Book 8

1.1. Alexander, the rock having been brought into submission with more fame than glory, since it was necessary to scatter his forces against a roving enemy, divided the army into three parts. He had given one to Hephaestion as commander, another to Coenus; he himself was over the rest.

1.2. But not all the barbarians were of the same mind: some were subdued by arms, more did his bidding before any contest. To these he ordered to be assigned the cities and fields of those who had persisted in revolt.

1.3. But the Bactrian exiles, with eight hundred Massagetan horsemen, ravaged the nearest villages. To check them Attinas, the prefect of that region, led out three hundred horse, unaware of the ambush that was being prepared.

1.4. For the enemy had hidden armed soldiers in the woods — and these happened to be joined to the plain — a few men driving on the cattle, that they might lead the unwary into the ambush by the lure of plunder.

1.5. And so, with his column in disorder and his ranks broken, Attinas followed, intent on plunder; and when he had passed beyond the wood, those who had settled in it, attacking him unexpectedly, slew him with all his men.

1.6. Quickly the report of this disaster was carried to Craterus, who came up with all the cavalry. And the Massagetae indeed had already fled, but a thousand of the Dahae were cut down: by their destruction the revolt of the whole region was ended.

1.7. Alexander too, the Sogdiani being again subdued, returned to Maracanda. There Derdas, whom he had sent to the Scythians dwelling beyond the Bosphorus, met him with envoys of that nation.

1.8. Phrataphernes too, who governed the Chorasmii, joined by the Massagetae and Dahae on the borders of their regions, had sent men to promise that he would do his bidding.

1.9. The Scythians asked that he should join the daughter of their king to himself in marriage: but if he disdained the alliance, that he should permit the chief men of the Macedonians to enter into wedlock with the foremost of their nation: they promised that the king too would come to him.

1.10. Both embassies being kindly heard, he kept his quarters, awaiting Hephaestion and Artabazus: and, these being joined to him, he came into the region which is called Bazaira.

1.11. Of the barbarian wealth in those places there are no greater indications than the herds of noble wild beasts shut up in great forests and glades.

1.12. For this purpose they choose spacious woods, made pleasant by frequent springs of perennial waters: the groves are girdled with walls and have towers as lodges for the hunters.

1.13. It was established that the glade had been untouched for four successive generations, when Alexander entered it with his whole army and ordered the beasts to be driven from every side.

1.14. Among them, when a lion of rare size rushed forward to attack the king himself, Lysimachus — who afterward reigned — happening to be nearest to Alexander, had begun to set his hunting-spear against the beast; but the king, thrusting him back and bidding him withdraw, added that the lion could be killed by himself alone as well as by Lysimachus.

1.15. For Lysimachus once, when they were hunting in Syria, had indeed killed alone a beast of extraordinary size, but, his left shoulder torn to the very bone, had come to the utmost peril.

1.16. Reproaching him with this very thing, the king did a braver deed than he had spoken: for he not only received the beast but even killed it with a single wound.

1.17. The tale which rashly spread abroad that Lysimachus was thrown to a lion by the king arose, I should believe, from that mishap which we have related above.

1.18. But the Macedonians, although Alexander had come off with a happy outcome, yet decreed, after the manner of their nation, that he should neither hunt on foot nor without picked men of the chief men and his friends.

1.19. He, four thousand beasts being brought down, feasted in that same glade with his whole army. From there they returned to Maracanda: and, Artabazus' excuse of age being accepted, he assigned his province to Cleitus.

1.20. This was the man who at the river Granicus covered with his own shield the king fighting bareheaded, and cut off with his sword the hand of Rhosaces threatening the king's head — an old soldier of Philip, and famous for many deeds of war.

1.21. And Lanice, who had reared Alexander, his sister, was loved by the king no less than a mother. For these reasons he committed to his loyalty and guardianship the strongest part of the empire.

1.22. And now, ordered to prepare for a march on the morrow, he was admitted to a solemn and seasonable banquet. At this the king, when he had grown warm with much wine, an immoderate appraiser of himself, began to celebrate the things he had done, grievous even to the ears of those who knew that the truth was being recalled.

1.23. The older men, however, kept silence, until, beginning to belittle the deeds of Philip, he boasted that the famous victory at Chaeronea had been his own work, and that the glory of so great an achievement had been taken from him by the spite and envy of his father.

1.24. He said that Philip, weakened by a wound which he had received in the disorder when a quarrel arose between the Macedonian soldiers and the Greek mercenaries, had lain there, made safe by nothing but the pretence of death: that he himself had protected his father's body with his own shield, and had slain with his own hand those who rushed upon him.

1.25. This, he said, his father had never with an even mind confessed, owing his safety unwillingly to his son. And after the expedition which he himself had made against the Illyrians without Philip, he had written to his father, as victor, that the enemy had been routed and put to flight: and Philip had been present nowhere.

1.26. They were worthy of praise, he said, not those who went to see the mysteries of Samothrace when Asia should have been put to fire and devastation, but those who by the greatness of their deeds had outstripped belief.

1.27. These things and the like the younger men heard with delight, but they were unwelcome to the older, chiefly on account of Philip, under whom they had lived longer; when Cleitus, himself too not quite sober,

1.28. turning to those who reclined below him, recited a verse of Euripides, in such a way that the sound rather than the sense could be heard by the king,

1.29. by which it was signified that the Greeks had been ill advised in inscribing on their trophies the names of kings only: for the glory won by another's blood was so intercepted. And so the king, suspecting that the speech had been made too spitefully, began to question those nearest what they had heard from Cleitus.

1.30. And, when they were resolved on silence, Cleitus little by little, in a louder voice, recalled the deeds of Philip and the wars waged in Greece, preferring all to the present ones.

1.31. Hence a dispute arose between the younger and the older men. And the king, though he seemed to listen patiently while Cleitus belittled his glory, had conceived a mighty wrath.

1.32. But while he seemed minded to command himself, if Cleitus should put an end to his insolently begun speech, since the other in no way relented, he was the more exasperated.

1.33. And now Cleitus dared even to defend Parmenion, and to prefer Philip's victory over the Athenians to the destruction of Thebes, carried away not by wine only but also by the perverse contentiousness of his spirit.

1.34. At last he said: "If one must die for you, Cleitus is first: but when you assign the award of victory, the chief honour goes to those who most insolently mock the memory of your father.

1.35. You assign me the Sogdian region, so often in rebellion, and not only untamed, but such as cannot even be subdued. I am sent to wild beasts, who have been allotted natures full of headlong fury. But what concerns me, I pass over.

1.36. You scorn the soldiers of Philip, forgetting that, had not this old Atarrhias here called back the younger men who shrank from battle, we should still be stuck about Halicarnassus.

1.37. How, then, did you subdue all Asia with these younger men of yours? It is true, I think, what your uncle is known to have said in Italy, that he himself fell among men, you among women."

1.38. Of all the things rashly and thoughtlessly thrown out, nothing had moved the king more than the mention of Parmenion with honour. Yet he repressed his grief, content with having ordered him to leave the banquet.

1.39. Nor did he add anything else than that perhaps Cleitus, had he spoken longer, would have reproached him with the life given him by Alexander himself; for he had often boasted of this arrogantly.

1.40. And as Cleitus still delayed to rise, those who had reclined nearest him, laying hands on him, chiding and warning him, tried to lead him away.

1.41. Cleitus, as he was being dragged off, his anger added to his former drunkenness, cried aloud that the king's back had been defended by his breast, but now, since the time of so great a service had passed, even its memory was hateful.

1.42. He cast up too the murder of Attalus; and at last, mocking the oracle of Jupiter, whom Alexander claimed as his father, he said that he had given the king truer answers than his father.

1.43. Now the king had conceived as much wrath as he could scarcely have borne sober. But, his senses overcome by wine, he sprang up suddenly from his couch.

1.44. His astonished friends rose, their cups not set down but flung away, intent on the outcome of an affair which he was about to carry through with so great an impetus.

1.45. Alexander, having snatched a lance from the hands of an armour-bearer, tried to strike Cleitus, who still raged with the same intemperance of tongue; but he was held back by Ptolemy and Perdiccas.

1.46. Clasping him round the waist and delaying him as he persisted in struggling, Lysimachus and Leonnatus had even taken away the lance:

1.47. he, imploring the loyalty of the soldiers, cried out that he was being seized by the nearest of his friends — as had lately befallen Darius — and ordered the signal to be given by trumpet, that the armed men should gather at the royal quarters.

1.48. Then indeed Ptolemy and Perdiccas, falling at his knees, begged him not to persist in so headlong an anger, but rather to give his mind space: on the next day he would carry out all things more justly.

1.49. But his ears were closed, with anger roaring against them: and so, not master of his mind, he ran out into the forecourt of the royal quarters, and, having taken the spear of the sentinel on watch, stood at the entrance by which those who had supped together must necessarily go out.

1.50. The rest had departed; Cleitus, last, was going out without a light, when the king asked who it was. Even in his voice the atrocity of the crime he was preparing stood out.

1.51. And he, now mindful not of his own anger but of the king's, answered that it was Cleitus and that he was leaving the banquet.

1.52. As he said this, the spear pierced his side, and the king, sprinkled with the blood of the dying man, said: "Go now to Philip and Parmenion and Attalus."

2.1. Ill has nature counselled the minds of men, in that for the most part we weigh not the things to come, but the things past. For the king, after anger had departed from his mind, and his drunkenness too was dispelled, perceived the greatness of the deed by a too-late reckoning.

2.2. He saw then that he had killed a man who had abused his liberty without measure, but who was otherwise excellent in war, and — if he were not ashamed to confess it — the saviour of his own life. He had usurped the detestable office of an executioner, avenging by an unspeakable murder a licence of words that could have been charged to the wine.

2.3. The blood of him who a little before had been his guest streamed over all the forecourt: the sentinels stood at a distance, dumbfounded and like men stunned; and solitude drew forth a freer repentance.

2.4. So he plucked the spear from the body of the man lying there and turned it against himself. And now he had brought it to his breast, when the sentinels flew up and wrested it from his hands as he resisted, and, raising him up, carried him into his tent.

2.5. He had thrown his body upon the ground, the whole royal quarters resounding with his groaning and pitiable wailing. Then he tore his face with his nails, and begged those standing round not to suffer him to survive so great a disgrace.

2.6. Amid these prayers the whole night was drawn out. And as he searched whether the anger of the gods had driven him to so great a wickedness, it occurred to him that the yearly sacrifice to Father Liber had not been rendered at the appointed time. And so, the murder having been committed amid wine and feasting, the anger of the god had been manifest.

2.7. But he was the more troubled because he saw the minds of all his friends astounded: that no one thereafter would dare to share speech with him; that he must live in solitude, like a wild beast terrifying others and itself afraid.

2.8. Then at first light he ordered the body, still as it was, all bloody, to be brought into the tent. When it had been set before him, his tears bursting forth, he said: "This is the thanks I have rendered my nurse, two of whose sons fell at Miletus for my glory; this brother of theirs, the one solace of her bereavement, has been killed by me amid feasting.

2.9. Whither now shall the wretched woman betake herself? Of all hers I alone survive, the one whom alone she will not be able to look upon with even eyes. And I, the robber of those who saved me, shall I return to my country, so that I cannot even offer my right hand to my nurse without the memory of her calamity!"

2.10. And as there was no end to his tears and laments, by order of his friends the body was carried away. The king lay shut up for three days.

2.11. When his armour-bearers and bodyguards perceived that he was resolved to die, they all burst into the tent, and after he had long resisted their entreaties, hardly prevailed on him to take food.

2.12. And, that he might be the less ashamed of the murder, the Macedonians decreed that Cleitus had been justly killed, and would even have forbidden his burial, had not the king ordered him to be interred.

2.13. So, ten days being spent chiefly in steadying his sense of shame, at Maracanda, he sent Hephaestion with part of the army into the Bactrian region, to prepare provisions for the winter.

2.14. The province which he had before destined for Cleitus he gave to Amyntas: he himself came to Xenippa. The region borders on Scythia, and is inhabited by many crowded villages, because the richness of the soil not only keeps the natives but even invites strangers.

2.15. It had been a refuge of the Bactrian exiles who had revolted from Alexander: but, after it was learned that the king was approaching,

2.16. driven out by the inhabitants, about two thousand five hundred gathered. All were horsemen, accustomed even in peace to brigandage: then their fierce natures had been made savage not by war only, but also by despair of pardon. And so, attacking Amyntas, Alexander's commander, unexpectedly, they had long made the battle hang in the balance:

2.17. at last, seven hundred of their own being lost, of whom the enemy took three hundred, they turned their backs to the victors — yet by no means unavenged: for they killed eighty Macedonians, and besides these three hundred and fifty were wounded.

2.18. Yet even after their second revolt they obtained pardon.

2.19. These being received into faith, the king came with his whole army into the region which they call Nautaca. The satrap was Sisimithres, having two sons born of his own mother: for among them it is lawful for parents to lie with their children.

2.20. He had fenced with a strong fortification, his countrymen being under arms, the gorge of the region where it narrows to its tightest. A torrent stream flowed past in front; a rock closed the rear:

2.21. this the inhabitants had made passable by hand, but the entrance of the cave receives light, while the inner parts are dark unless a light be brought in.

2.22. A continuous tunnel affords a passage into the plains, unknown except to the natives. But Alexander, although the barbarians guarded with a strong band the narrows fortified by their natural site, yet, bringing up rams, shook the works which had been added by hand, and with slings and arrows brought down most of the defenders. When he had scattered and put these to flight, climbing over the ruins of the fortifications, he moved his army up to the rock.

2.23. But a river barred the way, its waters coming together from a higher height into the valley, and it seemed a work of great labour to fill so vast a chasm:

2.24. yet he ordered trees to be felled and stones to be heaped up. And a great panic had shaken the barbarians, unused to such works, when they suddenly saw the structure rising.

2.25. And so the king, judging that they could be driven to surrender by fear, sent Oxartes, of the same nation but under his own dominion, to advise their leader to hand over the rock.

2.26. Meanwhile, to increase their terror, towers were being brought up, and the weapons hurled by the engines flashed. And so, despairing of every other defence, they made for the summit of the rock.

2.27. But Oxartes began to exhort Sisimithres, trembling and distrustful of his fortunes, to prefer to make trial of the faith rather than the force of the Macedonians, and not to delay the haste of a victorious army pressing on into India: against which whoever set himself would turn another's disaster upon his own head.

2.28. And Sisimithres himself did not refuse surrender; but his mother — who was also his wife — declaring that she would die before she came into anyone's power, had turned the barbarian's mind to the more honourable rather than the safer course; and he was ashamed that the price of liberty should be greater among women than among men.

2.29. And so, the envoy of peace dismissed, he had resolved to bear the siege. But when he weighed the enemy's strength against his own, he began again to repent of the woman's counsel, which he believed to be headlong rather than necessary.

2.30. And, Oxartes being briskly recalled, he answered that he would put himself in the king's power, begging this one thing, that the will and counsel of his mother be not betrayed, so that pardon might the more easily be obtained for her too.

2.31. So, Oxartes being sent ahead, he followed with his mother and children and the whole troop of his kindred, not even waiting for the pledge of faith which Oxartes had promised.

2.32. The king, having sent a horseman ahead to bid them turn back and await his own presence, came up; and, victims to Minerva the Victorious being slain, he restored his command to Sisimithres, holding out the hope of even greater province, if he should cultivate his friendship with faith.

2.33. He ordered the two youths, their father handing them over, to follow, to serve in war with him.

2.34. Then, leaving the phalanx, he went forward with his cavalry to subdue those who had revolted. The road, steep and obstructed with rocks, they endured at first as best they could; soon, the horses' hooves not only worn away but their bodies also wearied, most could not keep up, and the column became sparser by degrees, immoderate toil overcoming shame, as usually happens.

2.35. The king, nevertheless, changing his horses from time to time, pursued the fleeing without intermission. The noble youths accustomed to attend him had failed, except Philip: he was the brother of Lysimachus, then for the first time come to manhood, and, as could easily appear, of rare natural gifts.

2.36. He, on foot — incredible to tell — for five hundred stades accompanied the king as he rode, Lysimachus often offering him his own horse; yet it could not be brought about that he leave the king, although he bore his arms, clad in a corslet.

2.37. The same man, when they had come to the glade in which the barbarians had hidden, delivered a notable fight, and protected the king as he fought hand to hand with the enemy.

2.38. But after the barbarians, scattered in flight, had abandoned the woods, the spirit which in the heat of battle had sustained his body forsook him, and, sweat suddenly pouring from all his limbs, he leaned against the trunk of the nearest tree.

2.39. Then, even that support failing to hold him, he was received in the king's hands: and between them, collapsing, he expired. Another grief, no light one, met the sorrowing king.

2.40. Erigyius had been among the famous commanders: him he learned to have died a little before he returned to camp. The funeral of both was celebrated with every ceremony and honour.

3.1. Then he had resolved to make for the Dahae: for there he had learned that Spitamenes was. But this expedition too, like most others, fortune — never wearied in indulging him — accomplished for the absent king. Spitamenes burned with an immoderate love of his wife, whom, bearing ill flight and the new exiles ever following, he dragged as a companion into every peril.

3.2. She, wearied by misfortunes, again and again employed a woman's blandishments, that he should at last stop his flight and, having made trial of the clemency of the victorious Alexander, appease the man he could not escape.

3.3. Three grown children had been born to her by him: these, when she had set them against their father's breast, she begged him at least to have pity on them; and, that her prayers might be the more effective, Alexander was not far off.

3.4. He, thinking himself betrayed, not warned, and that, trusting surely in her beauty, she desired to be handed over to Alexander as soon as possible, drew his scimitar to strike his wife, had he not been prevented by the intervention of her brothers.

3.5. But he ordered her to depart from his sight, adding the threat of death, should she present herself to his eyes; and, to relieve his longing, he began to pass his nights among his concubines.

3.6. But the love rooted deep within was kindled by disgust of the present. And so, again given over to her alone, he did not cease to entreat that she abstain from such counsel and endure whatever lot fortune had made for them: that death was lighter to him than surrender.

3.7. But she excused herself, saying that what she had judged useful she had urged, in a woman's way perhaps, yet with a faithful mind; that for the rest she would be in her husband's power.

3.8. Spitamenes, taken by her feigned obedience, ordered a banquet to be prepared while it was still day; and, heavy with wine and feasting and half asleep, he was carried into the bedchamber.

3.9. When his wife perceived that he was sunk in deep and heavy sleep, she drew the sword which she had hidden in her dress, and, his head cut off and herself sprinkled with blood, handed it to her slave, an accomplice in the deed.

3.10. Accompanied by him, just as she was, in her bloody dress, she came into the camp of the Macedonians, and bade it be announced to Alexander that there was something which he ought to learn from herself.

3.11. He at once ordered the barbarian woman to be admitted. When he saw her sprinkled with blood, supposing that she had come to lament an outrage, he bade her say what she wished.

3.12. But she desired that the slave, whom she had ordered to stand in the forecourt, should be brought in. He, because he had the head of Spitamenes covered with a cloth, being suspected, when they searched what he was hiding, showed it.

3.13. Pallor had confounded the lifeless features of the face, nor could it well be recognized whose it was: so the king, informed that he was bringing in a human head, left the tent, and, asking what the matter was, learned it from the man's own confession.

3.14. From this point various thoughts agitated, by turns, his mind, drawn in opposite directions. He believed there had been a great service done to himself, in that a deserter and traitor, who, had he lived, would have thrown delay across so great affairs, had been killed: on the other hand he abhorred the great wickedness, since she had treacherously slain a man who had deserved most well of herself, the father of their common children.

3.15. Yet the atrocity of the crime overcame the favour of the service, and he ordered it proclaimed that she should leave the camp, lest she carry the example of barbarian licence into the manners and gentle natures of the Greeks.

3.16. The Dahae, learning of the murder of Spitamenes, surrendered to Alexander, in chains, Dataphernes, a partner in his revolt, and themselves. He, freed of the greatest part of his present cares, turned his mind to avenging the wrongs of those who were governed avariciously and arrogantly by his commanders.

3.17. Therefore he handed over Hyrcania and the Mardi together with the Tapuri to Phrataphernes, and charged him to send to him in custody Phradates, whom he was succeeding. To Arsames, prefect of the Drangae, Stasanor was put in his place; Arsaces was sent into Media, that Oxydates might withdraw from there. Babylonia, Mazaeus being dead, was made subject to Stamenes.

4.1. These matters being settled, in the third month he moved the army out of winter quarters, about to make for the region

4.2. which is called Gazaca. The first day afforded a quiet march; the next — not yet stormy and gloomy, but darker than before — passed not without threats of growing evil;

4.3. on the third, lightnings began to flash from every quarter of the sky, and, with the light now glittering between, now hidden, to terrify not only the eyes of the marching army but their minds as well.

4.4. There was an almost continuous crash of the heavens, and on all sides the sight of falling thunderbolts was seen; and the column, dazed, its hearing stunned, dared neither to advance nor to halt:

4.5. when suddenly rain, driving hail, was poured down like a torrent. And at first indeed they had received it sheltered by their own arms; but now their stiffening hands could neither hold their slippery arms, nor could they themselves decide in what direction to turn their bodies, since on every side the violence of the storm met them, greater than that against which they sought defence.

4.6. So, their ranks broken, the column was borne wandering through the whole glade, and many, worn out by fear sooner than by toil, had thrown their bodies on the ground, although the force of the cold had bound the rain fast in frozen ice.

4.7. Others had pressed themselves to the trunks of trees: this was for very many both a support and a shelter.

4.8. Nor did they fail to perceive that they were choosing a place to die, as the motionless vital warmth left them: yet the languor of their bodies was pleasing to the weary, and they did not refuse to be extinguished in repose. For not only a violent but also a persistent force of the evil pressed on, and the light, nature's solace, besides a tempest not unlike night, the shade of the woods too had suppressed.

4.9. The king alone, patient of so great an evil, went round the soldiers, gathered the scattered, raised the prostrate, pointed out the smoke rolling up from the huts afar, and exhorted them to seize each the nearest shelter.

4.10. Nor was anything more conducive to their safety than that they were ashamed to desert a king who, with his toil multiplied, was a match for evils to which they themselves had yielded.

4.11. But necessity, more effective in adversity than reason, found a remedy for the cold: for, setting about to fell the woods with axes, they kindled here and there heaps and piles.

4.12. With the unbroken blaze you would have thought the glade afire, and scarcely a place left amid the flames for the columns. This heat stirred their numbed limbs, and little by little the breath, which the cold had held back, began to move freely.

4.13. Some were received by the dwellings of the barbarians, which, hidden in the farthest part of the glade, necessity had tracked out; others by the camp, which they pitched in a wet spot indeed, but with the savagery of the sky now softening. Two thousand soldiers and camp-followers and servants that pestilence consumed.

4.14. It is handed down to memory that some were seen leaning against the trunks of trees, and like, not merely to living men, but even to men conversing with one another, the posture in which death had caught each one still remaining.

4.15. By chance a Macedonian, a common soldier, supporting himself and his arms with difficulty, had nevertheless reached the camp: seeing him, the king, although he himself was then warming his limbs at a fire just brought near, leapt up from his own seat, and, the numbed soldier, scarcely master of his mind, having had his arms taken off, ordered him to sit in his own place.

4.16. For a long time he recognized neither where he was resting, nor by whom he had been received. At last, the vital warmth recovered, when he saw the royal seat and the king, terrified, he rose.

4.17. Gazing at him, Alexander said: "Do you understand at all, soldier, by how much better a lot you live under a king than the Persians? For with them to have sat in the king's seat would have been a capital offence; to you it has been salvation."

4.18. On the next day, his friends and the commanders of his forces being assembled, he ordered it to be proclaimed that he himself would restore all that had been lost. And the promise was made good.

4.19. For Sisimithres brought many pack-animals and two thousand camels, and flocks and herds: which, being distributed, freed the soldier alike from loss and from hunger.

4.20. The king, greatly rejoicing that thanks had been repaid him by Sisimithres, ordered the soldiers to carry six days' cooked rations, making for the Sacae. Having ravaged this whole region, he gave thirty thousand head of cattle from the plunder as a gift to Sisimithres.

4.21. Thence he came into the region over which Oxyartes, a noble satrap, presided, who committed himself to the king's power and faith. He, his command being restored to him, exacted nothing more than that two of his three sons should serve in war with him.

4.22. The satrap, having handed over even the one who was left in his own keeping, had prepared, with barbarian opulence, a banquet at which he received the king:

4.23. and when this was being celebrated with much courtesy, he ordered thirty noble maidens to be brought in. Among them was his own daughter, Roxane by name, of surpassing beauty of body and a grace of bearing rare among barbarians.

4.24. Although she had come forward among the chosen ones, yet she turned all eyes upon herself, especially the king's — he now less master of his own desires, amid the homage of fortune, against which mortal nature is not cautious enough.

4.25. And so he, who had looked upon the wife of Darius, who upon his two virgin daughters — to whose beauty, save Roxane, none could be compared — with no other mind than that of a parent, then so poured himself out in love of the young girl, lowly if compared with royal stock, that he said it bore upon the establishment of his rule that Persians and Macedonians should be joined in marriage: that in this one way both shame could be taken from the conquered and arrogance from the conquerors.

4.26. Achilles too, from whom he himself drew his descent, had united with a captive: lest the conquered should think a wrong was being done them, he wished to be joined by the right of marriage.

4.27. The father, lifted up by unhoped-for joy, caught at his speech, and the king, in the very heat of his desire, ordered bread to be brought after the manner of his country — this was among the Macedonians the most sacred pledge of those entering into union — which, divided by the sword, each tasted.

4.28. I believe that those who established the customs of the nation wished, by frugal and easily-procured fare, to show those joining their fortunes how little should content them.

4.29. In this way the king of Asia and Europe joined to himself in marriage, brought in amid the sports of the banquet, a woman about to bear him, from a captive, one who should rule over the conquerors.

4.30. His friends were ashamed that a father-in-law had been chosen from among the surrendered, over wine and feasting; but, after the murder of Cleitus, liberty being taken away, they assented with the face that most of all serves.

5.1. But intending to make for India and beyond it the Ocean, lest anything be stirred in his rear that might hinder his purposes, he ordered thirty thousand young men to be levied from all the provinces and brought to him under arms, meaning to have them at once as hostages and as soldiers.

5.2. He sent Craterus to pursue Haustanes and Catanes, who had revolted from him: of whom Haustanes was taken, Catanes killed in battle. Polypercon too reduced into submission the region which is called Bubacene.

5.3. So, all things being settled, he turned his thoughts to the Indian war. The region was held to be rich not in gold only, but also in gems and pearls, adorned for luxury more than for magnificence.

5.4. Those of the soldiers who knew said that everything shone with gold and ivory: and so, lest he be outdone anywhere — since he surpassed in all else — he added silver plates to their shields, golden bits to their horses, and adorned their corslets, some with gold, some with silver. A hundred and twenty thousand armed men were those who followed the king to that war.

5.5. And now, all being prepared, judging that what he had long conceived with a perverse mind was now ripe, he began to consider in what way he might usurp divine honours. He wished not only to be called, but even to be believed, the son of Jupiter, as though he could command minds as well as tongues,

5.6. and ordered the Macedonians, after the manner of the Persians, to salute him with veneration, prostrating their bodies on the ground. There was no lack, for one coveting such things, of pernicious flattery, the perpetual bane of kings, whose power is more often overthrown by adulation than by an enemy.

5.7. Nor was this the fault of the Macedonians — for none of them endured to swerve at all from the custom of their fathers — but of the Greeks, who had corrupted the profession of honourable arts with evil manners:

5.8. Agis the Argive, the writer of the worst verses after Choerilus, and from Sicily Cleo — a flatterer by the vice not only of his nature but of his nation — and the rest, the refuse of their own cities, whom the king set above even his kinsmen and the commanders of his greatest armies. These then opened heaven to him, and boasted that Hercules and Father Liber and Castor with Pollux would yield to the new deity.

5.9. So on a festal day he ordered a banquet to be set out with all opulence, to which not only Macedonians and Greeks, the chief of his friends, but also nobles of the enemy were invited. When the king had reclined with them, having feasted a little while, he left the banquet.

5.10. Cleo, as had been arranged, began a speech with admiration of his praises. Then he recounted his merits: for which, he said, thanks could be repaid in one way only — if they confessed him to be a god, whom they knew to be one, ready to weigh so great benefits against the slight cost of incense.

5.11. The Persians, he said, not only piously but also prudently worshipped their kings among the gods: for the majesty of empire was the safeguard of their safety. Not even Hercules and Father Liber had been consecrated as gods before they had overcome the envy of those who lived in their own time: men believed of each of the dead as much as the present age had vouched for.

5.12. But if the rest hesitated, he himself, when the king entered the banquet, would prostrate his body on the ground. The rest ought to do the same, and especially those endowed with wisdom: for from them the example of worship toward the king ought to be set forth.

5.13. Not obscurely was the speech aimed at Callisthenes. The man's gravity and ready freedom of speech were hateful to the king, as though he alone were holding back the Macedonians, who were ready for such obeisance.

5.14. He then, silence being made, the rest fixing their eyes on him alone, said: "If the king had been present at your speech, surely no man's voice would be needed to answer you: for he himself would beg you not to compel him to degenerate into foreign and outlandish rites, nor by such flattery to draw envy upon his most fortunate achievements.

5.15. But since he is absent, I answer you in his stead, that no fruit is both lasting and early-ripe, and that you do not give the king celestial honours, but take them away. For there is need of an interval, that one may be believed a god; and posterity always renders this favour to great men.

5.16. But I pray a late immortality for the king, that both his life may be long and his majesty eternal. Divinity sometimes follows a man, never accompanies him.

5.17. You cited just now Hercules and Father Liber as examples of consecrated immortality. Do you believe that they were made gods by the decree of a single banquet? Nature had first removed them from the sight of mortals before fame bore them up to heaven.

5.18. Doubtless I and you, Cleo, make gods, and from us the king is to receive the authority of his divinity! It pleases me to make trial of your power: make someone a king, if you can make a god!

5.19. Is it easier to give heaven than empire? May the gods, propitious and without envy, have heard what Cleo has said, and suffer affairs to go in the same course in which they have hitherto flowed. May they will that we be content with our own customs. I am not ashamed of my country, nor do I desire to learn from the conquered in what manner I should worship my king.

5.20. Those whom I confess to be the victors, indeed, if from them we receive the laws by which we are to live!" With even ears Callisthenes was heard, as the champion of the public liberty. He had drawn out not assent only, but even the voice, especially of the older men, to whom the foreign change of inveterate custom was grievous.

5.21. Nor was the king ignorant of any of the things that had been bandied back and forth, since he stood behind the hangings drawn over the couches. So he sent to Agis and Cleo, that, the speech being ended, they should suffer only the barbarians, when he entered, to prostrate themselves after their custom; and a little after, as if he had been engaged on more important matters, he returned to the banquet.

5.22. As the Persians did him veneration, Polypercon, who was reclining above the king, began in mockery to exhort one of them, who touched the ground with his chin, to dash it more vehemently against the earth; and he drew forth the anger of Alexander, which he had long been unable to contain.

5.23. And so the king said: "But you — will you not venerate me? Or do I seem worthy of mockery to you alone?" The other answered that neither was the king worthy of mockery, nor he himself of contempt.

5.24. Then the king, dragging him down from his couch, hurled him to the ground; and when he had fallen forward, said: "Do you see that you have done the same thing which a little before you laughed at in another?" And, ordering him to be handed over to custody, he broke up the banquet.

6.1. Polypercon, indeed, after he had been kept long in custody, he afterward pardoned: against Callisthenes, long suspected of stubbornness, his anger was more obstinate. And a timely occasion of satisfying it presented itself.

6.2. It was the custom, as has been said above, for the chief men of the Macedonians to hand over their grown sons to the kings for duties not much removed from servile offices.

6.3. They kept watch, the turns of the night being observed, nearest the doors of the apartment in which the king rested. Through them the concubines were brought in by a different entrance from that which the armed men guarded.

6.4. The same took from the grooms the horses, when the king was about to mount, and brought them up, and accompanied him both hunting and in battles, trained in all the arts of liberal studies.

6.5. A special honour was held to be this, that they were permitted to eat with the king while seated. The power of chastising them with stripes belonged to none but himself.

6.6. This cohort was, among the Macedonians, like a nursery of commanders and prefects: from this their descendants had kings, from whose stock, after many ages, the Romans took away their power.

6.7. So Hermolaus, a noble boy of the royal cohort, having struck with his weapon a boar which the king had marked out to kill, was by his order chastised with stripes. Bearing this ignominy ill, he began to lament it to Sostratus.

6.8. Of the same cohort was Sostratus, ardent with love of him: who, when he gazed on the lacerated body of the one he was pining for, perhaps for some other cause too hostile to the king, urged on the youth, already moved of his own accord, a pledge being given and received, to enter into a plan with him of killing the king.

6.9. Nor did they carry out the matter with boyish impetuosity: for they cleverly chose those whom they should take into the partnership of the crime. It was resolved to take in Nicostratus, Antipater, and Asclepiodorus, and Philotas: through these were added Anticles and Aphthonius and Epimenes.

6.10. But the way to accomplishing the deed sought was by no means easy: it was needful that all the conspirators should be on watch the same night, lest they be hindered by those not privy to the plan; but by chance one kept watch on one night, another on another.

6.11. And so, in changing the turns of the watches and the rest of the preparation for executing the matter, thirty-two days were spent.

6.12. The night was at hand on which the conspirators were to keep watch, glad in their mutual faith, of which so many days had been the proof. Neither fear nor hope had changed any one of them: so great in all was either anger against the king or faith among themselves.

6.13. So they stood at the doors of the apartment in which the king was supping, that they might escort him, when he came out from the banquet, to his bedchamber.

6.14. But his own fortune, and at the same time the geniality of the feasters, drew all on to too liberal wine: the banquet-sports too prolonged the time, the conspirators now glad that they would attack him asleep, now anxious lest he draw out the banquet till daylight.

6.15. For others must succeed to the watch at first light, their own turn to return after the seventh day; nor could they hope that the faith of all would hold until that time.

6.16. But when the light was now approaching, and the banquet was breaking up, the conspirators received the king, glad that the occasion of executing the crime had been brought near: when a woman of a distracted mind, as was believed, accustomed to frequent the palace, because by some inspiration she seemed to foretell the future, not only met him as he was leaving, but even threw herself in his way, and, with countenance and eyes showing the agitation of her mind, warned him to return to the banquet.

6.17. And he, by way of jest, answered that the gods counselled well, and, his friends being recalled, prolonged the time of the banquet to about the second hour of the day.

6.18. Now others of the cohort had succeeded to the watch, to keep guard before the doors of the bedchamber, yet the conspirators still stood, their own turn of duty discharged:

6.19. so persistent is the hope which human minds have swallowed. The king, having addressed them more kindly than at other times, ordered them to withdraw to tend their bodies, since they had stood the whole night through. Fifty sesterces were given to each, and they were commended because, even though their turn had been handed to others, they had yet persisted in watching.

6.20. They, robbed of so great a hope, went home. And the rest indeed awaited the night of their watch: but Epimenes — whether suddenly changed by the king's kindness, with which he had received him among the conspirators, or because he believed the gods opposed their undertaking — disclosed to his brother Eurylochus, whom before he had wished to be without part in the plan, what was being prepared.

6.21. The punishment of Philotas was before all men's eyes: and so at once he laid hand on his brother and came to the palace, and, the bodyguards being roused, affirmed that what he brought bore upon the safety of the king.

6.22. Both the hour at which they came, and the look that was no sure index of an untroubled mind, and the sadness of one of the two, roused Ptolemy and Leonnatus, keeping watch at the threshold of the bedchamber. And so, the doors being opened and a light brought in, they roused the king, sunk in wine and sleep. He, his mind little by little collected, asked what they brought.

6.23. And Eurylochus, without delay, said that the gods did not wholly turn away from his house, since his brother, though he had dared an impious deed, yet both repented of it and through him above all made profession of the discovery: that an ambush had been prepared for that very night now ending; that the authors of the wicked design were those whom the king would least believe.

6.24. Then Epimenes set forth everything in order, and the names of the accomplices. It was established that Callisthenes was named, not as a partner in the deed, but as accustomed to lend ready ears to the talk of the boys disparaging and accusing the king.

6.25. Some add that, when Hermolaus complained to him too that he had been scourged by the king, Callisthenes said that they ought to remember that they were now men: and whether this was said to console them in their endurance of the stripes, or to incite the resentment of the young men, was held in doubt.

6.26. The king, his sleep of mind and body shaken off, since the image of so great a peril, from which he had escaped, hovered before his eyes, at once presented Eurylochus with fifty talents and the rich estate of a certain Tiridates, and restored his brother

6.27. before he could pray for his safety; but the authors of the crime, and among them Callisthenes, he ordered to be kept in chains. With these brought into the palace, the whole day and the next night he rested, glad, amid wine and watchings.

6.28. But on the next day he summoned a numerous council, at which were present the fathers and kinsmen of those who were in question, themselves not even secure for their own safety: for by Macedonian custom they too must perish, all whose blood had touched the accused being devoted to death.

6.29. The king ordered the conspirators, except Callisthenes, to be brought in: and they confessed without hesitation what they had planned.

6.30. Then, while all reviled them, the king himself asked by what desert of his they had conceived so great a crime against him.

7.1. While the rest stood dumbfounded, Hermolaus said: "We did indeed — since, as though you did not know, you ask — enter into a plan of killing you, because you have begun to command us not as freeborn men, but to lord it over us as over slaves.

7.2. First of all, his own father Sopolis, crying out that he was the parricide even of his own parent, rose up, and, his hand thrust against his mouth, declared that one raging with crime and wickedness ought to be heard no further.

7.3. The king, his father being restrained, ordered Hermolaus to say what he had learned from his master Callisthenes. And Hermolaus said: "I use your kindness, and I tell what I have learned by our miseries.

7.4. What part of the Macedonians is left to your savagery? what part, indeed, that is not of the meanest blood? Attalus and Philotas and Parmenion and Alexander the Lyncestian and Cleitus — as far as concerns the enemy — are alive, they stand in the line of battle, and protect you with their shields, and for your glory, for your victory, receive wounds.

7.5. To whom you have rendered notable thanks: one sprinkled your table with his own blood, another did not even die a simple death. The commanders of your armies, set on the rack, were a spectacle to the Persians whom they had conquered. Parmenion was butchered, his cause unheard — Parmenion, through whom you had killed Attalus.

7.6. For you use, by turns, the hands of wretches to exact your punishments, and those whom a little before you had as ministers of slaughter, you suddenly order to be butchered by others."

7.7. Again and again all clamoured against Hermolaus; his father had drawn his sword over him, meaning beyond doubt to strike, had he not been restrained by the king: for the king bade Hermolaus speak, and asked that they hear patiently one who was aggravating the causes of his own punishment.

7.8. So, the others being with difficulty restrained, Hermolaus again said: "How generously do you grant raw boys leave to speak! But the voice of Callisthenes has been shut up in prison, because he alone is able to speak.

7.9. For why is he not brought forward, when even those who have confessed are heard? Surely because you fear to hear the free voice of an innocent man, and cannot endure even his face.

7.10. And yet I maintain that he did nothing. There are here those who planned with me a most glorious deed: there is no one who says that Callisthenes was privy to us, though he has long been destined to death by a most just and most patient king.

7.11. These, then, are the rewards of the Macedonians, whose blood you misuse as something superfluous and base! But thirty thousand mules carry captive gold for you, while the soldiers will take home nothing but their unrewarded scars. Yet all these things we could have endured, before you handed us over to barbarians and, by a new fashion, sent us, the conquerors, under the yoke.

7.12. The dress and discipline of the Persians delight you; you have come to loathe the customs of your fathers.

7.13. It was therefore the king of the Persians, not of the Macedonians, that we wished to kill, and you we pursue, by the law of war, as a deserter. You wished the Macedonians to bend the knee to you and to venerate you as a god; you turn away from Philip your father; and, were any of the gods to be held greater than Jupiter, you would scorn even Jupiter.

7.14. Do you wonder if free men cannot bear your arrogance? What do we hope from you, who must either die innocent, or — what is sadder than death — live in servitude?

7.15. You indeed, if you can be amended, owe me much. For from me you have begun to learn what freeborn men cannot bear. For the rest, do not burden with punishments the old age of our kinsmen, bereft of their children: order us to be led to death, that what we sought from your death, we may obtain from our own." So spoke Hermolaus.

8.1. But the king said: "How false are the things which this fellow has said, handed down from his master, my patience shows.

8.2. For though he confessed his utmost crime, yet I not only heard it myself, but, that you might hear it too, I drew it forth — not unaware, when I had permitted this robber to speak, that he would use the frenzy by which he was driven, that he should wish to kill me, whom he ought to honour in a parent's place.

8.3. Lately, when he had behaved too insolently in the hunt, I ordered him to be chastised after the manner of his fathers, and used by the most ancient of the kings of Macedonia. This both ought to be done, and is done — by guardians to their wards, by husbands to their wives: we permit even slaves to scourge boys of this age.

8.4. This is my savagery toward him, which he wished to avenge by an impious murder. For toward the rest, who allow me to use my own disposition, how mild I am, it is superfluous to recall to men not ignorant of it.

8.5. That the punishments of parricides are not approved by Hermolaus, since he himself has deserved the same, I do not in the least wonder, by Hercules. For when he praises Parmenion and Philotas, he serves his own cause.

8.6. As for Alexander the Lyncestian, though he plotted against my life, convicted by two informers and by his own letters, I yet put him off for three years, until you yourselves demanded that he should at last atone for his crime by the due punishment.

8.7. That Attalus, before I was king, was an enemy to my life, you remember. Cleitus — would that he had not forced me to be angry with him! whose rash tongue, uttering reproaches against me and against you, I bore longer than he would have borne me uttering the same.

8.8. The clemency of kings and commanders rests not in their own dispositions only, but also in those of the men who obey. By obedience commands are softened: but when reverence has departed from men's minds, and the highest are confounded with the lowest, there is need of force to repel force.

8.9. But why should I wonder that this man has cast cruelty in my teeth, who has dared to reproach me with avarice? I do not wish to call up each of you, lest I make my own liberality hateful to me, if I make it a burden to your sense of shame. Look upon the whole army: he who a little before had nothing but his arms now reclines on silver couches, they load their tables with gold, they lead troops of slaves, they cannot carry the spoils taken from the enemy.

8.10. But the Persians, whom we conquered, are in great honour with me! To me indeed it is the surest proof of my moderation that I do not rule even the conquered arrogantly. For I came into Asia, not to overthrow nations utterly, nor to make a solitude of half the world, but that those whom I had subdued in war should not repent of my victory.

8.11. And so they serve in war with you, they shed their blood for your empire, who, had they been arrogantly treated, would have rebelled. No possession is lasting into which we are brought by the sword: the gratitude of benefits is everlasting.

8.12. If we wish to hold Asia, not merely to pass through it, our clemency must be shared with these men: their loyalty will make our empire stable and eternal. And indeed we have more than we can hold. It is the mark of insatiable avarice still to wish to fill what already overflows.

8.13. Yet I do transfuse their custom into the Macedonians! For in many nations I see things which we need not blush to imitate: nor can so great an empire be fitly ruled in any other way than that we both impart some things to them and learn some from them.

8.14. That was almost worthy of laughter, that Hermolaus demanded of me that I turn away from Jupiter, by whose oracle I am acknowledged.

8.15. Or is it in my power what the gods reply? He offered me the name of son: to accept it was not foreign to the very things we do. Would that the Indians too may believe me to be a god! For wars stand on fame, and often that which has been falsely believed has held the place of truth.

8.16. Or do you think I have adorned your arms with gold and silver out of indulgence in luxury? To men accustomed to see nothing cheaper than this material, I wished to show that the Macedonians, unconquered by the rest, are not to be conquered even by gold.

8.17. First, then, I shall take their eyes, that despise all things sordid and lowly, and shall teach them that we come, not greedy of gold or silver, but to subdue the world. This glory you, parricide, wished to intercept, and to hand over the Macedonians, their king taken away, to the conquered nations.

8.18. But now you warn me to spare your parents! It was not fitting indeed that you should know what I had determined concerning them, that you might die the more sorrowful, if any memory of or care for your parents is in you: but I long ago abolished that custom of killing innocent kinsmen and parents along with the guilty, and I declare that all these shall be in the same honour in which they were.

8.19. For as for your Callisthenes, to whom alone you seem a man, because you are a robber, I know why you wish him brought forward: that, in the presence of these men, the reproaches which now you have cast at me, now heard, should be repeated by his mouth too. Whom, were he a Macedonian, I should have brought in with you, a master most worthy of such a disciple: as it is, an Olynthian has not the same right."

8.20. After these things he dismissed the council, and ordered the condemned to be handed over to men who were of the same cohort. They, that they might prove their loyalty to the king by savagery, put them to death with torture.

8.21. Callisthenes too perished, tortured, innocent of the plan entered into against the king's life, but by no means accommodated to the temper of a court and of flatterers.

8.22. And so the death of no man raised greater odium against Alexander among the Greeks, because a man endowed with the best character and arts — by whom he had been recalled to life, when, after Cleitus was killed, he persisted in resolving to die — he not only killed, but even tortured, and that with his cause unheard.

8.23. Upon which cruelty a late repentance followed.

9.1. But lest leisure should feed the rumours born to be spread, he moved into India, always more renowned in war than after victory.

9.2. India almost wholly faces east, less spacious in breadth than along its straight extent.

9.3. The parts that receive the south wind rise to a higher elevation of land: the rest are flat, and afford, through the plains, a quiet passage to many famous rivers risen from Mount Caucasus.

9.4. The Indus is colder than the others: it carries waters not much differing in colour from the sea.

9.5. The Ganges, the greatest of all rivers from the East, runs down toward the southern regions and skirts the ridges of great mountains in a straight bed: then rocks set against it bend it toward the east.

9.6. Both are received by the Red Sea. The Indus swallows up its banks and many trees with a great part of the soil,

9.7. obstructed too by rocks, against which it is often beaten back: where it has found softer ground, it stagnates and forms islands. The Acesines swells it.

9.8. The Ganges intercepts the Iomanes as it runs down, and each river clashes with great commotion: for the Ganges sets a rough mouth against the inflowing stream, nor do the waters, beaten back, give way.

9.9. The Diardines is less famed to hearing, because it runs through the farthest parts of India: but it nourishes not only crocodiles, like the Nile, but also dolphins and monsters unknown to other nations.

9.10. The Ethymantus, bending with frequent windings, is carried off by the neighbouring peoples for watering their fields: this is the cause why it sends thin remnants, now without a name, into the sea.

9.11. By many rivers besides these the whole region is divided, but unknown ones, because they flow through unvisited parts.

9.12. But the parts nearer the sea are most of all scorched by the north wind: this, held back by the ridges of the mountains, does not penetrate to the interior, which is thus mild for nourishing crops.

9.13. But so far in that quarter does the world change the fixed turns of the seasons, that, when other lands seethe with the heat of the sun, the snows bury India, and again, when the rest are stiff with cold, there an intolerable heat arises.

9.14. Nor is there a reason why nature has reversed herself. The sea, certainly, by which it is washed, does not even in colour differ from the rest. Its name was given from King Erythras: on which account the ignorant believe the waters to be red.

9.15. The land is fruitful in flax: hence most have their garments. The tender bark of trees takes the marks of letters no otherwise than paper.

9.16. The birds are teachable to imitate the sound of the human voice. Animals unseen by other nations exist there, unless brought in. The same land breeds rhinoceroses, unknown to others.

9.17. The strength of the elephants is greater than of those they tame in Africa, and their size answers to their strength.

9.18. The rivers carry gold, those which, with a gentle and moderate flow, draw their waters sluggishly.

9.19. The sea pours gems and pearls upon the shores: nor have they any greater cause of wealth, especially since they made traffic of vices common to foreign nations. For the refuse of the seething strait is valued at the price which lust has set.

9.20. The dispositions of the men, as everywhere, the situation of the place there too shapes.

9.21. They veil their bodies down to the feet with cotton, their feet with sandals, and bind their heads with linen; little gems hang from their ears: their arms also and forearms those adorn with gold, who among their countrymen stand out either in nobility or in wealth.

9.22. They comb their hair more often than they cut it: the chin is always unshaved, but the rest of the skin of the face they smooth to an appearance of sleekness.

9.23. Yet the luxury of the kings, which they themselves call magnificence, is beyond the vices of all nations. When the king allows himself to be seen in public, attendants carry silver censers and fill with perfumes the whole road by which he has resolved to be borne.

9.24. He reclines in a golden litter, with pearls hanging round it: the cotton robes he is clad in are picked out with gold and purple: armed men and bodyguards follow the litter,

9.25. among whom on branches hang birds which they have taught, by their song, to break in upon serious matters.

9.26. The palace has gilded columns: a vine, chased in gold, runs over them all, and silver figures of the birds in whose sight they most delight pick out the work.

9.27. The palace lies open to those who come, while he combs and arranges his hair: then he gives answers to embassies, then renders judgments to his countrymen. His sandals removed, his feet are anointed with perfumes.

9.28. His greatest labour is the hunt, to shoot animals shut up in a park amid the prayers and songs of his concubines. The arrows are two cubits long, which they discharge with greater effort than effect: for the missile, whose whole force lies in its lightness, is loaded with an unwieldy weight.

9.29. Shorter journeys he makes on horseback: where the expedition is longer, elephants draw his chariot, and they cover the whole bodies of such great beasts with gold. And, lest anything be lacking to ruined morals, a long train of concubines follows in golden litters: the column is separate from the queen's train and matches its luxury.

9.30. The women prepare the feasts. By the same the wine is served, the use of which is liberal among all the Indians. The concubines carry the king, sunk in wine and sleep, into his bedchamber, calling on the gods of the night with the song of their country.

9.31. Who would believe that amid these vices there is care for wisdom? There is one rustic and rough class which they call the wise.

9.32. Among these to seize the day of one's fate is held a fair thing, and those whose age is sluggish or whose health is troublesome order themselves to be burned alive: a death awaited they count a disgrace to life, nor is any honour rendered to bodies which old age has dissolved: they think the fire defiled, unless it receives men still breathing.

9.33. Those of them who in the cities discharge public duties are said to watch skilfully the motions of the stars and to foretell the future.

9.34. Nor do they think any man brings on the day of his death whom it is granted to await unterrified. They count as gods whatever they have begun to worship, trees especially, to violate which is a capital offence.

9.35. They have divided the months into periods of fifteen days; the full spaces of the year are kept.

9.36. They mark their times by the course of the moon, not, as most, when the star has filled its orb, but when it has begun to curve into horns; and for this reason they have shorter months, because they direct the span of them to this measure of the moon.

9.37. Many other things too are handed down, by which it did not seem worth while to delay the order of events.

10.1. So, when Alexander had entered the border of India, the chieftains of the neighbouring nations met him, ready to do his bidding, declaring that he, the third sprung from Jupiter, had come to them: that Father Liber and Hercules were known by report, but that he himself was present and seen face to face.

10.2. The king, having kindly received them, ordered them to follow, meaning to use them as guides of his marches. But when no one more came to meet him, he sent forward Hephaestion and Perdiccas with part of the forces to subdue those who refused his command, and ordered them to advance to the river Indus and to make boats, by which the army might be carried over to the farther parts.

10.3. They, because several rivers had to be crossed, joined the boats in such a way that, when unfastened, they could be carried on wagons and joined together again.

10.4. He himself, having ordered Craterus to follow with the phalanx, led out the cavalry and light-armed troops, and those who met him he drove, in a slight engagement, into the nearest city.

10.5. Craterus had now come up: and so, that he might at the outset strike terror into a nation that had not yet tried the arms of the Macedonians, he commanded that no one be spared, the fortifications of the city which he was besieging being set on fire.

10.6. But, while he was riding round the walls, he was struck by an arrow. He took the town, nevertheless, and, all its inhabitants being butchered, his fury raged even against the buildings.

10.7. Thence, an inglorious nation being subdued, he came to the city of Nysa. By chance, the camp being pitched before its very walls in a wooded spot, the nightly cold afflicted their bodies with shivering more violently than usual, and the opportune remedy of fire offered itself.

10.8. For, the woods being cut down, they kindled a flame, which, fed by the wood, caught the tombs of the townsmen. These were made of old cedar, and spread the caught fire far and wide, until all was levelled with the ground.

10.9. And from the city first the barking of dogs, then the murmur of men too, was heard. Then both the townsmen learned that the enemy, and the Macedonians that the townsmen, had come up to them.

10.10. And now the king had led out his forces and was besieging the walls, when those of the enemy who had tried the hazard were overwhelmed with weapons. Some, then, were minded to surrender, others to try battle. Their hesitation being learned, he ordered them only to be hemmed in and slaughter to be refrained from: and at last, worn out by the evils of the siege, they surrendered.

10.11. They said that they had been founded by Father Liber: and this origin was true.

10.12. The city is situated at the roots of a mountain which the inhabitants call Meros: thence the Greeks took the licence of inventing the tale, that Father Liber had been hidden in the thigh of Jupiter.

10.13. The king, the situation of the mountain being learned from the inhabitants, with his whole army, provisions being sent ahead, ascended its summit. Much ivy and vine is born over the whole mountain, many perennial waters flow.

10.14. The juices of the fruits too are various and wholesome, the soil nourishing of its own accord the crops of chance-sprung growths. Of laurels and box and myrtles there is a wild wood on those cliffs.

10.15. I believe indeed that they were carried away, not by divine inspiration, but by wantonness, so that they plucked here and there the leaves of ivy and vines, and, wreathed with the foliage, wandered through the whole grove like men possessed by Bacchus.

10.16. So with the voices of so many thousands adoring the god, the guardian of that grove, the ridges and valleys of the mountain resounded, the licence having spread, beginning from a few — as usually happens — suddenly to all.

10.17. For, as if in the midst of peace, they stretched their bodies along the grass and the heaped foliage. And the king, not turning away from this chance gaiety, all things being lavishly provided for feasting, for ten days kept his army busied in the service of Father Liber.

10.18. Who would deny that surpassing glory too is more often the gift of fortune than of valour? For the enemy did not dare to attack them even feasting and drowsy with wine, terrified by the noise of the revellers and shriekers no otherwise than if the shout of men fighting had been heard. The same good fortune covered them, returning drunken and reveling from the Ocean, in the very faces of the enemy.

10.19. From here they came to the region which is called Daedala. The inhabitants had abandoned their seats and fled into the pathless and wooded mountains. So he passed through Acadira, equally wasted and forsaken by the flight of those who dwelt there.

10.20. So necessity changed the method of the war. For his forces being divided, he displayed his arms in several places at once, and the enemy, overpowered where they had not expected him, were wholly subdued by every kind of disaster.

10.21. Ptolemy took very many cities, Alexander the greatest: and again he joined the forces which he had distributed.

10.22. Then, the river Choaspes being crossed, leaving Coenus at the siege of a rich city — the inhabitants call it Beira — he himself came to Mazaga. Lately Assacanus, whose kingdom it had been, being dead, his mother Cleophis presided over the region and city.

10.23. Thirty-eight thousand foot defended the city, strong not by situation only, but also by work. For where it faces east, it is girdled by a torrent stream, which, with steep banks on either side, hinders approach to the city.

10.24. To the west and south, as if of set purpose, nature has piled up exceedingly high cliffs, below which caverns and chasms, hollowed out into the depths by long age, lie; and where they end, a ditch of vast labour is set against the way.

10.25. A wall of thirty-five stades embraces the city, whose lower parts are built of stone, the upper of unbaked brick. As a binding of the brick are stones, which they set between, so that the brittle material might rest upon the harder; and at the same time earth diluted with water.

10.26. But, lest the whole should settle, strong beams had been set on, on which planking thrown over both covered and made the walls passable.

10.27. As Alexander was surveying these fortifications and uncertain of his plan — since he could neither fill the caverns except with a mound, nor otherwise bring his engines up to the walls — a man on the wall struck him with an arrow:

10.28. and the missile happened to fall on his calf. Its point being plucked out, he ordered his horse to be brought up, and, borne on it, even with his wound unbound, carried out his purpose no less actively.

10.29. But when his wounded leg hung down, and the wound, the blood dried and growing cold, aggravated his pain, he is reported to have said that he was indeed called the son of Jupiter, but that he felt the ills of a sick body.

10.30. Yet he did not withdraw to the camp before he had surveyed everything and declared what he wished done. So, as had been commanded, some demolished the buildings outside the city and drew off a vast mass of material for making the mound, others threw the trunks of great trees with their branches, and masses of rocks, into the caverns.

10.31. And now the mound had levelled the topmost height of the ground: so towers were raised, which works, by the great ardour of the soldiers, were completed within nine days. To view these the king came forward, the scar not yet drawn over his wound, and, the soldiers being praised, ordered the engines to be brought up, from which a vast force of missiles was poured upon the defenders.

10.32. Above all, the moving towers, unused as they were to such works, terrified them, and they believed that such great masses, aided by no force that could be seen, were driven by the power of the gods: they said too that the wall-spears and the exceedingly heavy spears hurled by the engines did not befit mortals.

10.33. And so, despairing of the city's defence, they withdrew into the citadel. Thence, because nothing lay open to the besieged but surrender, envoys came down to the king to ask for pardon.

10.34. This being obtained, the queen came with a great troop of noble women pouring libations of wine from golden bowls.

10.35. She herself, her little son set at the king's knees, obtained not pardon only, but even the honour of her former fortune: for she was addressed as queen. And some believed that more was granted to her beauty than to compassion:

10.36. certainly to the boy too, afterward born of her in whatever fashion, the name of Alexander was given.

11.1. From here Polypercon, sent with the army to the city of Hora, defeated the disorderly townsmen in battle: and, having followed them as they were driven within the fortifications, reduced the city into submission.

11.2. Many inglorious towns, abandoned by their own people, came into the king's power. The inhabitants of these, in arms, seized a rock called Aornos. Report had spread abroad that this had been besieged by Hercules in vain, and that he had been forced by an earthquake to desist.

11.3. Alexander, at a loss for a plan, because on every side the rock was sheer and abrupt, was approached by a certain old man, acquainted with the places, with his two sons, promising that, if there were a reward for the effort, he would show the way of approach.

11.4. Alexander fixed eighty talents to be given, and, one of the youths being kept as a hostage, sent the man himself to carry out what he had offered.

11.5. To the light-armed troops was given as guide Myllinas, the king's secretary. For it was resolved that these should climb to the topmost ridge by a circuit, by which they might deceive the enemy.

11.6. The rock does not, like most, rise to a lofty summit by moderate and gentle slopes, but is raised most of all in the manner of a cone, whose lower parts are broader, the higher come together in a narrower compass, the topmost rise to a sharp peak.

11.7. The river Indus reaches its roots, very deep, with rough banks on either side: on the other part there are chasms and steep ravines. Nor did any other way of storming lie open, than that they should be filled up.

11.8. A wood was at hand: this the king ordered to be felled in such a way that bare trunks should be thrown down: for the branches clothed with foliage would have hindered the bearers. He himself first threw down a lopped tree, and the shout of the army, an index of their eagerness, followed, no one shirking the task which the king had taken up.

11.9. So within the seventh day they had filled the chasms, when the king ordered the archers and the Agrianians to strain up the steeps. And he chose thirty of the readiest youths from his own cohort:

11.10. as their leaders were given Charus and Alexander, whom the king reminded of the name which he had in common with himself. And at first, because the peril was so manifest, it was resolved that the king himself should not undergo the hazard:

11.11. but when the signal was given by trumpet, the man of ready boldness, turning to his bodyguards, bade them follow him, and was the first to assail the rock. Nor thereafter did any of the Macedonians hold back, and, leaving their posts, of their own accord they followed the king.

11.12. The fall of many was pitiable, whom, slipped from the steep rock, the river flowing past swallowed up — a sad spectacle even to those not in peril: but when, by another's destruction, they were warned what they themselves had to fear, their pity being turned into fear, they wept not for the dead, but for themselves.

11.13. And now they had come to a point whence they could not return, save as victors, without destruction, the barbarians rolling huge stones upon them as they climbed, struck by which they fell headlong back, their footing unsteady and slippery.

11.14. Yet Alexander and Charus, whom with thirty picked men the king had sent ahead, had got up, and had now begun to fight hand to hand: but, since the barbarians showered weapons from above, they themselves were oftener struck than they wounded.

11.15. So Alexander, mindful both of his name and of his promise, while he fought more keenly than warily, pierced on every side, was overwhelmed.

11.16. When Charus saw him fallen, he began to rush upon the enemy, forgetful of all but vengeance, and killed many with his spear, some with his sword: but, since so many hands assailed him alone, he fell lifeless over the body of his friend.

11.17. The king, moved no more than was fitting by the death of the readiest youths and of the rest of the soldiers, gave the signal for retreat.

11.18. It was their salvation that they withdrew gradually and unafraid, and that the barbarians, content to have driven off the enemy, did not press the retreating.

11.19. But Alexander, although he had resolved to desist from the undertaking — since no hope of gaining the rock offered itself — yet made a show of one persisting in the siege.

11.20. For he ordered both the roads to be beset and the towers to be brought up and fresh men to succeed the weary. His persistence being learned, the Indians for two days indeed and two nights feasted with a display, not of confidence only, but even of victory, beating their drums after their custom:

11.21. but on the third night the din of drums had ceased to be heard, while from the whole rock torches gleamed, which the barbarians had lit, that their flight might be the safer for themselves, about to run by night, in darkness, over the pathless rocks.

11.22. The king, Balacrus being sent ahead to spy, learned that the rock had been abandoned by the flight of the Indians.

11.23. Then, the signal being given that all should shout together, he struck fear into the disorderly fugitives: and many, as if the enemy were at hand, hurled headlong over the slippery rocks and the trackless crags, perished; more, maimed in some part of their limbs, were deserted by the unhurt.

11.24. The king, conqueror of the place rather than of the enemy, yet gave the appearance of a great victory by sacrifices and worship of the gods. Altars were set on the rock to Minerva the Victorious.

11.25. To the guides of the road by which he had ordered the light-armed to climb, although they had performed less than their promises, the reward was paid in good faith; and the guardianship of the rock and of the region joined to it was committed to Sisocostus.

12.1. Thence he advanced to Ecbolima, and, when he had learned that the narrows of the road were beset by twenty thousand armed men under a certain Erix, he handed over the heavier column of the army to Coenus to be led by moderate marches,

12.2. and himself, going on ahead, by means of his slingers and archers dislodged those who had beset the pass, and made a way for the forces following him.

12.3. The Indians, whether from hatred of their leader or to win the favour of the victor, attacked Erix as he fled and killed him, and brought his head and his arms to Alexander. He granted impunity to the deed, but, for example's sake, denied honour.

12.4. From here, in sixteen days' march, he came to the river Indus, and found everything, as he had ordered, prepared for the crossing by Hephaestion. There reigned in that region Omphis, who had been the author, even to his father, of surrendering the kingdom to Alexander, and after his parent's death had sent envoys

12.5. to consult him whether he wished him to reign in the meantime, or to await his coming as a private man.

12.6. Permission being given that he should reign, he yet did not bring himself to usurp the right granted. He had indeed received Hephaestion kindly, measuring out free grain for his forces, yet had not gone to meet him, that he might experience the faith of none but the king.

12.7. And so he went out to meet him as he came with his army in arms; the elephants too, mingled at moderate intervals with the column of soldiers, had given from afar the appearance of fortresses.

12.8. And at first Alexander believed that not an ally but an enemy was approaching, and had now ordered both his soldiers themselves to take up arms and his cavalry to part to the wings, ready for battle. But the Indian, learning of the Macedonians' error, the rest being bidden to halt, himself spurred on the horse on which he rode: the same Alexander too did, whether an enemy or a friend met him, safe either by his own valour or by the other's faith.

12.9. They met, as could be understood from the countenance of each, with friendly minds. But without an interpreter speech could not be joined: and so, one being brought up, the barbarian said that he had come to meet him with his army, about to hand over at once the whole strength of his empire, and had not waited until faith should be given through messengers.

12.10. He committed his person and his kingdom to one whom he knew to be one who, warring for glory, feared nothing more than the repute of treachery. The king, glad at the barbarian's frankness, both gave his right hand, the pledge of his faith, and restored his kingdom.

12.11. There were fifty-six elephants, which he handed over to Alexander, and many cattle of surpassing size, bulls to the number of three thousand — a herd precious in that region and dear to the hearts of its rulers.

12.12. To Alexander, asking whether he had more husbandmen or soldiers, he replied that, being at war with two kings, he had need of a greater band of soldiers than of husbandmen.

12.13. Abisares and Porus they were; but in Porus authority was preeminent. Each reigned beyond the river Hydaspes, and had resolved to try the fortune of war, whoever should bring arms against him.

12.14. Omphis, Alexander permitting, both took up the royal emblem and, after the manner of his nation, the name which had been his father's: his countrymen called him Taxiles, the name following the empire, into whomsoever it passed.

12.15. So, when he had received Alexander hospitably for three days, on the fourth he both showed how much grain he had furnished to the forces which Hephaestion had led, and gave as a gift golden crowns to him and to all his friends, and besides these eighty talents of coined silver.

12.16. At this kindness of his Alexander, wonderfully glad, both returned the things which he had given, and added a thousand talents from the plunder which he carried, and many banqueting vessels of gold and silver, very much Persian raiment, and thirty horses from his own with the same trappings to which they were accustomed when they bore the king himself.

12.17. Which liberality, as it had bound the barbarian, so it deeply offended his friends. Of whom Meleager, having over supper used too liberal wine, said that he congratulated Alexander that at least in India he had found a man worthy of a thousand talents.

12.18. The king, not having forgotten how ill he had borne it that he had killed Cleitus for a rashness of tongue, restrained his anger indeed, but said that envious men are nothing else but their own torturers.

13.1. On the next day envoys of Abisares came to the king: they committed all things, just as had been commanded, to his dominion, and, faith being mutually pledged, were sent back to their king.

13.2. Porus too, believing that he could be driven to surrender by the fame of his name, he sent Cleochares to him, to declare that he should pay tribute and meet the king at the first entrance of his borders. Porus answered that he would do one of these things, that he would be ready as the king entered his kingdom — but in arms.

13.3. Now Alexander had resolved to cross the Hydaspes, when Barzaentes, the author of the revolt in Arachosia, was brought in chains, and thirty elephants taken at the same time — an opportune aid against the Indians: for in beasts rather than in an army lay their hope and strength.

13.4. Damaraxus too, king of a small part of the Indians, who had joined himself to Barzaentes, was brought in chains.

13.5. So, the deserter and the chieftain being given to custody, and the elephants handed over to Taxiles, he came to the river Hydaspes, on the farther bank of which Porus had taken his stand, to bar the enemy's crossing.

13.6. He had set against them eighty-five elephants of surpassing strength of body, and beyond these three hundred chariots and nearly thirty thousand foot, among whom were archers, as has been said before, with weapons too heavy to be discharged conveniently.

13.7. An elephant, towering above the rest of the beasts, bore himself; and arms picked out with gold and silver graced his body of rare size.

13.8. His spirit was equal to the strength of his body and his wisdom as great as could be among rude men. The Macedonians were terrified not only by the sight of the enemy, but also by the size of the river that had to be crossed. Spread to the breadth of four stades, with a deep bed and nowhere disclosing a ford, it had made the appearance of a vast sea.

13.9. Nor, for the breadth of the widely-stagnating waters, did it check its rush, but, as if its banks came together into a strait, it was borne, a torrent and pent-up; and waves dashed back in many places showed that hidden rocks lay within.

13.10. More terrible was the face of the bank, which horses and men had filled. There stood huge masses of vast bodies, and, deliberately provoked, they wearied the ears with a horrible trumpeting.

13.11. On this side the river, on that the enemy, had struck with sudden panic breasts capacious indeed of good hope and often, in truth, proved.

13.12. For they believed that the unsteady rafts could neither be steered to the bank nor brought safely to land. There were in the middle of the river frequent islands, to which both Indians and Macedonians crossed, swimming, with their arms lifted above their heads. There light skirmishes were joined, and each king, by the hazard of a small matter, made trial of the issue of the greatest.

13.13. But in the Macedonian army, conspicuous for rashness and daring, were Hegesimachus and Nicanor, noble youths and, by the unbroken good fortune of their party, kindled to despise every peril:

13.14. under their lead the readiest of the youths, armed only with lances, swam across to the island which a numerous enemy held, and killed many of the Indians, armed by nothing better than their daring.

13.15. They could have departed with glory, if rashness ever found a measure when it was fortunate: but while they awaited, contemptuously and arrogantly, those coming up, hemmed in by those who had swum across secretly, they were overwhelmed at a distance with weapons.

13.16. Those who had escaped the enemy were either carried off by the river's force or caught in its eddies. And that fight much raised the confidence of Porus, who beheld all from the bank.

13.17. Alexander, at a loss for a plan, at last contrived against the enemy the following stratagem. There was an island in the river larger than the rest, wooded too and fit for hiding ambushes, and a ditch besides, very deep, not far from the bank which he himself held, able to conceal not foot-soldiers only, but men with horses as well:

13.18. so, that he might turn the enemy's eyes from the watch of this opportunity, he ordered Ptolemy to ride about with all his squadrons far from the island, and from time to time to terrify the Indians with shouting, as though he were about to swim the river.

13.19. For several days Ptolemy did this, and by this device he compelled Porus too to turn his column toward the part to which he pretended to make.

13.20. Now the island was out of the enemy's sight. Alexander ordered his own tent to be set up on the opposite part of the bank, and the cohort accustomed to attend him to stand before that tent, and all the apparatus of royal magnificence to be displayed of set purpose before the enemy's eyes.

13.21. Attalus too, his own age-mate and not unlike in the look of face and body — especially when seen from afar — he adorned with the royal robe, to give the appearance that the king himself was presiding over that bank and not thinking of a crossing.

13.22. The effect of this plan was at first delayed by the weather, but soon a storm aided it, fortune turning even adverse things to good outcomes.

13.23. He was preparing to cross the river with the rest of his forces into the region of the island, of which we spoke before, the enemy being turned against those who with Ptolemy beset the lower bank, when a storm poured down rain scarcely bearable under shelter. And the soldiers, overwhelmed by the downpour, fled back to land, leaving the boats and rafts; but the noise of those in confusion could not be heard by the enemy, the winds roaring against it.

13.24. Then in a moment of time the rain was checked, but the clouds gathered themselves so thick that they hid the light, and scarcely could the faces of those conversing among themselves be recognized.

13.25. Another man the night drawn over the sky would have terrified, when an unknown river had to be navigated, the enemy perhaps holding that very bank which they, blind and without foresight, were making for.

13.26. But the king, summoning glory from peril, and judging the darkness, which terrified the rest, to be his own opportunity, the signal being given that all should embark on the rafts in silence, ordered that on which he himself rode to be pushed off first.

13.27. The bank that was sought was empty of enemies: for still Porus was watching Ptolemy only. So, one ship sticking, which the waves had dashed against a rock, the rest got over, and he ordered the soldiers to take their arms and go to their ranks.

14.1. And now he was leading his column, divided into wings, when it was announced to Porus that the bank was held by arms and men, and that the crisis of affairs was at hand. And at first, by the fault of human nature indulging his own hope, he believed that Abisares, his ally in the war — for so it had been agreed — was coming.

14.2. Soon, a clearer light disclosing the enemy's line, he set against the approaching column a hundred four-horse chariots and four thousand cavalry. The commander of the forces which he sent ahead was Spitaces, his own brother, the chief of his strength being in the chariots:

14.3. each carried six men, two shield-bearers, two archers stationed on either side; the rest were charioteers, by no means unarmed: for they had several javelins, which, when there was need to fight at close quarters, the reins being let go, they hurled at the enemy.

14.4. But there was scarcely any use of this aid that day. For, as has been said above, the rain, poured more violently than usual, had made the plains slippery and unfit for riding, and the heavy and almost immovable chariots stuck in the mire and quagmires.

14.5. On the other side Alexander, with a free and light column, briskly bore in. The Scythians and Dahae, first of all, assailed the Indians: then he sent Perdiccas with the cavalry against the enemy's right wing.

14.6. Now the battle had stirred on every side, when those who drove the chariots, judging this the last aid of their own people, with loosened reins began to rush into the midst of the hazard.

14.7. That evil was a danger to both. For both the Macedonian foot were trampled at the first onset, and the chariots, driven over slippery and trackless ground, threw off those by whom they were guided.

14.8. The frightened horses of others hurled the cars headlong, not into the quagmires and pools only, but even into the river.

14.9. A few, driven on by the enemy's weapons, penetrated to Porus, who was urging on the fight most fiercely. He, when he saw the chariots scattered and wandering over the whole line without drivers, distributed the elephants to the nearest of his friends.

14.10. Behind them he had placed the foot and the archers and those wont to beat the drums: this stood to the Indians in place of the sound of trumpets, nor were they disturbed by their noise, their ears being long since softened to the familiar sound.

14.11. The image of Hercules was carried before the column of the foot: this was the greatest incentive to the fighters, and to have deserted those who bore it was held a soldier's disgrace.

14.12. They had even sanctioned a capital penalty for those who did not bring it back from the line, the fear which they had once conceived of that enemy being turned even into religious veneration. The Macedonians were checked for a little while by the sight not only of the beasts, but also of the king himself.

14.13. The beasts, set among the armed men, had from afar made the appearance of towers; Porus himself had nearly exceeded human size: the beast on which he rode seemed to add to Porus' size, towering as much above the rest as he himself surpassed other men.

14.14. And so Alexander, having surveyed both the king and the column of the Indians, said: "At last I see a peril matched to my spirit: the business is at once with beasts and with excellent men."

14.15. And, looking at Coenus, he said: "When I, accompanied by Ptolemy and Perdiccas and Hephaestion, make an attack on the enemy's left wing, and you see me in the midst of the heat of the contest, do you move the right and bear your standards against them when they are thrown into confusion. You, Antigenes, and you, Leonnatus, and Tauron, charge now into the middle of the line and press hard upon the front.

14.16. Our spears, exceedingly long and strong, can be of use at no other time more than against the beasts and their drivers: dislodge those who ride them, and stab the beasts themselves. It is a doubtful kind of aid, and rages more fiercely against its own side: for against the enemy it is driven by command, against its own by fear."

14.17. Having spoken these things, he spurred on his horse, the first. And now, as had been determined, he had assailed the ranks of the enemy, when Coenus with a mighty force bore in from the left wing.

14.18. The phalanx too broke through the middle of the Indian line at a single onset. But Porus, where he had perceived the cavalry charging, ordered the beasts to be driven: but the slow and almost immovable animal could not match the swiftness of the horses. Nor was there even any use of arrows to the barbarians.

14.19. For these, long and exceedingly heavy, they do not fit on aptly and conveniently unless they have first set the bow on the ground; then, struggling to make their shots on ground slippery and for that reason hindering the effort, they are forestalled by the speed of the enemy.

14.20. So, the king's command being scorned — which usually happens, when, men being in confusion, fear rather than the commander begins to command — there were as many commanders as there were straying columns:

14.21. one bade them join the line, another divide it; some bade them stand, and not a few ride round the enemy's rear; nothing was decided for the common good.

14.22. Porus, nevertheless, with a few in whom shame had prevailed over fear, set about gathering the scattered, and to go to meet the enemy, and ordered the elephants to be driven before the column of his own men.

14.23. The beasts struck great terror, and their unwonted trumpeting had thrown into confusion not the horses only — an animal so fearful at all things — but men too and their ranks.

14.24. Now those who a little before were victors were looking round for a place of flight, when Alexander sent against the beasts the Agrianians and Thracians, light-armed, soldiers better at skirmishing than in close formation.

14.25. These hurled a vast force of weapons both at the elephants and at those who guided them. The phalanx too began to press steadily on the terrified.

14.26. But some, pursuing the beasts too greedily, provoked them against themselves with wounds.

14.27. Trampled, therefore, under their feet, they were a warning to the rest to press on more sparingly.

14.28. Especially terrible was that sight, when the beasts seized arms and men with their trunks and handed them over their backs to those who guided them. So the doubtful battle, now of those pursuing, now of those fleeing the elephants, drew out the varying contest far into the day, until with axes — for this kind of aid had been prepared — they began to cut off the beasts' feet.

14.29. Copides they called swords slightly curved, like sickles, with which they aimed at the trunks of the beasts. Nor did the fear of death, nor even, in death itself, of a new kind of torment, leave anything untried.

14.30. So the elephants, at last wearied by their wounds, overthrew their own people in their rush, and those who had guided them, hurled to the ground, were trampled by them. And now, like cattle, more frightened than dangerous, they were being driven beyond the line,

14.31. when Porus, deserted by the greater number, began to hurl from his own elephant the many weapons prepared beforehand against those surrounding him. And, many being wounded from afar, he himself, exposed, was aimed at from every side.

14.32. Nine wounds by now he had received, here on the back, there on the breast, and, much blood being shed, with languid hands he threw weapons that slipped rather than were hurled.

14.33. Nor less briskly did the beast, possessed by frenzy, not yet wounded, charge into the ranks, until the beast's driver saw the king, his limbs failing, his arms let go, scarcely master of his mind.

14.34. Then he urged the beast into flight, Alexander pursuing: but his horse, pierced with many wounds and failing, sank, setting down the king rather than throwing him off.

14.35. And so, while he changed his horse, he pursued the more slowly. Meanwhile the brother of Taxiles, the Indian king, sent ahead by Alexander, began to warn Porus not to persist in trying the last extremity, and to surrender to the victor.

14.36. But he, although his strength was exhausted and his blood failing, yet, roused at the familiar voice, said: "I recognize the brother of Taxiles, the betrayer of his own empire and kingdom," and hurled at him the one weapon which by chance had not slipped away: which pierced through the middle of his breast to his back.

14.37. This last work of valour performed, he began to flee more keenly. But the elephant too, which had received many weapons, was failing: so he stayed his flight and set the foot-soldier against the pursuing enemy.

14.38. Now Alexander had come up, and, having learned the obstinacy of Porus, forbade that the resisters be spared. So from every side weapons were heaped both upon the foot and upon Porus himself, by which at last, overborne, he began to slip from the beast.

14.39. The Indian who guided the elephant, judging that he was dismounting, ordered the elephant, after the usual fashion, to kneel down: and when it lowered itself, the rest too — for so they had been trained — sank their bodies to the ground.

14.40. This delivered both Porus and the rest to the victors. The king, believing him killed, ordered the body of Porus to be stripped, and those who should draw off his corslet and garment ran up; when the beast began to defend its master and to attack the spoilers, and, lifting his body up, to set it again upon its back. So it was overwhelmed with weapons on every side, and, it being slain, Porus was placed in a vehicle.

14.41. When the king saw him lifting his eyes, moved not by hatred but by pity, he said: "What madness, in heaven's name, drove you, the fame of my exploits being known, to try the fortune of war, when Taxiles was so near a pattern to you of my clemency toward the surrendered?"

14.42. But he said: "Since you ask, I will answer with the freedom which you have given by asking. I thought no man braver than myself. For I knew my own strength, not yet having tried yours: the outcome of the war has taught me that you are the braver. But not even so am I little fortunate, who am second to you."

14.43. Asked again what he himself judged the victor ought to determine: "What this day," he said, "counsels you, on which you have learned how fleeting good fortune is."

14.44. By his warning he profited more than if he had entreated: for the greatness of his spirit, unterrified and unbroken even by fortune, the king deigned to receive not with compassion only, but even with honour.

14.45. He cared for the sick man no otherwise than if he had fought on his own side: and, when he had recovered, beyond all men's hope, he received him into the number of his friends, and soon presented him with a wider kingdom than he had held.

14.46. Nor indeed did his nature have anything more solid or more constant than admiration of true praise and glory: yet he weighed fame more simply in an enemy than in a fellow-citizen. For he believed that his own greatness could be diminished by his own people, but that the same would be the more illustrious, the greater those had been whom he himself had conquered.