Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  Inspection showed that Alexander's wound was extremely serious and it was with little hope that the Macedonians carried him away on his shield. According to Ptolemy, who was not present, 'air, as well as blood, was breathed out of the ait'; this would be certain proof that the arrow had punctured the wall of Alexander's lung, were there not a complication in the medical theory of the Greeks. As the circulation of the blood was unknown and the heart was widely believed to be the scat of intelligence, it could be argued that the veins were filled with air or vital spirit and that in the case of a wound, the air came out first, making way for the blood to follow. Ptolemy may have meant no more than that vital spirit had escaped from the king's veins, and hence the speed with which he fainted. But if the arrow did indeed pierce Alexander's lung, as its length suggests, his wound is a fact of the first importance. He would never escape from it; it would hamper him for the rest of his life and make walking, let alone fighting, an act of extreme courage. Never again after Multan is he known to have exposed himself so bravely in battle. True, no more sieges are described in detail, but when Alexander is mentioned he is almost always travelling by horse, chariot or boat. The pain from his wound, perhaps the lesions from a punctured lung, are a hindrance with which he had to learn to live. So too did his courtiers, but typically no historian refers to their problems again.

  For the moment, it seemed doubtful whether he would live at all. His Greek doctor from the Hippocratic school had excised the arrow, but the rumour quickly spread that Alexander was dead. Even Hephaistion and the advance camp heard it and when a letter was brought saying that he was about to come to them, they disregarded it as a fiction of the generals and bodyguard. Within a week Alexander was ready for what he knew he must do. He ordered his officers to carry him to the river Ravi and ship him downstream to the main army; the scene that followed was described by his admiral, and brings us very near to what it was like to be led by a son of Zeus.

  As soon as the royal ship approached the camp where Hephaistion and the fleet were waiting, the king ordered the awning to be removed from the stem so that he would be visible to them all. However, the troops still disbelieved, saying that it was only Alexander's corpse which was being brought for burial. But then, his ship put in to the bank and he held up his hand to the crowd. They raised a shout of joy, stretching their hands to heaven or towards Alexander himself; many even shed involuntary tears at this unexpected moment. Some of his Shield Bearers began to bring him a bed on which to carry him off the ship, but he told them no, they must bring a horse. And when he was seen again, mounted on his horse, rolls of applause broke through the entire army: the banks and the nearby woods re-echoed the noise. He then approached his tent and dismounted, so that he could be seen to walk too. The men thronged round him, some trying to touch his hands, other his knees, others his clothing; other just gazed on him from nearby and said a pious word, before turning away. Some showered him with ribbons, others with all such flowers as India bore at that time of year.

  'His friends were angry with him for running such a risk in front of the army; they said it befitted a soldier, not a general.' The complaint betrays them; after Alexander's death, they never commanded such devotion. An elderly Greek came forward, noticing Alexander's annoyance: 'It is a man's job,' he said in his rough accent, 'to be brave' and he added a line of Greek tragedy: 'The man of action is the debtor to suffering and pain.' Alexander approved him and took him into closer friendship. He had spoken the very motto of a Homeric Achilles.

  It was as if the wound had brought king and army together, for there were no more thoughts of mutiny, only an amazed relief. As for the local Indians, the slaughter at Multan induced them to send presents of surrender and plead for their 'ancient independence which they had enjoyed since Dionysus'. Their gifts were of linen, a thousand four-horsed chariots, Indian steel, huge lions and tigers, lizard skins and tortoise shells; they sufficed for them to be added into the satrapy of north-west India, for it is a point of some importance that Alexander still intended to rule what he had conquered. After a week or two of convalescence, distinguished by a lavish banquet for the Indian petty kings on a hundred golden sofas, Alexander ordered the fleet downstream to the bend where the Punjab rivers join the lazy current of the Indus; there, no doubt from his sick bed, he gave proof of his continuing plans for the future. First, he divided the satrapy of lower India between a Macedonian and Roxane's Iranian father; then, near Sirkot, he founded an Alexandria and stocked it with 10,000 troops, telling them to build dockyards 'in the hope that the city would become great and glorious'. A little lower down the Indus he did likewise, repeating the dockyards and the city walls. Though his many damaged ships needed rapid replacement, these two naval bases were more than a response to a present emergency. They could be lasting pivots in a scheme to develop the Indus river both as a frontier and as a line of communication: ships from the yards would patrol the river, while the northern plains round Taxila and Bucephala would be comfortably within their range.

  Alexander was not contented with mere dockyards. Already, he had decided to explore a new route, and so his veterans, elephants and various infantry units were now detached to march home to Susa by the regular road, settling the troubles which had recently been reported among the Iranians south-west of the Hindu Kush. The hard core of the army would accompany him, despite his wound, down to the mouth of the Indus, from where they could strike west into the desert and make for home along the shore of the Persian gulf by a land route famed for its difficulty. A sizeable fleet would skirt it at the same time in order to test out the sea passage from the Indus to the Persian coast; the army's task was secondary, to keep the fleet supplied along the shore. It was a fateful plan which now found its first expression. If fleet and army could have struggled through to Babylonia and the mouth of the Euphrates river, they would have reopened a valuable link between Asia and India.

  The aim, in outline, was worthwhile, the decision to pursue it intelligent; the route, under the Roman Empire, was to be the one fragile bond between India and the western world. But the past also puts the plan into perspective, for this sea-way was a passage of astonishing antiquity. Two thousand years before Alexander, trade from the Indus valley had flowed west to the Persian Gulf bringing copper, gems, iron and perhaps the peacock into the harbours near Susa. Heir to this long history of adventure, Darius I, king of Persia, had conquered the same frontier provinces of India and sent for Scylax the Carian explorer: he had told him to investigate the Indus and sail through the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf. Scylax had already sailed on the Caspian Sea: he had also rounded the tip of Arabia until he returned to the Persian Gulf and encouraged his patron's interest in the reopening of the Pharaohs' Suez Canal. He was an enterprising man, and the Indus had caused his little boat no trouble: he had written a Greek account of his voyage and dedicated it, fables and all, to Darius. There is no reason to suppose that Alexander had read it, but he did show possible acquaintance with the local Persian precedent: the first of his Alexandras on the Indus was built on the site of an old Persian garrison, noted by Scylax and settled two hundred years before. Once again, the credit for the placing of an Alexandria belonged not to its namesake but to a long-forgotten Persian district commissioner, whose buildings provided materials for the town.

  All such future developments depend on war to clear their way. Alexander's fleet had been on the river for some six months or more and spring 325 found them still a two-month journey from the ocean; they were in need of food and when they heard of a prosperous kingdom on the east bank whose king as yet had not sent envoys, they eagerly followed Alexander in a raid. Their approach was so fast that the Indians took fright and sent jewellery and elephants to buy them off, as well as an admission 'that they were in the wrong, which was the surest way with Alexander of being granted what one wanted'. Alexander admired his new conquest and left its king in command, supervised by another garrison fort:

  Here, men live a long while, som
e of them reaching the age of a hundred and thirty . .. they even use a system of soldiers' messes, like the Spartans, where men are fed at the state's expense. They have mines, but they do not use gold or silver; they do not study much science, except for medicine; some of the other sciences, such as military theory, are considered to be a criminal practice.

  This attempt to explain a Brahmin community in Greek terms was belied by what followed. While the army moved east to burn and destroy rebellious towns on the border, the Brahmin king broke his word and allowed his subjects to revolt all the more bitterly for being encouraged, not by a military handbook, but by the preaching of the Brahmin sects. Their resistance became a holy vendetta, helped by their use of poisoned arrows; and it was only ended by hanging the learned instigators and destroying all troublesome communities. Suppliants were spared in the name of the gods, but1 over 80,000 Indians' were killed, according to the most exaggerated history, which thereby brought its total for native dead in the past six months to more than quarter of a million. The figures are not reliable, but they would have impressed, not appalled, the majority of their readers. Burning and massacring ill-equipped patriots, Alexander's style of warfare had not suddenly become more savage under the irritation of a failure and a wound; as at Thebes or Tyre or Gaza, in Swat no less than Sogdia, his treatment of rebels had never shown any mercy or given patriots reason to expect forgiveness. But to keep his men contented, he allowed them for once to plunder what they had subdued.

  It was mid-July before the end of the river journey was in sight. The army was bivouacked near Pattala in the last of the petty kingdoms rich enough to keep them supplied; the natives had mostly run away and while they fortified villages and dug wells for water in the shale that edged the desert, Alexander arranged a wall for Pattala's citadel and another dockyard at the head of the Indus's estuary. The result, called the Wooden City, was built from timber, the only material to hand. When the work was to his satisfaction, he embarked with his friends on the swiftest ships and set the course for the nearby ocean. For a wounded man, the risk was considerable, as the natives had fled and there were no local pilots to be recruited. Alexander knew that he had to show the way, before asking his ships to follow: he had his reasons, but once again in the absence of local knowledge they were to be frustrated by the rise of the July monsoon.

  The officers had grown accustomed to the summer heat of the great Thar desert which stretches east along the Indus's far bank. They were to describe it accurately in their histories and they had even observed the shrimps and smaller fishes in the river itself. But they had not been expecting wind and rain. No sooner had Alexander launched into the delta than a storm sank many of his stoutest ships, and although during the repairs, guides were at last captured from the nearby tribesmen, even their skill could not avoid the weather. Where the delta widened, the wind blew so strongly from the sea that the rowers missed, their stroke and were forced to shelter in a backwater. After lying at anchor, they found they were high and dry: for the first time, Alexander's sailors had met a tide 'and it caused them considerable consternation, especially when the ebb-current changed in due course and the ships were floating back on the river'. Among Macedonian crews, this novelty led to more damage, and it was with a certain caution that Alexander sent out two of his heaviest flat-bottomed transports to inspect any further dangers before he advanced. They reported that an island stood conveniently in mid-stream; Alexander followed with a few of his bravest captains, until at last, the dash of the waves was heard against the royal trireme. He had reached the outer ocean, but it was not the Eastern Sea at which he had once aimed.

  Success emboldened the crews. First Alexander 'offered sacrifice on the island at the river mouth to those gods which, he said, had been told him by Amnion'; on the following day he sailed to a further island and offered different sacrifices to different gods; 'these too were made in accordance with Amnion's prophecy'. Then, venturing right out on to the deep, 'he slaughtered bulls to the sea-god Poseidon and cast them into the sea; he poured libations, and threw their golden cup and golden bowls out into the waves'. On returning up river to his base camp, he searched out a westerly arm of the Indus estuary and explored it too, finding it more navigable because of the shelter of an inland lake. There, instead of sacrifices, he left plans for a boat-house and a garrison.

  These sacrifices were not the thanksgivings of a romantic explorer; the outer ocean was only visited for a purpose, And Alexander had long revealed what this was to be. While the army marched west along the shoreline, the ships were to leave the mouth of the Indus, turn through the Indian Ocean and enter the Persian Gulf with the monsoon wind behind them; to a newly assembled fleet, the prospect was terrifying, and so Alexander had gone down to the ocean and made it his business to test the first stage in person with a proper show of piety. Only one gap remained in his plans: he himself would march by land, and he needed an officer to lead the naval expedition. Thinking through his friends, he chose, most happily, a Cretan who would also write a history.

  'Alexander,' wrote Nearchus the Cretan, long domiciled in Macedonia and throughout his life a friend,

  longed passionately to sail the sea from India to Persia but he was fearful of the length of the voyage and of the possibility that the expedition might meet with a bare stretch of country or fail to find anchorage or run short of supplies and so be completely destroyed. If so, this would be no mean blot on his past achievements and would efface his entire good fortune. But even so, his desire to do something that was always new or strange triumphed over his fears.

  Only an explorer can understand the power of these feelings: Alexander discussed with Nearchus the possible choices of admiral 'but', wrote his friend, choosing his words artfully, 'as one after another was mentioned, Alexander raised an objection to them all; some, he said, were not tough enough, others were not willing to take a risk for him; others were longing for home'. And so the way was prepared for Nearchus: 'My lord,' he said, 'I am prepared to lead your expedition and may heaven help the enterprise.' Alexander demurred, 'unwilling to risk one of his own friends in such distress and danger'. Nearchus begged and besought him and at last was allowed to go.

  The choice was perhaps less dramatic than its hero implied in his memoirs; Nearchus had been leading the fleet for the past ten months. The preparations, too, were awkward. Many of the triremes were waterlogged or in poor repair and as for the finances, the most mysterious aspect of Alexander's career, for once they are known to have been an added anxiety. The king's travelling treasury was empty, money to hire guides and buy supplies could only be raised by a levy among his friends. The decision was unpopular and several tried to evade it, not least of them Eumenes the royal secretary who is said to have refused two-thirds of his quota until Alexander ordered his tent to be set on fire to flush his true wealth into the open. Once obeyed, the levy did indeed force the officers to show concern for the preliminaries: 'The splendour of the equipment, the smartness of the ships and the patrons' conspicuous concern for the staff-officers and the crews encouraged even those who, a short while before, had been nervous about the undertaking.'

  So it was that Alexander had defied the winds, his wound and the lack of pilots, in order to venture on to the outer ocean. 'What greatly contributed to the sailors' enthusiasm was the fact that Alexander had sailed down each of the mouths of the Indus in person and paid sacrifice to the gods of the sea. They had always believed in Alexander's extraordinary good fortune and now, they felt there was nothing that he would not risk and still achieve.' Hence, the trip to the ocean, for a wound in the lung had not altered Alexander's attitude to leading his men. But the next three months of marching were to alter the men's belief in their leader's fortune and infallibility.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The new expedition was to prove the most unpleasant in Alexander's career. It is also the most puzzling. Posterity has decked him out with many different virtues, each to suit its varying tastes; none has been
more widespread or persistent than the idea of his invincibility. It set a pattern for Roman emperors; it kept its appeal a hundred and fifty years after his death for the kings and settlers in the Alexandras of upper Iran. The last three months of 325 should have given the lie to the legend. Alexander the Invincible was to suffer an extremely grave defeat; worse, he seems at first sight to have invited it. To many this is so unthinkable that his route and his aims have been believed, against the facts, to have lain elsewhere, and even the landscape has been argued away to save his reputation.

  While the fleet was detained by adverse winds at the mouth of the Indus, the land army set out through the barren and sandy plains which stretch to the north-west of modem Karachi. It was late August and water was in very short supply, but by the river Hab the Oreitan tribesmen, 'for long an independent people', were driven back in a skirmish. No quarter was shown; and near lake Siranda, the troops could briefly satisfy their thirst. They had already matched 150 miles in a temperature of more than ioo° F and many were suffering from a skin irritation caused by the sand; they were still burning and slaughtering all local resistance, but they showed no signs of flinching from the task before them. The king's ambitions, therefore, deserve to be closely considered.

  His admiral Nearchus, held up meanwhile at the Indus, has left a brief explanation.