Book 6

1a.1. While these things were going on in Asia, affairs were not peaceful even in Greece and Macedonia. Among the Lacedaemonians there reigned Agis, the son of Archidamus, who had fallen while bringing aid to the Tarentines on the very day on which Philip conquered the Athenians at Chaeronea. This Agis, a rival of Alexander's valor, kept urging his fellow citizens not to suffer Greece to be oppressed any longer by the servitude of the Macedonians: unless they provided for it in good time, the same yoke would pass to themselves. They must therefore exert themselves while the Persians still had some strength to resist; once these were crushed, they would in vain remember their ancestral liberty against so monstrous a power. With their spirits so kindled, they watched for an occasion to set war in motion. Encouraged, then, by the prosperous outcome of Memnon's affairs, they began to share their counsels with him; and after he was cut off by an untimely death in the very beginning of his successes, they pressed on no less vigorously. But Agis, having gone to Pharnabazus and Autophradates, obtained thirty talents of silver and ten triremes, which he sent to his brother Agesilaus to sail to Crete, an island whose inhabitants were torn between the Lacedaemonians and the Macedonians by their conflicting allegiances. Envoys too were sent to Darius to ask for a larger sum of money and more ships for the war. And the disaster at Issus—for that had now intervened—so far from interrupting these plans of theirs, even furthered them. For Alexander, in pursuit of the fugitive, was being carried day by day into more distant regions, and a great multitude of mercenaries had withdrawn in flight from the battle itself into Greece: of these Agis hired eight thousand with his money, and by their service recovered most of the cities of the Cretans. Then, when Memnon, sent into Thrace by Alexander, had driven the barbarians to revolt, and Antipater had led an army out of Macedonia into Thrace to crush it, the Lacedaemonians, briskly seizing the opportunity of the moment, drew the whole Peloponnese, save a few cities, over to their side; and, having raised an army of twenty thousand infantry with two thousand cavalry, they conferred the supreme command upon Agis. Antipater, on learning this, settled the war in Thrace on whatever terms he could, and, hastily returning into Greece, gathered auxiliaries from the friendly and allied states. When these had assembled, he mustered some forty thousand soldiers. A strong force too had come from the Peloponnese; but because he had learned that their loyalty was doubtful, he concealed his suspicion and thanked them for having come to defend Alexander's dignity against the Lacedaemonians: he would write of it to the king, who would render thanks for it in due time. For the present there was no need of larger forces: so let them return home, the obligation of their alliance discharged. Then he sent messengers to Alexander to inform him of the disturbance in Greece. And these at last caught up with the king at Bactra, when in the meantime the affair had been settled by Antipater's victory and the death of Agis in Arcadia. The king, having long since learned of the rising of the Lacedaemonians, had taken what precautions he could, separated as he was by the spaces of so many lands: he had ordered Amphoterus to sail into the Peloponnese with the Cyprian and Phoenician ships, and Menetes to carry three thousand talents to the sea, so as to supply Antipater with money from close at hand, as much as he should learn he needed. For he had clearly perceived how great a weight the turn of that disturbance would have on everything; though afterward, on receiving the news of the victory, comparing that struggle with his own affairs, he jested that it had been a battle of mice. But the beginnings of that war were by no means unfavorable to the Lacedaemonians. Near Corrhagum, a fortress of Macedonia, they had engaged the soldiers of Antipater and come off victors; and the report of the deed well done brought even those who had watched fortune with wavering minds to join their alliance. Of the cities of Elis and Achaea, Pellene alone spurned the league, and in Arcadia Megalopolis, faithful to the Macedonians for the memory of Philip, by whom it had been treated with kindnesses. But Megalopolis, besieged, was not far from surrender, had not Antipater at last come to its relief. He, after he had pitched his camp opposite theirs and saw himself superior in the number of his soldiers and in his other equipment, resolved to decide the whole matter by battle as soon as possible; nor did the Lacedaemonians decline the contest. So the battle was joined, which crushed the Spartan power most grievously. For when, trusting in the narrowness of the place in which they fought, where they believed the enemy would have no use of his numbers, they had engaged most bravely, and the Macedonians resisted most stubbornly, much blood was shed. But after Antipater again and again sent fresh troops to the aid of his men as they labored, the line of the Lacedaemonians was driven in and gave ground a little. Agis, perceiving this, threw himself with the royal cohort,

1.1. which was made up of the bravest men, into the very crisis of the battle; and, cutting down those who resisted most readily, he drove back a great part of the enemy.

1.2. The victors had begun to flee, and, as they too eagerly pursued and were drawn down onto level ground, they fell unavenged; but as soon as there was a place where they could stand, the fight went on with equal strength.

1.3. Among all the Lacedaemonians, however, the king stood out, not only in the splendor of his arms and his person, but also in greatness of spirit, in which alone he could not be conquered.

1.4. He was assailed on every side, now hand to hand, now from a distance; and for a long time, sweeping his arms about, he caught some weapons on his shield and avoided others with his body, until, his thigh pierced through and much blood lost, they failed him as he fought.

1.5. So his armor-bearers caught him on his own shield and were hastily carrying him into the camp, though he could scarcely endure the jolting of his wounds.

1.6. Yet the Lacedaemonians did not give up the fight; and as soon as they were able to take a place fairer to themselves than to the enemy, with ranks closed up they received the line that came flooding loosely against them.

1.7. No fiercer crisis has been handed down to memory. The armies of two of the most renowned nations in war fought with the fortune of battle even between them:

1.8. the Lacedaemonians looked to their ancient glories, the Macedonians to their present ones; the one fought for liberty, the other for dominion; the Lacedaemonians lacked a leader, the Macedonians the room.

1.9. The manifold turns even of that single day now increased the hope, now the fear of each side, as though fortune were on purpose making the contest even between the bravest men.

1.10. But the narrowness of the place in which the battle was locked did not allow them to engage with their whole strength: more men, then, looked on than had entered the fight, and those who were beyond the cast of a missile kindled their comrades' courage with their shouting, each in turn.

1.11. At last the line of the Laconians began to flag, their arms slippery and scarcely held for the sweat, and then began to give ground.

1.12. When, the enemy pressing, they fled more openly, the victor pursued them as they scattered, and, having traversed at a run all the ground that the Laconian line had held, he made for Agis himself.

1.13. He, when he saw the flight of his men and the enemy close at hand, ordered himself to be set down; and, having tested his limbs to see whether they could follow the impulse of his spirit,

1.14. after he perceived that they failed, he raised himself on his knees, and, briskly taking up his helmet, protecting his body with his shield, he brandished his spear in his right hand, even challenging the enemy,

1.15. if any dared to strip the spoils from a fallen man. Nor was there anyone who could bring himself to come to close quarters: he was assailed with missiles from afar, and turning those very weapons back upon the enemy, until a lance was fixed in his bare breast. When this was torn out of the wound, he caught his drooping and failing head for a moment upon his shield; then, as his breath ebbed away together with his blood, dying he sank down upon his arms.

1.16. There fell of the Lacedaemonians five thousand three hundred, of the Macedonians not more than a thousand; but scarcely anyone returned to the camp who was not wounded. This victory crushed not only Sparta and her allies, but all who had been awaiting the fortune of the war.

1.17. Nor did it escape Antipater that the faces of those who congratulated him were at variance with their hearts; but, since he desired to end the war, he had need to be deceived; and although the fortune of affairs pleased him, yet he feared the ill will that would arise, because the matter was greater than the measure of a deputy could contain.

1.18. For Alexander had wished his enemies to be conquered, but was vexed, though in silence, that Antipater had conquered, judging that whatever fell to another's glory was taken from his own.

1.19. So Antipater, who knew his temper well, did not dare to exercise the rights of victory himself, but consulted the council of the Greeks as to what should be done.

1.20. From it the Lacedaemonians obtained nothing more than leave to send spokesmen to the king; the Tegeans obtained pardon for their revolt, save the instigators; and the Achaeans and Eleans were ordered to give a hundred and twenty talents to the Megalopolitans, whose city had been besieged by the allies in the revolt.

1.21. Such was the end of a war which, though it arose suddenly, was nevertheless finished before Alexander overcame Darius at Arbela.

2.1. But as soon as his mind, less able to bear quiet and leisure than the affairs of war, was relieved of pressing cares, pleasures took hold of him; and the man whom the arms of the Persians had not broken, his vices conquered:

2.2. untimely banquets, and the mad sweetness of drinking deep and keeping vigil through the night, and games, and herds of concubines. Everything had slid into the foreign fashion. And by imitating that fashion as though it were better than his own, he offended the eyes and minds of his countrymen alike, so that by very many of his friends he was held as an enemy.

2.3. For he had driven men tenacious of their own discipline, and accustomed to satisfy the demands of nature with a frugal and easily procured fare, into the strange vices of conquered nations.

2.4. Hence the plots more often laid against his life, the disaffection of the soldiers, and a freer resentment amid their mutual complaints; then his own anger, now his suspicions, which an ill-considered fear stirred up, and the rest of the like, which will be told hereafter.

2.5. So, while he wore away days and nights alike in untimely banquets, he broke the surfeit of his feasts with games, not content with the throng of performers whom he had summoned from Greece; for captive women were ordered to sing, after their own fashion, a rude song jarring to foreign ears.

2.6. Among them the king often noticed one more sorrowful than the rest, and modestly reluctant as they brought her forward. She was of surpassing beauty, and her modesty set off her beauty: with her eyes cast down to the ground, and her face veiled as far as was allowed, she gave the king the impression that she was too noble to be displayed amid the games of a banquet.

2.7. So, when she was asked who she was, she answered that she was the granddaughter of Ochus, who had lately reigned in Persia, born of his son, and had been the wife of Hystaspes. He had been a kinsman of Darius, and himself a commander of a great army.

2.8. As yet some faint remnants of his former character clung to the king's mind: so, out of reverence for the fortune of one born of royal stock and for so famous a name as that of Ochus, he ordered the captive not only to be set free but to have her own possessions restored to her; her husband too was to be sought out, so that, when found, she might be given back to him as his wife.

2.9. On the next day, moreover, he charged Hephaestion to order all the captives to be brought into the palace. There, having reviewed the rank of each, he set apart from the common throng those whose birth was eminent. There were a thousand of these; among whom was found Oxathres, the brother of Darius, more illustrious for the disposition of his spirit than for his rank.

2.10. Twenty-six thousand talents in all had been gathered from the most recent plunder: twelve thousand were spent on a largess to the soldiers, and a sum equal to this was carried off by the fraud of the guards.

2.11. Oxydates was a noble Persian, who, marked out by Darius for capital punishment, was being kept in chains: him Alexander freed and assigned the satrapy of Media, and he received the brother of Darius into the company of his friends, preserving every honor of his ancient renown.

2.12. From here they came into Parthiene, then an obscure nation, now the chief of all those which, lying beyond the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, are bounded by the Red Sea.

2.13. The Scythians had occupied the level and fertile region, troublesome neighbors even now. They have seats both in Europe and in Asia: those who dwell above the Bosphorus are reckoned to Asia, but those who are in Europe stretch in a straight tract from the left side of Thrace to the Borysthenes and thence to the Tanais.

2.14. The Tanais flows midway between Europe and Asia. Nor is it doubted that the Scythians who founded the Parthians made their way not from the Bosphorus, but from the region of Europe.

2.15. There was at that time a famous city, Hecatompylos, founded by the Greeks: there the king held a standing camp, supplies being brought in from every quarter. And so a rumor, the vice of an idle soldiery, spread abroad without an author, that the king, content with what he had achieved, had resolved to return at once into Macedonia.

2.16. They ran about, like men distracted, to their tents and made their packs ready for the march: you would have believed a signal had been given for the whole camp to gather their baggage. From here the uproar of men asking after their tent-mates, and there of men loading the wagons, was carried to the king.

2.17. The Greek soldiers, ordered home, had lent credit to the rashly spread rumor: since to each of their cavalry six thousand denarii had been given, and to each of the foot a thousand, they too believed that the end of their service was at hand.

2.18. Not otherwise than was fitting was the king terrified, who had resolved to traverse the Indies and the farthest parts of the East; and he gathered the commanders of his forces into the headquarters, and, with tears welling up, complained that he was being recalled from the very midst of his course of glory, and would carry home into his country the fortune rather of a conquered man than of a conqueror:

2.19. nor was it the cowardice of his soldiers that stood in his way, but the envy of the gods, who had set a sudden longing for their country in the hearts of the bravest men—men who a little later would return into the same lands with greater praise and renown.

2.20. Then indeed each for himself offered his service, demanded all that was most difficult, promised the obedience of the soldiers too, if he would but soothe their spirits with a gentle and fitting speech:

2.21. they had never gone away broken and cast down, as often as they had been able to drink in his eagerness and the spirit of so great a mind. He answered that he would do so; let them only prepare for him the ears of the common soldiers. And when all that seemed to bear on the matter had been sufficiently arranged, he ordered the army to be called to assembly, before which he delivered a speech of this kind:

3.1. "When you consider the greatness of the things we have done, soldiers, it is by no means strange that both a longing for rest and a surfeit of glory should come over you.

3.2. To say nothing of the Illyrians, the Triballians, Boeotia, Thrace, Sparta, the Achaeans, the Peloponnese—some of which I subdued under my own leadership, others under my command and auspices—

3.3. behold, having begun the war from the Hellespont, we have delivered the Ionians and Aeolis from the servitude of an unbridled barbarism; Caria, Lydia, Cappadocia, Phrygia, Paphlagonia, Pamphylia, the Pisidians, Cilicia, Syria, Phoenicia, Armenia, Persia, the Medes, Parthiene—all these we hold in our power.

3.4. I have embraced more provinces than others have captured cities, and I know not whether, in my reckoning, the very multitude of these things has not let some of them slip from me.

3.5. And so, if I believed the possession of the lands we have subdued with such speed to be secure enough, then indeed, soldiers, I would break away to my household gods, to my mother and my sisters and the rest of my fellow citizens, even though you sought to hold me back, so that there above all I might enjoy with you the praise and glory we have won, where the richest rewards of victory await us—the joy of children, of wives, of parents; peace, rest, the untroubled possession of what we have gained by valor.

3.6. But in a new and—if we will confess the truth—a precarious empire, while the barbarians still bend their stiff necks beneath its yoke, there is need of time, soldiers, while they are steeped in gentler dispositions and a better habit softens their savage natures.

3.7. The crops too await their ripening at a fixed season: so even those things, void of all sense, nevertheless mellow by their own law.

3.8. What? Do you believe that so many nations, accustomed to the rule and the name of another, bound to us by no rites, no manners, no common use of language, have been subdued by the same battle in which they were conquered? They are held by your arms, not by their own manners; and those who fear us when present will be our enemies in our absence. We are dealing with wild beasts, which, when caught and shut up, the longer time tames, because their own nature cannot.

3.9. And even now I speak as though everything that was under the sway of Darius had been subdued by arms. Nabarzanes has seized Hyrcania; not only does the parricide Bessus possess Bactra, but he even threatens us; the Sogdians, the Dahae, the Massagetae, the Sacae, the Indians are their own masters.

3.10. All these, the moment they see our backs, will follow them: for they are of the same nation, while we are foreigners and strangers.

3.11. And each man obeys his own people more peaceably, even when one rules over him who can be feared the more. Therefore either what we have taken must be given up, or what we have not must be seized. Just as in sick bodies, soldiers, physicians leave nothing that will do harm, so let us cut away whatever stands in the way of our empire. A small spark, despised, has often kindled a great fire. Nothing in an enemy is safely despised: the man you have scorned you make the stronger by your neglect.

3.12. Not even Darius received the empire of the Persians by inheritance, but was admitted to the throne of Cyrus by the favor of Bagoas, a eunuch: do not believe that Bessus will seize an empty throne with great labor.

3.13. We have indeed sinned, soldiers, if we conquered Darius for this—to hand his empire over to his slave, who dared the last crime: he held his own king, even when in need of foreign help, even one whom we as victors would have spared, like a captive in chains, and at the last, lest he could be saved by us, slew him.

3.14. Will you suffer this man to reign? Whom I, for my part, am eager to see nailed to the cross, paying the deserved penalty to all kings and nations, and to the good faith which he violated.

3.15. But, by Hercules, if presently it shall be announced to you that this same man is laying waste the cities of the Greeks or the Hellespont, with what grief will you be filled that Bessus has seized the rewards of your victory? Then you will be in haste to recover them, then you will take up arms. But how much better to crush him while he is still terrified and scarcely master of his mind!

3.16. A four days' march remains for us, who have trampled so many snows, crossed so many rivers, run over so many mountain ridges. No sea swelling up and seizing the road with its waves delays us as we go; no defiles and narrows of Cilicia shut us in: all is level and downhill.

3.17. We stand upon the very threshold of victory. A few fugitives and the murderers of their own master remain to us. A splendid work, by Hercules, and to be counted among the foremost of your glories, you will hand down to posterity and to fame, that you avenged Darius too, your enemy, by the slaughter of the parricides, your hatred of him ended after his death, and that no impious man escaped your hands.

3.18. When this is accomplished, how much more obedient do you think the Persians will be, when they understand that you undertake righteous wars and are angry at the crime of Bessus, not at their own name?"

4.1. The speech was received with the utmost eagerness of the soldiers, bidding him lead wherever he would.

4.2. Nor did the king check their impulse; and on the third day he penetrated through Parthiene to the borders of Hyrcania, having left Craterus with the forces he commanded and the band which Amyntas led, with six hundred cavalry and as many archers added, to protect Parthiene from the incursions of the barbarians.

4.3. He ordered Erigyius to lead the baggage by the road across the plain, with a moderate escort. He himself, with the phalanx and the cavalry, having covered a hundred and fifty stades, fortified a camp in the valley by which men approach Hyrcania. A grove, shadowy with very tall and thick trees, covers the rich soil of the valley, watered by streams that flow from the overhanging rocks.

4.4. From the very roots of the mountains the river Stiboetes pours forth, which for about three stades flows all in one channel, then, beaten back by a rock that breaks its bed, opens two courses as though its waters were divided.

4.5. From there, a torrent and made more violent by the roughness of the rocks through which it runs, it plunges headlong beneath the earth. For three hundred stades it glides hidden, and then again, as if conceived from another spring, it issues forth and forms a new channel, broader than in its earlier part—

4.6. for it spreads to a breadth of thirteen stades—and again, confined by narrower banks, forces its way along. At last it falls into another river: its name is the Rhidagnus.

4.7. The inhabitants affirmed that whatever was let down into the cavern nearer to the spring came up again where the river opens its other mouth: and so Alexander ordered cattle to be cast in where the waters go beneath the earth, whose bodies, when it bursts forth again, those who had been sent to receive them saw thrown up.

4.8. Now for the fourth day he had given his soldiers rest in the same place, when he received a letter from Nabarzanes, who had intercepted Darius along with Bessus, the substance of which was this: that he had not been an enemy to Darius, but had even advised him of what he believed to be useful, and, because he had given the king faithful counsel, had nearly been killed by him.

4.9. That Darius had been minded to entrust the guardianship of his person, against right and divine law, to a foreign soldier, condemning the loyalty of his own countrymen, which they had kept inviolate toward their kings for two hundred and thirty years.

4.10. That he himself, standing on a steep and slippery place, had taken his counsel from present necessity. Darius too, when he had killed Bagoas, had satisfied his countrymen with this excuse, that he had slain a man who plotted against him.

4.11. That nothing was dearer to wretched mortals than the breath of life: by love of it he had been driven to the last extremity.

4.12. But that he had followed those things rather than wished for them. In a common calamity each man has his own fortune. If the king should order him to come, he would come without fear. He did not fear that so great a king would violate a pledge once given: it was not the way of a god to be deceived by a god.

4.13. But if he to whom he should give his pledge seemed unworthy, many places of exile lay open to the fugitive: his country was wherever a brave man should choose a seat for himself.

4.14. Nor did Alexander hesitate to give his pledge, in the manner in which the Persians received it, that he should be unharmed if he came. Nevertheless he went in a hollow square, in order of battle, sending scouts ahead from time to time to explore the ground.

4.15. The light-armed led the column, the phalanx followed it, behind the infantry came the baggage. Both the warlike nation and the difficulty of the country's situation in the approach had heightened the king's care.

4.16. For an unbroken valley lies open all the way to the Caspian Sea, into which the arms, as it were, of that land run out: in the middle, with a slight curve, they form a bay very like the moon when the horns stand out and the star does not yet fill its whole orb.

4.17. The Cercetae and the Mossyni and the Chalybes are on the left, and on the other side the Leucosyrians and the plains of the Amazons: the former it faces where it inclines to the north, the latter where it turns to the west.

4.18. The Caspian Sea, fresher than the others, nourishes serpents of vast size: the colors of the fish in it are far different from those elsewhere. Some call it the Caspian, some the Hyrcanian; there are others who think that the Maeotian marsh falls into it, and bring as proof that its water, being fresher than the other seas, is sweetened by the inflow of the marsh's water.

4.19. From the north a vast sea presses upon the shore and drives its waves far, and over a great part lies swelling in shallows: and again, in another state of the weather, it draws the channel back into itself, and, ebbing with the same force with which it had spread, restores the land to its own nature. And some have believed that it is not the Caspian Sea, but that the Ocean falls from India into Hyrcania, whose level, as was said above, is lowered by the unbroken valley.

4.20. From here the king advanced twenty stades by a path almost impassable, overhung by woods, and torrents and floods delayed his march; yet, with no enemy in the way, he made his way through and came at last to more cultivated parts.

4.21. Besides the other provisions, of which the region then had abundance, a vast quantity of fruit also is produced, and the soil is most fertile for the growing of vines.

4.22. A common tree has the appearance of an oak, whose leaves are steeped with much honey; but unless the inhabitants gather it before sunrise, the juice is dried up even by a moderate warmth.

4.23. Thirty stades farther he had advanced, when Phrataphernes met him, surrendering himself and those who had fled after the death of Darius; and, having received these kindly, he came to the town of Arvae. Here Craterus and Erigyius met him.

4.24. They had brought Phradates, the governor of the nation of the Tapurians; he too, received into protection, was to many an example for making trial of the king's clemency.

4.25. Then he gave the satrapy of Hyrcania to Amminaspes: this man, an exile in the reign of Ochus, had come to Philip. He restored the nation of the Tapurians too to Phradates.

5.1. And now he had entered the farthest parts of Hyrcania, when Artabazus, whom we have said above was most faithful to Darius, met him with the kinsmen of Darius and his own children and a moderate band of Greek soldiers.

5.2. The king offered his right hand to him as he came; for he had been a guest-friend of Philip, when he was an exile in the reign of Ochus, and the loyalty he had kept to his own king to the very end outweighed the pledges of that guest-friendship.

5.3. Received courteously, then, he said: "You indeed, O king, I pray the gods, may flourish in unbroken happiness: I, glad in all else, am tormented by this one thing, that in my headlong old age I cannot long enjoy your goodness." He was in his ninety-fifth year.

5.4. Nine young men, all born of the same mother, accompanied their father: these Artabazus brought to the king's right hand, praying that they might live so long as they were useful to Alexander.

5.5. The king for the most part made his journey on foot: then he ordered horses to be brought up for himself and Artabazus, lest, if he himself went on foot, the old man should be ashamed to be carried on horseback.

5.6. Then, when the camp had been pitched, he ordered the Greeks whom Artabazus had brought to be called together; but they answered that, unless pledge were given to the Lacedaemonians and the Sinopeans too, they would deliberate what they ought to do.

5.7. There were envoys of the Lacedaemonians who had been sent to Darius: when he was conquered, they had attached themselves to the Greeks serving for pay among the Persians.

5.8. The king, dismissing all pledges of compacts and of faith, ordered them to come, to have such fortune as he himself should grant them. Hesitating long, with many varying their counsels, at last they promised that they would come.

5.9. But Democrates the Athenian, who had always most opposed the power of the Macedonians, despairing of pardon, ran himself through with his sword. The rest, as they had resolved, surrendered themselves to the sway of Alexander.

5.10. There were fifteen hundred soldiers, and besides these ninety envoys sent to Darius. The soldiers were distributed as reinforcement, the rest sent home, except the Lacedaemonians, whom he ordered to be handed over into custody.

5.11. The nation of the Mardi bordered on Hyrcania, rough in their way of life and given to brigandage: this alone had neither sent envoys nor seemed likely to do his bidding. So the king, indignant that a single nation should be able to bring it about that he was not unconquered, leaving his baggage with an escort, advanced with a strong band attending him.

5.12. He had made his march by night, and at first light the enemy were in sight: it was an uproar rather than a battle. The barbarians, driven down from the hills they had occupied, fled, and the nearest villages, deserted by their inhabitants, were taken.

5.13. The inner parts of that region could not well be approached without great hardship to the army: lofty woods and pathless crags fence in the mountain ridges, and the parts that are level the barbarians had blocked with a new kind of fortification.

5.14. Trees are planted thick on purpose; their branches, while still tender, they bend by hand, and, twisting them, set them again in the ground: from there, as if from another root, the trunks grow up more luxuriantly green.

5.15. These they do not allow to grow up where nature carries them; for they interweave one with another as in a kind of mesh. When these are clothed with much foliage, they cover the ground: and so the branches, hidden like snares, shut off the road with an unbroken hedge.

5.16. The only way was to open the pass by cutting; but this too was a work of great labor. For frequent knots had hardened the stems, and the branches of the trees, entwined with one another and like hanging hoops, baffled the strokes with their pliant withes.

5.17. The inhabitants, moreover, accustomed to creep under the thickets in the manner of wild beasts, had then too entered the pass and harried the enemy with hidden weapons. The king, searching their lurking-places like a hunter, ran many of them through, and at last ordered the soldiers to surround the pass, so that, if there were any opening, they might burst in.

5.18. But in the unknown places most of them wandered astray, and some were taken, among whom was the king's horse—they called him Bucephalas—whom Alexander valued not in the same spirit as the other beasts. For that horse would not suffer another to sit on his back, and when the king wished to mount, of his own accord lowering his knees, he would receive him; and he was believed to be conscious of whom he carried.

5.19. So, goaded by anger and grief greater than was seemly, the king ordered the horse to be tracked, and proclaimed through an interpreter that, unless they restored him, not one of them should live. Terrified by this denunciation, they brought the horse along with their other gifts.

5.20. But not even so appeased, he ordered the woods to be cut down, and earth, heaped up from the mountains, to be piled upon the plain that was blocked by the branches.

5.21. Already the work had risen to some height, when the barbarians, despairing that the region they had occupied could be held, surrendered their nation. The king, having received hostages, ordered them to obey Phradates.

5.22. Then on the fifth day he returned to his standing camp. Then he sent Artabazus home with double the honor that Darius had given him. Now they had come to the city of Hyrcania, in which had been the palace of Darius: there Nabarzanes, having received a pledge, met him, bringing vast gifts.

5.23. Among these was Bagoas, a eunuch of singular beauty and in the very flower of his boyhood, whom Darius had used and Alexander soon used: and chiefly moved by his entreaties, he pardoned Nabarzanes.

5.24. There was, as was said above, a nation of the Amazons bordering on Hyrcania, dwelling about the river Thermodon, in the plains of Themiscyra.

5.25. They had as queen Thalestris, ruling over all who dwelt between the Caucasus and the river Phasis. She, fired with a longing to see the king, departed from the borders of her kingdom, and, when she was not far off, sent men ahead to make known that the queen had come, eager to approach him and to make his acquaintance.

5.26. At once leave was granted to come, the rest being ordered to halt. Attended by three hundred women she advanced; and as soon as the king was in sight, she herself leaped down from her horse, carrying two lances in her right hand.

5.27. The dress of the Amazons is not drawn over the whole body: for the left side is bare to the breast, the rest is then covered. Yet the fold of the garment, which they gather in a knot, does not descend below the knees.

5.28. One breast is kept untouched, with which to nourish their female children: the right is seared, so that they may bend their bows and brandish their weapons the more easily.

5.29. With undismayed countenance Thalestris gazed at the king, surveying with her eyes a bearing by no means equal to the fame of his deeds; for among all barbarians there is reverence for majesty of person, and they think none capable of great deeds but those whom nature has deigned to endow with extraordinary appearance.

5.30. But when she was asked whether she wished to seek anything, she did not hesitate to confess that she had come to share children with the king, being a woman worthy that he should beget from her heirs of his realm: the female offspring she would keep, the male she would give back to the father.

5.31. Alexander asked whether she wished to serve in war with him: but she, pleading that she had left her kingdom without a guard, persisted in her petition, that he would not suffer her to depart frustrated of her hope.

5.32. The woman's desire for love, keener than the king's, prevailed upon him to halt for a few days. Thirteen days were spent in compliance with her longing. Then she made for her kingdom, the king for Parthiene.

6.1. Here indeed he openly let loose his desires, and turned his self-restraint and moderation—those goods eminent in every loftiest fortune—into pride and wantonness.

6.2. Holding the manners of his fathers and the wholesomely tempered discipline of the Macedonian kings and their citizen-like bearing as too mean for his greatness, he strove to rival the loftiness of the Persian court, equal to the power of the gods:

6.3. he demanded that men prostrate themselves on the ground before him in worship, and that he steep so many conquerors of nations little by little in servile offices, and make them the equals of captives.

6.4. And so he set upon his head a purple diadem picked out with white, such as Darius had worn, and put on Persian dress, not even fearing the omen, that he was passing from the insignia of a victor into the garb of the conquered.

6.5. And he indeed said that he was wearing the spoils of the Persians; but with those spoils he had put on their manners too, and the arrogance of his bearing followed upon the insolence of his spirit.

6.6. The letters too which he sent into Europe he sealed with the gem of his old ring; on those he wrote into Asia the ring of Darius was impressed, so that it might appear that one mind could not contain the fortune of two.

6.7. His friends, indeed, and the cavalry, and with them the leading men of the soldiery—spurning it, yet not daring to refuse—he had adorned with Persian garments.

6.8. Three hundred and sixty-five concubines, as many as Darius had had, filled the palace, whom troops of eunuchs, themselves too accustomed to suffer a woman's part, attended.

6.9. These things, tainted with luxury and foreign manners, the old soldiers of Philip, a people raw in their taste for pleasures, openly turned away from; and throughout the whole camp there was one feeling and one talk among all, that more had been lost by victory than had been sought by war:

6.10. that at that very moment they themselves were being conquered, surrendered to alien and foreign manners. With what face, then, would they return home as though in a captive's garb? They were now ashamed of themselves; the king, made from an emperor of Macedonia into a satrap of Darius, was more like the conquered than the conquerors.

6.11. He, not ignorant that both the leading men of his friends and the army were grievously offended, tried to recover their goodwill by liberality and gifts. But, I suppose, to free men the price of servitude is unwelcome.

6.12. Therefore, lest the matter should turn into mutiny, the leisure had to be broken by war, the material for which was opportunely at hand.

6.13. For Bessus, having taken up the royal dress, had ordered himself to be called Artaxerxes, and was drawing together the Scythians and the rest who dwell by the Tanais. This Satibarzanes reported: him, received into protection, the king set over the region he had held before.

6.14. And since the column, heavy with spoils and the apparatus of luxury, could scarcely be moved, he ordered first his own baggage, then that of the whole army, save what was strictly necessary, to be brought together into the middle.

6.15. There was a spacious plain, into which they had brought the laden wagons. While all awaited what he would then command, he ordered the beasts to be led away, and, fire being first set to his own baggage, the rest to be burned.

6.16. They were ablaze, their masters burning the very things which they had often saved from the flames to carry off untouched from the cities of the enemy, no one daring to bewail the price of his blood, when the same fire consumed the royal wealth.

6.17. Soon, however, reason soothed their grief, and, fit for service and ready for anything, they rejoiced that they had made the sacrifice of their baggage rather than of their discipline.

6.18. So they were making for the Bactrian region. But Nicanor, the son of Parmenion, carried off by a sudden death, had filled all with great longing for him.

6.19. The king, sorrowful above all, desired indeed to halt and be present at the funeral; but the scarcity of supplies compelled him to hasten: so Philotas was left with two thousand one hundred men, to pay the last rites to his brother, while he himself pressed on against Bessus.

6.20. As he was making his march, a letter was brought to him from the neighboring satraps, from which he learned that Bessus indeed was advancing against him with a hostile mind and an army, but that Satibarzanes, whom he himself had set over the satrapy of the Arii, had revolted from him.

6.21. So, although Bessus was pressing upon him, yet, judging it best to turn aside first to crush Satibarzanes, he led out the light-armed and the cavalry, and, having briskly made the march through the whole night, came upon the enemy unawares.

6.22. On learning of his arrival, Satibarzanes with two thousand cavalry—nor could more be gathered on a sudden—fled to Bactra; the rest occupied the nearest mountains.

6.23. There is a sheer crag where it faces the west, the same lowered to a gentler slope where it inclines to the east: set thick with many trees, it has a perennial spring, from which water flows in abundance.

6.24. Its circuit comprises thirty-two stades. On the summit is a grassy plain: on this they bid the unwarlike multitude settle. They themselves, where the crag rests on the ground, pile up trunks of trees and rocks.

6.25. There were thirteen thousand armed men. Leaving Craterus to besiege them, he himself hastened to pursue Satibarzanes. But, because he had learned that he was farther off, he returned to storm those who had occupied the heights of the mountains.

6.26. And at first he ordered all that men could pass over to be cleared; then, as crags and sheer rocks met them in the way, the labor seemed in vain, nature standing in the way.

6.27. He, being ever of a spirit that struggled against difficulties, since both to advance was hard and to turn back dangerous, turned himself to all manner of thoughts, one after another—as is wont to happen when we condemn each first plan—his mind suggesting them.

6.28. As he hesitated, fortune supplied the counsel that reason could not. There was a strong west wind, and the soldier, forcing a path through the rocks, had cut down much timber. This, parched by the heat, had caught and burned with a blaze:

6.29. so he ordered other trees to be heaped up and fuel given to the fire, and quickly, the stems piled high, the height of the mountain was made level.

6.30. Then, fire cast in from every side, it caught hold of everything. The wind drove the flame into the faces of the enemy; a vast smoke, as with a kind of cloud, had hidden the sky.

6.31. The woods rang with the burning, and even those parts which the soldier had not set on fire, taking the flame, scorched all that was nearest. The barbarians tried to escape the last of torments, wherever the fire died down at all; but where the flame gave place, the enemy stood in the way.

6.32. So they were destroyed by a varied slaughter: some flung themselves into the midst of the fire, others from the rocks; some offered themselves to the hands of the enemy; a few, half-burned, came into his power.

6.33. From here he returned to Craterus, who was besieging Artacana. He, having made all ready, was awaiting the king's arrival, yielding to him, as was fitting, the title of the captured city.

6.34. So Alexander ordered the towers to be brought up; and the barbarians, terrified at the very sight, began to beg from the walls, holding out their upturned hands, that he would reserve his anger for Satibarzanes, the author of the revolt, and spare suppliants surrendering themselves. The king, granting pardon, not only raised the siege but restored all their own to the inhabitants.

6.35. As he was departing from this city, a reinforcement of new soldiers met him: Zoilus had brought five hundred cavalry from Greece, Antipater had sent three thousand from Illyricum, there were a hundred and thirty Thessalian cavalry with Philip, and from Lydia had come two thousand six hundred foreign soldiers, with three hundred cavalry of the same nation following.

6.36. With this band added, he came to the Drangae: it is a warlike nation. The satrap was Barzaentes, a partner with Bessus in the crime against his own king: he, in fear of the punishments he had deserved, fled into India.

7.1. Now for the ninth day the standing camp had been pitched, when the king, safe from external force, nay unconquered, was assailed by a crime within.

7.2. Dymnus, a man of moderate authority and favor with the king, burned with love of a youth named Nicomachus, bound by the obedience of one body devoted to him alone.

7.3. He, as could be seen even from his face, like one stunned, with witnesses removed, withdrew with the young man into a temple, declaring beforehand that he was bringing matters secret and to be kept silent;

7.4. and, while the youth hung in expectation, he begged him, by their mutual affection and the pledges of each other's hearts, to affirm by an oath that he would cover with silence what he should confide.

7.5. And he, supposing that nothing would be disclosed which had to be revealed even at the cost of perjury, swore by the gods present.

7.6. Then Dymnus revealed that a plot had been prepared against the king for the third day, and that he himself was a partner in that design with brave and illustrious men.

7.7. When the youth heard this, he steadfastly denied that he had pledged his faith for a parricide, and that he could be bound by no oath to conceal a crime.

7.8. Dymnus, frantic with love and fear, embracing the youth's right hand and weeping, begged at first that he would become a partner in the design and the deed:

7.9. if he could not bring himself to that, that at least he would not betray him, of whose goodwill toward himself he had, besides all else, this strongest pledge too, that he had entrusted his own life to a faith as yet untried.

7.10. At last, as he persisted in turning from the crime, he tried to terrify him with fear of death: from that head the conspirators would begin a most splendid deed.

7.11. Then, calling him now effeminate and womanishly timid, now a betrayer of his lover, now promising free gifts, and at times even a kingdom, he worked upon the spirit of the youth, who shrank far from so great a crime.

7.12. Then, setting his drawn sword now to the other's throat, now to his own, suppliant and threatening at once, he wrung from him at last that he would promise not only silence but even his help.

7.13. For Nicomachus, of a thoroughly steadfast spirit and worthy to be chaste, had changed nothing of his former resolve, but, feigning that he was caught by love of Dymnus, pretended to refuse nothing.

7.14. He then went on to inquire with whom Dymnus had entered into the partnership of so great a deed: it mattered most what kind of men were to set their hands to so memorable a work.

7.15. He, unsound with love and crime alike, both gave thanks and congratulated himself that he had not hesitated to join himself to the bravest of the young men: Demetrius, a bodyguard, Peucolaus, Nicanor: to these he added Aphobetus, Iolaus, Theoxenus, Archepolis, Amyntas.

7.16. Dismissed from this conversation, Nicomachus reported to his brother—Cebalinus was his name—what he had heard. They decided that he himself should stay in his tent, lest, if he entered the palace, being unaccustomed to approach the king, the conspirators should learn that they had been betrayed.

7.17. Cebalinus himself took his stand before the vestibule of the palace—for no nearer approach lay open to him—waiting for someone from the first cohort of the king's friends, by whom he might be brought in to the king.

7.18. By chance, the rest having been dismissed, Philotas alone, the son of Parmenion—for what cause is uncertain—had remained in the palace: to him Cebalinus, with troubled face bearing the marks of great agitation, disclosed what he had learned from his brother, and bade him report it to the king without delay.

7.19. Philotas, having praised him, at once went in to Alexander, and, much talk being spent on either side about other matters, reported nothing of what he had learned from Cebalinus.

7.20. Toward evening, as he came out, the young man met him in the vestibule of the palace, asking whether he had carried out the charge. He, pleading that the king had not been at leisure for his speech, departed.

7.21. On the next day Cebalinus was at hand as Philotas came to the palace, and reminded him, as he entered, of the matter shared with him the day before. He answered that he was attending to it:

7.22. yet not even then did he disclose to the king what he had heard. Cebalinus had begun to suspect him: so, thinking he must interrupt no further, he revealed to a noble young man—Metron was his name—set over the armory, what crime was being prepared.

7.23. He, having hidden Cebalinus in the armory, at once showed to the king, who chanced to be tending his body, what the informer had reported.

7.24. The king, having sent guards to seize Dymnus, entered the armory. There Cebalinus, transported with joy, said: "I have you safe, snatched from the hands of the impious."

7.25. Then Alexander, having inquired into what had to be known, learned the whole in order.

7.26. And again he pressed to ask how many days it was since Nicomachus had brought him the information. And when the man confessed that it was now the third, judging that he reported what he had heard so long after with no untainted faith, he ordered him to be bound.

7.27. But he began to cry out that at the very moment he had heard it, he had hurried to Philotas; from him he was awaiting what should be discovered.

7.28. The king, asking again and again whether he had approached Philotas, whether he had pressed him that they should come to himself, and as the man persisted in affirming what he had said, stretching his hands to heaven, with tears flowing, complained that this thanks had been rendered to him by one once the dearest of his friends.

7.29. Meanwhile Dymnus, not unaware for what cause he was summoned by the king, gravely wounded himself with the sword with which he chanced to be girded, and, checked by the running up of the guards, was carried into the palace.

7.30. Looking at him, the king said: "What so great a wrong did I plan against you, Dymnus, that Philotas should seem to you worthier than I myself of the kingdom of the Macedonians?" His voice had already failed him: and so, with a groan and his face turned from the sight of the king, sinking down at once, he expired.

7.31. The king, having ordered Philotas to come into the palace, said: "Cebalinus has deserved the last punishment, if for two days he concealed a plot prepared against my life: but of this charge he sets up Philotas as the guilty party, to whom he affirms that he reported the information at once.

7.32. By how much nearer a degree of friendship you touch me, by so much the greater is the crime of your dissimulation, and I confess that this befits Cebalinus rather than Philotas. You have a favorable judge, if at least what ought not to have been admitted can be cleared away."

7.33. To this Philotas, by no means trembling, if his spirit were to be judged by his face, answered that Cebalinus had indeed reported to him the talk of a catamite, but that he himself had believed nothing on so light an authority, fearing lest he should have brought a quarrel between a lover and his minion, not without the laughter of others:

7.34. since Dymnus had killed himself, however the matter stood, it ought not to have been kept silent. And, embracing the king, he began to beg that he would look rather to his past life than to his fault, and that one of silence only, not of any deed.

7.35. I could not easily say whether the king believed him or suppressed his anger deeper: he offered his right hand as a pledge of reconciled favor, and said that the information seemed to him to have been despised rather than concealed.

8.1. Then, having summoned a council of his friends, to which, however, Philotas was not admitted, he ordered Nicomachus to be brought in.

8.2. He set forth in order the same things his brother had reported to the king.

8.3. Craterus was dear to the king among a few, and on that account opposed to Philotas through rivalry of rank; nor was he ignorant that Philotas had often been burdensome to Alexander's ears by his excessive boasting of his valor and his service, and that for these things he was suspect, not indeed of crime, but of insolence.

8.4. Judging that no other occasion fitter for crushing his rival would arise, he set the appearance of loyalty before his hatred: "Would," he said, "that at the very beginning of this matter too you had deliberated with us!

8.5. We would have advised, if you wished to pardon Philotas, that you should rather suffer him to remain ignorant how much he owed you, than, brought to the fear of death, more often to think of his own peril than of yours through your kindness. For he will always be able to plot against you, you will not always be able to pardon Philotas.

8.6. Nor is there cause for you to think that one who has dared so much can be changed by pardon. He knows that those who have used up mercy can hope for no more.

8.7. But I, even if he himself, overcome either by repentance or by your kindness, should wish to be quiet, know that his father Parmenion, the leader of so great an army and placed not far below the height of your greatness by his long-established authority among his own soldiers, will not owe you with an even mind the safety of his son.

8.8. Some kindnesses we hate. It is shameful to confess that one has deserved death: it remains that he prefer to seem to have suffered a wrong rather than his life. Therefore know that you must fight with them for your safety.

8.9. Enough enemies remain, to pursue whom we are about to go: fortify your flank against domestic enemies. If you remove these, I fear nothing from the foreigner." Thus Craterus.

8.10. Nor did the rest doubt that he would not have suppressed the information of the conspiracy unless he were the author or a partner. For what man, dutiful and of a good mind—not a friend only, but one of the lowest commons—on hearing what had been reported to him, would not have run at once to the king?

8.11. The son of Parmenion, the commander of the cavalry, the arbiter of all the king's secrets, had not been moved even by the example of Cebalinus, who reported to him at once what he had learned from his brother! He had even pretended that the king was not at leisure for his speech, lest the informer should seek another go-between.

8.12. Nicomachus, bound also by the religion of the gods, had hastened to unburden his conscience: Philotas, having spent almost the whole day in sport and jest, had grudged to insert a few words touching the king's life into so long and perhaps superfluous a conversation.

8.13. But he had not believed the boys who brought such reports! Why, then, had he dragged out two days, as though he gave credit to the information? Cebalinus ought to have been dismissed, if he condemned his report.

8.14. In his own peril each man has a great spirit: when there is fear for the king's safety, men ought to be credulous, to admit even those who report idle tales.

8.15. All therefore decreed that an inquiry should be held concerning him, that he might be forced to disclose the partners in the crime. The king, having warned them to keep the design in silence, dismissed them. He then ordered the march for the next day to be proclaimed,

8.16. lest any mark of the design entered upon should be given to the guilty. Philotas was even invited to the king's last banquet, and the king brought himself not only to dine with, but even to converse familiarly with, the man he had condemned.

8.17. Then, at the second watch, the lights being put out, Hephaestion and Craterus and Coenus and Erigyius came to the palace with a few men—these of the friends—and of the bodyguards, Perdiccas and Leonnatus. Through these it was commanded that those who kept watch at the headquarters should keep vigil under arms.

8.18. Already cavalry had been posted at all the approaches, ordered too to beset the roads, lest anyone should escape secretly to Parmenion, who was then in command of Media and of great forces.

8.19. Atarrhias, moreover, had entered the palace with three hundred armed men: to him ten attendants were added, each of whom was followed by ten armed men.

8.20. These were distributed to seize the other conspirators; Atarrhias, sent with three hundred against Philotas, set himself to force the closed entrance of the house, attended by fifty of the readiest young men: for he had ordered the rest to surround the house on every side, lest Philotas should be able to slip away by a hidden exit.

8.21. He, whether through tranquillity of mind or through weariness, sleep had overcome, relaxed: Atarrhias seized him while still torpid.

8.22. At last, his slumber being shaken off, as the chains were thrown upon him, he said: "The bitterness of my enemies, O king, has conquered your goodness." And, having spoken no more, with his head veiled, they led him into the palace.

8.23. On the next day the king proclaimed that all should assemble under arms. About six thousand soldiers had come, and besides them a throng of sutlers and camp-servants had filled the palace.

8.24. The armor-bearers screened Philotas with their column, lest he should be seen by the common soldiers before the king had addressed them.

8.25. In capital matters the king made inquiry after the ancient custom of the Macedonians, the army judged—in peace it was the right of the common people—and the power of the kings availed nothing, unless their authority had first availed.

8.26. So first the corpse of Dymnus was brought in, most being ignorant of what he had prepared or by what chance he had been killed.

9.1. Then the king came forward into the assembly, bearing on his face the grief of his soul. The sadness of his friends too had raised no small expectation of the matter.

9.2. For a long time the king stood with his face cast down to the ground, like one stunned and dazed; at last, recovering his spirit, he said: "I was almost, soldiers, snatched from you by the crime of men: by the providence and mercy of the gods I live. And the sight of you, which I revere, has compelled me to be the more vehemently angry at the parricides, since this is the first—nay, the only—fruit of my life, that I am still able to render thanks to so many bravest men who have deserved most excellently of me."

9.3. The groaning of the soldiers interrupted his speech, and tears welled up in all. Then the king said: "How much greater a stir shall I raise in your minds, when I show the authors of so great a crime! Their mention I still shrink from, and, as though they could be saved, I abstain from their names.

9.4. But the memory of our former affection must be overcome, and the conspiracy of impious citizens disclosed. But how shall I be silent on so great a wickedness? Parmenio, at his age, bound to me by so many of my services and of my father's, the oldest of all our friends, has shown himself the leader of so great a crime.

9.5. His agent Philotas suborned Peucolaus and Demetrius and now Dymnus, whose body you behold, and the rest of the same madness, against my life.

9.6. The murmur of men indignant and complaining sounded through the whole assembly on every side, such as is wont to be that of a multitude, and most of all of soldiers, when they are moved either by zeal or by anger.

9.7. Then Nicomachus and Metron and Cebalinus were brought forward, and each set forth what he had reported. By none of their information was Philotas marked out as a partner in the crime. So the cry of indignation was met in turn by silence.

9.8. Then the king said: "Of what spirit, then, does he seem to you, who suppressed the information of this matter when it was reported to him? That it was not idle, the end of Dymnus declares.

9.9. Bringing an uncertain matter, Cebalinus did not fear the rack, nor did Metron put off even a moment of time to unburden himself, so that he burst in where I was bathing: Philotas alone feared nothing, believed nothing.

9.10. O man of great spirit! Would that man be moved by the king's peril, change his countenance, hear with anxiety the informer of so great a matter?

9.11. There lies hidden, without doubt, a crime beneath that silence, and a greedy hope of the kingdom has driven a headlong spirit to the last wickedness. His father commands Media: he himself, mighty among the many leaders of forces through my strength, breathes greater things than he can grasp.

9.12. My childlessness too, that I am without children, is despised. But Philotas errs. In you I have children, parents, kinsmen: while you are safe I cannot be childless.

9.13. Then he read out an intercepted letter of Parmenion, which he had written to his sons Nicanor and Philotas, by no means presenting the information of any graver design.

9.14. For its substance was this: 'First take care of yourselves, then of your own: for thus shall we accomplish what we have determined.'

9.15. And the king added that it was so written that, whether it reached the sons or not, it could be understood by those in the secret, or, if intercepted, deceive the ignorant.

9.16. But Dymnus, when he named the rest of the partners in the crime, did not name Philotas! This indeed is a sign not of his innocence but of his power, that he is so feared even by those by whom he can be betrayed, that, when they confess about themselves, they nevertheless conceal him. For the rest, his own life informs against Philotas.

9.17. This man joined himself as ally and accomplice to Amyntas, who was my cousin and who in Macedonia prepared impious plots against my life. This man gave his sister in marriage to Attalus, than whom I had no graver enemy.

9.18. This man, when I had written to him, by the right of so familiar an intimacy and friendship, what answer had been given by the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, brought himself to write back that he indeed congratulated me on being received into the number of the gods, but pitied those who must live under one who exceeded the measure of a man.

9.19. These are the signs of a spirit long since estranged from me and envious of my glory. These indeed, soldiers, as long as I could, I pressed down in my own heart. For I seemed to myself to be tearing away a part of my own vitals, if I made cheaper to myself those on whom I had bestowed such great things.

9.20. But now it is not words that must be punished: the rashness of the tongue has come to the sword.

9.21. These, if you believe me, Philotas whetted against me; if you believe himself, he admitted them. Whither shall I betake myself, soldiers? To whom shall I entrust my life? Over the cavalry, the best part of the army, over the leaders of the noblest youth, I set him; my safety, my hope, my victory I committed to his faith and protection.

9.22. His father I advanced to the same height in which you yourselves placed me; Media, than which no region is richer, and so many thousands of citizens and allies I subjected to his command and sway. Whence I had sought protection, peril arose.

9.23. How happily I should have fallen in battle, the prey of an enemy rather than the victim of a citizen! Now, saved from the perils which alone I feared, I have fallen into these, which I ought not to have feared.

9.24. You are wont, soldiers, ever and again to ask of me that I spare my own safety. You yourselves can grant me what you urge me to do. To your hands, to your arms I flee: against your will I do not wish to be safe; with your will I cannot be, unless I am avenged."

9.25. Then he ordered Philotas to be led in, his hands bound behind his back, veiled in a worn-out cloak. It was easily apparent that men were moved at so pitiable a state, not without ill will toward one a little before beheld with admiration.

9.26. The day before they had seen him commander of the cavalry, they knew he had taken part in the king's banquet: suddenly they beheld him not a defendant only, but already condemned, nay bound.

9.27. There came too into their minds the fortune of Parmenion also, so great a leader, so renowned a citizen, who, lately bereaved of two sons, Hector and Nicanor, was now, with the one whom calamity had left him, pleading his cause in his absence.

9.28. So Amyntas, a royal commander, stirred up again with a harsh speech against Philotas the assembly that was inclining to pity: that they had been betrayed to the barbarians; that no one would return to his wife in his country and to his parents; that, like a trunk of a body with its head removed, without breath, without a name, they would be the mockery of the enemy in a foreign land.

9.29. By no means as he himself hoped was Amyntas's speech welcome to the king, because he had reminded them of their wives, of their country, as pledges to make them perform their other duties.

9.30. Then Coenus, although he had united Philotas's sister to himself in marriage, nevertheless inveighed against Philotas more keenly than anyone, crying out that he was a parricide of the king, of his country, of the army, and snatched up a stone

9.31. that chanced to lie before his feet, meaning to hurl it at him, as most believed, wishing to snatch him from the torture. But the king stayed his hand, affirming that the accused ought first to be given the power of pleading his cause, and that he would not suffer it to be judged otherwise.

9.32. Then, ordered to speak, Philotas, whether from consciousness of crime or from the greatness of his peril, frantic and stunned, dared neither to lift his eyes nor to open his mouth.

9.33. Then, as the tears flowed and his spirit failed, he sank upon the man who held him, and, his eyes wiped with that man's cloak, gradually recovering breath and voice, he seemed about to speak.

9.34. And now the king, looking at him, said: "The Macedonians are about to judge you: I ask whether you will use your native tongue with them."

9.35. Then Philotas said: "Besides the Macedonians, there are present very many whom I think will more easily grasp what I shall say, if I use the same language which you have used, for no other reason, I suppose, than that your speech might be understood by the greater number."

9.36. Then the king said: "Do you see how Philotas loathes even his native tongue? He alone, indeed, scorns to learn it. But let him speak, by all means, however it pleases him, only remember that he shrinks from our manners as much as from our speech."

10.1. And so the king departed from the assembly. Then Philotas said: "It is easy for an innocent man to find words; it is hard for a wretched one to keep a measure in words.

10.2. And so, left destitute between the best conscience and the most unjust fortune, I know not how to obey both my own mind and the time.

10.3. The best judge of my cause is indeed absent: why he himself has been unwilling to hear me, I cannot, by Hercules, conceive, since to him, the cause being known on both sides, it is as lawful to condemn me as to acquit, but, the cause unknown, I cannot be freed in his absence, who have been condemned by him when present.

10.4. But although the defense of a man in chains is not only superfluous but even hateful—since he seems not to instruct the judge, but to arraign him—yet, however far I am allowed to speak, I will not desert myself, nor allow myself to seem condemned even by my own verdict.

10.5. For my part, of what crime I am accused I do not see: among the conspirators no one names me, of me Nicomachus said nothing, Cebalinus could not know more than he had heard.

10.6. And yet the king believes that I was the head of the conspiracy! Could Dymnus, then, pass over the man he followed, especially when, as he sought allies, I should have been named even falsely, that the man who was being tempted might be the more easily driven on?

10.7. For it was not after the crime was detected that he passed over my name, so that he might seem to have spared an accomplice: to Nicomachus, whom he believed would keep his secret silent, he confessed, and, others being named, he alone withdrew me.

10.8. I ask you, fellow soldiers, if Cebalinus had not approached me, had wished me to know nothing of the conspirators, should I today be pleading my cause, when no one names me?

10.9. Grant that Dymnus still lives and wishes to spare me—what of the rest? Those who will confess about themselves will, forsooth, withdraw me! Calamity is malignant, and the guilty man, for the most part, when he is tortured by his own punishment, finds rest in another's.

10.10. Will so many accomplices, not even set upon the rack, confess the truth? And yet no one spares a man about to die, nor does a dying man, I think, spare anyone.

10.11. To the true charge, and the one charge, I must return: why did you keep silent the matter reported to you? why did you hear it so unconcerned? This, whatever it is, since I have confessed it, you, Alexander, wherever you are, have forgiven me: I embraced your right hand, the pledge of a reconciled spirit, I took part in your banquet too.

10.12. If you believed me, I am acquitted; if you spared me, I am dismissed: at least keep to your own judgment. What did I do this last night, after I left your table? what new crime, reported to you, changed your mind?

10.13. I was resting in a heavy sleep, when my enemies, by binding me as I slept among my woes, woke me. Whence comes so deep a quiet of sleep to a parricide and a traitor?

10.14. The wicked, with conscience clamoring against them, cannot fall asleep: the Furies harry them when the parricide is but conceived, much more when it is accomplished. But to me my innocence first, then your right hand, had given security: I did not fear that another's cruelty should have more power with you than your own clemency.

10.15. But that you may not repent of having believed me—the matter was reported to me by a boy who could produce neither witness nor pledge of his information, one likely to fill all with fear, if he had begun to be heard.

10.16. I believed, unhappy man, that my ears were being thrust into the quarrel of a lover and his minion, and held his report suspect, because he did not report it himself, but rather suborned his brother.

10.17. I feared lest he should deny that he had charged Cebalinus with it, and I should seem to have been the cause of peril to many of the king's friends.

10.18. Even so, though I have harmed no one, I have found men who would rather I perished than be safe: what enmities do you think I should have incurred, if I had assailed the innocent?

10.19. But Dymnus killed himself! Could I, then, divine that he would do so? By no means. So that which alone gave credit to the information could not move me when I was interrupted by Cebalinus.

10.20. But, by Hercules, if I had been privy with Dymnus to so great a crime, I ought not, in those two days, to have concealed that we were betrayed: Cebalinus himself could have been removed, and with no trouble.

10.21. Finally, after the information was reported, which I was about to cover, I alone entered the king's bedchamber, girt indeed with iron. Why did I put off the deed? Was it that without Dymnus I did not dare?

10.22. He, then, was the head of the conspiracy! under his shadow I, Philotas, lay hid—I, who aim at the kingdom of the Macedonians! Has any one of you been corrupted with gifts? What leader, what commander did I court too earnestly?

10.23. Against me it is indeed objected that I spurn the fellowship of the native tongue, that I disdain the manners of the Macedonians. So I, forsooth, threaten an empire which I scorn! Long since that native speech has fallen out of use through intercourse with other nations: a foreign tongue must be learned by victors as well as by the vanquished.

10.24. These things, by Hercules, do not wound me more than that Amyntas, the son of Perdiccas, plotted against the king. That I had friendship with him I do not refuse to defend, if the king's brother ought not to have been loved by us.

10.25. But if one set in that rank of fortune had even to be revered, am I, I ask, guilty because I did not divine the future, or must the innocent friends of the impious die too? If that is just, why have I lived so long? if unjust, why am I now nevertheless slain?

10.26. But I wrote that I pitied those who must live under one who believed himself the son of Jupiter. Faith of friendship, perilous freedom of true counsel, you have deceived me! you drove me not to keep silent what I felt!

10.27. I confess that I wrote these things to the king, not about the king. For I was not making him an object of ill will, but fearing for him. Alexander seemed to me worthier to acknowledge the stock of Jupiter in silence than to boast of it by proclamation.

10.28. But since the credit of the oracle is sure, let the god be the witness of my cause: keep me in chains while Hammon is consulted, whether I have entered upon a secret and hidden crime. He who deigned to name our king his son will not suffer any of those who plotted against his own stock to lie hidden.

10.29. If you believe tortures to be surer than oracles, I do not even beg off from this means of exhibiting the truth.

10.30. Men accused of capital crimes are wont to bring their parents before you. Two brothers I lately lost; my father I can neither show nor dare to invoke, since he himself too is accused of so great a crime.

10.31. For it is too little that he, but now the parent of so many children, resting content in his one son, should be bereaved of him too, unless he himself be set upon my pyre.

10.32. So, dearest father, both for my sake will you die, and with me: I take your life, I extinguish your old age. Why did you beget me, unhappy man, the gods opposing? was it that you might reap from me these fruits which await you?

10.33. I know not whether my youth be more wretched or your old age: I am snatched away in the very strength of my years; from you the executioner will take that breath which, had fortune been willing to wait, nature was demanding.

10.34. The mention of my father has reminded me how timidly and hesitatingly I ought to have disclosed what Cebalinus had reported to me. For Parmenion, when he had heard that poison was being prepared for the king by the physician Philip, wished to dissuade him, by a letter written, from drinking the medicine which the physician had resolved to give. Was credit given to my father? did his letter have any authority?

10.35. How often have I myself reported what I had heard, and been repulsed with mockery of my credulity! If we are both hated when we inform and suspected when we are silent, what ought we to do?"

10.36. And when one out of the throng of bystanders had cried out: "Not to plot against your benefactors!"

10.37. Philotas said: "Rightly, whoever you are, you speak. And so, if I plotted, I do not beg off the penalty, and I make an end of speaking, since my last words have seemed grievous to your ears." Then he was led away by those who guarded him.

11.1. There was among the leaders one Bolon, vigorous of hand, raw in the arts of peace and in civil bearing, an old soldier, promoted from a humble rank to the place in which he then was:

11.2. who, while the rest were silent, fierce with a stolid boldness, began to remind them how often each man, thrust out of the lodgings he had taken, had had to give them up to the scum among Philotas's slaves, from the very place whence he had driven his comrades.

11.3. That his vehicles, laden with gold and silver, had stood through whole villages, and that not one of his comrades had been received even into the neighborhood of his lodging, but, by men set to guard his sleep, all had been banished far off, lest that woman of his be roused by the murmuring of men, truer in silence than in sound.

11.4. That they had been his mockery, called rustics and Phrygians and Paphlagonians—he who, born a Macedonian, did not blush to hear men of his own language through an interpreter.

11.5. That now he wished Hammon to be consulted: but that the same man had accused Jupiter of falsehood for acknowledging Alexander as his son, fearing, forsooth, lest what the gods offered should breed ill will.

11.6. That when he plotted against the life of the king and his friend, he had not consulted Jupiter: now he sent to the oracle, while his father stirred up those over whom he commanded in Media, and with money, the keeping of which had been committed to him, drove abandoned men to the partnership of the crime.

11.7. That they themselves would send to the oracle, not to ask of Jupiter what they had learned from the king, but to give thanks, to pay their vows for the safety of the best of kings.

11.8. Then indeed the whole assembly was kindled, and a beginning was made by the bodyguards, crying out that the parricide must be torn to pieces by their hands. This indeed Philotas, who feared graver punishments, heard with no very unwilling spirit:

11.9. but the king, having returned into the assembly, whether to torture him in custody too, or to learn the whole more carefully, put off the council to the next day; and, although the day was drawing toward evening, nevertheless ordered his friends to be summoned.

11.10. And to the rest indeed it seemed good that he should be overwhelmed with stones after the manner of the Macedonians; but Hephaestion and Craterus and Coenus said that the truth must be wrung out by tortures: and even those who had advised otherwise went over to the opinion of these.

11.11. The council, then, being dismissed, Hephaestion with Craterus and Coenus rose to hold the inquiry concerning Philotas.

11.12. The king, having summoned Craterus and held a conversation with him, the substance of which was not made public, withdrew into the innermost part of his lodging, and, the witnesses removed, awaited the outcome of the inquiry far into the night.

11.13. The torturers set out before the eyes of Philotas all the instruments of cruelty.

11.14. And he of his own accord: "Why do you delay," he said, "to kill the king's enemy, the murderer who confesses? What need is there of inquiry? I planned it, I willed it." Craterus pressed that what he confessed he should say under torture too.

11.15. Then he is seized, and, while his eyes were bandaged, while his garment was stripped off, he invoked in vain, on deaf ears, the gods of his fathers and the laws of nations. Then, through the utmost torments—since he was both condemned and tortured by enemies to win the king's favor—he was mangled.

11.16. And at first, although on this side fire, on that the lash were now applied not for inquiry but for punishment, he kept in his power not only his voice but even his groans:

11.17. but after his body, swelling with sores, could not bear the strokes of the scourges driven against his bare bones, he promised that, if they would set a measure to the tortures, he would tell what they sought to know.

11.18. But he wished them to swear by the safety of Alexander that there would be an end of the inquiry, and that the torturers should be removed.

11.19. And when both were obtained: "Craterus," he said, "tell me what you wish me to say." When the other indignantly said that he was mocking him, and again recalled the torturers, he began to ask for time, until he should recover his breath, meaning to disclose all that he knew.

11.20. Meanwhile the cavalry, all the noblest and chiefly those who were joined to Parmenion by near kinship, after report had spread abroad that Philotas was being tortured, fearing the law of the Macedonians, by which it was provided that the kinsmen of those who had plotted against the king should be put to death together with them, some killed themselves, others fled into pathless mountains and vast solitudes, a vast terror being spread through the whole camp, until the king, on learning of the disturbance, proclaimed that he remitted the law concerning the punishment of the kindred of the guilty.

11.21. Whether Philotas wished to free himself from torture by truth or by falsehood is a doubtful conjecture, since the same end of pain is set both for those who confess the truth and for those who tell lies.

11.22. But: "You are not ignorant," he said, "how familiarly my father lived with Hegelochus: that Hegelochus, I mean, who fell in battle: he was to us the cause of all our ills.

11.23. For when the king first ordered himself to be saluted as the son of Jupiter, he, taking it ill, said: 'Do we then acknowledge as king this man who disdains Philip as his father? It is all over with us, if we can endure such things.

11.24. He despises not only men but even the gods, who demands to be believed a god. We have lost Alexander, we have lost our king: we have fallen upon a pride tolerable neither to the gods, with whom he makes himself equal, nor to men, from whom he sets himself apart.

11.25. Have we made a god of our own blood, to despise us? to be burdened with coming into the assembly of mortals? Believe me, we too, if we are men, shall be adopted by the gods.

11.26. Who avenged the death of this man's great-grandfather Alexander, who then of Archelaus, who of Perdiccas, slain?

11.27. This man indeed pardoned his father's murderers.' These things Hegelochus said over supper: and on the next day at first light I am summoned by my father. He was sad, and saw me sorrowful: for we had heard things that bred anxiety.

11.28. So, that we might test whether he had poured out those words weighed down with wine, or had conceived them from a deeper design, it pleased us to summon him. He came, and, the same talk being repeated of his own accord, he added that, if we dared to be leaders, he would claim for himself the next part after us; if courage failed us, he would cover the design with silence.

11.29. To Parmenion, while Darius still lived, the thing seemed untimely: for they would be killing Alexander not for themselves but for the enemy; but with Darius removed, the reward of the king slain—Asia and the whole East—would fall to his murderers. And the design being approved, on these terms faith was both given and received.

11.30. As to what concerns Dymnus, I know nothing, and, having confessed these things, I understand that it does not avail me that I am free of the present crime."

11.31. They, the tortures being applied again, when with the very spear-shafts they beat his face and eyes, wrung from him that he should confess this charge too.

11.32. Then, as they demanded that he should set forth the order of the contemplated crime, since they seemed likely to detain the king long at Bactra, he answered that he had feared lest his father, seventy years old, the leader of so great an army, the keeper of so much money, should in the meantime be cut off, and there should be for himself, stripped of so great forces, no cause for killing the king.

11.33. That he had therefore hastened, while the reward was in his hands, to put the design into effect: and that, unless they believed his father absent from it, he did not, although he could no longer bear them, refuse the tortures.

11.34. They, having conferred, judging that enough had been inquired, returned to the king, who on the next day ordered both what Philotas had confessed to be read out, and the man himself, because he could not walk, to be carried in.

11.35. While he acknowledged everything, Demetrius, who was accused of being a partner in the most recent crime, was brought forward. With much affirmation and equal steadfastness of spirit and of face denying that anything had been contemplated by him against the king, he even demanded the tortures upon himself:

11.36. when Philotas, casting his eyes about, as they fell upon a certain Calas standing not far off, ordered him to come nearer. As the man, troubled, refused to pass over to him, he said: "Will you suffer Demetrius to lie and me to be tortured again?"

11.37. Calas's voice and blood had failed him, and the Macedonians suspected that Philotas wished to defile the innocent, because the young man had been named neither by Nicomachus nor by Philotas himself when he was tortured: but when he saw the king's officers standing around him, he confessed that he and Demetrius had contemplated that crime.

11.38. So all who had been named by Nicomachus were, the signal being given after the custom of their fathers, overwhelmed with stones.

11.39. From great peril not of his life only but also of ill will Alexander had been freed: for Parmenion and Philotas, the leading men of his friends, could not have been condemned, unless plainly guilty, without the indignation of the whole army.

11.40. And so, while the inquiry was doubtful, while he denied the crime, he seemed to be cruelly tortured: after his confession even the pity of his friends was idle.