Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  The Punjab had already been visited by westerners, not only by the bravest man in early Greek history, Scylax the sailor from Caria, but also, as the troops were soon to believe, by the Greek gods Heracles and Dionysus in the very distant past. Six thousand and forty-two years, so the Indians claimed, divided Dionysus's invasion from Alexander's; there was stress on their self-government ever since, a theme which Alexander picked up, and there was no mention of the Persian empire. As for Heracles, he had come a little later, but the Macedonians were to see cattle in India branded with the sign of a club which their hero always carried. These parallels with the two divine ancestors of the Macedonian kings cannot be dismissed in the search for Alexander and within months of his invasion, they are to come into sharp perspective against a background of Indian myth-One son of Zeus was keen to rival another: it was in the spring before the invasion that Alexander's first Persian mistress Barsine gave birth to a son, believed, perhaps wrongly, to be Alexander's own. Aptly, the baby was named Heracles, after the royal hero of the moment, even if Alexander never recognized him with full honours after his marriage to Roxane.

  Amid its myth and fable, India was a conqueror's chance for undying glory. The fighting would be tough, exactly what Alexander liked. The opponents were kings in their own right, his favourite class of enemy and as the Punjab was split between their independent tribes, many of whom had more of a link with Iran than India, they could as usual be set against each other. The Hindu religion had long centred in the plains, but it had not penetrated the wild mountain kingdoms; Buddhism was almost unknown, and there was no threat of a holy war. If Alexander succeeded his name would never be forgotten and even in their cups, men could no longer boast that Philip's achievements were superior: he would have conquered what had eluded all native kings, and he would have opened a whole new world to the West; Achilles's feats, by comparison, were very parochial.

  As summer camp was broken in Bactria, the army he led eastwards showed the changes of the past two years. In size, it had grown but slightly. No new Macedonian troops had been received for the past four years. Fourteen thousand of the last year's Greek reinforcements had been left to supervise the two Oxus provinces; the Thracian and the Paeonian cavalry were absent, and most of the Thracian and other barbarian infantry were serving in the garrisons of Parthia and Hamadan. Some 50,000 men remained for India, scarcely more than at Guagamela, though a very sizeable force by the standards of classical warfare. But in style, they were different men, for only some 35,000 were westerners from Europe. The Foot Companions had abandoned the sarissa as too unwieldy for the mountainous ground and they never used it with Alexander again; the Mounted Lancers had done the same and been merged with the Companion Cavalry, whose numbers had now fallen to some 1,800 Macedonians in the absence of reinforcements from their homeland. Archers, in which India was strongest, numbered at least 3,000; on foot, strength was maintained by three brigades of the newer mercenaries, mainly Greeks from Europe and Asia, but now led by Macedonian noblemen. Iranian horsemen from Bactria and Sogdia swelled the cavalry, though kept in separate units from the Greeks and Macedonians: there were even a thousand horse-archers recruited from Spitamenes's nomads. As a whole, the army was lighter, more independent and better equipped with missiles. Iranians had given it balance, and the fluid tactics of their nomad horsemen along the Oxus had not been wasted on Alexander's officers.

  But it was the pattern of command which wore the newest look. The Foot Companions had been rearmed and were still brigaded in seven battalions whose officers, where changed, were brothers of the previous barons; the commands of Alexander's highland infantry were very much a family affair. But through plots and depositions, the cavalry had lost all links with Philotas, Parmenion, Cleitus and the past. The diminished squadrons of the Companions had been spread for the last eighteen months into six or more Hipparchies, only one of whose known commanders had previously made his name as a leader of horsemen. The others were close friends, like Ptolemy or Hephaistion, or men like Perdiccas or Leonnatus, better known as royal Bodyguards; the Royal Squadron of Companions, once led by Cleitus, had been renamed and taken over by Alexander himself. Each had their friends and families, though their fickle currents of influence can no longer be usefully traced: an officer-class which had once been scattered with friends of Parmenion was now distinguished by future friends of Perdiccas, who would fight to keep the empire together after Alexander's death. Clearest was the case of the Royal Shield Bearers, now renamed the Silver Shields because of their smart new silver armour. Initially, this picked unit of veteran infantry had been responsible to a son of Parmenion, but shortly before his family's plot this son had died and now the Silver Shields looked to new officers, among them Seleucus, the future king of Asia, and Nearchus, Alexander's friend from childhood, soon to be admiral of the Indian fleet; their supreme commander was Neoptolemus, related to the Epirote royal family and so to Alexander's mother Olympias. By the summer of 327, a new group of marshals had emerged, not only in the royal Shield Bearers. These Hipparchs and trusted squadron-leaders now made it possible to divide the army more freely between different attacks at any one time, for long a principle of Alexander's siegecraft but not of his pitched warfare. Spitamenes had shown that second rate underlings were not equal to the task. Parmenion and Philotas had also shown that the cavalry, especially, could not be entrusted to any one man.

  In the provinces, a similar pattern was emerging, less urgent for being remote. In June Alexander returned at a modest pace to the Hindu Kush and crossed it comfortably in ten days, presumably by the same road as he had used before, rather than by the treacherous road through modem Bamyan, future sanctuary of Buddha. The snows had melted and after the rich finds of food in the Sogdian fortresses there were no fears about a second starvation as the troops marched over the high grazing-grounds, among skylarks, buff hillsides and the pungent smells of wormwood and wild roses. Down near Begram, the new Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus was found to be giving trouble: its commander was deposed for insubordination, the eighth appointment to have proved a failure in the fourteen satrapies conquered since the year of Gaugamela, and although the replacement was another Oriental, he was the last Iranian, except for Roxane's father, to be given a governorship by Alexander. The experiment with the native satraps of the past four years had been convenient but risky, and by disappearing eastwards Alexander was inviting rebellion from those who still remained behind him; with only two exceptions, he was to reap a harvest of troubles on his return, 'I wish to go to India', Alexander was made to say in a fictitious letter, composed a thousand years later in Sassanid Persia, 'but I fear to leave alive my Persian nobles. It seems prudent to me to destroy them to a man, that I may carry out my purpose with untroubled mind.' To this, Aristotle was made to reply: 'If you destroy the people of Fars, you will have overthrown one of the greatest pillars of excellence in the world. When the noble among them are gone, you will of necessity promote the base to their rank and position; be assured that there is no wickedness or calamity, no unrest or plague in the world which corrupts so much as the ascending of the base to the station of the noble.' Nobody ever spoke more clearly for the views of a Persian gentleman than the Aristotle of Persian legend. But on returning from India the real Alexander would have more cause to question his advice.

  The remaining summer months were spent peacefully in the Hindu Kush, a relaxation for the men who would otherwise have entered India in appalling heat, and a useful time for reconnaissance and the training of the new units. For the past two years the rajah Sasigupta had been maintained in camp, a man 'who had fled from India to Bessus, but now proved trustworthy to the Macedonians'. In the absence of any maps, he was an invaluable source of native information; in early autumn Alexander left Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus and came sharply down from the foothills of the Hindu Kush till he struck the river Laghman and could survey the panorama of the Punjab spread before him. On the far bank of the Laghman, he fortified a native village and
gave it the confident name of Nicaea, city of Victory, the theme which he always emphasized. Then, sending a herald east down the long-used road by the river Kabul, he invited the rajahs of the valley to a conference, no doubt on Sasigupta's advice. It was early October before they arrived; meanwhile Alexander had declared the campaign open by a sacrifice, again to the goddess Athena of Victory.

  His insistence on victory was not unfounded. He was bringing a professionally led army, complete with catapults, borers and siege-towers, into an independent world of border tribes, numerous but always at variance. Indian cavalry were not to be compared with squadrons of Companions and Iranians; the yantras of their epic heroes were only elementary slings and catapults. Their iron and steel and archery were famous, but they had none of the discipline of the Shield Bearers. The kings in the valleys still trusted in chariots, a force that meant little to the Macedonians of Gaugamela. There was one danger, and Alexander knew it to be very real: at the first news of invasion, Punjab rajahs would send for their mahouts, meaning to fight like their forefathers, trunk and tusk from the backs of the largest known animal species in the world. In India, Alexander was to be the first western general to do serious battle with Elephas maximus, 'nature's masterpiece, the only harmless great thing': catapults were as nothing to the menace of an elephant on musth.

  The elephant so dominated the Indian imagination that in Hindu mythology, it was said to support the world on its shoulders. But within five years, Alexander had made it his own: elephants guarded his tent, and their images adorned his funeral chariot, while shortly after his death, his close friend Ptolemy depicted him on Egyptian coins as if dressed in a cap of elephant-skin. As a result the elephant became a symbol of grand pretensions in the west; Caesar would take one to Britain, Claudius would take two: Pompey would try to enter Rome in a triumphal chariot pulled by elephants, only to find that the city gate was too narrow and he had to dismount. Thanks to Alexander a more exact knowledge of the elephant first spread to the west: in his great works on natural history, Aristotle described one with an accuracy that could only have come from dissection, while he also knew how to cure its insomnia, wounds or upset stomach, and how much wheat or wine was needed to keep it in prime condition. But like Alexander's officers, he was inclined to believe that an elephant lived for two hundred years. Through Alexander's army, the skills of elephant and native mahout first raced westwards back to Greece. The use of the howdah, or turreted scat on the elephant's back, became popular, and as neither art nor reliable literature mention it as native to India, the howdah may be an invention of Greek engineers. Within three years of Alexander's death his officers had made elephants fell trees, hold up a river's current and flatten a city wall. They were adorned, as in India, with bells and scarlet coverlets and again as in India, they served as executioners. And yet before him, they had never been seen in the uncongenial landscape of Greece. On the battlefield, their first shock proved decisive, though defenders soon learnt the value of planks of upturned nails against their tender feet: ditches were dug, and momentarily, the elephants halted, as they cannot jump. But when defences seemed to be winning, the Ptolemies shipped hunters to comb the forests of Ethiopia for new and braver recruits, while Carthage, gathering strength, began to explore her western marches for a suitable retort. Hannibal found them, and used them to terrify Italy; Rome, quick to learn, returned the compliment to Macedon and sent envoys cast to the Syrian mud-parks of the Seleucids, with secret orders to hamstring every elephant in sight. Two years later, the Seleucid empire collapsed.

  As enemies receded the Romans turned the elephant to show. They would dance, play the cymbals and walk a tight-rope in the circus, and for two hundred years, the audience loved what Alexander had first made possible. But it was the elephant who trumpeted last and loudest: in the mid-fourth century, as Persian power revived, hundreds of elephants tramped west through Asia in the dreaded name of Shapur, 'most monstrous and horrific', wrote a Roman witness, 'of all war's units'.

  With the fall of the Western Empire, the elephant vanished from Europe, except for an occasional item of gifts; for six hundred years, however, it had symbolized the open frontier between East and West, a frontier which Alexander had been the first man to roll back. It was, perhaps, his most lasting contribution to classical life.

  Without his Indian invasion, the elephant would surely never have been enrolled for Mediterranean military service. Its capture is hazardous and its disadvantages are serious. It dislikes winter cold and is happiest in warm mud; it must eat twice as much as it needs because of poor digestion, consuming 100 pounds of hay and up to fifty gallons of water daily: Aristotle knew of an elephant which would drink 140 gallons between dawn and dusk and then begin again at nightfall. Its hearing is superb but its sight dismally poor; it can swim but not jump, and its transport powers are unremarkable; it moves at a steady six miles an hour, charging rarely and then only for brief bursts at twenty m.p.h. It does not usually breed in captivity, though males spend awkward months on musth, exuding a fluid from their temples which makes them too morose to be controlled. Worst of all, the elephant has no team spirit. Though it is deeply affectionate to its master and mild to small children, human wars mean nothing and it will run amok among friend and foe alike. The most notable elephant in Greek history, called Victor, had long served in Pyrrhus's army, but on seeing its mahout dead before the city walls, it rushed to retrieve him: hoisting him defiantly on his tusks, it took wild and indiscriminate revenge for the man it loved, trampling more of its supporters than its enemies in the process. In war, such devotion was a very mixed blessing.

  Men, however, did their utmost to embolden it. In India, it was goaded, equipped with bells and fed on wine: in Ceylon, it was made to take opium. It was encouraged to whisk attackers in its trunk, at least until they wore the deterrent of spiked armour. Its tusks were strengthened with long steel daggers, tipped with poison; its body was protected in iron chain-mail, while seven or more warriors shot and speared from its saddled back, even without the protection of the howdah. Most important of all, though afraid of mice which would run up its trunk, it scared the wits out of horses: at Gaugamela, Alexander's Companion Cavalry had safely outflanked the few opposing elephants, but in the Punjab they would have to withstand hundreds, this time face to face. Alexander was extremely anxious.

  His first news in India was that elephants were on his side, for by early October, rajahs from the Indus valley had followed his herald back to the frontier and they promised that their twenty-five specimens were at his disposal. Such a welcome caused Alexander to divide his troops. The main road ran along the banks of the Indus towards the distant town of Taxila, home of the rajah Ambhi who had come, as expected, to surrender. Hephaistion, the mercenaries and half the Companions were to follow him down through the plains of Peshawar and bridge the Indus at Hund where it bends back northwards. In the latter stages, Ambhi would guide and supply them, while on the way they could capture such cities as Pushkalavati, City of the Lotus, in its open fields of sugar-cane and sand; its governor, however, resisted them for a month behind his ditch and mudbrick ramparts, only to be put to death for the trouble. Alexander, meanwhile, had swung far north into the Swat highlands with some 22,000 troops to protect this main road's flank by tactics of terror: it was his lifeline back to Iran, and as a cautious tactician he could not leave northerly tribesmen to cut it when he still hoped for news and reinforcements from Asia. As the native kings had not surrendered, he decided to fight them, not bribe them. Choosing a road far up the river Alishang

  because it was reported to be the best supplied, he launched into an arduous six-month campaign with Sasigupta to guide him. The hill tribes were numerous, and they had determined to resist valiantly among mountains and fast-flowing rivers which were not to be bridged lightly, even in December. Failing their surrender, Alexander was not disposed to be any more kind to resistant patriots than usual: it boded ill for the style of the war that he was wounded at the firs
t city and 'the Macedonians killed all prisoners, angry that they had pained their Alexander'.

  But the grim business of war had its compensations. Up in the green valleys of the westerly Swat hills, perhaps near the peak of Koh-i-nor, camp had been pitched on a chilly December night and the men began to search for firewood at a height of some 5,000 feet. A bonfire was built and when timber ran short the troops smashed up square boxes of cedar-wood which they found conveniently distributed over the hillside: they did not realize they were burning the natives' coffins. Before long the natives retaliated, but a brief attack rebuffed them and they preferred to surrender. Their envoys found Alexander in his tent 'still dusty from the march but fully armed, wearing a helmet and holding a spear; they were amazed at the sight of him and falling to the ground, they kept a long silence'. Through interpreters, terms were agreed: to Alexander's pleasure, the city was ruled by aristocrats, three hundred of whom were to serve in his cavalry while another hundred, after a brief argument, were left to keep the nobility in power. In the course of conversation, he became aware of a startling fact: these tribesmen had been settled by the god Dionysus, their town was the elusive sanctuary of Nysa and the mountain was therefore a holy place. In Greece the ecstatic followers of Dionysus wreathed their brows in ivy; on this Indian hill, alone of the ones they had visited, common ivy was growing in profusion. What better proof could the common soldier want? Dionysus had been this way before them.