before Alexander to explore the Indus River in preparation for a Persian takeover. Scylax sailed down the Indus to the sea and then around the Arabian peninsula to Egypt. His work survives only in scattered fragments, but the intelligence he gathered allowed Darius to add the Indus valley to the Persian Empire as the twentieth satrapy. By the time of Alexander, Persian control of the Indus was only nominal, but Alexander considered it subject to the Great King and therefore part of the domain he had to secure.

  A Greek physician also from Caria named Ctesias wrote briefly about India in a history of Persia just a few years after Scylax, drawing on the mariner’s voyage and his own examination of Indian animals brought to the Persian court. His work likewise survives only in fragments, but Alexander would have read the complete accounts of both men. The king also would have been familiar with the references to India in Herodotus. The Greek historian did not visit India as he did Egypt and Babylon, so his account is limited and even more imaginative than usual. He described India as rich in gold, contributing more to the Persian treasury than any other province, but claimed the gold was dug from the ground by ants. He related that there were many nations living along the Indus who spoke different languages and had diverse customs. Some reportedly ate only raw meat, while others would never kill any animals. Herodotus also claimed that some Indians ate the bodies of their dead fathers as a sign of respect and were disgusted when they heard that Greeks cremated their dead. But the one constant thread regarding India in Herodotus and the other sources that Alexander would have read was that the country lay at the easternmost edge of the world, separated from the great encircling ocean by only a thin strip of desert. None of the ancient writers until the time of the Macedonian invasion had any idea that India extended far beyond the Indus.

  Thus Alexander approached India believing that if he could conquer the valley of the Indus, his realm would reach the limits of the inhabited world. Just a short march across the desert and he would stand on the shore of the great eastern ocean. Some Greeks even believed that this sea could be glimpsed from the summit of the Hindu Kush. It must have been when the king of the Indian city of Taxila arrived at his camp in Bactria and began to speak of his country that Alexander learned just how wrong he had been. The Indian prince would have described to him the geography of the Punjab, the land of five rivers stretching like the fingers of a hand across the northern Indus valley. But then he would have told Alexander of the lengthy Ganges River flowing through a vast land beneath the Himalayan mountains down to a large gulf. Along the banks of the Ganges were ancient, powerful, and wealthy kingdoms. To the south of the Ganges was the enormous mass of the Indian peninsula stretching out into the ocean, with the fabled island of Taprobane (Ceylon or Sri Lanka) just off the southeastern coast. The king of Taxila would also have known of another immense peninsula beyond the mouth of the Ganges extending far into the southern sea toward fabulous islands where rare spices grew. It was probably also at this meeting that Alexander became the first man from the Aegean to hear about the Seres, or silk people, who lived between two great rivers in a distant land beyond the Himalayas. It must have been disorienting in the truest sense to Alexander to discover that his vision of the lands of the East was woefully inadequate. And yet, even if the edge of the world did not lie just days beyond the Indus, the idea of a whole new world of rich lands and prosperous kingdoms must have stirred his imagination and endless ambition.

  Alexander and his army crossed the Indus on the bridge Hephaestion and his engineers had constructed by lashing together dozens of boats large and small and building a roadway on top. In this region of the world, where torrential monsoon rains flooded the lands each summer, permanent bridges were impracticable. After pausing to offer sacrifices and celebrate athletic contests as thanks for a safe transit of the river, they continued south to Taxila through the low hills. They were still several days away from the city when its king sent gifts of silver, cattle, sheep, and elephants to show his goodwill. The ruler of Taxila was not the same man Alexander had met earlier in Bactria but rather his son, Omphis, as the old king had recently died. The new king had shown as much as his father every sign of cooperating with the Macedonians, having supplied Hephaestion and his work crews with grain, though he surprisingly had not left his city to greet Alexander’s friend personally.

  As the Macedonians drew near to Taxila, Alexander was alarmed to see an army coming out to meet him. There were thousands of Indian troops in battle formation with decorated elephants so large they looked like moving fortresses. He immediately ordered his trumpeters to sound the call to arms and sent his cavalry to the wings to prepare for the coming attack. The surprised King Omphis saw what was happening and guessed that his grand display had been misinterpreted. He ordered his army to halt and he rode forward to meet Alexander with just a few men at his side. It was a tense moment, especially as neither king could speak the other’s language, but eventually an interpreter was found and Omphis explained that he was merely greeting his new lord in the traditional Indian manner. The Indian king pledged his loyalty to Alexander and surrendered his kingdom to him. Alexander in turn gave back Taxila and the surrounding territory to Omphis.

  Alexander rode into Taxila at the head of his army and inspected a major Indian city for the first time. It was a haphazard town of rough limestone and mud-brick houses lining irregular, wandering streets—more of an overgrown village than the capital of a wealthy kingdom. Still, what was lacking in architectural grandeur was made up for by the vibrancy of the people and hospitality of his host. Omphis entertained Alexander and his officers at a banquet for three days and presented the king and his companions with more gifts, including a fortune in coined silver. Alexander graciously thanked the king, but in a gesture of royal generosity returned everything to Omphis and added silver and gold vessels, Persian robes, and an astonishing amount of gold from the treasury. This prompted one of Alexander’s Macedonian companions, Meleager, to congratulate the king
for having traveled all the way to India to find a man deserving of so much money. Alexander took this sarcasm poorly, but after the death of Cleitus he had learned how to restrain himself, coldly telling Meleager that jealous men only tormented themselves. What his companion failed to appreciate was that Alexander was buying loyalty, a precious commodity in a land so far from the center of his empire. He needed to secure both Taxila and its king before he could move down the Indus. If it cost him a fraction of the vast treasure he had accumulated from the Persians, so be it.

  Omphis was eager to be accommodating as he was in a permanent state of war with the neighboring kingdoms, including a powerful state to his south beyond the Hydaspes River ruled by Porus, king of an Indian people known as the Paurava. The young ruler of Taxila wanted to expand the borders of his own kingdom at the expense of Porus and was happy to use the gold and army of Alexander to accomplish his goal. His prospects seemed even more promising when an envoy Alexander had sent to Porus returned to Taxila. The Macedonian king had demanded that the Indian lord pay tribute to him and meet him at the borders of his realm when he moved south. Other local rulers had submitted, but Porus replied that he would not be giving Alexander any tribute, though he would be happy to meet him at the Hydaspes with his army ready for battle.

  This was a serious blow to Alexander’s plans for a quick and peaceful march through India. His intelligence network had already informed him that Porus had a large army, including more than a hundred war elephants. Alexander was confident he could beat such an adversary, but it would not be easy, especially as the monsoon had just begun. The Macedonians didn’t mind rain, but they had never experienced anything like the deluge that poured on them from the Indian sky. Adding to their misery was the unbearable heat, creating the rare and thoroughly miserable sensation of being hot and wet at the same time. Day after day the rain continued with no respite. Streets turned to rivers, fields became lakes, and thick mud covered everything. The Indians were perfectly cheerful in the rain as the monsoon was essential for their crops, but the Macedonians began to despair that they would ever be dry again. The local people assured them that the rain would stop in a few months, but Alexander could not afford to wait that long. He appointed a Macedonian as commander of a permanent military garrison at Taxila—just in case Omphis wavered, in spite of the gold—and led his very wet army to the Hydaspes River.