to Alexander consisted of the question “For what reason did Alexander make such a long journey
hither?” It was a somewhat strange inquiry given the clear evidence of what the Macedonians recently
had done to Musicanus and the Brahmans. Alexander certainly had not come in peace.
CALANUS
Alexander himself, we are told, received the Indian philosopher Sphines, called Calanus by the
Greeks because he greeted everyone he met, not with the Greek greeting of Chairete, but with the
Indian word Cale.
The Indian sage tried to teach the Macedonian king the doctrine of good government. Throwing a
piece of dried and shrunken hide on the ground, Calanus put his foot on the outer surface. The hide
was pressed down at that point, but rose elsewhere. This happened wherever Calanus stepped on the
edge of the hide. But when Calanus placed his foot on the center of the hide, it finally lay flat. The
demonstration was supposed to show Alexander that he should concentrate the weight of his authority
on the center and not go meandering around on the borders. It was an idea with which most of the
Macedonian army fully agreed. Somewhat oddly, Calanus himself then chose to accompany
Alexander and the Macedonians on their journey back toward that “center.” Ironically, the Indian sage
never made it to Macedon itself. His death, however, achieved in spectacular style, would leave a
permanent impression upon Alexander, the Macedonians, and Western literature.
CHAPTER 22
Fulfillment of an Oracle
PATTALA
The ruler of Pattala (Bahmanabad, about fifty miles northeast of Hyderabad), who controlled the area
of the Indus Delta, now came to Alexander and turned himself and all his possessions over to
Alexander. At the same time, Alexander chose to divide his army, sending Craterus back to Carmania
by way of Arachotia and Drangiana, with three battalions of the infantry, some archers, the elephants,
and Macedonian units deemed unfit for service, including members of the Companion cavalry. Their
task was to solidify Macedonian rule in the areas through which they would pass. Hephaestion was
given command of the rest of the army except those units who were to sail with Alexander down the
Indus to the sea. Alexander would lead these men southward to the Outer Ocean and then westward
along the coast.
Peithon, with the mounted javelin men and the Agrianes, was conveyed across the river, with
orders to settle the towns that already had been fortified, and to deal with any signs of trouble among
the Indians before meeting Alexander at Pattala.
When Alexander had been on the voyage downstream for three days he received news that the chief
of Pattala had fled along with the majority of his tribesmen. The country around Pattala was
reportedly now virtually deserted. And, indeed, when Alexander and the Macedonians arrived,
around the middle of July 325, they found both Pattala and the territory around it empty. By this time
Alexander’s name alone inspired terror.
The king sent out light troops to pursue the fugitives, who were urged to return without fear. Pattala
was theirs to live in and the country was theirs to till, the messengers announced. Many of them
eventually did return.
Meanwhile, Alexander began preparing for the army’s passage along the Makran coast (the
southwest coast of Pakistan). As usual, Alexander planned carefully. Hephaestion fortified the citadel
of Pattala, and wells were dug in the surrounding desert. A harbor and dockyards were also built
there.
At Pattala the Indus split into two large streams that eventually flowed into the Outer Ocean (the
Indian Ocean). After arranging for Leonnatus to lead a land force of 1,000 cavalry and 8,000 heavy
and light armed infantry along the riverbank, Alexander lowered his ships into the Indus’ westerly
stream. Before leading the army southward and westward, Alexander had determined to find the
easiest and safest route down the Indus to the Outer Ocean.
TO THE OUTER OCEAN
This proved a surprisingly formidable task. The day after the fleet weighed anchor, a storm blew up
and damaged most of the ships, so that the sailors had to beach them and build new ones.
After securing some local pilots, Alexander’s fleet set out once again, sailing into a hard wind and
waters so rough that they were forced to seek refuge in a side channel. There they were left high and
dry by the receding tide. This was a considerable surprise to Alexander’s men. Having grown up like
frogs around the calm Mediterranean pond, they had never experienced a real tide.
Eventually, however, the Macedonians reached the island of Cilluta. With the best sailors
Alexander then went to the far side of the island to see if it offered a safe passage out to the sea.
Sailing out about 200 stades from Cilluta they saw another island right out in the sea itself. Having
seen it they returned to Cilluta, and anchoring at the headland, Alexander sacrificed to those gods
whom, he used to say, Ammon had ordered him to so honor. Whatever Alexander had been told at
Siwah, it was now, in Alexander’s view, that the oracle had been fulfilled.
On the following day Alexander sailed down to a second island, the one in the sea, went ashore,
and once more offered sacrifice, this time to other gods and with a different ritual, though still, by his
own account, in accord with the oracle of Ammon.
THE OUTER OCEAN
Then leaving the mouths of the Indus River behind him altogether, Alexander set sail for the open
ocean to see, as he said, whether there was any land nearby. Out on the open ocean the king sacrificed
bulls to Poseidon and cast them out to sea. He poured a libation from a golden cup and flung the cup
and golden bowls into the sea as thanks offerings. Finally, Alexander prayed that Poseidon might
safely conduct the fleet that he proposed to send later to the Persian Gulf and to the mouths of the
Tigris and Euphrates under Nearchus’ command.
The son of Zeus had reached the great Outer Ocean—as Zeus Ammon perhaps had promised in
Siwah. Although he had stayed his steps at the Hyphasis, to this point Alexander had not lost a single
battle. As of yet, he was invincible.
But Zeus’ brother Poseidon ultimately denied Alexander’s prayer, or at least decided to make
Nearchus’ subsequent journey an odyssey rather than the well-provisioned cruise Alexander had
meticulously planned.
Alexander himself then returned to Pattala, where he directed Hephaestion to make preparations for
fortifying the harbor and installing docks. Pattala was being prepared for a prosperous future.
Alexander then undertook a second voyage down to the ocean, this time by the eastern arm of the
river. His object was to learn which branch of the Indus was safer. On his way down Alexander came
to a great lake. The passage by this branch proved easier (but slower). Having landed on the shore,
Alexander arranged for wells to be dug along the coast to supply the fleet with water.
After he returned to Pattala, Alexander set out once more down the eastern stream and then had
another harbor and more docks built at the lake he had discovered on his way down the first time.
Leaving a garrison there with four months’ supplies for the troops, he prepared all other things for the
coastal voyage. The way was now prepared for the Macedonian fleet and army t
o begin sailing and
marching westward for the first time since 335.
THE CONQUEST OF INDIA
Alexander’s campaign down the Indus in just over six months had been an astonishing feat of
planning, coordinated movement, and arms. Alexander had directed the campaign despite suffering a
wound that almost killed him. Somewhere, very deep inside of Alexander’s heart, there was a will or
self-belief that simply would not let him give up his spirit to the arrow of an Indian tribesman. His
story would not end inside the walls of an unnamed mud-brick fort.
At the same time, we must not overlook the sheer brutality of Alexander’s conquest of the region—
as well as the ferocity of the resistance, which continued long after Alexander left the Indus Delta.
While the Indians who capitulated immediately usually were spared, those who did not were
subjected to ferocious attacks in which soldiers and civilians were slaughtered, often without
distinction. Tens of thousands were enslaved, as they always had been after battles in the ancient
world. Alexander may have brought the Indians “peace and with it the promise of economic
development,” but the price was very, very high. Alexander’s conquest of the lower Indus Valley was
not genocide by any definition of that modern word. He did, however, intend to conquer and rule the
Indians. If they were unwilling to accept his rule, he felt no qualms about killing them by the
thousands.
Some have argued that because Alexander later withdrew his governor Peithon from the Indus
Delta and transferred him (along with his troops) to the northwestern satrapy (where direct
Macedonian control was maintained from the central Hindu Kush to the Indus Valley), the campaign
in India proper was a failure. But after that transfer, Macedonian interests between the Indus and the
Hydaspes were secured by a native prince (Eudamus) who was supported by an army commanded by
a Macedonian officer, and Alexander’s great ally Porus ruled over the enormous area from the
Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. By these measures Alexander adjusted the administration of his
empire to the circumstances, as he always had done. If that constitutes failure, rarely in the history of
imperialism can a conqueror be said to have failed so successfully.
WESTWARD
If Zeus Ammon had revealed to Alexander that he would reach the ends of the world unconquered,
then his prophecy had come true. Soon, however, Alexander would embark upon another conquest,
this one not so much of peoples, but of a landscape, the fabled deserts of Gedrosia (the modern
Makran, comprising the southwestern coastal area of Pakistan). Gedrosia had a legendary history of
vanquishing those who attempted to cross its waterless dunes. Although Alexander and the majority of
his army would survive their march through the desert, many of the army’s camp followers would not.
For that reason Alexander’s march through Gedrosia has been compared to Napoleon’s disastrous
Russian campaign. But whether Alexander bears full responsibility for the disaster is debatable.
CHAPTER 23
Death in the Desert
THE OREITAE
Alexander himself left Pattala, perhaps in late August 325. He brought with him half the Guards and
the archers and the brigades of the Companion infantry, the special squadron of the Companion
cavalry, a squadron from each cavalry regiment, together with the mounted archers. Hephaestion was
left with the rest of the army. Between them the two men led at least 30,000 combatants and non-
combatants (wives, concubines, children).
For the time being, the fleet also stayed behind; the plan was for it to remain in Pattala until the
southerly winds of the monsoon subsided, sometime in early November.
But the hostility of the locals was such that the admiral, Nearchus, was forced to leave with the
fleet while the stiff breezes were blowing hard, probably early in October. Moreover, he sailed, not
down the eastern stream of the Indus River as Alexander had planned, but down the western stream,
perhaps because the Indians had destroyed the docking facilities Alexander had constructed on the
easier, eastern branch of the river.
The army meanwhile marched along first “by the foothills of the Kirthar Range to the mouth of the
Arabis River” (probably the modern Hab, west of Karachi). From there, Alexander turned toward the
ocean, keeping it on his left. He meant to dig wells along the way for the army that was sailing along
the coast and to make a surprise attack upon an independent and hostile Indian tribe in the area called
the Oreitae.
Soon Alexander launched his attack. Those who resisted were cut down by the cavalry, but many
surrendered. The remaining Oreitans and the Gedrosians, who sought to block Alexander’s advance
into Gedrosia, either fled or gave up. The Oreitans then were put under the governorship of
Apollophanes. One of Alexander’s personal bodyguards, Leonnatus (who had fought at Alexander’s
side within the Mallian town), also was left behind with the Agrianes, archers, cavalry, and
mercenaries to wait for the fleet when it passed, to build a new city, and to put everything in order.
After Hephaestion arrived with his force, Alexander proceeded in early October toward the territory
of the Gedrosians.
THE PLAN
To reach Pura (modern Iranshahr in Iran), the capital city of the Gedrosians, Alexander first had to
cross a desert region (now called the Makran) well known in antiquity for its heat and lack of water
and food. Alexander, however, did not choose the route in ignorance of the difficulties involved. He
chose it, we are told, because, with the exception of Semiramis, returning from her conquests of India,
no one had ever brought an army successfully through it. Indeed, Semiramis had “succeeded” in
getting twenty survivors through the desert, while the Persian king Cyrus the Great supposedly had
lost all but seven of his men when he crossed it. Alexander knew about these stories, and they had
inspired him to emulate—and hopefully surpass—Cyrus and Semiramis.
Alexander thus thought he knew what he, his army, and his fleet would face as they made their way
westward; and, on the basis of that knowledge, he had made his usual, careful preparations. As we
have seen, for the sake of the fleet a secondary harbor had been constructed on the lake along the
eastern stream of the Indus down to the sea. In addition, a four-month grain supply had been laid on to
meet provisioning demands before Nearchus sailed.
During the crossing of the Makran itself, Alexander’s plan was for the (land) army to dig wells for
the fleet at points along the coast to supply it with water during the coastal voyage, and also to make
provision for a market or anchorage. The fleet thus would be supplied with adequate water from the
land. The parallel plan perhaps was for the transport ships to furnish the army with whatever food
provisions Alexander and the land forces might not be able to carry along their route inland.
These provisions would supplement both what Alexander and the army carried into Gedrosia and
also what they might be able to forage from the countryside; for Alexander also had timed his entry
into Gedrosia, in early October, to coincide with whatever local harvest there might be. The monsoon
rains would have guaranteed that whatever crops could have grown in the Ma
kran region at the time
would have been growing as Alexander made his way westward. Alexander did not take the
Macedonian army through the Makran in ignorance of its dangers or without a plan.
THE MARCH THROUGH GEDROSIA
No doubt based upon local intelligence, at the outset of its march the army avoided the particularly
inhospitable coast, instead taking the inland route through the valleys between what is now called the
Central Makran Range and the Coastal Range. Here, too, however, supplies were lacking and the
army found no water. The men marched great distances at night to avoid the heat. This was done in
spite of the fact that, as we have seen, Alexander was anxious to work along the coast to find
anchorage and to assist the fleet by digging wells. Under the circumstances, Alexander could not risk
bringing the army down to the coast.
Nevertheless, at one point, a party of mounted troops under the command of a certain Thoas was
sent to the seacoast with a few cavalrymen to find out if there might be any anchorage for ships, or any
fresh water near the sea, or anything else of use to the fleet. But all Thoas found were a few fishermen
living in stifling huts built out of shells fastened together and roofed by the backbones of fish. For
drinking water these wretched souls scraped away the gravel, and even this was not exactly sweet.
These fishermen became known to the Greeks as the Ichthuophagoi, or Fish Eaters, because they
subsisted on the fish left by the receding tide. Among other quirks of personal hygiene the Fish Eaters
let the nails of their fingers and toes grow from birth to old age, and also let their hair grow until it
was matted like felt. For clothes they wore animal skins. Such men certainly could not adequately
resupply the army—and were hardly worth conquering.
When Alexander (and the army) finally reached a slightly more fertile area (perhaps the oasis of
Turbat in southwestern Pakistan), he collected what supplies he could and sent them down to the coast
(perhaps at modern Pasni). But the guards bringing the supplies, near starvation themselves, broke
open the provisions and shared them out.
Though Alexander rarely tolerated violations of military discipline, he understood that to punish
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