If he had spent longer in Athens, he might have known what this act would cost him, and thought twice. He had embittered the most influential body of opinion formers in his world. Anti-Macedonian and anti-monarchist already, the men of the Academy and the Lyceum now sank their rivalries to execrate in concert the martyrdom of free-minded philosophy. His barbarian marriage was derided; wild rumours of sexual debauch were swallowed whole; military operations were converted to atrocities. Blatantly forged letters of his abounded. One of them purported to say that the squires had not implicated Callisthenes; even the absurdity of his exonerating a man he had just condemned was not questioned by the logicians, it would have been ideological heresy. The Athenian Alexander, passed on to Rome, has bedevilled history ever since.
His death had been devised with treachery and cowardice, things he abhorred and could not understand. But killing Callisthenes was the one great strategic blunder of his career. He did not live to know the worst of it.
* In a fictional account of this incident (The Persian Boy) a different explanation of Bagoas’ arrival was given. Later reflection, however, has persuaded me that the one above is more consistent with the evidence. M.R.
India
IN 327 ALEXANDER MOBILIZED his largest army, augmented with troops from all his new dominions, perhaps as many as 120,000 men, for his march on India.
It had every lure to which his nature responded. Darius the Great had failed to hold on to his Punjab satrapies, and now could be surpassed. Heracles, one of Alexander’s great exemplars, had been there; so had Dionysus, that god of half-human birth, wandering in his divine madness. (Alexander’s instinctive genius preserved him from ever trying to suppress the Dionysiac in his nature—that way real madness would have lain.) India called also to the explorer in him. Not only were its marvels legendary; its further shore was, in all Greek belief, the end of the earth.
By now he must have crossed caravan routes that led to China. He may have seen and fingered its silk. But trade goods changed hands along the way, often with the simplest barter signs; the Persians did not know much more than he. His geographers noted all information within their reach; none of it had shaken his belief that the endless Stream of Ocean, the world’s girdle, lay a few months’ march away. He had no notion of the southward depth of the Indian subcontinent, and supposed that from its eastern shore it would be no great voyage to the Euphrates. Having learned that the Indus harboured crocodiles, he believed for some time that it flowed into the Nile.
In Sogdiana he had had his first contact with the fabled land, a state visit from the King of Taxila in the Punjab; a former satrapy, which its present ruler did not want to lose. He bore splendidly exotic gifts, “such as the Indians most prize,” which no doubt included pearls and rubies. His train of twenty-five painted and bedizened elephants made a great impression; astutely, as a last prodigal gesture he sent them back over the passes on his return home. This foretaste sharpened Alexander’s appetite for discovery, and his men’s for loot.
The quality of Hephaestion’s military record now appears. Under him and Perdiccas, Alexander put more than half the army; including apparently most of the new levies, a touchy job. In his charge were the noncombatants, among whom must have been Roxane; Alexander could not have taken her where he was going, which was to control the flanks of the immemorial gateway by which all the rest would enter.
Sir Robert Warburton, who had a similar task in the 1880s, wrote in his memoirs: “To those who are not acquainted with this highway, I must explain that formerly the Khyber Pass, thanks to the quarrels and exactions of the Afridis, was always closed to caravans, trade and travellers, except when some strong man forced them to keep it open for the time being; and when he passed away, or the whim left him, the pass was closed again.” This one, when he passed away, was remembered for two millennia.
The campaign began in autumn. Sir Robert, describing operations in winter, says, “So cold was it that the rushing water froze on my pony’s feet and flanks wherever it touched the animal.” Alexander had much fierce fighting among the hill forts, where the tribesmen shut themselves up at his approach, ready to emerge behind him. Demands for their surrender were taken in bad part; but they were unused to sophisticated siege techniques and most of the assaults were brief. He got two arrow wounds, in the shoulder and ankle; neither of them severe, but his men reacted savagely, as they did to anything that endangered him. He had one narrow escape when an assault bridge, thrown across to the walls of Massaga, collapsed under the weight of men pressing up to fight beside him; luckily the drop was not too deep. On the death of the tribal chief the rest surrendered; including a force of about 7,000 mercenaries from another region. Alexander granted a truce, and negotiated with these men to join his army, which they agreed to do. In the night, however, they started to make off. Alexander decided he could not expose his men to the risk of treachery; he surrounded the Indians and cut them down. It must have been a grim enough business; but not deserving of the propagandist version given by Diodorus, which, disregarding Ptolemy’s first-hand witness, makes it an act of calculated revenge.
The brave and attractive Sir Robert, seeking to defend the tribesmen of his manor from the charge of irremediable savagery, writes,
The Afridi lad from his earliest childhood is taught by the circumstances of his existence and life to distrust all mankind; and very often his near relations, heirs to his small plot of land by right of inheritance, are his deadliest enemies. Distrust of all mankind, and readiness to strike the first blow for the safety of his own life, have therefore become the maxims of the Afridi. … It took me years to get through this thick crust of mistrust …
All frontier campaigners agree that the fate of their prisoners was appalling.
When you’re wounded an’ left on Afghanistan’s plains,
An’ the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle an’ blow out your brains …
This last resort of Kipling’s soldier was not. available to Alexander’s. Though—as Ptolemy admits—the mercenaries may have meant only to get away home, it is understandable that he would not take a chance on it.
Alexander’s famous exploit of this campaign was the assault upon Aornus, the “Birdless Rock,” a 7,000-foot massif in a curve of the Indus, its precipices carved by primeval floods. The feat astonished Sir Aurel Stein, who rediscovered it. It was unbesiegeable, having natural springs and space for farmland. It could not be bypassed, being full of warriors from miles around who would have threatened his communications. It could only be stormed. Guided by natives hostile to the defenders, Ptolemy seized an outer spur. Alexander brought up his forces, but a wide ravine still barred the way. He got his men to fell the neighbouring pinewoods, and heap up loads of timber with earth thrown on; from this mound his catapults could reach the walls while he filled in the gorge. When missiles started reaching them, the defenders began slipping away at night; he let them go, glad to make the assault less costly to his men, and was the first in the steep climb to the top. Many of the enemy were overtaken. There was an Indian legend that “Heracles” (probably the mighty bowman Rama, with his monkey bridge builders) had attempted the Rock in vain.
Effort and triumph must have left their traces. The ruler of Nysa and his nobles, anxiously seeking peace, came to his tent and found him still in his armour, dusty from the ride and spear in hand. “They were wonderstruck at the sight of him, and fell to the ground, and were a long time silent.” He raised them up and reassured them. Prompted no doubt by some astute Greek trader or settler—many such had preceded the Macedonians—they begged him to spare their city because Dionysus had founded it; hence their abundant ivy, unique in those parts. Their goodwill was their soundest recommendation; but Alexander and the Companions had a delightful ramble in the sacred park of the local Indian god, hailing Dionysus in ivy crowns.