The Nature of Alexander

by Mary Renault

  For months Alexander had been fighting on foot; but for a pitched battle he must use cavalry, and horses were terrified of elephants. In the field they could be dealt with; the point of crucial danger was the moment of landing. If they were on the bank, the horses would plunge off the rafts in panic, and be swept away.

  No operation of Alexander’s better displays his many-sided military genius than the battle of the Hydaspes: war psychology, cool nerve, swift reaction in emergency, resource, organization, and the leadership by which total trust is inspired. Day after day, in pouring rain and thunderstorms, with the river steadily rising, he played an elaborate game of bluff. He made large troop movements to likely crossing points, launching boats and rafts in suggestive ways. He built up ostentatious stores, making it known that he thought of sitting out the floods till their winter fall. He kept Porus guessing not only at his plans, but at his quality. He showed every sign of irresolution. He marched his army by night along the bank, to blow trumpets and yell war cries till Porus and all the elephants had marched to meet him; then he retired, leaving the enemy to wait in the wet till morning. He did it night after night. Porus, a warrior of towering stature, began thoroughly to despise him, and stopped moving elephants each time he made a noise. Alexander was now ready.

  He chose an upstream bend, where a headland and wooded island would screen him. The rafts were brought by stealthy land portage. Craterus was left in camp with a strong contingent, to cross when the elephants were engaged elsewhere. Under cover of a violent thunderstorm, Alexander reached his crossing point. Among his officers, besides Hephaestion and Perdiccas, were Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus, three future kings. With the rafted horses they stole ashore. There was a bad moment when they found the bank had been cut off by a flood channel, but they just managed to ford it. A fascinating detail here reveals the average height of the Greek war horse: the men were chest deep in water, and the horses could just keep their heads above. No elephants appeared.

  Too late, Porus’ scouts alerted him. He sent one of his sons with a flying column of chariots and horsemen. They were cut to pieces, a loss he could ill spare; his infantry superiority was enormous, about 30,000 to Alexander’s 6,000; in cavalry he was weak; he had now lost half (his son, who was killed, as well) and was left with 2,000 to the Macedonian 5,000 or so. He disposed his huge force on the most solid ground he could find, the cavalry on the wings, the infantry in the centre, and in front the wall of elephants, 100 feet apart.

  Alexander was never a general to fight his last war over again. He did not attempt the tactics of Gaugamela. His usual right-wing station happened to suit his plan; but when his weary infantry came struggling up through the mud, he rested them till it was time for the decisive thrust. Viewing the portentous line of elephants with their weapon-bristling howdahs, he planned how to make them fight for him.

  At first he let them alone. He set his horse archers (mostly Thracian) to harass and confuse the left-wing cavalry, which he then charged with his own cavalry wing. The Indian right-wing cavalry galloped round to meet the threat. They were attacked from the rear by Coenus, a reliable commander of whom more will be heard. Alexander pressed his assault. The cavalry retreated among the infantry, behind the elephants. Now the horse archers shot down their mahouts, and turned their arrows on the bewildered beasts; as they started milling, the phalanx, its moment come, fell on them with javelins and sarissas. (The sufferings of this intelligent and loyal creature in the service of man’s aggression is one of history’s shameful tragedies.) In pain and panic, bereft of their guides and friends, they flailed and trampled the troops around them, as the Macedonians cordoned the confused and desperate mob in ever-narrowing ground. The Indians had just forced a gap and started to pour out of it, when Craterus, who had meantime crossed the undefended river, arrived with his fresh troops and cut them off. The scene stuns imagination: the great horde of men and beasts, the drumming rainstorms, the neighing, trumpeting and yells, the war horns and gongs counterpointed with thunder; the deepening bog stinking of blood and elephant spoor and river slime; dark faces and fair alike inhuman with mud and rain. Allowing for the chroniclers’ usual licence, the Indian casualties were terrible, the Macedonians’ light. It was Alexander’s last pitched battle; and, as he would have wished, it was his masterpiece.

  King Porus was no Darius. On his brave elephant he fought when others fled, till, wounded in the underarm gap of his mail, he turned slowly to join the rearguard in retreat. Alexander had marked him down with admiration, and at the end sent him a royal ambassador; indiscreetly choosing the hated Omphis, whom he at once prepared to kill. Alexander found someone else, and he surrendered. The regal giant gazed down at the victorious enemy who measured beside him like a half-grown boy. How did he want to be treated, asked the muddy lad’s interpreter. “Like a king,” he answered. “I would do that for my own sake,” said Alexander; “ask something for yours.” Porus, having measured the inward as well as the outward stature, replied that all had been said which needed saying. His kingdom was restored as soon as he had given allegiance, and later added to. His loyalty was lifelong. It would seem that Alexander, honouring the brave, did not even forget his elephant. Philostratus preserves a story that in a “temple of the sun” at Taxila there was a very old elephant, formerly belonging to King Porus, dedicated there by Alexander, who gave him the Homeric name of Ajax; the people used to anoint this pensioned hero with myrrh, and decorate him with ribbons.

  At Taxila, Alexander performed the funeral rites of another veteran, nearer to his heart.

  In the plains where the battle was fought, and which he set out from to cross the Hydaspes, Alexander founded cities. The first he called Nicaea, from his victory over the Indians; the other Bucephala, in memory of his horse Bucephalas who died there, not wounded at all but from exhaustion and old age. For he was about thirty years old and fell victim to fatigue; but till then had shared with Alexander many labours and dangers, never mounted except by him, since Bucephalas would bear no other rider. He was tall in stature, and valiant of heart.

  The Romancers, feeling what was due to him, gave him a heroic death in battle; but both humanity and self-preservation would have kept Alexander from going into such an action on a thirty-year-old horse; and Ptolemy, his lifelong associate, must be Arrian’s source here. Bucephalas had come a long way from the horse pastures of Thessaly. By the shifting channel of the Jhelum archaeologists still seek traces of his tomb.

  Porus’ wound did not lay him up. He was induced to make peace with Omphis, and was soon on campaign with his new King. Alexander was ready to move east, to the sacred Ganges and its mouth in the ultimate ocean; his zest whetted by the real and the rumoured Indian marvels; the banyans which made a wood of a single tree, the sagacious elephants, the tiger skins and pearls and sapphires and rubies, the brilliant dyes of clothes, moustaches, beards and monkeys’ behinds; the fishponds and the shrines.

  Not all the marvels were pleasing to his soldiers. Greeks might believe that woman was an imperfect form of man, but it seemed excessive to burn her alive on his pyre. Pythons flushed from their holes by the floods were huge, but unappealing. Worse were the poison snakes also enlivened, of all sizes down to the tiny and deadly krait which can lurk in a shoe or round a door handle. Alexander collected the best Indian snake charmers and used their remedies, but many men died painfully. And always, daily, there was the rain.

  He was not going to let it waste his time. He marched north against an old enemy of Porus who, hearing of the rajah’s reinstatement, had declared war on both of them. His territory was reduced and handed as a gift to Porus; later in the campaign he was released to take it over. With him was sent Hephaestion, to help consolidate the conquest, found new towns and get them garrisoned. No mission could better attest the ability he had shown in diplomacy and organization; he had to set up the administration of a newly subdued province, in conference with a powerful ex-enemy, carrying also the vital responsibility for Alexander�
�s communications. Had he been simply the beloved confidant, he would have been taken along to see the Ocean. Indeed, in view of the outcome he must have been sadly missed.

  Alexander marched on towards the foothills of Kashmir, unaware of its beauties, concerned only to clear his passage eastward. He had been told (correctly) that the king whose lands bordered the Ganges was a low-caste usurper, despised by his divided people. His lands were rich and populous, his elephants particularly large. Alexander was eager to get on. He pressed swiftly across two more rivers, one of them in spate; made a sensational assault on the city of Sangala (unusually defended with a wagon wall), routed hostile tribesmen and arranged the affairs of others who had acknowledged him. He was too busy to notice that, under a well-disciplined outer surface, his men’s morale had sunk to zero.

  By this time they had probably decided that it rained in India for nine or ten months a year. The miseries of constant soakings were made worse by inadequate clothes. They could well afford the good strong wool or linen they were used to; but when it wore out, they could get only wretched flimsy cotton, with no wear in it nor protection from the armour’s chafing, tearing on every thorn; they referred to the stuff as “Indian rags.” They were sick of trudging in pulp-wet boots through deep mud churned up by the column; of lame horses with thrushy frogs and worn hooves; of heaving at the wheels of bogged-down ox carts; of mouldy food, mildewed leather, and daily scourings of all their metal for rust. They felt no exhilaration at the thought of larger elephants, or new tribes of warriors, or the half-month march through desert which they heard would lie between. There was one more Punjab river left to cross, the Beas. Camping on its banks, they put their heads together; in significant numbers, they decided not to cross it.

  Once aware of their disaffection, Alexander took it seriously. He knew their discomforts and sympathized; but he had dealt with it all before, he had never failed to pick up their spirits and carry them along with him, and had no fear of failing now. He called the regimental officers together; his address in Arrian shows that he knew they were dejected too. He recalled past exploits and victories and their rich rewards; he reminded them that he had always shared the hardships and let them share the spoils. It is a lovely thing, he said, to live with courage, and die leaving an everlasting fame. When they had reached the Endless Ocean, all could go home who wished; it would be easy then; for, he assured them with passionate conviction, it was well known that Ocean flowed into the Caspian Sea. He recalled to them that Heracles by labours became divine.

  It was probably one of his best speeches. This time it failed. The cast-iron-reliable Coenus broke the unresponsive silence. With meticulous respect and courtesy, he said the officers had no complaints; Alexander’s generosity had left them none; they were already overpaid even for future hardships. But he would presume to speak for the men. Arrian, himself a soldier, gives him a moving directness and simplicity. He spoke of their weariness (it was eight years since he had set out with Alexander); of their homesickness for wives and children left behind; of their many dead. “Most have died of sickness.” In an age without antibiotics, bad water and tropical diseases had killed more than the enemies on whom they had never turned their backs. Old enough, probably, to be Alexander’s father, he urged him to let his mother have a sight of him. Let him lead his veterans home, with the loot which would set them up as gentlemen in the homeland, and bring out the young men who would follow him to further conquests. When Coenus ended, the rest did not cheer; they wept.

  Alexander had no illusions; he had met rock at last. Still undespairing, he dismissed them brusquely, hoping they would think again. Nothing happened. He called them back, told them they could go as soon as they liked and leave him to advance with the auxiliaries; then flung back into his tent, and shut out everyone. Intellectually he may have seen it as Achilles’ angry withdrawal; emotionally, in view of their extraordinary bond, it had something feminine, an appeal to their concern over his wounds and illnesses; even over his grief, real as it had been, for Cleitus’ death. This time it did not move them. He kept it up for two days; they answered sulk with sulk. On the third, he ordered the sacrificial omens to be taken for crossing the river. Whether by Amnion’s guidance or his son’s, all the omens were adverse. He gave it out that he would turn back.

  Their anger vanished. They were all his again. They shouted and cried with joy. Many came to his tent invoking blessings on him, saying that this, his sole defeat, was the victory of his kindness. Though the word defeat must have stung, he kept, as he would to the end, his sense of style. He made an occasion of it, holding games and horse races, dedicating the army to the twelve Olympian gods, to each of whom he raised a tower-tall altar (they have defied discovery; perhaps all he had was mud brick), marking the limit of his enterprise. Then he returned to Hephaestion’s new cities, where he could unburden himself to the one man who would understand.

  The bitterness he felt was probably lifelong. It is not unlikely he could have reached the Bay of Bengal; his intelligence about the route was sound. There is no telling, however, what further knowledge the journey might have brought him of the vast Far Eastern land masses forever beyond his reach, or with what sense of diminishment it might have shaken his soul. The gods may have been kinder than he knew.

  The March to Babylon

  IF THE MACEDONIANS EXPECTED an easy march through the Khyber and peaceful Sogdiana, they had reckoned without Alexander, who told them acidly that they must at least allow him to leave India, not bolt from it. He had just had reliable information that the Indus did not flow into the Nile, but into the Endless Ocean. Baulked of reaching it eastward, he would not be stopped from getting to it in the west. There was more to this than the thirst of the explorer; like most of his “longings,” it had a practical side. From the Indus mouth he had been told of a seaway direct to Persia. It was said in his day that “the sea unites, the land divides”; it was quicker by water wherever water was, and frequently less dangerous. There was promise of a splendid trade route, cutting out the long, hard caravan trail beset with bandits; the coast road was said to be difficult; the obvious answer was the sea. Some states in the western Punjab had not paid allegiance yet; he would therefore voyage down the river till he met resistance, deal with it, reach the Ocean, and send the fleet to Persia while he marched beside it to keep it supplied from land, noting future sites for harbourage. His friend Nearchus, from the seafaring island of Crete, was given the post of admiral.

  For the intermediate Indus voyage, Hephaestion would march along the left bank, in command of most of the army, the elephants, and the huge train of noncombatants; including, presumably, Roxane after another brief reunion. Her husband can hardly have taken her to the Beas through swollen torrents and drenching rain; nor would he be taking her now in a war galley on a crocodile-infested river known to have dangerous rapids. For something like a year, she must have spent more time in Hephaestion’s custody than in his. On the right bank, Craterus would lead a rather smaller force. Hephaestion was now his equal in rank; rivalry had been felt, and there had been some kind of friction, which Alexander had smoothed over with mingled firmness and tact. This separation gave them time to cool off, and no more is heard of it.

  While the fleet was preparing, one more name was added to the long roster of the dead from sickness, of whom Coenus had spoken: Coenus himself. Cholera was no doubt endemic in India then as now. He had voiced the men’s discontent, not incited it; and Alexander gave him a state funeral.

  The embarkation was a spectacle on which Nearchus’ memoir lingered. They were seen off in state by Porus; on whom Alexander had bestowed no mere satrapy, but a tributary kingship over all the conquests between Taxila and the Beas. There were 80 warships, but the whole fleet reached a miscellaneous 2,000. The horses were on rafts, probably Hephaestion’s pontoons again, decked over; a marvel to the Indians, who had never seen a horse afloat. Nearchus gives the names of the trierarchs, honorary commanders of the processional ships (the
working captains were the pilots) and privileged to decorate them: mostly high-ranking Macedonians, including Hephaestion, who must have joined his contingent later, and Ptolemy. Besides some Greeks, there was, perhaps significantly, one Bagoas “son of Pharnuces” (so spelled by Nearchus); not the young favourite, but a Persian prince. Pharnaces, brother of Darius’ wife and half-sister Stateira, had fallen at the Granicus. This compliment to the cousin of Alexander’s future bride—the only Persian so honoured—may show his dynastic plans already forming.

  At the dawn embarkation, Alexander poured libations to the river spirits, to Heracles, and the gods he usually honoured. In the first light the trumpets sounded, the chantymen timed the rowers; the high river banks gave back the sound; the Indians on shore, entranced by the show, followed it singing for miles.

  Alexander stopped along the way to receive homage from various towns which had already promised it. Then they came to the dreaded confluence of the Hydaspes and Akesines, where the gorge was deep and narrow. “Even from far off one can hear the tumult of the waves.” The scared rowers paused; the pilots shouted to them to pull as never before, to avoid being slewed abeam into the rapids. Somehow they shot them (the horses must have been disembarked) at the cost of some broken oars and one collision, from which part of the crews were saved. Alexander made camp, sent on the ships, and assembled his troops from both sides of the river. Ahead were the lands of the recalcitrant Mallians who had defied his envoys. In no mood for delay, he did not offer a second parley. Leaving Craterus in charge of his base and the noncombatants beside the river, he advanced with a pincer movement, sending Hephaestion five day’s march ahead and telling Ptolemy to keep three days behind. Alexander and his men, avoiding the beaten road, made a short gruelling dash through desert, the quarter whence he would be least expected. His cavalry surprised the men of the first Mallian city still in the fields, and mowed them down as they were. He was as impatient, now, as his men to be done with India.