Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  Their hair, as Persian sculptures show, was gathered into a bun or topknot and as for their customs:

  Those who are too poor to give their daughters a dowry [wrote Aristobulus], put them up for sale in the market in their prime, summoning a crowd of buyers by the noise of shells and drums. When a customer steps forward, first, the girl's back is bared for inspection as far as the shoulders, then, the parts in front; if she pleases him and also allows herself to be persuaded, she lives with him on agreed terms.

  Among other Indian tribes, impecunious virgins were bestowed as prizes in boxing-matches, where their lack of money did not matter, but the rich needed only to press their suit with the gift of an elephant to be sure of success. When the husband died, 'some people said that the wives would burn themselves on his pyre and that those who refused to do so were held in disgrace'. This, the custom of suttee, was accompanied by a practice which Alexander had already tried to ban in outer Iran: the exposure of dead bodies to dogs and vultures. For a happy after-life, nothing mattered more to Greeks than a proper burial, and Alexander could not bear to see his subjects ignore it.

  Other discoveries were more delightful. Wise men were to be seen in the market-place where they anointed all passers-by with oil as a sign of their favour and chose whatever they wanted free of charge, whether figs, grapes or honey. Remarking on their two different sects, the one with long hair, the other with shaven heads, Alexander was keen to meet their leaders, and so he sent his Greek steersman of the Fleet, Onesicritus, to search them out. He had chosen his man carefully, for Onesicritus knew philosophy as well as the sea, having studied with the great Diogenes, master of the Greek Cynic school. Eastern and western wisdom met for polite discussion: fortunately, Onesicritus was also writing a history.

  Two miles from Taxila he came on fifteen wise men, sitting or lying naked in various postures. One, whom the Greeks called Calanus, laughed aloud 'seeing that the visitor was wearing a cloak, a broad-brimmed Maccdonian hat and knee-length boots'. Onesicritus was asked to take off his clothes and sit down if he wished to hear their teaching: 'But the heat of the sun', he later explained 'was so scorching that nobody could have borne to walk barefoot on the ground, especially at midday.' Less hardy than his master Diogenes, he hesitated in embarrassment, until the oldest and wisest guru, named Mandanis, excused him and began to talk. 'Mandanis,' he said, 'commended Alexander for his love of wisdom, even though he ruled so vast an Empire: he was the only philosopher in arms he had ever seen. ... He went on to ask about Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes, remarking that they seemed to be decent and easy men, though they paid too much attention to conventions and not enough to nature.' Three interpreters were needed for the conversation. 'Because my interpreters only understand the simplest language,' Mandanis was believed to have said, 'I cannot prove to you why philosophy is useful. It would be like asking pure water to flow through mud.' But Onesicritus filtered the dark wisdom of the gurus through his own Greek preconceptions: he could barely understand them, so 'steersman of fantasy, not of the fleet', he took them to be agreeing with his own philosophy. Hindus, therefore, vouched in his history for the truths of Diogenes the Cynic.

  Even if misunderstood, two of these naked wise men did make their way down to occupied Taxila. There, they dined at Alexander's table and 'ate their food while standing ...: the younger and fitter of the two balanced on one leg and held up a wooden beam, about five feet long, with both of his hands; when the leg became tired, he shifted on to the other and stood there all the day long.' As proof of his self-control he left the camp and refused all inducements to return, as they would put him at Alexander's beck and call. The elder one, Calanus, had finished his thirty-seven years of prescribed asceticism and was free to adapt his way of life: for the next two years, he followed the army from Taxila to Susa and lectured to any officers who were interested. His death, aged seventy-nine, was to cause a remarkable stir.

  Legend could hardly leave this meeting between East and West as it had happened. The theme was embellished with variations and for two thousand years, the name of the Gymnosophists, or Naked Philosophers, remained part of the common culture of lettered men. In India their meetings with Alexander passed through his Romance into the Sayings of Milinda, a classic Buddhist text; in the Mediterranean, they were prominent in the works and poems of scholars in Renaissance Florence; in England, after the death of Cromwell, Puritan gentlemen still pinned their revolutionary fervour on the Gymnosophists' ideal, praising the Indians in pamphlets for being Puritans before their time, and denouncing Alexander as the type of a monarch like Charles II. The Gymnosophists' fame had spread far beyond their town by the Murree hills, and all because a pupil of Aristotle had crossed the Hindu Kush in search of the eastern Ocean and a pupil of Diogenes had left the boats on his native island of Cos, joined the expedition and agreed, in India, to go out in the midday sun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Among the peculiarities of Taxila there was one which was to matter more to Alexander than any Gymnosophist or elephant: the first spring rains had begun to fall. But he paid no attention, though his Indian wise men were famed for their knowledge of the weather, and he turned to the task in hand. This was plain enough. The rajahs of the Punjab had their local animosities and, as usual, Alexander meant to play them off against each other. Ambhi of Taxila told of his neighbour Porus, who ruled to the south-east across the boundary river Jhelum: he had elephants and a large army and was likely to prove troublesome. Friendlier rajahs to the north were received and reinstated, as Alexander's thoughts had now turned eastwards, unwilling to interfere with native government provided his lines were assured: Ambhi was allowed to wear the royal diadem, happy in his reward of a thousand talents of booty, gold and silver tableware, Persian dress and thirty caparisoned horses, to the disgust of at least one Macedonian officer who could not see any merit in a decadent Indian.

  In early May Alexander recruited 5,000 Indians and left Taxila, never to return to the Tamranala river and its province. His campaign in Swat had been no more immediately successful than any other attempt in history to exterminate mountain guerrillas. He had built walls, left Macedonian garrisons and restored the native chieftains wherever possible, but within three months, the tribesmen round Pir-Sar were to rise in revolt and murder his satrap. It needed harsher punishment to put them down for another eight years. As for Taxila, it too received a garrison and a settlement of invalided soldiers, but it was not for another two hundred years that the presence of Greeks in Iran and India forced it to break with its past. Then, had Alexander returned, he would have found a very different city, no longer the shambling disorder of an Indian slum but the neat rectangle of a Greek street plan, eventually to be defended by a stone-built wall whose twenty-foot width was buttressed with square towers.

  North-west up the valley, Pushkalavati, City of the Lotus, was to wear a similar new look: its alleys would become broad boulevards, whose straight lines were edged with regular blocks of shops and town houses,

  broken here and there by a Buddhist shrine. When Greek culture overtook the towns of the north-west Punjab, it did so decisively; some three hundred years after Alexander, the new town at Taxila was overlooked by a temple, perhaps for fire-worship, whose facade was distinguished by classic Ionic pillars. These changes were part of a different story, the conquests of the Greek kings who emerged in the province of Bactria a hundred years after Alexander, and of the later Scythian nomads who seem to have continued the Greek city plans which they saw on their way from Sogdia into India. Alexander had deposited in furthest Asia the great-grandfathers of Greeks who would one day alter city life in the plains near Rawal-Pindi, but he could take no credit for the change himself.

  The road to the river Jhelum was short, flat and easy. An envoy had been sent to Porus, asking him to bring his tribute and meet Alexander at the river-frontier: Porus replied that he would come to a meeting, certainly, but his tribute would only be armed men. There was nothing for it but
to fight. A march of no miles brought men and elephants to a suitable camp, probably near modern Haranpur, the crossing-point of the Jhelum for Sultan Mahmud 1,400 years later and nowadays the bridgehead for the British-built railway. Even without binoculars, scouts could hardly miss the outlines of Porus's army on the far bank three miles to the south: his cavalry seemed to number 5,000, his infantry more than 30,000, and as the Macedonians liked to exaggerate their enemies, there is little doubt that his forces were very much fewer than Alexander's. But his elephants brought to a head the anxieties of the past few months: two hundred, it seemed to the attackers, waited in harness for the signal to advance. In between the two armies, the river was rapidly rising, swollen by the prelude to the June monsoons. Alexander had neither the time nor the cover to ship elephants of his own to the far bank: Porus had the defender's advantage and only a tactical master-piece would show him that the defensive, at least on the battlefield, can be a very mixed blessing. Centuries later, when Alexander's histories were being read to Napoleon in Egypt, it was the forthcoming battle of the Jhelum that particularly caught his admirer's attention; not as grand as Gaugamela, it was subtler than anything seen in the field before.

  At Haranpur, beneath the Salt Range mountains and west of the Pabbi hills, the Jhelum flows fast in its bed, about half a mile wide. As soon as Porus saw Alexander's encampment, he sent pickets further up the river bank and moved down to guard the nearest crossing in person. His planning was predictable, but it sufficed to block Alexander's path: 'The huge mass of his elephants stood along the bank and when carefully goaded, they wearied the ear with their hideous trumpeting.' Alexander could not cross a swollen river against animals who scared his horses so much that they would probably jump off their rafts in mid-stream and swim back to safety: he therefore took to a ruse, buying time for reconnaissance, while Porus saw no reason to make the first attack. Even the monsoon rains were soon to serve Alexander's purpose.

  As at Gaugamela, he began his battle with a war of nerves. Boat parties and leather rafts ventured daily on to the river as if for an attack and sailed up and down out of bowshot, annoying the pickets on the far bank; the army was split into patrols and ordered to make, such a noise that Porus would live on the alert. Even the Macedonians were kept under a false impression. Word had been spread in camp that it would not be possible to cross the Jhelum during the monsoons and therefore the men should prepare to bivouac until late autumn. Food was ostentatiously carted from the nearby country and stored where Porus's scouts could see it. Noting the supplies, the rajah presumed that Alexander meant delay.

  And yet, even after a week or two he could not be certain. By night, he could hear the enemy cavalry cantering up and down their bank, and breaking the calm of the Punjab darkness with their alalalalais. As the din grew louder, his guards had to move to keep up with it; elephants were unloosed and hurried up the line, parallel with Alexander's own horsemen. Fortunately they are not animals who need more than three hours' sleep, so their tempers did not suffer. But for the men it was most exhausting. As soon as they had their enemy covered, the noise died away, only to begin again elsewhere. Night after night, these sham attacks continued, until Porus's guards would no longer play Alexander's game. They had seen their enemies' stores and they trusted in the coming monsoon; next time, they could stay at their posts and pass the night in peace.

  Against an Alexander, peace is a dangerous ambition. During his scouting, a bend had been noticed in the river, some seventeen miles upstream from Haranpur. The banks were thickly treed and on Alexander's side the headland of Mangal Dev rose to a height of 1,000 feet; a mile-long ditch ran beside it into the main riverbed, which seemed to be very narrow, partly because it was divided by an island. Remote and well-hidden, it was exactly what Alexander had been wanting. He could take a select force, leaving others to cause a diversion, hide in the scrub near Mangal Dev and slip across the river under cover of night. His recent manoeuvres had so lulled the Indians' suspicions that one more flurry would seem nothing unusual. Porus's guards were too few to stop him and by the time the

  Rajah heard the news at base, his main force would be safely on dry land. This strategy would never have been considered had he not the highest confidence in his officers of staff. Some were to act as a decoy, others were to arrange the transport: all the while, the yellow waters of the Jhelum were rising and gathering speed.

  On the night of the grand attack, fires were lit near Haranpur to suggest a permanent camp. The faithful Craterus, so often the second-in-command, was ordered to stay at base with more than a third of the army: he was briefed for each of two emergencies, depending on the conduct of the elephants.

  If Porus fled, or took all his elephants up the bank towards Alexander's crossing-party, Craterus was to ford the river and attack the Indian camp opposite, however many troops had been left to guard it. But if Porus kept even a few of his elephants back where they now stood, Craterus was on no account to venture on to the river except in the case of a Macedonian victory.

  There could be no more cautious tribute to the menace of an elephant in battle.

  A few miles further up the bank, between Craterus at Haranpur and the crossing-point near Mangal Dev, the three mercenary commanders were posted with all their hired troops and ordered to brave the river only when the Indians were fully engaged. This engagement was to be the work of some 6,000 foot and 5,000 horse, chosen for their balance and experience. Shield Bearers, Agrianian javelin-men and archers would have little fear of the river and less of the elephants; their numbers imply that no Foot Companions were detailed to the front line. The cavalry, where Porus was weakest, were fundamental to the plan: the Royal Squadron and three brigades of the Companions would deliver their usual charge, thrusting-spears to the fore, while Scythians, mounted archers and the pick of the Iranian horse, probably armed with javelins, would first pin down the enemy at longer range. Alexander led the troops in person, accompanied by bodyguards and senior brigadiers: some said Ptolemy was left behind to raise a diversion, but Ptolemy himself insisted that he sailed with the leaders and fought as hard as the rest of them. It was not an adventure which a future Pharaoh would like to admit he had missed.

  The preparations had been patient. Boats had been cut into sections and carted, presumably by night, to the chosen ford, where they were pieced together and hidden in the scrub, along with the usual rafts which were stitched from tent-skins and stuffed with hay. On the afternoon of the crossing, Alexander had looped back behind his lines as if in search of supplies, and led his troops by a roundabout route into the woodland near the Mangal Dev ford. There they were to wait and cross in the darkness. But nothing could be done to prepare the weather; in the early evening an electric summer storm broke overhead, thundering and hissing with rain so that even the Macedonian war cry would have been inaudible. The covering noise was not unwelcome, but the clouds blotted out any light from the stars and the men had to sit until the wind and rain subsided, whiling away the hours until dawn was perilously close. The river was racing faster than ever when Alexander launched out in a thirty-oared boat, showing his troops the way to what he believed to be dry land.

  As he put in to the nearest bank he was sighted by Porus's pickets, who turned and galloped back across the seventeen miles of rough ground to their rajah at base. It seemed too simple to be true: they would not return for at least an hour and a half, by which time Alexander could have disembarked enough of his 11,000 men and 5,000 horses to repulse them. But in the aftermath of the storm, he had landed not on the far bank but on the island, deceptively placed in mid-stream. There was a ford across to dry land but the river had risen so fast that it was not easily detected, especially in a hurry: there was no time left to man the boats again and head for the shore. Alexander had to set his men an example. He urged Bucephalas down into the river and steadied the old horse as he felt for the reassuring clatter of a hard bed beneath and held his ground against water which now came up to his shoulder. Even
when four or five have to clamber out of a river, it pays to be the first rider up the bank; when 5,000 horses are waiting their turn, latecomers can only dread the morass churned up by those in front. But they managed, even without stirrups, to steady themselves as the horses floundered. The infantry followed behind, up to their chests in water, all the more unpleasant for any who happened to be wearing breastplates.

  Once on the far bank Alexander pressed ahead with his cavalry. This bold move was well planned. Any advance troops sent by Porus would be the very fastest in his army, no doubt the cavalry and chariots, for he would wish them to arrive before the Macedonians had crossed. In this aim they had failed, so the light Macedonian infantry were not needed to counter them. Alexander's horsemen outnumbered Porus's total cavalry, and chariots were no menace to veterans of Gaugamela, reinforced by mounted archers. If Porus decided to move his entire force at once, elephants included, it would be several hours before he appeared, and meanwhile the Macedonian infantry would have rejoined their king and the Companions, grateful for the cover they had been given.

  Porus's retort, when it arrived, was variously described both in number and result. According to Ptolemy, who claimed to be present, 120 chariots and 2,000 horse came careering down the riverside only to run into a slanted wing of Companions and horse-archers, who attacked in squadrons and soon showed the Indians why they were the finest riders in the world. The chariots were of the fast four-horse variety, and they fell victim to muddy ground which the recent storm had made unusually slippery. Pelted by horse-archers, their teams careered with no respect for the reins, until the javelin-throwers on board found themselves struck in ditches off the beaten track. Those who could not reverse were wiped out, their general among them: some said he was Porus's son, others Porus's brother, but he died before revealing his identity. Alexander's cavalry had won a promising victory: they halted, the flanks of their horses still steaming from the rain, and when the infantry line overtook them, all 11,000 men could look forward to their next objective, Porus himself, some fifteen miles distant.