The king proceeded to command that scaling ladders be brought up to the walls, and he went up the first one himself. He killed the first two defenders and then foolishly but daringly jumped inside the battlements: He was a perfect target for an archer. His men, following his lead, climbed the ladders in such numbers that the rungs collapsed, causing many soldiers to fall to their deaths. Alexander was temporarily cut off from the bulk of his forces. He and three of his aides fought courageously but alone. A long Indian arrow suddenly pierced Alexander’s armor and entered his chest just above his lungs.
He was carried off the field more dead than alive. Indeed, rumors spread quickly that he was dead. The arrowhead, about three inches long, was leaf-shaped and barbed, and getting it out was a very dangerous procedure. A major hemorrhage followed, and Alexander lost consciousness. He hung perilously between life and death for a week. The Indians, believing the rumors, attacked with renewed ferocity.
Even after he regained consciousness and sent a letter to his troops that he was fine and would soon be up and around, they refused to believe him. So great was his physical presence that they could not conceive of going on without him. This was later proved true when, upon his death three years later, his empire fell into shreds and infighting among his closest companions lost all that Alexander had gained.
He was going to appear in front of his troops in a litter, but it soon became apparent that the men needed to see him mounted on his horse, ready to do battle again. Even though he was still extremely weak, and the wound had still not healed, Alexander mounted his horse and rode through the ranks of soldiers, who waved and cheered and touched his clothes with almost religious fervor. He never completely recovered from this wound, and after his friends harangued him about his foolhardiness, he promised that he would be more careful in the future.
On the downside Alexander must have believed that his recovery was such a miracle that he was never to be crossed. He was now able to get away with anything, and in his own mind this rendered his concept of deification more powerful, until it became an obsession.
More battles followed as the entourage made its way down the Indus River. Some of the Indian rulers surrendered without incident; others insisted on fighting. Some casualty figures that have been given are as high as 80,000; and the actual number may be even higher.2
Alexander failed to achieve a lasting place in Indian history and literature. He was viewed in his own time as an invader and a destroyer, not an empire-builder. This could not have been his ambition. In reality, Alexander was only a precursor of other conquerors, such as Sultan Mahmud, Tamerlane, and Nadir Shah, who were more successful in massacre and plunder than Alexander had been.3
One story is told by Arrian that illustrates what the Indian wise men and philosophers felt about Alexander. He found the wise men in a meadow, and when they saw Alexander, they did nothing further than beat with their feet the ground on which they stood. When Alexander inquired through interpreters what this action of theirs meant, they replied: “Oh, king Alexander, each man possesses just so much of the earth as this on which we stand; and you being a man like other men, save that you are full of activity and relentless, are roaming over all this earth far from your home troubled yourself, and troubling others. But not so long hence you will die, and will possess just so much of the earth as suffices for your burial.”4
In order to get the army back into home territory, Alexander decided to split the troops. The fleet would continue from the Indian Ocean into the Persian Gulf, and he would take the bulk of the army and noncombatants home though a wilderness known as the Makran. He set men to the task of planning for the victualing of the fleet, leaving supplies of food and water at outposts along their path. Why he chose the more dangerous path for the rest is uncertain. It has been suggested that he had to keep the territory subdued for the passage of supplies. The primary territory bordering on the Makran was Gedrosia, and this is where Alexander turned his army. He tried to keep as close to the shore as possible, but the terrain was still desert. Though he had advance parties digging wells so a water supply would be available, this eventually became impossible after they entered a mountainous section near the coast. The army had to detour far inland.
Lack of water now became a serious problem. The army often had to march fifty miles to find a pool of even brackish water, and then the men would jump in, armor and all. Sometimes they would die of overdrinking after being dehydrated. Heatstroke was also a possibility.
The army traveled laboriously through sand dunes, where their wagons sunk to the axles and their boots filled with grit. Their faces were constantly tormented with stinging sand and insects. Poisonous snakes and plants were all around them. A type of prickly cucumber squirted a juice that caused blindness, and some shrubs made the pack animals foam at the mouth and then die.
Sometimes too much water caused disaster also. Flash storms from the hills occasionally roared through the night darkness and carried everything away in their path. One such flash flood killed almost all the women and children, and the soldiers survived with nothing but the clothes they were wearing and their weapons.
It took the columns sixty days to traverse the Makran, and after getting lost in a blinding sandstorm, the gaunt skeletons that had been Alexander’s army emerged. This disastrous march through the desert has been compared to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812. The losses were staggering. Perhaps 85,000 people started into the desert; only about 25,000 survived. Alexander’s horses, equipment and supplies were all lost, as were the majority of the noncombatants in the army.5
Alexander needed an explanation as to why his supply trains and reinforcements, carefully planned for in advance, had not appeared on schedule. Although he had become more paranoid as time went on, in this instance he probably had good cause to wonder.
The first person to suffer the effects of Alexander’s fear and paranoia was a man named Apollophanes, who was the satrap of Gedrosia. He was killed before he could be brought before Alexander for an explanation as to why he hadn’t supplied the king adequately. From all sides now came reports of gross incompetence, insubordination, and corruption among those who had been left in power in Alexander’s absence. Reports of his demise in India had come through, and many of the men in power had decided to set up their own little kingdoms while he was gone. Such little pockets of power were hotbeds of sedition and treason, as Alexander well knew. He had to take action quickly to save not only his kingdom but his life.
Thus began a purge of the satraps. No fewer than five leaders were tried and executed in short order, so that when Alexander ordered his remaining satraps to disband their personal mercenary forces, they did so.
It was December 325 before the fleet finally appeared, intact, giving rise to great rejoicing. The troop had battled unfriendly tribesmen, survived a school of whales that seemed intent on upsetting the ships, and been forced to eat their camels, but they had it much easier than the land force. To celebrate, Alexander ordered days of athletic and musical festivals to thank the gods for the safe return of his fleet.
According to Green and other sources, after Gedrosia a change took place in Alexander—and it was not for the better. He became increasingly paranoiac and suspicious of everyone, willing to listen to whatever gossip was told him about his officials. He would punish minor offenses as if they were serious ones, often overlooking the serious ones in the process. The sources of antiquity seem to be united in the opinion that Alexander’s character had undergone very considerable degeneration. From the beginning (witness Thebes and Tyre) Alexander had been murderous when thwarted in his desires. But in this instance absolute power had corrupted absolutely, and the combined effects of unbroken victories, unparalleled wealth, absolute and unchallenged power, continual heavy physical stress, and incipient alcoholism had taken their toll. As a young man Alexander had been abstemious; now he regularly drank to excess. He had become a domineering and uncontrollable megalomaniac, and very dangerous.
6
But temporarily, at least, his anger and spite had run out; he suspended his purge and, when he returned to Susa, turned his attentions to other things. There was talk of other campaigns—to Carthage, Spain, Italy, and Saudi Arabia. He set his admiral, Nearchus, to work building seven hundred new war galleys. And controversially, he set about to orientalize his kingdom. He started by assimilating Persian generals into his command and creating a joint Persian-Macedonian group of administrators.
Years before Alexander had sent 30,000 Iranian boys to Macedonia to be given military training, and these boys were now back. They were young and bursting with enthusiasm, while Alexander’s staunch troops were now tired and aged. These Iranian boys created tremendous resentment among Alexander’s seasoned veterans, who believed that Alexander had been destroyed by the East. His adoption of Persian clothing and his autocratic behavior did nothing to dispel their fears.7
A further irritation for the Macedonians was an attempt of Alexander’s to integrate the Persians and Macedonians in a personal way. He decided to hold a mass wedding, celebrating for five days the marriages of ninety-one of his Macedonians to highborn Persian women. He himself took two wives—the eldest daughter of Darius III and the youngest daughter of Artaxerxes III. He gave another bride to Hephaestion, because he wanted their children to be cousins. The celebration lasted five days and was colossally expensive. Alexander spared no expense. He gave the women huge dowries, furnished a bridal chamber for each couple, and had the banquet served with the guests seated on couches with silver legs.
There is no indication that any of these marriages succeeded; in fact, most of the women were summarily divorced within months of Alexander’s death. It was another experiment that failed miserably.
In the spring of 324, Alexander led an advance party down the Tigris River, obviously intending to pave the way for an invasion of Saudi Arabia. The group found many dams along the way, which were for the purpose of subverting the waters into irrigation channels. Wherever they found these, Alexander ordered them destroyed. The agricultural well-being of the area was secondary to making the river wide enough for his ships to sail southward.
Alexander went further, announcing that all the old, seasoned soldiers in the army were going to be retired and sent home to train new recruits in Macedonia. These were same troops who had revolted at the Beas River when they refused to go any farther, and now they took their retirement as an insult. Alexander saw their discontent as a challenge to his authority. He was walking around in his purple-and-white Persian robes with the royal diadem on his head, receiving proskynesis from his Asian subjects with no difficulty, having no one gainsay his word on anything. For his veterans to complain was too much.
Alexander ordered the most obvious demonstrators to be arrested and immediately executed. Then he went into his quarters and secluded himself for several days. Rather than capitulate to the demands this time, he removed all his Macedonians from their commands and gave those commands instead to Persians. Not only could Macedonians now be replaced by Persians; they might actually be disciplined by Persians. In response to this threat, the Macedonians gave in completely and begged Alexander for forgiveness, which he graciously gave, but not until extreme homage was given and a lot of groveling was done. Then a huge banquet was held to celebrate the reconciliation, and the Macedonians continued to hold high command.
Ten thousand Macedonian veterans were now sent home, paid handsomely, and put under the command of Craterus. Craterus was to go back to Macedonia and relieve Antipater as regent, the latter to join Alexander in Asia with a fresh army of recruits. As far as Alexander was concerned, Antipater had been causing trouble back home; letters from Olympias had strained the relationship between the two men, and Alexander obviously felt it would be better to have Antipater closer to the court.
Antipater at first refused and sent his son Cassander instead. Alexander had a deep antipathy toward both Antipater and Cassander (he was very intuitive where his intimates were concerned); that is why they were the primary suspects when rumors that Alexander had been poisoned erupted after his death.
Alexander now moved his court to the ancient Persian summer palace in Ecbatana, where the time was spent in festivities and drinking parties. It was at one of these that Hephaestion took ill; he died seven days later. The influence of this man on Alexander cannot be overstated. He had been Alexander’s closest friend and lover since boyhood, was the only person who consistently supported him in all his exploits and decisions, and was second only to Alexander in power. Even the eunuch Bagoas, who was Alexander’s favorite also, never came close to the influence wielded by Hephaestion. Hephaestion had apparently never overstepped his privileged friendship, and Alexander was devastated by his death. In fact, he never recovered from it.
Autumn turned to winter, and according to Plutarch, Alexander sought to “alleviate his grief in war, [and] set out, as it were, to a hunt and chase of men, for he fell upon the Cossaeans, and put the whole nation to the sword. This was called a sacrifice to Hephaestion’s ghost.”8
Early in 323 the court made its way back to Babylon. Alexander had been warned by his seers that he should not go into Babylon, or if he did, at least to approach the city from the east, not the west. He apparently took the warning seriously, as he was wont to do, and attempted an easterly entry. But he found this direction blocked by a marsh, so against the advice of his religious advisers, he entered from the west.
Once he was in the city, he received numerous delegates from all over the Mediterranean, bringing felicitations and gifts. Rulers from as far abroad as Spain had heard rumors that Alexander was planning an offensive against the West, and they wanted to be the first to get into his good graces. If a delegation came from the Roman republic, it would have been fraught with symbolism, but the Roman consuls, busy with the Samnite Wars and soon to be at war with Carthage, were not really worried by this “conqueror of the East.” Alexander was more involved and preoccupied with the approaching invasion of Arabia, which was never to come to fruition.
The last ten days of Alexander’s life are somewhat shadowy in content. The rumors that he was poisoned arose because his death occurred so quickly, and no one could die that quickly unless he was poisoned—or at least that was the wisdom of the day. More likely, he developed a fever (perhaps malaria), but he continued to attend banquets still being given in honor of Hephaestion where drinking was heavy. One night he is supposed to have drained a glass of undiluted wine, twelve pints in capacity.9
He took his usual bath each morning, made his customary offerings to the gods, and continued to drink each night. The fever intensified over the ten days, and eventually he lapsed into a coma. He died on June 10, 323 BC, without leaving any clear-cut directions for his succession. He was thirty-three years old. The exact location of Alexander’s tomb is unknown, but some sources claim he was buried in Alexandria in Egypt.
Alexander’s frenetic behavior in the last two years of his life indicated that he was suffering from mania and paranoia and was probably clinically insane. Plutarch provides this somber account of Alexander’s death:
Oracles from the god relating to Hephaestion were brought to him, and after that he put an end to his grieving and went back to his sacrificing and drinking. He gave a magnificent banquet for Nearchus, and afterwards took a bath, as he usually did when about to go to bed, but then, pressed by Medius, he went to continue the party in Medius’ tent. There he spent the whole night and the next day drinking, during which he began to develop a fever. He did not drink the “cup of Heracles” nor did he suddenly feel a severe pain in the back as if he had been struck by a spear, though some authors think they should add these details as a way of fashioning a tragic and highly emotional finale to a great drama. Aristobulus simply states that Alexander developed a high fever and that his raging thirst made him drink wine, after which delirium set in and he died.10
This account is consistent with alcohol poisoning, aggravated by mala
ria.
Before these last two years of ill health, dissipation, and madness, Alexander had done enough to make a reputation as the cynosure of antiquity, its supreme hero. It is true that Alexander was fortunate in the weakness and incompetence of his enemy Darius III. It is also true that Alexander ran into stiff resistance from the princes of the Punjab; he was not invincible. But what gained Alexander his posthumous reputation was the kind of man he was, irrespective of military strategy and tactics.
He was like those athletes at the quadrennial Olympic Games who stripped naked and covered themselves with olive oil. He, too, stood before the world naked and fierce, a beautiful man among other beautiful men, but with incomparable capacity for leadership and for showing the world his strength, intelligence, and guile.
FIVE
How “Great” Was Alexander?
FOR ALL practical purposes Alexander’s empire died with Alexander. His only brother was feeble-minded, and his only heir was a baby. Neither was in any position to assert authority. But practical considerations aside, Alexander moved quickly to become a symbol of conquest. He gave a semblance of legitimacy to anyone who might desire conquest, regardless of how inherently wrong that conquest might be. He was a pioneer in bringing Europe and Asia together into discourse and commerce.
It appears as though he did this empirically, administering the Persian Empire peacefully while he moved beyond its borders into India. Perhaps he would have undertaken some systematic reorganization of his empire, stretching all the way from Macedonia to northern India, but he did not have time to do this.
Alexander’s effort to create a world state and empire were less successful. Within a decade of his death, his kingdom, loosely organized as it was, split apart. His successors, who were his generals, carved out territories for themselves. Cassander took Macedonia; Seleucid took most of Asia Minor, Syria, Iraq, and Iran; Ptolemy took over Egypt. In Egypt Ptolemy—who wrote an account of Alexander’s military campaigns—established a dynasty that endured until 30 BC, ending only with the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra by Julius Caesar’s grandnephew Octavius (later Augustus Caesar) at the Battle of Actium.
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