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.