Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  Even a banyan was at the mercy of the weather. As the Chenab came in view, midsummer made way for the monsoon proper to begin, and at last the army understood why the local villages had been built on banks and mounds. As the rain teemed down, the river rose from its bed and came to life as if roused from a long and reluctant sleep. The nullahs began to flood and the ditches could no longer take their overflow. Camp had to be hastily moved as the current rose, ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet, until it burst its banks in disdain for the invaders. The men retired to the villages and watched the water race across the plains, in places even deeper than the elephants, and as they watched, they became aware of a threat which could not be so easily avoided: the floods had caused their houses to be plagued with snakes.

  'Their numbers and their ferocity,' wrote Nearchus, 'were very surprising: at the time of the rains, they retreat to the higher villages and the natives therefore build their beds well above the ground, though even then, they are often forced to abandon their homes by this overwhelming invasion.' Species of python as long as twenty-four feet came in search of a dry comer: others were too tiny to be noticed, but it was these smaller snakes, scorpions and cobras who brought the most discomfort. 'They hid in the tents, the cooking-pots, the hedges and the walls: those whom they bit bled from every pore and suffered agony, dying very rapidly unless help was found in the drugs and roots of the Indian snake-charmers,' whose skill, however, was remarkably effective. Medical supplies were summoned urgently from all quarters, while wherever possible the men hung hammocks between the trees and spent an anxious night above the ground. Only by crossing the Chenab could they hope for better things.

  But the Chenab was foaming and roaring in its mile-and-a-half-wide channel. Though Alexander chose the broadest and smoothest stretch for the crossing, even Ptolemy admitted that many of those who crossed by boat, rather than by rafts of stuffed leather, were dashed against the rocks so that 'not a few were lost in the water'. Once on the far bank Hephaistion was sent to deal with Indians to the north, while Porus returned to recruit as many elephants as possible, a sign that Alexander was expecting heavy fighting. Supplies were to be convoyed eastwards as soon as the river allowed, and in the meantime, he would live off the land.

  Marching eastwards he waded across the river Ravi with his lightest troops and received the surrender of its nearest tribesmen. They told him of a tribe called the Cathaioi in the plains near Lahore who were bellicose by nature; they were said to have planned resistance and inflamed the tribesmen south on the Indus. Alexander hurried down to their territory in three days' rapid marching, with only one day for rest, and arrived at Sangala, their largest fortress. The Cathaioi had drawn up a triple line of carts off which they could defend themselves; cavalry failed to provoke them down from their hill, so the infantry line pushed in amongst them and drove them back behind Sangala's solid brick wall. Alexander had no siege machinery and could only encircle the fort while tunnels were dug to undermine it; a night escape was anticipated and cost the Indians five hundred lives. Just when the tunnels were being completed, Porus arrived with 5,000 Indian volunteers and the siege engines, a credit to the transport section who had hauled them across the mud of a summer monsoon. The engines were not needed, as the sapper's job had already sufficed; the wall subsided into the tunnel, ladders were slung across the breaches and brave resistance did not save 17,000 Indians from being slaughtered, according to Ptolemy, and another 70,000 being captured. 'Less than a hundred of Alexander's troops died in the siege' but more than 1,200 were wounded, an unusually high proportion for Ptolemy to admit and one which included many officers. The wounded were another bad burden on morale, and all the while the thunder rumbled and the rain poured down on weary men.

  Neighbouring tribesmen were pursued to the death if they ran away, pardoned if they surrendered; Alexander 'would not be harsh to them if they stayed and received him as a friend, any more than he had been harsh to other self-governing Indians who surrendered willingly'. The continued stress on their 'ancient self-government' was a thin, but revealing, cloak for the campaign; momentarily, matters improved when the army reached Sopeithes's kingdom near Lahore and the river Beas.

  When their engines of war drew near its capital city, out marched the native king, a tall figure dressed in gold and purple embroidery, golden sandals and bracelets and necklaces of pearl. He handed over his sceptre, studded with precious beryl, whereupon historians repaid his compliment:

  Among these people, the strangest feature is their respect for beauty: they choose their most handsome man as king. When a baby is born, two months after its birth the royal council decides whether it is beautiful enough to deserve to live . ..: as for the adults, to improve their looks they dye their beards all sorts of bright colours. Oddly enough, their brides and bridegrooms even choose each other.

  There were reasons for these friendly reminiscences: the ancient name of the country round Lahore meant 'prosperity' and for several days the army feasted in comfort, while the officers, at least, were housed away from the rain. The king entertained them with his famous breed of dogs, whose pedigree included the blood of tigers: four of them harassed a lion in public and refused to let go of his haunches even when the keepers were ordered to hack off one of their hind legs. The show appealed to Alexander's love of hunting and one of the dogs was given to him as a present; there were also reports of local veins of gold and silver, verified in the meantime by his Greek prospector-in-chief. The land of prosperity owned an enormous mound of salt: 'the Indians, however, have no experience of mining or casting metals', and 'are rather naive about what they own.'

  East of Amritsar, only one more river of the Punjab remained to be crossed and there was no doubt now that Alexander meant to go beyond it. His staff needed little imagination to guess what he intended on the far side: for the past few weeks, they had been assembling as many elephants as they could find and they were now expecting the arrival of a batch of reinforcements from Greece and Asia far larger than any they had ever received before. Indians were joining in the march as well as any of the multitude of prisoners who had not been sold: the total strength of the army when reinforced was said to be 120,000, double its previous size and large enough for an expedition to the eastern ocean or for a view of the edge of the inhabited world. True, timber had been cut for a fleet on the Jhelum, but it would take time to season and even when ships had been built there was no need to use them immediately.

  But Alexander was to pass from prosperity to disillusionment. The officers had heard stories of India and even knew the name and existence of Ceylon, but it was hard to connect these scraps of information with the brown and endless plain through which they were dragging their carts and sodden equipment, in mud which sucked the elephants down to a slow crawl. Alexander had talked of a four-month journey from Taxila and they had been prepared to believe him, but on the borders of the Beas the next king after Prosperity's lands gave the first clear warnings of what lay beyond. His knowledge may have been rough and ready, but its gist was unmistakable; beyond the Beas was a well-tilled land of peace and fertility, governed by aristocrats and well supplied with elephants. Beyond the Indus, if Alexander returned and marched down it, there came a twelve days' journey through deserted land; then the Ganges, some 'four miles wide', and deepest of all the Indian rivers, along whose lower course stretched the lands of Ksandrames the king, whose infantry was said to number 200,000, his horsemen as many again or more, while 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants would support them to the death. It was a dramatic piece of news. Like the Conquistador who first saw a boat from the unknown kingdom of the Incas, Alexander had been warned of a civilization which the western world had never known to exist. For the first time, he heard the name of Dhana Nanda, last of the nine great kings of Magadha, whose dynasty had ruled for the past two hundred years from their splendid palace at Palimbothra, where the Ganges runs down to the eastern sea.

  It was hard to believe such a revelation. Alexan
der is said to have asked Porus to confirm it, which he duly did, adding that Ksandrames was a very common sort of man, who was only the son of a barber, raised to the throne by a family intrigue. That promised well for the invasion, while detailed inquiry gave a clear enough picture of the landscape, even down to such details as the turtles which swam in the Ganges. But wild surmise had quickly spread among the men and its dangers were obvious. Personally, Alexander relished the thought of a struggle with another Empire which was labouring, like Darius's, in its extreme old age. He would have to time his announcement carefully: unusual favours would help to prepare the audience, especially as the rains were showing signs of abating.

  The troops, therefore, were given leave to plunder the nearby country, no mean privilege in a land where precious stones were theirs for the taking; in a river like the Chenab, jewels were washed to the surface, until no keen eye could miss the Indian beryls and diamonds, the onyxes, topaz and jasper and the clearest amethysts in the classical world. While the men were seeking their fortune, their women and children were called into camp and promised regular payments of com and money. Such bribery was of no avail: when the soldiery returned from their plundering, they gathered in groups and sullenly discussed the rumours of their future. Their mood had not improved when Alexander summoned their commanders and at last explained his plans for what lay beyond.

  His speech was better constructed than received. The officers heard him in silence and for a long while they were too embarrassed to take up his invitation to reply. At last, the veteran Coenus dared to put their feelings into words: the men would never agree to a march against such an enemy, and if Alexander still wished to go eastwards to the Ganges, he must go without his Macedonians. It was not so much a mutiny as the expression of a deep despair. The men had marched 11,250 miles in the past eight years, regardless of season or landscape; official figures were to claim that they had killed at least three-quarters of a million Asiatics. Twice they had starved, and their clothing was so tattered that most were dressed in Indian garments: the horses were footsore and the wagons were unusable in plains that had turned to a swamp. It was the weather which had finally broken their spirit. For the past three months, the rains had soused them through and through. Their buckles and belts were corroded and their rations were rotting as mildew ruined the grain: boots leaked, and no sooner had their weapons been polished than the damp turned them green with mould. And all the while the river Beas rolled on before them, defying them to cross it in search of a battle with elephants, not in their tens or hundreds but in thousand upon thousand. They had been told, rightly, that the elephants east of the Ganges were larger and fiercer, and there was even word of the heavier breed which lived on the island of Ceylon.

  Their case could not have been put from a more respectable quarter. Coenus had served in the army for twenty years, latterly as a Hipparch in the Companion Cavalry, and Alexander would always choose him for the toughest missions. Lesser generals, therefore, felt free to approve his words: 'Many even shed tears as a further proof of their unwillingness to face the dangers ahead.' Alexander grew angry and blamed them for hanging back. When anger had made no impression, he sent them away and began to sulk. There is nothing harder for a man than when all he has planned is challenged, when he knows he can do it if only the others will think on his own bold terms.

  The next morning, he called the officers back and told them that 'he would go on himself but he would not force a single one of his Macedonians to come with him; he would find the men to follow him willingly. As for those who wished to go home, they could go now and they could tell their friends that they had deserted their King in the middle of their enemy.'

  But the officers had taken a stand and they were not to be shamed into surrender. They refused, and it was time for the King's last threat: Alexander retired in anger to his tent and refused to see his Companions for the whole of the next two days in the hope that his brooding would make them think again.

  A profound silence fell on the camp. The men were annoyed with their king's loss of temper but they were not to be shifted from their ground. The hours passed, until they could even feel brave enough to despise him and boo if he kept up his anger any longer. Such stubbornness proved decisive, for Alexander realized that he was a beaten man. Like his hero Achilles, he could not stand the shame of a public humiliation: he sent for the priests and seers and told them he meant to offer sacrifice to see if he should cross the Beas or not. Animals were brought, 'but when he sacrificed, the offerings did not go in his favour'. Now that he could plead the gods' disapproval, he set aside his shame, and summoned his closest friends and elderly Companions to tell them that all seemed to point to a retreat. It was only three years since he had flouted the omens and crossed the Oxus in defiance of gods and prophets.

  When the news was announced, a roar of relief went up from the ranks and many burst into tears that their wishes had come true. Amid such jubilation, respect for the gods was the one remaining solace for Alexander's sense of pride. The army was divided into twelve sections, each of which was ordered to build an altar for the twelve Greek gods of Olympus 'as thanks to those who had brought them victoriously so far and as a memorial of all they had been through together'. The altars were to be enormous, 'as high as the tallest towers and broader even than towers would be': Alexander did not wish to be remembered as the king whom the river Beas had humbled. Others said that he traced out a camp three times larger than the one he had used and surrounded it with a ditch fifty feet wide and forty feet deep. Inside, huts were to be built with beds nearly eight feet long and mangers twice the normal size; huge suits of armour and impossibly large bits and bridles were scattered on the ground 'to leave the native evidence that his men were big men, showing excessive physical strength'. Romance later claimed that the altars were inscribed to father Amnion, brother Apollo, the Sun and the Kabeiroi, wild gods who were favoured by his mother Olympias.

  Only archaeology will ever settle how far these rumours are true and though several have searched, nobody has been lucky enough to find what could be one of the strangest memorials of the classical past. There is no doubting the altars, but until it is proved on the ground the megalomania 370 of the camp need only be posthumous gossip. What is certain is that Alexander had known his first defeat and that when he reached the Jhelum by the way he had come, he would find little joy in the sudden relaxation of the early autumn rain. Across to Amritsar, back to the river Ravi, and so to the river Chenab, less swollen than before: there, the retreat was briefly halted by a sudden loss in the high command. Coenus the Hipparch 'died of sickness and Alexander buried him as magnificently as circumstances allowed'. It was only a few weeks since his bold complaint had turned the army homewards.

  'How often before, the Führer had removed an inconvenient associate not by dismissal, but by an allegation of illness, merely to preserve the German people's faith in the internal unity of the top leadership; even now, when all was almost over, he remained true to this habit of observing public decorum.' Parallels between Hitler and Alexander have been fashionable, but there is nothing to prove that they are valid. If Coenus had been a sick man, then his plea to return was all the more intelligible; it could have been dysentery, it might have been snakebite, but the man who had publicly thwarted a son of Zeus never lived to enjoy the results of his counsel.

  The retreat he inspired has always seemed sympathetic. Alexander's eastern plans have not been well received by historians: many have argued that they never existed and some have maintained that all mentions of the Ganges, are best discarded as legend. Apart from the facts, these arguments assume that no sane man could have wished to go on; there are two sides to such a judgement, and only one finds its evidence in Greek accounts of the campaign. The kingdom of Magadha was powerful, certainly, but reports of its strength were no less fantastic than those of the legendary armies of Indian epic heroes, and however plentiful its elephants, it was passing through a painful old age. In nati
ve Jain tradition, Dhana Nanda, last of its kings, was long remembered as son of a common woman, born, therefore, outside the ruling caste and detested by many of his courtiers. In the epic book of Ceylon, he is said to have extorted heaps of gold from his subjects and hidden them, meanly, in the waters of the Ganges. Alexander, most remarkably, knew this perfectly well from his informants: Ksandrames, said Porus, was 'merely the son of a barber', and not only is a barber's son a common Indian idiom for a feeble and low-born king, but it is exactly echoed in later Indian histories as a judgement on Dhana Nanda himself. The last of the Nanda dynasty had no firm hold on himself or on Magadha's loyalties; like Cortes, Alexander had stood on the brink of an old civilization, rich but torn by internal discontent. The journey from the Beas to the Eastern Ocean would have lasted another three months down a royal road, and his officers knew it as clearly as he did. And yet they turned it down.