OF ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE KNOWN WORLD,
THE INDIANS OF ASIA LIVE FARTHEST TO THE EAST
AND THE CLOSEST TO THE RISING SUN. BEYOND
INDIA IS NOTHING BUT AN UNINHABITABLE
DESERT OF SAND.
—HERODOTUS
Alexander’s wedding to Roxane in the seventh year of the campaign was only the first of several controversial steps the king took to unite the disparate factions of his empire as he prepared to move toward the borders of India. One of the most farsighted was his decision to train thirty thousand native youths from throughout the empire as Macedonian soldiers. This plan was motivated by necessity, since Alexander knew—even if most of his officers refused to accept the fact—that the small nation of Macedonia simply could not produce enough troops to control all the lands he had conquered and hoped to conquer yet. Like the Persians before him, the king realized that he needed to draw on the manpower of the many nations under his control to secure and expand his dominion. These selected youths would be taught the Greek language, equipped as Macedonian soldiers, and trained to fight as members of his army. They would not be foreign auxiliaries, as was common enough in the ancient world, but an integral part of the new Macedonian army, including leaders at the top levels. It was a boldly innovative plan beyond anything that had been attempted in military history. Alexander took pains to assure his current troops that this action would not lessen their importance, but they did not believe him for a minute. Anyone could see that the king was planning to turn the Macedonian army from a provincial into an international force. As the soldiers grew older and the new crop of native recruits came of age, the men who had fought with him for so long would be sent home to Macedonia with a bag of gold and a pat on the back. Their sons and grandsons would also serve under Alexander, of course, but as members of an imperial army of which Macedonians were just one part. Their future commanders would as likely be from Persia, Babylon, or India as Pella. It was a bitter blow to his loyal troops, officers and common soldiers alike, who did not share Alexander’s vision of a new world empire.
But even more disturbing to many Macedonians was the immediate problem of homage before the king, a ritual known to the Greeks as proskynesis. Herodotus says that when two Persians met on the street, it was always possible to know their respective social status by watching how they greeted each other. Equals would kiss each other on the mouth, but a man of slightly lower rank would receive a kiss on the cheek from his superior. Persons of greatly inferior standing, however, would prostrate themselves on the ground before their betters. The same ritual applied to the Great King at court, though as he was superior to all others, it was expected that everyone would fall on the ground before him except a select few. Scenes from Persian art show high-ranking officials approaching the king on his throne and blowing him a kiss with their right hands, but most supplicants—and certainly all Greeks—were expected to fall on their faces before the awesome royal glory.
To Greeks and Macedonians, such degrading behavior before any king was inconceivable. Free Greeks did not bow down before kings, but only before gods. To fall prostrate on the floor before a man was the posture of a slave before his master or a worshiper before a divinity. Even in prayer, the people of the Aegean normally stood in reverence before the image of a god with no more than a slightly bowed head. The Persians did not view proskynesis to the Great King as an act of worship, but as a profound mark of reverence and submission to royal authority. The Greeks knew this, but they could never in good conscience bring themselves to perform such obeisance when they appeared before the Persian throne. One clever Theban envoy to Persepolis had once approached the Persian king and let his ring drop to the floor, then stooped to pick it up, excusing himself in his own mind that he had simply fallen to the ground to retrieve his personal property. Some Spartan visitors to the court at Susa, however, had been more obstinate. When the royal bodyguards told them to prostrate themselves, they refused. When the guards tried to push them onto the floor, they fought back, saying it was not their custom to fall down before any mortal man. Greek resistance to this Persian ceremony was deeply ingrained in the national psyche, so that many preferred to risk death rather than submit to such degradation.
But to Persians and others at the royal court, proskynesis was a normal part of protocol. From the first time they had come before Alexander, the Persians had fallen to the ground as an act of respect, in spite of the fact that the Macedonians looked upon their performance with amusement and contempt. This created an untenable situation for Alexander. His Asian subjects regularly performed proskynesis before him and refused to change their ways, while the Greeks and Macedonians treated the ritual as an impious and degrading barbarian observance. By the time Alexander was preparing for the invasion of India, he knew he had to resolve the situation. His hope was to introduce proskynesis gradually to the Macedonians, perhaps in a modified form, so that they would come to accept it as a purely ceremonial rite with no religious connotations. Alexander had no desire to be worshiped as a god by his countrymen or even enjoy the same elaborate court rituals that traditionally surrounded the Great Kings of Persia, but it was ridiculous and divisive to have half his court performing ritual obeisance before him and the other half treating it as a bad joke.
The king’s attempt to introduce proskynesis among the Greeks and Macedonians turned out to be a miserable failure, thanks largely to the court historian Callisthenes. Callisthenes hated to lose an argument and took pride in portraying himself as the defender of liberty in the face of Oriental despotism. Many among the old guard Macedonians admired his outspoken stance in favor of tradition because he spoke what was on their own minds, but the historian mistakenly believed he was untouchable. Even Aristotle had commented that his nephew was a marvelous orator, but had no common sense.
Callisthenes sealed his fate one night at a banquet when Alexander tried to introduce a form of proskynesis acceptable to his Macedonian officers and friends. The king passed a cup of wine to his nearest dining companion, who then would bow down to a small shrine of a god conveniently located just behind the king. Each guest would then receive a kiss from Alexander and return to his place on the dining couch. When it was Callisthenes’ turn, he took the wine but did not perform proskynesis to the shrine. Alexander was busy talking with Hephaestion at the moment and did not notice, but one of his friends pointed out the omission to the king. When Alexander confronted him, Callisthenes impertinently responded that he would do without a kiss.
Alexander had arranged the death of his greatest general and his son, then killed one of his most loyal friends in a fit of anger. Callisthenes was a fool if he thought the king would hesitate to punish a mere historian for such willful insubordination. But Alexander was also shrewd and knew he could play on Callisthenes’ vanity to hasten his doom. He therefore challenged him to offer an impromptu oration in praise of Macedonian valor. Callisthenes was only too happy to comply, lauding the glories of the sons of Macedonia while they applauded and threw garlands at his feet. But then, to test his skills in a time-honored fashion taught at all Greek schools of rhetoric, the king asked him to take the opposite stand and denounce Macedonian virtue. Callisthenes took the bait and responded with gusto, decrying the faults of his hosts with biting recriminations. As Alexander’s generals did not appreciate the nuances of Greek rhetorical performance, they took the criticisms at face value and grew furious at Callisthenes. Thus with one stroke, Alexander succeeded in alienating him from his most ardent supporters. Now all he had to do was wait for the right time to silence Callisthenes forever.
The opportunity soon presented itself when one of the royal pages, a dull-witted young man named Hermolaus, concocted a plan to gain eternal fame by killing Alexander. The page had earlier offended Alexander when he killed a boar during a hunt ahead of the king, earning the boy a flogging. Hermolaus was humiliated and wanted revenge. Just as Pausanius had hoped to win fame by killing Philip years earlier, Hermolaus now wanted to make his mark on history as the assassin of a famous king. When he told some of his friends of his plan, the foolish youth was quickly betrayed and arrested. Alexander knew this was just a harebrained plot by a boy who should never have been a royal page in the first place, but he saw a perfect chance to rid himself of Callisthenes. Even though Hermolaus did not implicate the historian under torture, it was no trouble to entangle Callisthenes in the plot, given that he was friendly with all the pages. Before he knew it, Callisthenes was arrested and placed in chains with no objections from the old guard Macedonians he had so recently insulted. Some sources say he was immediately hanged, others that he died months later of disease, but all agree that his career as court historian met a fatal end on the borders of India. Nevertheless he had managed to prevent Alexander from permanently introducing the ritual of proskynesis among his Macedonian followers. In the end, the king decided it was not worth the trouble.
In the late spring of the seventh year after crossing into Asia, Alexander and his army left Bactria to begin the invasion of India. He crossed the mountains to the south in ten days, much faster than his trek north two years earlier by way of the Khawak Pass. He spent several days in the Alexandria he had founded north of the Kabul valley and replaced a governor there who had ruled poorly in his absence. It is easy to see Alexander as nothing but a general and conqueror as this is how he is usually portrayed in the ancient sources, but he spent a great deal of time fretting over the administrative details of his empire. Whether he always made wise choices is debatable. He was in the habit of choosing a governor for a city or province quickly, then replacing the appointee after he built up a glaring record of mismanagement. At Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus, he chose a solid Macedonian as the new ruler of the city, but almost as an afterthought selected a Persian named Tyriespis as satrap of the region. True to form, Alexander would replace Tyriespis two years later and execute him for corruption.
While he was still in Sogdiana, Alexander had sent messengers to the closest cities in India to summon the local kings to attend him and submit to his authority. These rulers met him as he moved east through the Kabul valley and pledged their allegiance. The ruler of the important Indian city of Taxila, just beyond the Indus River, was among them. He had no more love for Macedonians than he had for the Persians, but he saw an opportunity to use Alexander to help him defeat his enemies. To prove his sincerity to the Macedonian ruler, he presented him with twenty-five battle elephants to use in the upcoming campaign.
At this point, Alexander divided his army in two and sent Hephaestion with a considerable force along the relatively easy road east across the Khyber Pass with orders to subdue rebellious tribes along the way, and most important, to reach the Indus River as quickly as possible and build a bridge, as he had at the Euphrates, for the rest of the army to cross. The Indian kings and a large squadron of engineers accompanied his best friend on this route. Alexander himself took the remainder of the army northeast into the mountains on a circuitous trek to pacify the highland tribes of the eastern Hindu Kush. As usual, the young king delighted in taking on the most difficult tasks.
The expedition through the mountains took months of trudging over narrow trails and across raging streams. If there was an inaccessible fortress that refused to surrender to the Macedonians, Alexander took it, no matter how difficult. The records of this highland campaign tell the same story repeatedly—Alexander demanded the surrender of a town, the citizens refused, the Macedonians stormed the city after a great struggle, and the inhabitants were slaughtered. But there were variations in the routine from time to time. One day early in the march Alexander was shot in the shoulder with an arrow, adding to his many wounds. At another point he and his army were ambushed by tribesmen who charged out of nowhere just as the Macedonians were making camp for the evening, forcing them to withdraw to a nearby hill. But then Alexander struck back and pushed the warriors behind their city walls, having killed many of them. These were the toughest opponents the king faced on this campaign, but after four days of assaulting their city, he forced them to surrender and spared their lives on the condition they join his army as auxiliaries. They agreed, but when they tried to sneak away that night, the suspicious Alexander waylaid and killed them, then captured their city.
As he moved east through the towering peaks and beautiful forests of the Swat valley, the king continued to seize fortresses and force the submission of local tribes. But when he arrived at the town of Bazira, he found that the soldiers and townspeople had fled to a nearby mountain called Aornus. As with the defenders at the Sogdian Rock, the natives of the region believed this refuge was a perfect defense against invaders. It was surrounded by sheer slopes several thousand feet high with only one precipitous and well-defended path to the top. On the summit was a wide plateau suitable for growing abundant grain along with plentiful wood and a perennial water supply. The local guides with Alexander said that even Hercules had been unable to take the mountain on his travels. This was just the encouragement the king needed.
Unlike the Sogdian Rock, Aornus could not be taken by climbers but only by direct assault up the impossible path along a narrow ridge. The guides were able to lead Ptolemy and some troops to a part of the mountain that they could hold against the enemy, but the position was not secure enough for a direct attack against the main fortress. Ptolemy held the post against a fierce assault while Alexander and his engineers set to work building a road to the top. They were able to fight their way near the summit, but there was a steep ravine before the final approach that blocked their progress. The king ordered his men to cut thousands of stakes to hold the soil and began to extend a large mound of packed dirt hundreds of feet across the gap under constant fire from the defenders above. It took days of torturous effort, but at last they had constructed a narrow causeway. The astonished tribesmen sued for peace and offered to surrender the next day. But once again, the enemy tried to sneak away by night, only to find Alexander waiting for them. He killed many as they fled, while others fell over the cliffs, then the king stormed the walls and took possession of the mountain at last. Alexander was tremendously proud that he had managed to conquer a place that had defeated even Hercules.
The king turned south from Aornus and continued the march toward the Indus, finding time for a wild elephant hunt along the way. But his greatest surprise during the march came when he neared the town of Nysa. The local people and even the flora seemed strangely out of place in these mountains. The Nysians placed their dead in cedar coffins in the trees—some of which Alexander accidentally set on fire—and made wine from grapes, unlike other tribes in the area. The natives met Alexander and begged him not to harm their town as they were descendants of settlers that the god Dionysus had placed there generations before. Their prolific ivy, a plant sacred to Dionysus that grew nowhere else in the mountains, was proof they were a people blessed by the god. This was just the sort of story that appealed to Alexander. They showed the king the grove of Dionysus, covered with ivy, where Alexander and his soldiers decked themselves with wreaths and sung hymns to the god of wine. Although the divinity worshiped by the people of Nysa was more likely Shiva or another Eastern deity than a misplaced Greek god, Alexander accepted the tale and treated the natives kindly, taking their presence in those remote mountains as a sign that he had now arrived at the very limits of the ancient wanderings of Dionysus. This was proof in his mind that he was nearing the edge of the earth.
When he at last came down from the high mountains and arrived at the Indus, Alexander found that Hephaestion had finished a large pontoon bridge of boats across the wide river. On the other side was India, a mythical land barely known to the Greek world. The earliest stories of India in the West were brought back by a sailor named Scylax from Caria in Asia Minor. The first Great King Darius commissioned him almost two hundred years before Alexander to explore the Indus River in preparation for a Persian takeover. Scylax sailed down the Indus to the sea and then around the Arabian peninsula to Egypt. His work survives only in scattered fragments, but the intelligence he gathered allowed Darius to add the Indus valley to the Persian Empire as the twentieth satrapy. By the time of Alexander, Persian control of the Indus was only nominal, but Alexander considered it subject to the Great King and therefore part of the domain he had to secure.
A Greek physician also from Caria named Ctesias wrote briefly about India in a history of Persia just a few years after Scylax, drawing on the mariner’s voyage and his own examination of Indian animals brought to the Persian court. His work likewise survives only in fragments, but Alexander would have read the complete accounts of both men. The king also would have been familiar with the references to India in Herodotus. The Greek historian did not visit India as he did Egypt and Babylon, so his account is limited and even more imaginative than usual. He described India as rich in gold, contributing more to the Persian treasury than any other province, but claimed the gold was dug from the ground by ants. He related that there were many nations living along the Indus who spoke different languages and had diverse customs. Some reportedly ate only raw meat, while others would never kill any animals. Herodotus also claimed that some Indians ate the bodies of their dead fathers as a sign of respect and were disgusted when they heard that Greeks cremated their dead. But the one constant thread regarding India in Herodotus and the other sources that Alexander would have read was that the country lay at the easternmost edge of the world, separated from the great encircling ocean by only a thin strip of desert. None of the ancient writers until the time of the Macedonian invasion had any idea that India extended far beyond the Indus.
Thus Alexander approached India believing that if he could conquer the valley of the Indus, his realm would reach the limits of the inhabited world. Just a short march across the desert and he would stand on the shore of the great eastern ocean. Some Greeks even believed that this sea could be glimpsed from the summit of the Hindu Kush. It must have been when the king of the Indian city of Taxila arrived at his camp in Bactria and began to speak of his country that Alexander learned just how wrong he had been. The Indian prince would have described to him the geography of the Punjab, the land of five rivers stretching like the fingers of a hand across the northern Indus valley. But then he would have told Alexander of the lengthy Ganges River flowing through a vast land beneath the Himalayan mountains down to a large gulf. Along the banks of the Ganges were ancient, powerful, and wealthy kingdoms. To the south of the Ganges was the enormous mass of the Indian peninsula stretching out into the ocean, with the fabled island of Taprobane (Ceylon or Sri Lanka) just off the southeastern coast. The king of Taxila would also have known of another immense peninsula beyond the mouth of the Ganges extending far into the southern sea toward fabulous islands where rare spices grew. It was probably also at this meeting that Alexander became the first man from the Aegean to hear about the Seres, or silk people, who lived between two great rivers in a distant land beyond the Himalayas. It must have been disorienting in the truest sense to Alexander to discover that his vision of the lands of the East was woefully inadequate. And yet, even if the edge of the world did not lie just days beyond the Indus, the idea of a whole new world of rich lands and prosperous kingdoms must have stirred his imagination and endless ambition.
Alexander and his army crossed the Indus on the bridge Hephaestion and his engineers had constructed by lashing together dozens of boats large and small and building a roadway on top. In this region of the world, where torrential monsoon rains flooded the lands each summer, permanent bridges were impracticable. After pausing to offer sacrifices and celebrate athletic contests as thanks for a safe transit of the river, they continued south to Taxila through the low hills. They were still several days away from the city when its king sent gifts of silver, cattle, sheep, and elephants to show his goodwill. The ruler of Taxila was not the same man Alexander had met earlier in Bactria but rather his son, Omphis, as the old king had recently died. The new king had shown as much as his father every sign of cooperating with the Macedonians, having supplied Hephaestion and his work crews with grain, though he surprisingly had not left his city to greet Alexander’s friend personally.
As the Macedonians drew near to Taxila, Alexander was alarmed to see an army coming out to meet him. There were thousands of Indian troops in battle formation with decorated elephants so large they looked like moving fortresses. He immediately ordered his trumpeters to sound the call to arms and sent his cavalry to the wings to prepare for the coming attack. The surprised King Omphis saw what was happening and guessed that his grand display had been misinterpreted. He ordered his army to halt and he rode forward to meet Alexander with just a few men at his side. It was a tense moment, especially as neither king could speak the other’s language, but eventually an interpreter was found and Omphis explained that he was merely greeting his new lord in the traditional Indian manner. The Indian king pledged his loyalty to Alexander and surrendered his kingdom to him. Alexander in turn gave back Taxila and the surrounding territory to Omphis.
Alexander rode into Taxila at the head of his army and inspected a major Indian city for the first time. It was a haphazard town of rough limestone and mud-brick houses lining irregular, wandering streets—more of an overgrown village than the capital of a wealthy kingdom. Still, what was lacking in architectural grandeur was made up for by the vibrancy of the people and hospitality of his host. Omphis entertained Alexander and his officers at a banquet for three days and presented the king and his companions with more gifts, including a fortune in coined silver. Alexander graciously thanked the king, but in a gesture of royal generosity returned everything to Omphis and added silver and gold vessels, Persian robes, and an astonishing amount of gold from the treasury. This prompted one of Alexander’s Macedonian companions, Meleager, to congratulate the king for having traveled all the way to India to find a man deserving of so much money. Alexander took this sarcasm poorly, but after the death of Cleitus he had learned how to restrain himself, coldly telling Meleager that jealous men only tormented themselves. What his companion failed to appreciate was that Alexander was buying loyalty, a precious commodity in a land so far from the center of his empire. He needed to secure both Taxila and its king before he could move down the Indus. If it cost him a fraction of the vast treasure he had accumulated from the Persians, so be it.
Omphis was eager to be accommodating as he was in a permanent state of war with the neighboring kingdoms, including a powerful state to his south beyond the Hydaspes River ruled by Porus, king of an Indian people known as the Paurava. The young ruler of Taxila wanted to expand the borders of his own kingdom at the expense of Porus and was happy to use the gold and army of Alexander to accomplish his goal. His prospects seemed even more promising when an envoy Alexander had sent to Porus returned to Taxila. The Macedonian king had demanded that the Indian lord pay tribute to him and meet him at the borders of his realm when he moved south. Other local rulers had submitted, but Porus replied that he would not be giving Alexander any tribute, though he would be happy to meet him at the Hydaspes with his army ready for battle.
This was a serious blow to Alexander’s plans for a quick and peaceful march through India. His intelligence network had already informed him that Porus had a large army, including more than a hundred war elephants. Alexander was confident he could beat such an adversary, but it would not be easy, especially as the monsoon had just begun. The Macedonians didn’t mind rain, but they had never experienced anything like the deluge that poured on them from the Indian sky. Adding to their misery was the unbearable heat, creating the rare and thoroughly miserable sensation of being hot and wet at the same time. Day after day the rain continued with no respite. Streets turned to rivers, fields became lakes, and thick mud covered everything. The Indians were perfectly cheerful in the rain as the monsoon was essential for their crops, but the Macedonians began to despair that they would ever be dry again. The local people assured them that the rain would stop in a few months, but Alexander could not afford to wait that long. He appointed a Macedonian as commander of a permanent military garrison at Taxila—just in case Omphis wavered, in spite of the gold—and led his very wet army to the Hydaspes River.
Alexander and his soldiers marched south over a low range of mountains for several days until they suddenly came to a pass leading down to the plain of the Hydaspes. From this gap they first saw the vast Punjab plain, an utterly flat landscape stretching south and east all the way to the Ganges River. Below they could see the Hydaspes River, almost a mile wide, fast-moving and swollen by both the monsoon and the melting snows of the Himalayas. Porus was on the far side of this flood with an army smaller than that of Alexander, but the Indian ruler knew the territory well and possessed many trained elephants that would terrify any horses that approached.
Alexander took one look at the Hydaspes and sent Coenus back to the Indus to dismantle the pontoon bridge that Hephaestion had built and bring the boats to him in pieces. Meanwhile the king made camp on the north bank of the river and considered how he might cross such a stream undetected by Porus. He had to find a spot along the river that was out of view of the southern shore. After days of searching, his scouts located a likely place several miles to the east near where a ridge of mountains approached the Hydaspes. Across from this headland was a large island in the river surrounded by several smaller islands, all covered with thick trees that hid the north shore from the troops of Porus, constantly patrolling the opposite side. Alexander realized this was the perfect location to launch his amphibious assault, but he had to make sure the Indian king didn’t know the attack would come so far to the east. To keep Porus guessing, Alexander ordered units of his army to move back and forth along the northern shore for many miles. He would shift troops to the west, then the east, then back again to his main camp. The Macedonians also built campfires along the river and made a point of being noisy as they went about their duties. The Indian troops across the Hydaspes were driven to distraction by this constant motion and eventually gave up trying to keep track of every movement of the Macedonian soldiers—just as Alexander intended. The king also ordered tons of grain from the surrounding countryside transported to his camp as if he planned to stay there until the autumn when the rain would stop and the river subside. He also announced to his troops—and to the Indian spies among them—that they would wait at least two months to move across the river. When Porus heard the report, he was unconvinced, but Alexander was not seeking to deceive the king as much as he was to keep him off balance.
When the ships were at last ready, Alexander left Craterus in charge of the main camp opposite Porus with a strong force and orders not to move unless the Indian king shifted east to the site of the upcoming crossing. Then in darkness Alexander led his toughest troops silently upriver to the embarkation point. He must have felt the heavens favored him as the normally steady showers had turned into a violent storm. The crashing of thunder and the pounding rain covered the noise made by the Macedonians as they prepared to launch the boats, though several were reportedly killed by lightning.
Thousands of troops slipped into the boats and began to paddle across the raging river and around the large island as best they could. When at last they reached land, they poured out of the landing craft ready to face Porus, only to find that in the darkness they had not reached the southern bank but one of the many smaller islands in the river. It was an absolute disaster as the storm was now breaking and the sun rising, leaving the Macedonians visible to the Indian scouts. With no time to lose, Alexander ordered his men into the deep channel separating them from the southern bank. The heavily armored soldiers were up to their necks in swift water and the cavalry horses could barely swim through the current, but at last they struggled out of the river onto land.
At this point word reached Porus that a large force of Macedonians was crossing several miles to the east, leaving the Indian king with a difficult decision. He could see that many of the enemy were still directly across from him in Alexander’s camp. Was theeastern attack a ploy to draw him away so that the western force could cross and attack him from behind, or was it in fact the main thrust of the assault, outflanking him to the east? There was no time to send out more scouts, so Porus ordered his son upriver with a chariot brigade to prevent the landing if possible or delay it if not. Then he followed with the main force of his army, leaving only a small detachment with a few elephants behind to hinder the remaining Macedonians from crossing.
Porus was a brave and capable leader, but he was in an impossible situation. Outnumbered, he now found himself facing Alexander’s superbly trained troops, who were so tired of being wet and miserable that they were ready to massacre every Indian they found. The one advantage Porus had was his elephants, who just as Alexander feared caused havoc among his cavalry and trampled his men. But by now the Macedonians had developed a defense against these creatures. Although it cost the lives of many of their countrymen, Alexander’s troops would encircle an elephant and stab it with their long sarissa spears while the archers shot out its eyes. Then the maddened and blinded beast would charge wildly, as likely at friends as foes.
Alexander surveyed the Indian battle order and decided to deploy a classic envelopment tactic to surround the enemy troops. He sent his cavalry to the left and right with orders to come up behind the Indians while the main army attacked from the front. It was a brutal battle waged savagely in mud and blood with heavy casualties on both sides. At one point, Alexander was riding Bucephalas when the old horse was struck by a spear and mortally wounded. The king was too busy to mourn, so he switched to another mount and continued the fight. When the Indian lines began to break, Craterus quickly crossed the river and came up behind to cut off the Indians’ retreat.
Only Porus continued the fight from the back of his giant elephant. Alexander so admired the man’s courage that he sent a messenger to the king begging him to surrender and be spared. Unfortunately the envoy was Omphis of Taxila, whom Porus bitterly hated and tried to kill with a spear. Then Alexander sent another messenger who at last persuaded the Indian king to lay down his arms. As the two rulers met, the elephant Porus was riding knelt down in spite of its wounds to allow the king to dismount. Alexander approached Porus and marveled at the stature of the man, more than six feet in height, as well as his regal bearing even in defeat. Alexander asked how he would like to be treated, to which Porus replied, “Like a king.” The victor allowed him to retire from the field to seek medical treatment, then gave him back his kingdom, even adding nearby lands, much to the chagrin of Omphis. The Macedonians held funeral rites for their dead, offered sacrifices, and celebrated athletic games on the banks of the Hydaspes in honor of their costly victory. Then, in memory of Bucephalas, Alexander founded a city near the site of the battle and named it for his beloved horse.
Alexander meanwhile sent a work party into the mountains to cut wood for ships. His plan was to build a great navy and sail down the Hydaspes to the Indus, then follow the river to the sea, subduing kingdoms along the way. As this grand construction project would take weeks if not months, the king announced to his men that in the meantime they would invade eastern India. His army still must have believed that the great sea lay just over the horizon, even though by now Alexander had learned the true extent of the Indian subcontinent. The problem was once again how to keep the troops moving. This was especially challenging as the monsoon was still raging as they moved into a region where the ground was so thick with snakes that the men took to sleeping in hammocks like the locals. Yet the king marched on with his loyal but increasingly disgruntled troops behind him.
The westernmost tributary of the Ganges was two hundred miles away, while the mouth of that great river system lay more than a thousand miles to the east. Still Alexander was determined to lead his army all the way to the Ganges delta, taking the rich kingdoms along its banks. His first stops were the cities near the borders of Porus, thirty-seven towns in the shadow of the Himalayan mountains. He conquered these easily enough and gave them to Porus as part of his expanded kingdom. Then he advanced to the Acesines, one of the largest and swiftest rivers of the Punjab. He loaded his troops onto their transportable boats and launched out into the stream, only to find that the current ripped many of the craft to shreds, drowning a number of his men. Afterward he moved forward to the Hydraotes River, just as broad as the Acesines but not as swift. The natives on the far bank put up only token resistance, then submitted to the Macedonians. But beyond the Hydraotes was the land of the Cathaeans, a warlike tribe with the city of Sangala as their capital. The Macedonians heard tales that the Cathaean widows were encouraged rather forcefully to burn themselves alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands, a suttee ritual reportedly initiated after one local woman poisoned her husband. These Indians placed wagons in front of their city to block the Macedonian charge and manned their walls to shower arrows and spears on the attackers. But Alexander’s men were finally able to break through the brick walls and take the city by storm, aided by Porus, who had recently arrived with a brigade of elephants.
The king of the next country along the sodden march was Sopeithes, who wisely surrendered before the Macedonians drew near to his capital. Alexander gave him back his kingdom to govern in his name, then enjoyed the hospitality of the Indian ruler for the next few days. The unusual customs of the country surely reminded Alexander of Spartan society or the ideal city laid out in Plato’s Republic. At birth, the children in the kingdom of Sopeithes were separated into two groups, the most fit and beautiful of which were carefully reared, while the rest were killed. As the survivors grew, they were placed in arranged marriages with those mates that would likely produce the finest offspring for the state. Sopeithes was also proud of the hounds raised in his land and gave Alexander more than a hundred of these animals, so fierce they were said to have tiger’s blood in their veins. To prove this to his guest, the Indian king staged a fight pitting four of the dogs against a full-grown lion. The canines were winning when Sopeithes sent a servant in to cut off the right leg of one of the dogs that had a death grip on the lion. Alexander rose up to object, but the hound did not even flinch as its leg was severed, keeping its jaws clamped on its prey even while it slowly bled to death.
By now, after weeks of fighting their way across the Punjab, the ever-victorious Macedonians were starting to feel like Sopeithes’ dog. Alexander pushed them on to the kingdom of Phegeus on the Hyphasis, the last of the great rivers of the Punjab. This Indian ruler also submitted and received back his throne, much to the relief of Alexander’s soldiers, who had no desire for another battle in the rain. Alexander questioned Phegeus about the country ahead and learned there was a wide desert to the east, followed by a deep river leading to the Ganges. Beyond this was the great kingdom of the Gandaridae ruled by Xandrames, who reportedly possessed two hundred thousand infantry, twenty thousand cavalry, and four thousand war elephants. Alexander couldn’t believe these numbers, so he sent for Porus and questioned him separately. Porus assured his new lord that the report was accurate, adding, however, that Xandrames was a lowly born son of a barber who had seized his throne through treachery and murder. This news only fired the desire of Alexander to march on and conquer lands no other Western ruler, not even the Great Kings of Persia, had dared to dream of. He reminded himself that the oracle at Delphi had said he was unbeatable and that Zeus-Ammon at Siwa had confirmed his rule over the whole world.
Alexander was so excited that he led his troops down to the banks of the Hyphasis to begin the crossing to the other side. He launched into a magnificent speech extolling the bravery of his fine Macedonians and their allies, enticing them with promises of spoils from the rich cities that lay ahead. There were armies and elephants to the east, of course, but they were nothing compared with what they had already overcome. Eight years ago, the king declared, we crossed the Hellespont together, then conquered Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Bactria, Sogdiana, and more. We have marched ten thousand miles and accomplished the impossible. There is no limit to what men of noble spirit can accomplish. All of Asia lies within our grasp if we press on a little farther. The eastern sea is there, just beyond the horizon, waiting for us to bathe our feet in its waters. Then we can return home, knowing that our new empire is secure and rejoicing that our names will live forever. Of course, if you want to stop here, you certainly can. You may run home and tell your children that you deserted your king in a distant land. But as for myself, I will go on even if I march alone. But those who come with me to the fabulously wealthy lands ahead will be the envy of all when they return home to live like kings.
This sort of speech had always worked for Alexander before, so he waited in anticipation for the rousing cheers he knew would follow. But to his surprise, there was a complete silence as his men hung their heads, not daring even to raise their eyes to look at their king. At last Coenus, Alexander’s most senior surviving general, who had served him so faithfully as he had his father, Philip, before him, rose to speak. The old soldier spoke for the entire army when he told Alexander that they had been honored to follow him for so long amid all the toils and dangers they had faced together. But now they were exhausted and their spirits broken. So many of their friends had died, so many of those who survived bore the scars of battle. Their own clothing had worn away long ago so that now they were forced to wear Persian and Indian garments beneath their armor. They wanted to see their parents, if they were still alive, and to embrace their wives and children once more. He urged the king to return to Macedonia with them and lead back a new generation of soldiers, young men to follow him to the glorious victories that surely lay ahead. But as for themselves, they could go no farther.
Now a great cheer rose up from the army in support of Coenus as the men openly wept at the thought of going home. Alexander, however, was so furious that he dismissed the assembly and stormed off to his tent, not seeing even his closest friends for three days. He waited for his men to change their minds and come to him as they had in the past, begging him to forgive them, swearing that they would follow him to the ends of the earth—but no one came. At last the king had to accept that his dream of marching down the Ganges was dead. To save face, he held a public sacrifice to seek the counsel of heaven. After examining the entrails before them, the soothsayers wisely declared that the omens were poor for crossing the river. Alexander then stood before the army once again and declared that he would not fight the will of the gods as well as his men. They were all going home.
Before he left the Hyphasis, Alexander ordered his army to erect twelve towering altars, one for each of the Olympian gods. These were in thanksgiving to the gods for having carried him so far, but also as lasting memorials to his own accomplishments. Some stories say he also constructed an enormous fort with beds more than seven feet long and feeding troughs twice the normal size so that future generations of Indians would think the Macedonians and their horses were giants.
With a last wistful look to the east, Alexander began the long march back to Macedonia. They were still on the northern edge of India, more than a hundred miles from the fleet being readied on the Hydaspes. After that it was a voyage of almost six hundred miles to the sea. Alexander’s plan was to conquer the remaining tribes of the Indus valley on his journey rather than return by way of Bactria. He must have used considerable charm and persuasion to convince his officers and troops that the fastest road home lay to the south. From a military point of view, it also made perfect sense to complete the conquest of western India. From the Indus delta he would send his fleet along the coast to rendezvous in Persia with the army he would be leading overland. This would close the great circle the king had begun when he left Persepolis four years earlier to chase Darius, but also give him the opportunity to establish a trade route between his provinces in India and the rest of the empire. What the troops did not know—and Alexander himself did not realize—was that some of the toughest fighting of the long campaign still lay ahead, as well as one of the most grueling desert marches in military history.
The journey back to the Hydaspes was uneventful, aside from the surrender of a few remaining Indian kings who decided that fighting was unnecessary now that the Macedonians were withdrawing. Alexander was also pleased with the arrival of a sizeable group of reinforcements who had journeyed all the way from Greece to join his army. These included thirty thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry, along with wagonloads of medical supplies and twenty-five thousand sets of armor inlaid with gold and silver from histreasurer Harpalus.These were much appreciated by the men, whose original armor was falling apart. A sad note was struck by the sudden death of old Coenus. In spite of the timing, it is likely that he died of natural causes. In fact it may have been a sense of his approaching demise that had given Coenus the courage to face down Alexander at the Hyphasis.
When the army arrived back at the Hydaspes, the king was thrilled to see that the fleet was ready. There were more than a thousand ships prepared for the voyage, including large warships, horse transports, and cargo vessels. Alexander recruited the seafaring Phoenicians, Cypriots, Carians, and Egyptians in the army to serve as sailors and appointed his boyhood friend Nearchus as admiral. A few days later at dawn when everything was finally in order, Alexander sacrificed to Zeus and Hercules as well as to many other gods, including the divine powers ruling the rivers of India. He poured libations into the Hydaspes from a golden bowl, much as he had done in the middle of the Hellespont before crossing to Troy. There was not enough room on the ships for most of the army, so Alexander sent Hephaestion and Craterus to lead the rest of the men on opposite banks following the fleet. These two companions of the king had developed an intense mutual hatred and had even drawn swords on each other once, so Alexander considered it prudent to keep a river between them.
The departure was a great ceremony, with the ships moving in perfect formation down the wide stream with the sound of drums and oars striking the water. The local Indians had never seen such a spectacle and were especially impressed by the sight of horses riding in boats. The locals all came down to the banks to cheer the Macedonians and sing songs in celebration. Alexander was deeply touched by the beautiful farewell the Indians were giving him, taking it as a sign of their affection, but they were undoubtedly thrilled to see him and his army sailing away.
The first few days of the voyage south along the Hydaspes provided Alexander with a welcome opportunity to relax. With thousands of miles of marching behind him and constant life-or-death decisions to make, it was a rare luxury to sit on a ship gently drifting down a river in India. He passed some of the time listening to his old friend Aristobulus reading from a history of the expedition he was composing. The Greek writer was reciting aloud from a recent section he had composed on the battle against Porus. In his version, Alexander fought in glorious single combat with the Indian king and personally killed his elephant with a spear. The king grabbed the book and threw it into the river, saying he should toss overboard the man who wrote such nonsense as well.
After five days the Macedonian fleet came to the confluence of the Hydaspes and Acesines. Here the two wide, gently flowing rivers entered a single, narrow channel that produced swift currents and turbulent whirlpools. The sailors were accustomed to storms on the Mediterranean, but no one, least of all Alexander, had any experience running rapids. The small round ships used for transport managed well enough as they twisted and turned in the stream, but the larger warships were tossed like corks. They quickly turned sideways and ran into one another as their oars snapped off. Men that had faced barbarian warriors and trumpeting elephants with determined silence screamed in terror as they were thrown into the river, with many drowning in the roiling water. Alexander himself panicked when his flagship hit the rapids. He threw off his clothes and jumped naked into the swirling eddies even though he had never learned to swim. His friends leapt in after him and pulled him to shore, thankful they had been able to save his life. The king was so grateful to the gods for having spared him that he sacrificed to them as if he had just won a deadly battle. After a little rest he was even able to joke about the experience, boasting that he had now won a contest of strength against a river, just like his hero Achilles in the Trojan War.
After they had repaired the damaged ships, Alexander sent Nearchus ahead to the next river juncture while the king and most of the army marched overland to the realm of the Malli, one of the most feared tribes of the Punjab. These Indians had prepared for the arrival of the Macedonians by river, but in typical fashion Alexander snuck up on them from behind by crossing a waterless desert at night. He struck their first city by surprise while the few soldiers were relaxing outside the town, then stormed the walls and seized the citadel, killing all two thousand natives who had taken refuge there. Those few that had escaped to the nearby marshes were hunted down and slaughtered. A second and third city followed, with Alexander bravely—or recklessly—climbing the first ladder to reach the walls and personally leading the fight against the defenders.
The remaining Malli had all fled to the strongest of their cities to make a final stand against the invaders. Alexander arrived at the town near sunset and told his troops to rest in preparation for an assault at dawn. He divided his troops into two forces, leading the first himself and entrusting the second to his companion Perdiccas. The Indians were so terrified at the approaching army that they deserted their posts and retreated to the inner citadel of the city, leaving the outer walls unguarded. Most of the Macedonians thought they had taken the whole town as they poured through the gates only to see the natives holding a much stronger position at the central fortress. The soldiers tried to find a way into the citadel, but failed to breach the walls. Alexander soon became frustrated and grabbed a ladder himself, held his shield in front of him, and began to mount the wall. His attendant Peucestas went up behind him, carrying the sacred shield the king had taken from the temple of Athena at Troy. He was followed by two more men, Leonnatus his bodyguard—whom he had sent to console the women of Darius after the battle of Issus—and Abreas, a common soldier.
Alexander reached the top of the wall and stood there fighting off Malli defenders while his three companions scaled the ladder behind him. The rest of the soldiers below were so ashamed that they had allowed themselves to be left behind that they all clambered up the ladder at once, breaking it under their weight. This left the king and the three others who had made it to the top in a desperate struggle. Rather than remain a perfect target poised on top of the wall, Alexander decided to cast caution to the wind and jumped into the city. When the soldiers outside saw him disappear, they were horrified. Out of their sight, Alexander positioned himself with his back to a large tree and stabbed anyone who approached him. After he killed several defenders, the Malli backed away and formed a semicircle around him just out of sword range. The king then picked up stones lying on the ground and hurled them at anyone who dared to draw near. The natives countered by grabbing their own rocks and throwing them back.
At this point, the three companions who had made it to the top of the wall with Alexander saw what was happening and leapt down themselves into the fray to defend the king. Abreas was killed almost immediately by an arrow in the face. Then Alexander was struck by an arrow shot at close range that penetrated his armor and went into his chest, puncturing a lung. He continued to defend himself, but he was bleeding so profusely and struggling so hard to breathe that he collapsed onto the ground. Leonnatus took up position on one side of the king while Peucestas held the Trojan shield above him to ward off the stones and arrows that rained down on them.
The Macedonians outside the walls were meanwhile frantically trying to find a way into the citadel. Some stuck pegs into the mud bricks and climbed the wall like a mountain cliff. Others stood on the shoulders of their comrades to reach the top, while more pushed on the gate until the bar holding it finally snapped. When they at last reached Alexander, they found him in a pool of blood beneath the tree with Peucestas still standing over him. The soldiers were not an educated lot, but they knew battlefield injuries and could see that the king was critically, perhaps mortally, wounded. In their fury they turned against the Malli inside the citadel and cut down every man, woman, and child.
Alexander was carried to his nearby ship, where some sources report that Critodemus, a physician from the Greek island of Cos and a descendant of the legendary healer Asclepius, removed the arrow. Others say that no doctor was available, so that Perdiccas cut out the projectile with his knife. In either case, the king began to hemorrhage profusely when the arrow was finally removed and slipped into unconsciousness. Rumors ran through the army that Alexander was dead, so that wailing and lamentation echoed through the camp. Once again the men began to wonder who could lead them home if the king died. Deep in enemy territory as far from Macedonia as anyone could imagine, the situation seemed hopeless to the distraught soldiers. As the days passed with no word, the army fell into despair. Finally the command staff announced that the king was alive and would soon make an appearance, though most of the men thought this was a lie to cover up the fact that Alexander had already died. Then at last the curtains on the ship opened and the army watched as the motionless body of the king was carried on a litter down the ramp. He seemed dead to all who were standing on the shore, but the moment the litter reached the bank Alexander held up his hand and waved to the crowd. Shouts and cries were raised to heaven while some of the toughest fighters in the world broke down and wept like little children at the sight of their king still alive. Alexander’s officers had brought another litter to transfer him to the dock, but instead the king ordered a horse led forward. In what must have been one of the most courageous acts of his life, the still gravely injured king pushed his friends away and climbed slowly up onto his horse to reassure his men that he was fine. The army was beside itself with joy, clapping in unison and showering Alexander with the fresh flowers that were blooming all around them. Men strained to touch even the hem of his garment as he rode through the ranks. Then with the greatest of efforts, he dismounted and walked under his own power into his tent to collapse onto his bed.
Once he had regained some of his strength, his officers began to chide him that his performance on the wall was a brave but foolish act for a king. It was not the job of a commander, they said, to risk his life in such a way when there were plenty of men in the army who could do the same thing. Alexander did not know how to tell his friends that for him such actions were an essential part of being a king. Faced with such criticism, he walked out of his tent into the camp. A grizzled veteran from Boeotia in central Greece who had heard about the rebukes of Alexander’s companions approached him. The man looked the king straight in the eye and said just a few words in his rural dialect—“Alexander, brave deeds are what true men do.” The king embraced the old soldier and considered him a friend for the rest of his life.
Alexander’s often brutal campaign in India did not hinder his ongoing fascination with native religions. As early as his visit to Taxila he had gathered together Indian wise men to question them about their beliefs. The king was fortunate to visit a land with such a rich collection of religious traditions. Some aspects of Indian religion, such as belief in a multitude of gods, would have been familiar to anyone from the Mediterranean world, but many of the ideas he encountered would have been quite puzzling to Alexander.
Followers of the native Jain tradition sought to release the soul from the cycle of pain and reincarnation through the practice of asceticism. The most devout became monks who wandered naked through the land owning nothing but a small pot for washing. All Jains sought to follow the teachings of masters from the past who had achieved enlightenment. The latest had been Mahavira, a former warrior who lived along the Ganges two centuries before Alexander. Other Indians were devotees of a teacher named Siddhartha Gautama, who had lived near the Himalayas at about the same time as Mahavira. Siddhartha had been born a prince, but had abandoned his previous life when he first encountered old age, disease, and death. Underneath a bodhi tree he gained enlightenment and release from the cycle of rebirth, becoming the Buddha—literally “the one who is awake”—and devoting himself thereafter to guiding his followers along the path of escape from suffering and rebirth. There were also many religious traditions known under the collective term of Hinduism that traced their origins to the arrival of the Aryan tribes in India many centuries before. These invaders brought with them the hymns of the Vedas and many gods similar to the Persian pantheon, but their beliefs were also shaped by contact with the rich traditions of the natives they met in their new land. Hindus worshiped Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, and many other deities, but shared with Jains and Buddhists the desire to attain release from the endless cycle of reincarnation.
To Alexander, the teachings of these spiritual masters—lumped together by the Greeks as gymnosophistai, or “naked wise men”—seemed most like those of Diogenes, the Cynic philosopher, whom Alexander had met living in his jar in Corinth ten years earlier. One story tells how Alexander met a group of these religious teachers living under the open sky in a meadow. When he approached them, they stood and beat their feet on the ground. Alexander asked them through an interpreter what this action meant and was told that each man alive holds no more earth than he stands on. They urged him to remember that even though he was busy conquering the world, one day he too would die and possess no more land than that which held his bones.
Two of the most venerated Indian religious teachers in the region were Dandamis and Calanus, who each lived quietly by themselves in the forest. Alexander sent Onesicritus—a follower of Diogenes and one of his resident philosophers on the campaign—to find and question them. Dandamis received his visitor warmly and asked about famous Greek philosophers. Onesicritus explained the teachings of Socrates, Diogenes, and Pythagoras (who also believed in reincarnation) to Dandamis, but the wise man said that although each had his good points, they seemed too concerned about following rules. When Onesicritus reached Calanus, the Indian teacher yelled at him to take off his clothes and sit naked before him or he would say nothing, even if Zeus himself sent him. Onesicritus did so and listened to his teachings, then persuaded Calanus to return with him to visit Alexander. When he arrived, the king asked him how best to govern an empire. The holy man threw an ox hide on the ground and pressed down on one edge, only to have another rise up. Then he stood in the center so that the whole hide lay flat—the lesson being that Alexander should stay close to the center of his realm and not wander about the borders. The king was so impressed by Calanus that he invited him to accompany him on the remainder of the expedition. Although the other Indian wise men disapproved of such involvement in secular affairs, Calanus accepted his invitation.
Alexander ordered even more boats constructed during his convalescence to carry his troops the remainder of the journey down to the sea. When these were ready, he once again loaded thousands of his men on board while the rest marched along the banks. The wide Acesines was joined a few days later by the Hyphasis flowing in from the east, then at last the fleet entered the Indus. At this final juncture of the rivers, the king founded another Alexandria with expectations that it would one day grow into a city known throughout the world. He constructed dockyards and laid out streets, then left behind troops to garrison the new metropolis, including many veterans from the mountains of Thrace who would live out their lives far from home on the banks of the Indus.
The army then drifted along the broad plains for several weeks in relative peace until it came at last to the kingdom of Musicanus just above the Indus delta. This local king surrendered and once again Alexander gave him back his realm to rule in his name. Things did not go so well, however, at a nearby land ruled by a king named Sambus. One of his towns was a holy center of the Brahmins, the priestly caste of India. These religious leaders urged resistance against the Macedonians and sent warriors into battle with weapons smeared with a poison derived from dried snake venom. The drug caused sharp pains, convulsions, and a horrible, lingering death. The king’s friend Ptolemy was one of the many dying from the poison when Alexander reportedly had a vision of a local plant that could counteract the drug. He plastered it on Ptolemy’s body, then ground up the rest in a drink for his friend, which cured him. Alexander continued the war against the city of the Brahmins, who had now been joined by Musicanus, sensing that the Macedonians were at a disadvantage. Alexander quickly dispelled this notion by storming the city and hanging Musicanus and the leading Brahmins as rebels.
At last the army arrived at the city of Patala, where the Indus split into two branches, both flowing through an enormous delta into the great southern sea. The king found the city deserted, but was eventually able to persuade the local inhabitants of his goodwill so that they returned from hiding in the nearby countryside. Here Alexander split his army into three parts. The first, under Craterus, would march northwest overland back to Kandahar and join Alexander in Persia. He would take with him all the elephants and the Macedonian veterans soon to be decommissioned. The second group, under Nearchus, would sail the fleet along the coast all the way to the Persian Gulf once the winds were favorable. The king himself would lead the main force of the army back to Persepolis by a southern route through the Gedrosian desert.
Though he was nearing the end of his Indian campaign, Alexander could not resist one final bit of exploration. He sailed down one branch of the Indus and anchored not far from the ocean. There the king and his men received a shock when over a period of just a few hours the sea surged many feet and damaged their ships. Alexander had never heard of tides. In the Mediterranean, the sea rose and fell each day only a few inches at best, so even educated men had no idea that along a sea coast the water could ebb and flow so rapidly. But after repairing his ships and bracing himself for the twice-daily repetition of this strange phenomenon, he continued his journey down to an island called Cilluta at the mouth of the river. From there he proceeded to another island in view of the open sea. Alexander and his men gazed in wonder at the vast ocean before them—a sight few from the Aegean world had ever beheld. But this was not enough for the king. Taking a single ship, he sailed many miles out into the ocean to see if there were any more lands to conquer. When he was finally convinced that nothing lay beyond, he sacrificed to Poseidon and cast a golden bowl into the waters in thanksgiving to the gods for having brought him to the very edge of the world.