Book 9

1.1. Alexander, delighted by a victory so memorable—one that, he believed, had opened to him the limits of the East—offered sacrifices to the Sun, and then, before the assembled army, praised his soldiers, so that they might face the remainder of the war with readier spirits, and told them that whatever strength India had possessed had been laid low in that single battle:

1.2. that the rest would be rich plunder, and that the renowned wealth eminent in that region was the prize they were marching toward. The spoils taken from the Persians, he said, were now cheap and outworn: with gems and pearls, with gold and ivory, they would fill not only their own homes but all Macedonia and Greece.

1.3. The soldiers, greedy both for money and for glory, and at the same time aware that his promises had never deceived them, pledged their effort. He dismissed them in good hope and ordered ships to be built, so that, once he had traversed the whole of Asia, he might look upon the boundary of the world, the sea.

1.4. There was abundant timber for shipbuilding on the nearby mountains; but the men who set about felling it discovered serpents of unheard-of size.

1.5. Rhinoceroses too, an animal rare elsewhere, were found on those same mountains. This name, however, was given to the beasts by the Greeks: the Indians, ignorant of that tongue, use another in their own language.

1.6. The king founded two cities, one on each bank of the river he had crossed, and presented each of the commanders of his forces with a crown and a thousand gold pieces; the rest too were honoured in proportion, either to the rank they held in his friendship or to the service they had rendered.

1.7. Abisares, who before the battle with Porus had sent envoys to Alexander, now sent others, promising that he would do everything he was commanded, provided he were not forced to surrender his own person; for he would neither go on living without his royal power, nor reign as a prisoner.

1.8. Alexander had it announced to him that if he found it burdensome to come to him, then he himself would come to him. From there he crossed a very swift river and advanced into the interior of India.

1.9. There were forests spread out over an almost boundless expanse, shaded by tall trees that rose to an extraordinary height.

1.10. Many of their branches, bent down like great trunks, rose up again from the ground where they had curved, so that the appearance was not of a branch springing up afresh, but of a tree generated from its own root.

1.11. The climate was healthful: for the shade tempers the force of the sun, and water flows abundantly from springs.

1.12. Yet here too there was a great abundance of serpents, their scales giving back the gleam of gold. No venom is more deadly than theirs: indeed, instant death followed the bite, until a remedy was offered by the natives.

1.13. From there they passed through deserts to the river Hyarotis. Joined to the river was a grove dark with trees unseen elsewhere, and thronged with a multitude of wild peacocks.

1.14. Moving camp from there, he took by assault a town set not far off, and, accepting hostages, imposed tribute. He then came to a city large, as cities go in that region, fortified not only by a wall but also by a marsh.

1.15. The barbarians, however, came out to fight with their wagons yoked together: some had spears for weapons, others axes, and they would leap from wagon to wagon with a vigorous bound whenever they wished to come to the aid of their hard-pressed comrades.

1.16. At first this unfamiliar kind of fighting alarmed the Macedonians, since they were wounded from a distance; then, scorning so crude a device, they poured around the wagons on both sides and began to cut down those who resisted.

1.17. And he ordered the bonds by which the wagons were linked to be cut, so that each might more easily be surrounded. And so, having lost eight thousand of their men, the enemy took refuge in the town.

1.18. The next day, with ladders set against the walls on every side, the ramparts were seized. Speed saved a few: when, on learning that the city had fallen, they swam across the marsh, they carried great terror into the neighbouring towns, declaring that an unconquerable army, and assuredly an army of gods, had come.

1.19. Alexander sent Perdiccas with a light force to lay waste that region, handed over part of his troops to Eumenes, so that he too might compel the barbarians to surrender, and himself led the rest against a strong city into which the inhabitants of other towns had also fled.

1.20. The townspeople sent envoys to entreat the king, yet none the less they were preparing for war. For a dissension had arisen and divided the common people into opposing counsels: some thought anything preferable to surrender, others that there was no help in themselves.

1.21. But while nothing was decided in common, those who leaned toward surrender opened the gates and admitted the enemy.

1.22. Alexander, though he might justly have been angry with the authors of the war, nevertheless granted pardon to all, and, accepting hostages, then moved his camp to the nearest city.

1.23. The hostages were led at the head of the column; and when the inhabitants recognized them from the walls, as belonging to the same nation, they called them into conference. They, by recounting both the clemency and the might of the king, drove them to surrender; and the other cities, subdued in like manner, he received into his protection.

1.24. From there they came into the kingdom of Sopithes. This nation, as the barbarians believe, excels in wisdom and is governed by good customs.

1.25. The children born to them are not reared at the discretion of their parents, but of those to whom is entrusted the duty of examining the infants' condition. If any are marked by defects, or are rendered useless in some part of their limbs, they order them to be put to death.

1.26. They form marriages not on the basis of family and nobility joined together, but with a view to the chosen beauty of the body, since the same is looked for in the children.

1.27. The town of this nation, against which Alexander had advanced his forces, was held by Sopithes himself. The gates were shut, but no armed men showed themselves on the walls and towers, and the Macedonians were in doubt whether the inhabitants had abandoned the city or were hiding themselves by some stratagem:

1.28. when suddenly the gate was thrown open and the Indian king came out with his two grown sons, far surpassing all the other barbarians in beauty of person.

1.29. His robe was wrought with gold and purple, and covered even his legs; he had set gems into his golden sandals; his upper and lower arms too were adorned with pearls;

1.30. from his ears hung jewels remarkable for their brilliance and size; a golden staff was set off with beryls. Handing this over, he prayed that the king would receive him in safety, and surrendered himself, his children, and his nation.

1.31. There are noble hunting dogs in that region: they are said to refrain from barking when they have caught sight of a wild beast, and they are most fierce against lions.

1.32. To display their power to Alexander, Sopithes ordered a lion of remarkable size to be let into an enclosure, and only four dogs to be set upon it. They quickly seized the beast; then one of the men accustomed to such tasks began to drag away the leg of one of the dogs that, with the others, clung to the lion, and, because it would not let go, to cut the leg off with a knife.

1.33. Even so its tenacity was not overcome, and he set about cutting away another part, and from there too went on slashing with the knife at the dog as it clung no less firmly; but even in death it kept its teeth fixed in the beast's wound. So great a passion for the hunt, it is recorded, has Nature bred in those animals.

1.34. For my part I set down more than I believe; for I can neither bring myself to affirm what I doubt, nor to omit what I have received.

1.35. Leaving Sopithes, then, in his own kingdom, Alexander advanced to the river Hypasis, where he was joined by Hephaestion, who had subdued a different region.

1.36. Phegeus was king of the neighbouring nation: having ordered his people to cultivate their fields as they were accustomed, he came to meet Alexander with gifts, declining nothing that he commanded.

2.1. The king halted with him for two days. On the third he had resolved to cross the river, a passage difficult not only because of the breadth of the waters, but also obstructed by rocks:

2.2. having therefore questioned Phegeus on what he needed to know, he learned that beyond the river there was a journey of twelve days through vast wastes, and that the Ganges then succeeded, the greatest of all the rivers of India,

2.3. that the farther bank was inhabited by the nations of the Gangaridae and the Prasii, and that their king was Aggrammes, who blocked the roads with twenty thousand cavalry and two hundred thousand infantry.

2.4. To this he added that he was bringing two thousand four-horse chariots and—the chief object of terror—elephants, which he said made up the number of three thousand.

2.5. All this seemed incredible to the king: he therefore questioned Porus—for he was with him—whether what was reported was true.

2.6. Porus affirmed that the strength of the nation and of the kingdom was not falsely boasted, but that the man who reigned was not only of low birth but of the very meanest station: for his father, a barber barely keeping off hunger by his daily earnings, had been dear to the queen because of his not unhandsome appearance.

2.7. By her he had been advanced to a closer place in the friendship of the king then reigning; and when that king had been killed by treachery, under the pretext of guardianship he had usurped the kingdom of his children, and, after murdering the boys, had begotten this man who now reigns—hated and despised by the people, mindful rather of his father's fortune than of his own.

2.8. The affirmation of Porus cast a manifold anxiety upon the king's mind. He scorned the enemy and their beasts; he dreaded the lie of the land and the force of the rivers:

2.9. to pursue, banished as they were almost to the farthest limit of human affairs, and to root them out, seemed an arduous thing; yet again his greed for glory and his insatiable craving for fame let nothing seem inaccessible, nothing remote.

2.10. And at times he doubted whether the Macedonians, who had traversed so many tracts of the earth, who had grown old in the battle line and the camp, would follow him across the rivers set in their way, through so many obstacles of nature standing against them: men who, overflowing and laden with the booty already won, would rather enjoy it than wear themselves out in acquiring more.

2.11. His own spirit and his soldiers' were not the same: he, having embraced in his mind the rule of the whole world, still stood at the very beginning of his labours, while the soldier, worn out by toil, sought only the nearest reward, now that danger was at last ended.

2.12. So desire conquered reason, and, summoning the soldiers to an assembly, he addressed them in much this manner: "I am not unaware, soldiers, that many things which might frighten you have, in these days, been deliberately spread abroad by the inhabitants of India:

2.13. but the lying vanity of liars is no surprise to you. So the Persians made terrible the passes of Cilicia, the plains of Mesopotamia, the Tigris and Euphrates—one of which we crossed by a ford, the other by a bridge.

2.14. Never is rumour brought to a clear truth: all things, in the telling, are made greater than the reality. Our own glory too, though it rests on solid ground, yet has more of name than of substance.

2.15. Who, a little while ago, believed that the beasts presenting the appearance of walls, that the river Hydaspes, that the rest of what was greater in the hearing than in the fact, could be withstood? Long ago, by Hercules, we would have fled from Asia, if mere fables could have defeated us.

2.16. Do you believe that herds of elephants are greater than herds of cattle anywhere are, when the animal is rare, not easily caught, and far more difficult to tame?

2.17. And yet the same vanity has counted up their forces of infantry and cavalry. For a river, the more widely it is spread, the more calmly it lies as a pool: it is streams confined within narrow banks and forced into a narrower channel that drive on torrent waters; over a broad bed the current is more sluggish.

2.18. Besides, all the danger is on the bank, where the enemy awaits men bringing their boats to shore. Thus, however broad the river that lies between, the same will be the crisis for those landing on the shore.

2.19. But let us pretend that all this is true: is it the size of the beasts that frightens us, or the multitude of the enemy? As to the elephants, we have a present example: they charged more violently upon their own people than upon us; their huge bodies were maimed with axes and bills.

2.20. And what does it matter whether there be as many as Porus had, or thousands of them, when, with one or two wounded, you have seen the rest turned to flight?

2.21. Moreover, even a few are governed with difficulty and trouble; but so many thousands gathered together crush themselves, when, unfit as the masses of those vast bodies are, they can neither stand nor flee. For my own part I have so despised these animals that, though I had them myself, I did not put them in the front, well knowing that they bring more danger to their own side than to the enemy.

2.22. But it is the multitude of cavalry and infantry that disturbs you! For you have been used to fighting against few, and now for the first time you will face a disorderly horde.

2.23. Witness, against the multitude, the invincible strength of the Macedonians: the river Granicus, and Cilicia flooded with the blood of the Persians, and Arbela, whose plains are strewn with the bones of those whom we vanquished.

2.24. Too late have you begun to count the legions of the enemy, after by your conquests you have made a wilderness in Asia. When we were sailing across the Hellespont, that was the time to think of our small numbers: now the Scythians follow us, Bactrian auxiliaries are at hand, the Dahae and Sogdiani serve among us.

2.25. And yet I do not trust in that throng: it is your hands I look to, your valour I hold as the surety and pledge of the deeds I am about to do. So long as I stand with you in the line, I count neither my own army nor the enemy's by number: only bring me spirits full of eagerness and confidence.

2.26. We stand not at the threshold of our labours and toils, but at their end: we have reached the rising of the sun and the Ocean. Unless cowardice stands in the way, from there, as victors, with the boundary of the earth subdued, we shall return to our homeland. Do not, as lazy farmers do, through idleness let the ripe fruits slip from your hands.

2.27. The rewards are greater than the dangers: the region is at once rich and unwarlike. And so I am leading you not so much to glory as to plunder. You are worthy to carry home the wealth which that sea casts upon its shores; worthy to leave nothing untried, nothing forgone through fear.

2.28. By yourselves and by your glory, by which you rise above the summit of mankind, and by both my services to you and yours to me, in which we vie with one another, I beg and beseech you: do not desert your foster-son and fellow-soldier—not to say your king—as he approaches the limits of human affairs.

2.29. In all else I have commanded you: this one thing I shall owe you. And it is I who ask you—I, who have never enjoined anything upon you without first offering myself to the dangers, who have often shielded the battle line with my own shield. Do not break in my hands the palm by which I shall equal Hercules and Father Liber, if envy be absent.

2.30. Grant this to my prayers, and break at last your stubborn silence. Where is that shout, the sign of your eagerness? Where is the look of those Macedonians of mine? I do not recognize you, soldiers, nor do I seem to be recognized by you. For some time now I have been knocking on deaf ears, trying to rouse spirits turned away and broken."

2.31. And when they persisted in silence, their heads bowed to the ground, he said: "I do not know what wrong I have unwittingly done you, that you will not even look at me. I seem to myself to be in a solitude. No one answers; no one even refuses.

2.32. Whom am I addressing? And what am I asking? It is your glory and greatness that we claim. Where are those men whose contest I saw a little while ago, as they strove which above all should take up the wounded body of their king? Deserted, forsaken, I am, given over to the enemy.

2.33. But I shall persevere in going on, even alone. Set me before the rivers and the beasts and those nations whose very names make you shudder: I shall find men to follow me when you have deserted me. The Scythians and Bactrians will be with me—enemies a little while ago, now our soldiers.

2.34. Better to die than to be a commander on sufferance. Go home, then, you that return! Go, exulting that you have deserted your king! For my part, I shall find here either the scene of a victory you despaired of, or of an honourable death."

3.1. Not even so could any word be drawn from any of the soldiers. They waited for their leaders and chief men to carry to the king the message that, worn out by wounds and the unbroken toil of soldiering, they did not shrink from their duties, but were unable to bear them. But the leaders, struck dumb with fear, had fixed their faces upon the ground.

3.2. And so first a murmur arose of its own accord, then groans as well, and little by little the grief began to be vented more freely, with tears flowing, so that the king, his anger turned to pity, could not himself—though he wished it—keep his own eyes dry.

3.3. At last, as the whole assembly wept more abundantly, Coenus dared, while the rest hung back, to approach nearer the tribunal, signifying that he wished to speak.

3.4. When the soldiers saw him taking the helmet from his head—for so it is the custom to address the king—they began to urge him to plead the cause of the army.

3.5. Then Coenus said: "May the gods keep impious thoughts far from us! And assuredly they do keep them away: the spirit of your men is the same it always was—to go wherever you command, to fight, to face danger, to commend your name to posterity with our blood. Therefore, if you persist, unarmed and naked and bloodless as we are, however it pleases you, we will follow, or even go before.

3.6. But if you are willing to hear the voices of your soldiers—not feigned, but wrung from them by the utmost necessity—lend, I beg, gracious ears to men who have most steadfastly followed your command and your fortune, and who, wherever you go, will follow still.

3.7. By the greatness of your achievements, O king, you have conquered not the enemy alone, but your own soldiers as well. Whatever mortality could attain, we have fulfilled.

3.8. Having measured out seas and lands, all things are better known to us than to their own inhabitants. We stand almost at the very edge of the world. You are preparing to go into another world and to seek an India unknown even to the Indians. You long to dig out from their lairs and dens men who dwell among wild beasts and serpents, that your conquest may survey more lands than the sun beholds.

3.9. The thought is altogether worthy of your spirit—but higher than ours. For your valour will always be on the increase; our strength is already at its end.

3.10. Look at our bloodless bodies, pierced with so many wounds, rotting with so many scars. Already our weapons are blunted, already our arms fail. We have put on Persian dress, because our own cannot be brought up, and have degenerated into a foreign garb.

3.11. How few have a breastplate? Who has a horse? Order a count to be made of how many have been followed even by their own slaves, of what is left to each man out of the plunder. Conquerors of all, we are destitute of all. Nor do we suffer from luxury: it is on war that we have spent the instruments of war.

3.12. Will you expose this most splendid army, naked, to the beasts? Their number, though the barbarians deliberately exaggerate it, I understand to be great even by their lie.

3.13. But if it is still resolved to penetrate into India, the region to the south is less vast; and once it is subdued, we may run down to that sea which Nature has willed to be the boundary of human affairs.

3.14. Why do you seek by a long circuit the glory that lies ready at hand? Here too the Ocean meets you. Unless you prefer to wander, we have arrived where your fortune leads.

3.15. I have chosen to say these things to you, rather than to these men in your absence, not that I might win the favour of the surrounding army, but that you might hear the voice of men speaking rather than the groan of men muttering."

3.16. When Coenus made an end of his speech, a shout arose on all sides, mingled with weeping, as men called the king their father, their lord, in confused voices.

3.17. And now the other leaders too, and especially the older men—for whom both the excuse was more honourable on account of their age, and the authority greater—made the same entreaties.

3.18. He could neither rebuke their obstinacy nor, in his anger, be appeased; and so, at a loss for counsel, he leapt down from the tribunal and ordered the royal quarters to be closed, all forbidden to approach but the usual attendants.

3.19. Two days were given to his anger; on the third he came forth and ordered twelve altars of squared stone to be raised, a monument of his expedition; he ordered too that the entrenchments of the camp be extended, and that sleeping-places of a larger form than suited the men's stature be left behind, so as to magnify the appearance of everything, preparing a deceptive marvel for posterity.

3.20. From there, retracing the ground he had measured, he pitched his camp at the river Acesines. There, as it chanced, Coenus died of disease; the king indeed grieved at his death, yet added that it was for the sake of a few days that he had embarked upon his long speech—as though he alone were going to see Macedonia.

3.21. By now the fleet which he had ordered to be built was riding on the water. Meanwhile Memnon brought from Thrace a reinforcement of cavalry, a thousand, besides seven thousand infantry from Harpalus, and conveyed arms chased with gold and silver for twenty-five thousand men. When these had been distributed, he ordered the old arms to be burned.

3.22. About to approach the Ocean with a thousand vessels, he left Porus and Taxiles, kings of India—who were at variance and were renewing old hatreds—in their own kingdoms, their friendship secured through a marriage alliance, having found both of them most zealous in building the fleet.

3.23. He also founded two cities: one he called Nicaea, the other Bucephala, dedicating the city to the memory and name of the horse he had lost.

3.24. Then, having ordered the elephants and the baggage to follow by land, he floated down the favouring stream, advancing about forty stadia each day, so that the troops could from time to time be disembarked at suitable places.

4.1. They had come into the region where the river Hydaspes joins the Acesines:

4.2. from here it runs down into the territory of the Sibi. These men relate that their ancestors belonged to the army of Hercules: left behind sick, they had taken the seat which they themselves now held.

4.3. Skins of wild beasts served them for clothing, clubs for weapons, and, even though Greek customs had fallen into disuse among them, they showed many traces of their stock.

4.4. From here he made a landing, advanced two hundred and fifty stadia, laid waste the region, and took by assault the town that was its capital.

4.5. Another nation had set forty thousand infantry on the bank of the river; these, when he had crossed the stream, he drove into flight, and stormed them when they shut themselves within their walls.

4.6. The men of military age were killed, the rest sold. Then, setting about the storming of a second city, he was beaten off by the great violence of its defenders and lost many of the Macedonians. But when he had persisted in the siege, the townspeople, despairing of safety, set fire to their houses and burned themselves and their children and wives in the conflagration.

4.7. And since they themselves fed the fire while the enemy quenched it, the battle took a new form: the inhabitants were destroying the city, the enemy defending it. To such a degree does war turn even the laws of nature into their opposite.

4.8. There was a citadel of the town left untouched, in which he placed a garrison. He himself sailed round the citadel. For three rivers, the greatest in all India after the Ganges, bring their waters up to the fortifications of the citadel: on the north the Indus washes it, on the south the Acesines mingles with the Hydaspes.

4.9. The meeting of the rivers, moreover, raises waves like those of the sea, and, with much turbid mud—which is constantly stirred up by the clash of the waters—the channel by which boats pass is forced into a narrow bed.

4.10. And so, when frequent waves came rolling in and struck the boats now on the prows, now on the sides, the sailors began to take in their sails. But their efforts were checked, here by the surge, there by the headlong swiftness of the rivers.

4.11. Before the eyes of all, two of the larger vessels were sunk; the lighter ones, though they too could not be steered, were nevertheless driven ashore unharmed. The king himself fell among the most rapid whirlpools, by which his ship, spun sideways and not answering the rudder, was carried along.

4.12. He had already stripped the clothing from his body, meaning to throw himself into the river, and his friends were swimming not far off to catch him; and the danger appeared doubtful, whether he swam or persisted in sailing:

4.13. and so with mighty effort they drove the oars, and all the force that human strength could exert was applied, to beat back the waves that came rolling on.

4.14. You would have believed that the waters were split apart and the whirlpools retreated. The ship, at last snatched from them, was yet not brought to the bank, but dashed onto the nearest shallow. You would have believed there had been a war with the river. And so, with altars set up to the number of the rivers and a sacrifice made, he advanced thirty stadia.

4.15. From there he came into the region of the Sudracae and Malli, peoples who at other times were accustomed to make war upon each other, but whom now the partnership of danger had joined. Ninety thousand young foot-soldiers were under arms, besides ten thousand horse and nine hundred four-horse chariots.

4.16. But the Macedonians, who had believed they were now done with every peril, when they learned that a fresh war remained against the most ferocious nations of India, struck by sudden fear began once more to reproach the king with mutinous cries:

4.17. that, forced across the Ganges and what lay beyond, he had nevertheless not ended the war, but changed it. They had been thrown against untamed nations so as to open the Ocean to him with their blood.

4.18. They were dragged beyond the stars and the sun, and forced to approach what Nature had withdrawn from mortal eyes. New enemies kept rising up against new arms. And when they had routed and put to flight all of them, what reward awaited themselves? Gloom and darkness and perpetual night brooding over the deep sea, a strait filled with herds of monstrous beasts, motionless waters in which dying Nature had failed.

4.19. The king, troubled not by his own anxiety but by his soldiers', summoned an assembly and pointed out that those they feared were unwarlike. Nothing then stood in the way, he said, but these nations, to prevent them from measuring out the expanses of the earth and reaching at once the boundary of the world and of their toils.

4.20. He had yielded to their fears the Ganges and the multitude of nations beyond the river; he had turned his march to where the glory was equal and the danger less.

4.21. He already saw the Ocean before him; already the breeze of the sea blew upon them: let them not begrudge him the praise he sought. They would cross the bounds of Hercules and of Father Liber, and give immortality of fame to their king at small cost to themselves. Let them suffer him to return from India, not to flee from it.

4.22. Every multitude, and a soldierly one above all, is carried away by impulse: and so the beginnings of mutiny are greater than its remedies.

4.23. Never before was so eager a shout returned by the army: they bade him lead on, the gods favouring, and equal in glory those whom he emulated. Delighted by these acclamations, he at once moved his camp against the enemy.

4.24. These were the strongest of the Indian nations, and they were preparing for war with energy; they had chosen a leader of proven valour from the nation of the Sudracae, who pitched his camp at the foot of a mountain, and, to magnify the appearance of his numbers, displayed fires far and wide, vainly attempting, with shouting too and the howling of his custom, again and again to terrify the Macedonians as they rested.

4.25. Day was now approaching, when the king, full of confidence and hope, ordered his eager soldiers to take up their arms and march out into the battle line. But—whether from fear or from a mutiny that had broken out among themselves is not recorded—the barbarians suddenly fled, and at any rate occupied the trackless and difficult mountains.

4.26. The king, having pursued their column in vain, seized their baggage. They then came to the town of the Sudracae, into which most had fled, with no greater confidence in their walls than in their arms.

4.27. The king was already advancing, when a soothsayer began to warn him not to undertake the siege, or at least to defer it: peril to his life, he said, was foreshown.

4.28. The king, looking at Demophon—for he was the soothsayer—said: "If someone were thus to interrupt you, intent upon your art and inspecting the entrails, I should not doubt that he might seem to you inconvenient and troublesome." And when Demophon had answered that this would indeed be the case:

4.29. "Do you think," he said, "that to a man who has such great matters, not the fibres of sheep, before his eyes, there is any greater hindrance than a soothsayer in the grip of superstition?"

4.30. And, delaying no longer than to make his answer, he ordered the ladders to be brought up, and, while the rest hung back, climbed onto the wall. The coping of the wall was narrow: there were no battlements distinguishing its summit, as elsewhere, but a continuous parapet had been built along it and barred the passage.

4.31. And so the king clung rather than stood on the edge, with his shield warding off the missiles falling on every side:

4.32. for he himself was being aimed at from a distance from the towers, and his soldiers could not come up, because they were overwhelmed from above by the force of the missiles. At last shame conquered the magnitude of the danger: for they saw that by their delay their king was being given up to the enemy.

4.33. But by hurrying they hindered the rescue. For while each strove to climb up for himself, they overloaded the ladders, which, not bearing the weight, broke, and the men, thrown down, disappointed the one hope of their king. For he stood in the sight of so great an army as though forsaken in a wilderness.

5.1. And now he had wearied his left arm, with which he kept moving his shield about against the blows, while his friends shouted to him to leap down to them, and stood ready to catch him: when he dared a deed incredible and unheard of, and far more remarkable for the fame of its rashness than of its glory.

5.2. For with a headlong leap he hurled himself into a city full of the enemy, though he could scarcely hope that he would die at least fighting and not unavenged: for before he could rise, he might be overwhelmed and taken alive.

5.3. But by chance he had so balanced his body that he came down on his feet: and so, standing, he entered the fight. And, that he might not be surrounded, fortune had made provision.

5.4. An ancient tree, not far from the wall, had thrown out branches clothed with abundant foliage, as if deliberately to protect the king: against its broad trunk he set his body, so that he could not be surrounded, catching on his shield the weapons hurled at him from in front.

5.5. For though so many hands aimed at one man from a distance, yet no one dared to come nearer, and more of the missiles fell upon the branches than upon his shield.

5.6. There fought for the king first the renown of his celebrated name, and then desperation, a great incitement to dying honourably.

5.7. But as the enemy kept flowing in, he had already received a vast quantity of weapons on his shield, already stones had shattered his helmet, already his knees, weighed down by unbroken toil, had given way.

5.8. And so, contemptuously and incautiously, those who stood nearest rushed upon him; of these he so received two with his sword that they fell lifeless before him. After that no one had the heart to attack him from close at hand: from a distance they hurled javelins and arrows.

5.9. Exposed to every blow, he nevertheless defended, not without difficulty, his body propped on his hams, until an Indian shot a two-cubit arrow—for the Indians, as we have said before, had arrows of this size—so that it struck through his cuirass a little above the right side.

5.10. Stricken by this wound, with a great rush of blood spurting forth, he let his arms fall, like a man dying, and so weakened that his right hand had not even the strength to pull out the missile. And so the man who had wounded him ran up, eager with joy, to strip the body.

5.11. When the king felt him laying hands upon his body, moved—I believe—by the indignity of this last disgrace, he recalled his fainting spirit and drove his raised sword-point into the enemy's exposed side.

5.12. Three bodies lay around the king, while the rest stood stupefied at a distance. He, that he might be destroyed fighting still before his last breath failed, tried to raise himself with his shield, and,

5.13. when he had no strength left for the effort, grasping the overhanging branches with his right hand, tried to rise. But not even so master of his body, he sank again upon his knees, with his hand challenging the enemy, if any dared to close with him.

5.14. At last Peucestes, having driven the defenders from another part of the town, came up, following the king's tracks along the wall.

5.15. At the sight of him, Alexander, thinking that now not the hope of life but the solace of death had come, let his weary body sink upon his shield. Soon after came Timaeus, and a little later Leonnatus, and to him Aristonus.

5.16. The Indians too, when they had learned that the king was within the walls, leaving all else, ran together to that place and pressed hard upon those who shielded him. Of these, Timaeus, after receiving many wounds in front and fighting a distinguished fight, fell:

5.17. Peucestes too, pierced by three javelins, yet shielded not himself but the king; Leonnatus, while he eagerly drove back the charging barbarians, struck heavily on the neck, fell half-dead before the king's feet.

5.18. And now Peucestes too, worn out with wounds, had let his shield drop: the last hope rested on Aristonus. He too, grievously wounded, could not any longer sustain so great a force of the enemy.

5.19. Meanwhile a rumour was carried to the Macedonians that the king had fallen. What would have terrified others spurred them on. For, forgetful of all peril, they broke through the wall with mattocks and, where they had forced a passage, burst into the city and cut down more of the Indians fleeing than daring to fight.

5.20. They spared neither old men, nor women, nor infants: whoever they met, they believed that the king had been wounded by him. And at last, by the slaughter of the enemy, just anger was given its due offering.

5.21. That Ptolemy, who afterward reigned, was present at this battle, Clitarchus and Timagenes assert; but he himself—not, to be sure, opposing his own glory—recorded for posterity that he was absent, having been sent on an expedition. So great was either the carelessness, or—a fault equal to this—the credulity of those who composed the ancient records of these affairs.

5.22. When the king had been carried back to his tent, the physicians cut off the wood of the arrow fixed in his body in such a way that the point should not be moved.

5.23. Then, when the body was laid bare, they observed that the weapon had barbs, and that it could not be drawn out without destroying the body, except by enlarging the wound with a cut.

5.24. But they feared that, as they cut, a flow of blood might overtake them: for the weapon driven in was huge, and seemed to have penetrated into the vital organs.

5.25. Critobulus, among the physicians a man of outstanding skill, but in so great a peril frightened, was afraid to lay his hands to it, lest the outcome of an unsuccessful treatment fall back upon his own head.

5.26. The king had seen him weeping and almost bloodless with fear and anxiety: "Why," he said, "or for what moment, are you waiting, and do not free me as soon as possible—if only from this pain—when I am about to die?

5.27. Or do you fear to be put on trial, since I have received an incurable wound?" But Critobulus, his fear at last either ended or concealed, began to urge him to let himself be held still, while he drew out the point: even a slight movement of the body, he said, would be harmful.

5.28. When the king had affirmed that there was no need of any to hold him, he offered his body without movement, as he had been bidden. And so, when the wound was opened wider and the point drawn out, a vast flow of blood began to run, the king fainted, and, with darkness spreading over his eyes, was stretched out as though dying.

5.29. And when in vain they tried to check the flow with remedies, a shout and a wailing of his friends arose at once, believing that the king had breathed his last. At length the blood stopped, and little by little he recovered his senses and began to recognize those who stood about him.

5.30. All that day, and the night that followed, the army stood under arms around the royal tent, confessing that all of them lived by the breath of one man. Nor did they withdraw until it was learned that he was resting for a while in sleep. From there they carried back to the camp a surer hope of his recovery.

6.1. When, in seven days, the wound was healed, though the scar had not yet closed over, the king, hearing that among the barbarians a report of his death had gained strength, ordered two boats to be joined together and a tent to be set up in the middle, conspicuous on every side, from which he might show himself to those who believed he had perished; and, seen by the inhabitants, he checked the hope which the enemy had conceived from the false report.

6.2. Then he floated some little distance down the favouring stream, going ahead of the rest of the fleet, lest the rest, still so weak, should be hindered by the stroke of the oars, which was necessary.

6.3. On the fourth day after he had begun to sail, he came into a region deserted indeed by its inhabitants, but abounding in grain and cattle. This place was pleasing both for his own rest and the soldiers'.

6.4. It was the custom for the chief among his friends and for the bodyguards to keep watch before the royal quarters whenever ill-health befell the king: this custom being then also observed, they all entered his chamber.

6.5. Anxious lest they should bring some news—since they had come together—he asked whether a recent arrival of the enemy was being reported.

6.6. But Craterus, to whom it had been entrusted to carry the friends' entreaties to him, said: "Do you believe that we are more anxious at the arrival of the enemy—even were they to take their stand on the rampart—than at our care for your safety, which you, as now appears, hold cheap?

6.7. However great a force of all nations should conspire against us, should fill the whole world with arms and men, cover the seas with fleets, bring on beasts never seen—you will keep us invincible.

6.8. But which of the gods can promise that you, this pillar and star of Macedonia, will be long-lasting, when you so eagerly offer your body to manifest dangers, forgetful that you drag the lives of so many citizens into the hazard? For who either wishes, or is able, to survive you?

6.9. We have come, following your auspices and command, to a place from which, unless you lead us back, there is no road home for any of us.

6.10. But if you were still contending with Darius for the kingdom of Persia, then, even though no one would wish it, yet no one could even wonder that you were so ready in your daring for every crisis: for where danger and reward are equal, there is both a fuller harvest in success and a greater consolation in adversity.

6.11. But that an ignoble village should be bought with your life—who could endure it, not only among your own soldiers, but among any people, any barbarian, who knows your greatness?

6.12. The mind shudders at the thought of what we saw a little while ago. I fear to say it: the most cowardly hands would have stained themselves with the spoils of your invincible body, had not a merciful fortune, snatching you back, preserved you for us.

6.13. We are so many traitors, so many deserters, as we are men who could not follow you. You may brand all your soldiers with disgrace: no one will refuse to atone for what he could not prevent himself from committing. Suffer us, we beg, to be of value to you in another way.

6.14. Wherever you bid us, we will go. We claim for ourselves the obscure dangers and the inglorious battles: keep yourself for those things that befit your greatness. Quickly does glory grow stale among mean enemies, and nothing is more unworthy than that it be spent where it cannot be displayed."

6.15. Much the same, and like to this, said Ptolemy and the rest. And now, weeping, in confused voices they entreated him at last to set, out of his sated love of praise, a limit, and to spare his own safety—that is, the public safety.

6.16. The devotion of his friends was pleasing to the king: and so, embracing each of them more intimately, he bade them be seated, and, taking up his speech from a deeper source, said:

6.17. "To you indeed, O most faithful and most loving of my citizens and friends, I give and render thanks, not only on this account, that today you set my safety above your own, but because, from the very beginnings of the war, you have omitted no pledge and token of goodwill toward me—so that I must confess that never has my life been so dear to me as it has begun to be, that I may long enjoy you.

6.18. But the thought of those who wish to die for me is not the same as mine, who judge that I have long since earned this goodwill of yours by my valour. For you may desire to reap a lasting harvest from me, perhaps even a perpetual one: but I measure myself not by the span of my years, but of my glory.

6.19. I might, content with my father's resources, within the bounds of Macedonia, have awaited, in bodily ease, an obscure and inglorious old age. And yet not even the slothful arrange their own destinies; rather, while they judge long life the one good, a bitter death often overtakes them. But I, who count not my years but my victories, if I reckon up well the gifts of fortune, have lived long.

6.20. Beginning from Macedonia, I hold the empire of Greece; I have subdued Thrace and the Illyrians; I rule over the Triballi and the Maedi; I possess Asia, where it is washed by the Hellespont, and where by the Red Sea. And now I am not far from the boundary of the world, which, once passed, I have resolved to open up to myself another Nature, another world.

6.21. From Asia into the bounds of Europe I have crossed in the space of a single hour. Victor of both regions, in the ninth year of my reign, in the twenty-eighth year of my life, do I seem to you able to slacken in the cultivation of that glory to which alone I have devoted myself? No, I shall not fail it; and wherever I fight, I shall believe myself to be in the theatre of the whole world.

6.22. I shall give nobility to ignoble places; I shall open to all nations the lands which Nature had set far away. In these works, to be extinguished, if chance should so bring it, is a fair thing: I am sprung from such a stock that I must pray for a full life rather than a long one.

6.23. I beseech you, consider that we have come into lands where women have a most renowned name for valour. What cities Semiramis founded! What nations she brought into her power! How great works she accomplished! We have not yet equalled a woman in glory, and already a surfeit of praise has seized us?

6.24. May the gods be favourable—greater things still remain. But what we have not yet approached will be ours only if we count nothing small in which there is room for great glory. Only keep me safe from inward treachery and the plots of those of my own household: the crisis of war and of Mars I will face undismayed.

6.25. Philip was safer in the battle line than in the theatre: he often escaped the hands of the enemy, but could not flee those of his own. If you reckon up the deaths of other kings too, you will count more slain by their own people than by the enemy.

6.26. But, since the occasion has now offered itself for bringing out a matter long turned over in my mind, the greatest harvest of my labours and works will be this: that my mother Olympias be consecrated to immortality, whenever she shall depart from life. This, if it be permitted, I shall myself accomplish; this, if fate forestalls me, do you remember that I charged you with it." And then indeed he dismissed his friends. But for several days he kept his standing camp there.

7.1. While these things were being done in India, the Greek soldiers lately led out by the king into colonies around Bactra had revolted, a mutiny having arisen among themselves—not so much in hatred of Alexander as in fear of punishment.

7.2. For, having killed certain of their countrymen who were stronger, they began to look to their arms, and, having seized the citadel of Bactra, which, as if secure, had been guarded rather carelessly, they had driven the barbarians too into partnership in their revolt.

7.3. Athenodorus was their chief, who had even assumed the name of king—not so much from desire of empire as of returning to his homeland with those who followed his authority.

7.4. Against him a certain Biton, of the same nation but hostile out of rivalry, contrived a plot, and, having invited him to a banquet, killed him at the feast through a certain Boxus, a Bactrian.

7.5. The next day, an assembly being called, Biton had persuaded most that Athenodorus had plotted against him; but to others the treachery of Biton was suspect, and little by little the suspicion began to spread among more.

7.6. And so the Greek soldiers took up arms, meaning to kill Biton if the chance were given; but their chiefs softened the anger of the multitude.

7.7. Biton, rescued beyond his hope from present danger, a little later plotted against the very authors of his safety. When his treachery was discovered, they seized both him and Boxus.

7.8. Now it was decided that Boxus should be killed at once, and Biton even put to death by torture. And the torments were already being applied to his body, when the Greeks—it is uncertain for what cause—like men frenzied, ran to arms.

7.9. Hearing their uproar, those who had been ordered to torture Biton desisted, fearing that they might be prevented from doing it by the outcry of the rioters.

7.10. He, naked as he was, came to the Greeks, and the pitiable look of a man marked out for execution suddenly changed their minds in the opposite direction, and they ordered him to be released.

7.11. Having in this way been twice freed from punishment, he returned to his homeland with the rest who had abandoned the colonies assigned them by the king. These were the things done around Bactra and the bounds of the Scythians.

7.12. Meanwhile a hundred envoys of two nations, of whom we have spoken before, came to the king. All of them rode in chariots, of remarkable size of body and handsome appearance: their linen garments were wrought with gold and purple in the weave.

7.13. They reported that they surrendered themselves, their cities, and their fields, and would entrust to his protection and dominion, first of all, a liberty kept inviolate through so many ages: the gods, they said, not fear, were the authors of their surrender; for it was with their strength untouched that they accepted the yoke.

7.14. The king, after holding a council, received those who surrendered into his protection, imposing on them the tribute which both nations had been paying to the Arachosians; besides, he required of them two thousand five hundred horsemen. And all was done obediently by the barbarians.

7.15. Then, having invited the envoys of the nations and their princes to a feast, he ordered the banquet to be sumptuously appointed. A hundred golden couches were set at moderate intervals; he had surrounded the couches with hangings gleaming with purple and gold, displaying at that banquet whatever had been corrupted, whether among the Persians by their ancient luxury or among the Macedonians by their recent change of ways, with the vices of both nations mingled together.

7.16. Present at the feast was Dioxippus the Athenian, a noted boxer, and on account of his extraordinary bodily strength already well known to the king and in his favour. Envious and malicious men kept taunting him, in earnest and in jest, as a useless beast following the army to be fattened: while they themselves went into battle, he prepared his oil-soaked belly for feasting.

7.17. So at the banquet a Macedonian named Corratas, now drunk, began to reproach him and to demand that, if he were a man, he should the next day fight it out with him by the sword: the king would at last judge either of his own rashness or of the other's cowardice.

7.18. And from Dioxippus, who contemptuously mocked the soldier's ferocity, the challenge was accepted. And the next day the king, since they demanded the contest even more keenly, and since he could not deter them, allowed what was determined to be carried out.

7.19. A vast number of soldiers, among whom were Greeks, favoured Dioxippus. The Macedonian had taken up regular arms: a bronze shield and a spear—they call it a sarissa—holding it in his left hand, in his right a lance, and girt with a sword, as though about to fight with several at once:

7.20. Dioxippus, gleaming with oil and garlanded, carried in his left hand a scarlet cloak, in his right a strong and knotted club.

7.21. This very thing had held the minds of all in suspense with expectation: for to engage a man in armour unarmed seemed madness, not rashness. And so the Macedonian, not doubting that he could kill at a distance, hurled his lance. Dioxippus, having avoided it with a slight bending of his body, before the other could shift his spear to his right hand, leapt upon him and broke it in the middle with his club.

7.22. Having lost both weapons, the Macedonian had begun to draw his sword, when Dioxippus, seizing him in his grasp and suddenly knocking his feet from under him, dashed him to the ground, and, snatching away his sword, set his foot upon the neck of the fallen man, and, brandishing his club, would have crushed his conquered foe with it, had he not been stopped by the king.

7.23. The outcome of the spectacle was a grief not to the Macedonians only, but to Alexander as well, especially because the barbarians had been present: for he complained that the celebrated valour of the Macedonians had fallen into mockery.

7.24. From this, the king's ears were opened to the slander of the envious. And a few days later, at a banquet, a golden cup was by arrangement spirited away, and the attendants came to the king as though they had lost what they themselves had removed.

7.25. Often there is less firmness in shame than in guilt: Dioxippus could not bear the converging of the eyes by which he was marked out as a thief, and, when he had left the banquet, after writing a letter to be delivered to the king, he killed himself with the sword.

7.26. The king took his death heavily, judging it the proof of indignation, not of repentance—and the more so after the excessive joy of the envious showed that he had been falsely accused.

8.1. The envoys of the Indians, sent home, returned a few days later with gifts. There were three hundred horsemen, a thousand and thirty chariots drawn by four-horse teams, a quantity of linen cloth, a thousand Indian shields, a hundred talents of white iron, and lions of rare size and tigers,

8.2. both kinds of animal tamed to gentleness, hides too of huge lizards, and the shells of tortoises.

8.3. The king then ordered Craterus to lead the troops not far from the river by which he himself was to sail; and those who were accustomed to accompany him he put aboard the ships and was carried down the favouring stream into the territory of the Malli.

8.4. From there he came to the Sambagrae, a strong nation of India, governed by the rule of the people, not of kings. They had sixty thousand infantry, six thousand cavalry: these forces were followed by five hundred chariots. They had chosen as leaders men of proven valour in war.

8.5. But those who were in the fields nearest the river—and they had frequent villages especially on the bank—when they saw the whole river, as far as could be seen, covered with vessels, and the gleaming arms of so many soldiers, terrified by the strange sight, believed that an army of gods and another Father Liber—a name famous among those nations—was approaching.

8.6. From here the shout of the soldiers, from there the beat of the oars and the various cries of the sailors urging them on, had filled their frightened ears.

8.7. So they all ran together to those who were under arms, crying out that they were mad and were about to enter battle with the gods: the vessels, they said, could not be counted, that carried invincible men. And they brought so great a terror into the army of their own people that they sent envoys to surrender the nation.

8.8. Having received these into his protection, he then came on the fourth day to other nations. These had no more spirit than the rest had had.

8.9. And so, founding a town there which he had ordered to be called Alexandria, he entered the territory of those who are called the Musicani. Here, concerning Terioltes the satrap, whom he had set over the Parapamisadae, on the same men accusing him, he learned and, having convicted him of doing many things greedily and arrogantly, ordered him to be killed.

8.10. Oxyartes, governor of the Bactrians, was not only acquitted, but, by the right of his greater love, was rewarded with the territory of a larger command. Then, having reduced the Musicani into submission, he placed a garrison in their city.

8.11. From there, through forests, they came to a rough nation of India. Their king was Porticanus, who had shut himself up in a fortified city with a great band of his countrymen. This Alexander took by storm on the third day after he had begun to besiege it.

8.12. And Porticanus, having fled into the citadel, sent envoys to the king concerning the terms of surrender. But before they reached him, two towers fell with a great crash; through the ruins of these the Macedonians made their way into the citadel. When it was taken, Porticanus, resisting with a few men, was killed.

8.13. The citadel therefore being razed and all the captives sold, he entered the territory of King Sambus, and, having received many towns into his protection, took by a mine the strongest city of the nation.

8.14. To the soldiers, unskilled in works of siegecraft, it seemed like a portent of barbarism: for in almost the middle of the city, armed men rose up out of the earth, no trace of a dug tunnel having appeared before.

8.15. Clitarchus is the authority that eighty thousand Indians were slain in that region, and that many captives were sold under the crown.

8.16. The Musicani revolted again: to suppress them Pithon was sent, who brought to the king the captured chief of the nation, the same who was the author of the revolt. When Alexander had raised him on a cross, he returned again to the river, on which he had ordered the fleet to await him.

8.17. Then on the fourth day he came, down the favouring stream, to a town which was in the lowest part of the kingdom of Sambus. He had lately surrendered, but the townspeople refused his rule and had shut their gates.

8.18. Despising their small numbers, the king ordered five hundred Agrianians to advance to the walls and, gradually retiring, to draw the enemy outside the walls, who would surely follow if they believed them to be fleeing.

8.19. The Agrianians, as had been ordered, having provoked the enemy, suddenly turned their backs; the barbarians, pursuing them in disorder, fell upon others, among whom was the king himself. The battle therefore being renewed, of three thousand barbarians six hundred were slain, a thousand taken, the rest shut up within the walls of the city.

8.20. But the victory was not in its outcome as joyful as in its first appearance: for the barbarians had steeped their swords in poison. And so the wounded kept dying one after another, nor could the cause of so swift a death be devised by the physicians, since even slight blows were incurable.

8.21. The barbarians, moreover, had hoped that the careless and rash king might be caught. But by chance, fighting among the foremost, he had escaped untouched.

8.22. Above all Ptolemy, lightly wounded indeed in the left shoulder, but afflicted with greater peril than wound, had turned the king's anxiety upon himself. He was united to him by blood, and some believed that he was begotten of Philip: at any rate it was agreed that he was sprung from a concubine of his.

8.23. The same man was a bodyguard and a most ready warrior, and greater and more renowned in the arts of peace than of war: of moderate and civil bearing, liberal above all and easy of access, he had taken nothing from the pomp of royalty.

8.24. On account of these qualities it could be doubted whether he was dearer to the king or to the people; at that time, at any rate, he first proved the feelings of his men, so that the Macedonians seemed to have foretold, in that peril, the fortune to which he afterward rose.

8.25. For their care for Ptolemy was not less than the king's. The king, wearied both by the battle and by anxiety, while he sat beside Ptolemy, ordered the couch on which he himself might rest to be brought in.

8.26. As soon as he had laid himself upon it, a deeper sleep followed at once. Roused from it, he related that in his sleep he had seen the figure of a serpent presented to him, carrying in its mouth a plant which it showed to be a remedy for the poison:

8.27. and he described too the colour of the plant, affirming that he would recognize it if anyone should find it. The plant being then found—for it was sought by many at once—he laid it on the wound, and at once the pain ended, and within a short space the scar also closed over.

8.28. When their first hope had failed the barbarians, they surrendered themselves and the city. From here they came to the nearest nation, the Patalians. Their king was Soeris, who, having abandoned his city, had fled into the mountains:

8.29. and so Alexander took possession of the town and laid waste the fields. Great booty of flocks and herds was driven off from there, and a great quantity of grain was found.

8.30. Then, having taken guides skilled in the river, he floated down to an island that had risen up in about the middle of the channel.

9.1. There he was compelled to halt for a longer time, because the guides, carelessly kept, had fled, and he sent men to seek out others. When none were found, his craving to behold the Ocean and to reach the boundaries of the world prevailed, so that, without men acquainted with the region, he entrusted to an unknown river his own life and the safety of so many of the bravest men:

9.2. they sailed, then, ignorant of all the places through which they were borne. How far the sea was from there, what nations dwelt by it, how calm the river's mouth, how it would bear long ships—uncertain and blind conjecture guessed at all this: the one consolation of their rashness was unbroken good fortune.

9.3. They had now advanced four hundred stadia, when the pilots told the king that they recognized the breeze of the sea, and that the Ocean seemed to them to be not far off.

9.4. Delighted, he began to urge the sailors to bend to their oars: the end of their toil, sought with all their prayers, was at hand; now nothing was wanting to their glory, nothing stood in the way of their valour, since without any crisis of Mars, without blood, the shore of the land was taken by them; not even Nature could go farther; in a short time they would see things unknown except to the immortals.

9.5. A few men, however, he sent ashore from a boat, to catch the wandering country folk, from whom he hoped that surer information could be learned. They, having searched all the huts, at last found people in hiding.

9.6. When these were asked how far they were from the sea, they answered that they had not so much as heard, even by rumour, of any sea; but that on the third day one could come to bitter water, which spoiled the fresh. It was understood that the sea was meant by men ignorant of its nature.

9.7. And so with vast eagerness the sailors rowed, and with each succeeding day, as the hope drew nearer, the ardour of their spirits grew. Already on the third day the sea, mingling with the river, was rising, the gentle tide as yet blending the unlike waters.

9.8. Then, having passed another island set in the middle of the river, a little more slowly because the current was beaten back by the tide, they brought the fleet to land and scattered to seek provisions, careless of the calamity which came upon men who knew nothing of it.

9.9. It was about the third hour, when, at its fixed turn, the Ocean, surging up, began to flow in and to drive the river back. The river, at first checked, then more violently thrust back, was carried in the opposite direction with a greater force

9.10. than torrents rush down a headlong channel. The nature of the strait was unknown to the common men, and they seemed to behold portents and signs of the gods' anger, as the sea, swelling up again and again, descended in flood upon plains a little while before dry.

9.11. And now the vessels being lifted up and the whole fleet scattered, those who had been put ashore came running back to the ships from every side, in a panic and stunned by the sudden disaster.

9.12. But in confusion even haste is slow. Some pushed the vessels with poles; some, while they hindered the fitting of the oars,

9.13. had sat down; certain men, hastening to sail off, but not waiting for those who ought to have been with them, worked sluggishly at crippled and unwieldy boats; others, rushing aboard the ships heedlessly, had taken in too many: and alike both the multitude and the fewness hindered men in their haste.

9.14. The shouting, here of men bidding to wait, there to go, and the discordant voices of men never aiming at one and the same thing, had robbed them of the use not only of their eyes but even of their ears.

9.15. Not even in the pilots was there any help, whose voice could neither be heard by the rioters, nor their command obeyed by men terrified and out of order.

9.16. And so the ships began to collide with one another, the oars to be sheared away from each other, and one to drive against another's vessel. You would have believed that not the fleet of one army was sailing, but that two had entered upon a naval battle.

9.17. Prows were dashed against sterns; those who had thrown the leaders into confusion were pressed by those who followed; the anger of the wranglers came even to blows.

9.18. And now the tide had flooded all the plains around the river, only the hillocks standing out like small islands, onto which most, in their panic, abandoning the ships, hastened to swim.

9.19. The scattered fleet stood partly in very deep water, where the valleys had sunk, partly stuck fast in the shallows, according as the waters had occupied the uneven height of the ground: when suddenly a new terror, and greater than the former, was struck into them.

9.20. The sea began to ebb, the waters running back with a great drawing into their own strait, and gave back the lands a little while before sunk under the deep brine. And so the stranded vessels were pitched, some onto their prows, some sinking onto their sides. The plains were strewn with baggage, with arms, with fragments of torn planks and oars.

9.21. The soldier dared neither to go ashore nor to stay in the ship, ever expecting things worse than the present to follow. They could scarcely believe that they themselves saw what they were suffering—shipwreck on dry land, the sea in a river.

9.22. Nor was there an end of their woes: for, ignorant that the sea would a little later bring back the tide by which the vessels might be lifted, they foreboded famine and the worst for themselves. Beasts too, left behind by the waves, wandered about, terrible.

9.23. And now night was coming on, and despair of safety had afflicted even the king with anguish. Yet his unconquered spirit was not overwhelmed by cares, but he kept watch the whole night on the lookout posts and sent horsemen ahead to the mouth of the river, so that, when they perceived the sea again surging up, they might come on before it.

9.24. He ordered too that the damaged vessels be repaired and those overturned by the waves be set upright, and that all be ready and on the alert, when the sea should again flood the lands.

9.25. That whole night being spent among watches and exhortations, the horsemen quickly came galloping back at a great pace, and the tide followed. It first, with the waters gently coming up, began to lift the vessels, then, with all the plains flooded, even drove the fleet on.

9.26. And the applause of the soldiers and sailors, celebrating their unhoped-for safety with boundless joy, resounded along the shores and banks. Whence had so great a sea suddenly returned, whither had it withdrawn the day before, what was the nature of this same element, now discordant, now subject to the command of the seasons—these things, marvelling, they inquired.

9.27. The king, conjecturing from what had happened that the fixed time was after the rising of the sun, in the middle of the night, to catch the tide, floated down the favouring stream with a few vessels, and, having sailed out of its mouth, advanced four hundred stadia into the sea, the master at last of his vow. And, having made sacrifice to the gods who preside over both the sea and those places, he returned to the fleet.

10.1. From here the fleet went up against the stream and on the next day was brought to land not far from a salt lake, whose nature, being unknown, deceived very many who rashly entered the water. For a scab seized their bodies, and the contagion of the disease was spread to others as well.

10.2. Oil was the remedy. Then, having sent Leonnatus ahead to dig wells where he seemed likely to lead the army by the land route—for the region was dry—he himself halted with his forces, awaiting the spring.

10.3. Meanwhile he both founded most of his cities and ordered Nearchus and Onesicritus, men skilled in seamanship, to take down the strongest of the ships into the Ocean, and, having gone forward as far as they safely could, to learn the nature of the sea: they could come up either by the same river or by the Euphrates, whenever they wished to return to him.

10.4. And now, the winter being softened and the ships that seemed useless burned, he led the army by land.

10.5. In nine marches they came into the region of the Arabitae, and from there in as many days into that of the Cedrosii. This people, a free one, having held a council, surrendered themselves, and nothing was required of those who surrendered but provisions.

10.6. On the fifth day from here he came to a river: the inhabitants call them the Arabes. A region deserted and destitute of water followed; having measured it out, he crossed to the Horitae. There he handed over the greater part of the army to Hephaestion, and divided the light-armed troops with Ptolemy and Leonnatus.

10.7. Three columns at once laid waste the Indians, and great booty was driven off: Ptolemy burned the coastal regions, the king himself the rest, and Leonnatus from another quarter. In this region too he founded a city, and Arachosians were settled in it.

10.8. From here he came to the maritime Indians. They hold far and wide a deserted and waste region, and do not even mingle with their neighbours by any right of commerce.

10.9. The very solitude has made savage their dispositions, naturally harsh: their nails, never cut, stand out; their hair is shaggy and unshorn.

10.10. They build their huts of shells and the other refuse of the sea. Covered with the skins of wild beasts, they feed on fish dried by the sun and on the flesh of larger beasts too, which the waves have cast up.

10.11. Their provisions therefore being consumed, the Macedonians began first to feel scarcity, then at last famine, searching everywhere for the roots of palm trees—for that is the only tree that grows there.

10.12. And when these provisions too had failed, they set about slaughtering their beasts of burden, and did not even spare their horses. And when there was nothing to carry the baggage, they burned in the fire the spoils taken from the enemy—the very things for which they had traversed the farthest East.

10.13. Famine was then followed by pestilence. For the noxious juices of unwholesome food, and besides this the toil of the march and sickness of mind, had spread diseases, and they could neither stay without disaster nor advance: famine pressed those who stayed, a sharper pestilence those who went on.

10.14. And so the plains were strewn with men almost more half-alive than dead. And not even the more lightly sick could follow: for the column was driven on at speed, each man believing that it profited him toward the hope of safety only so much as he gained of the journey by hurrying.

10.15. And so those who had given out begged of men known and unknown to be helped: but there were no beasts of burden on which they could be taken up, and the soldier could scarcely carry his arms, and the face of impending evil was before the eyes of these men too. And so, called back again and again, they could not bear even to look back upon their own, their pity turned to dread.

10.16. The men, left behind, called upon the gods to witness, and the rites they shared, and implored the help of the king; and when in vain they wearied deaf ears, turned by despair to frenzy, they prayed that their friends and tent-mates might come to an end like their own, and like themselves.

10.17. The king, anxious with grief and shame at once, because he himself was the cause of so great a disaster, sent to Phrataphernes, satrap of the Parthyaeans, to bid him bring cooked food on camels, and informed the other governors of the neighbouring regions of his need.

10.18. Nor was there any delay on their part. And so the army, rescued at least from famine, was at last brought into the territory of Cedrosia. The region is fertile in all things: in it he kept his standing camp, that he might restore his harassed soldiers by rest.

10.19. Here he received a letter from Leonnatus, that he himself had engaged with eight thousand foot and four hundred horse of the Horitae, with a happy outcome. A message came too from Craterus, that Ozines and Zariaspes, noble Persians who were plotting revolt, had been overpowered by him and were in chains.

10.20. Having therefore set Sibyrtius over the region—for Menon, its governor, had lately died of disease—he himself advanced into Carmania.

10.21. Astaspes was the satrap of the nation, suspected of having wished to make a revolution while the king was in India: him, as he came to meet him, the king, dissembling his anger, addressed courteously, and, while he investigated what had been reported, kept him in the same honour.

10.22. When from there the governors, as had been ordered, had sent a vast quantity of horses and draught animals from the whole region that was under his rule, he restored to those who lacked them their means of carriage.

10.23. The arms too were refurbished to their former splendour: for they were not far from Persia, which was not only at peace but also wealthy.

10.24. Therefore, as has been said above, emulating Father Liber not only in the glory which he had carried off from those nations, but even in his pageant—whether that was a triumph first instituted by him, or the revel of bacchanals—he resolved to imitate it, his spirit exalted above human pride.

10.25. He ordered the villages through which his march lay to be strewn with flowers and garlands, mixing-bowls filled with wine and other vessels of extraordinary size to be set out at the thresholds of the houses; the wagons then to be covered over, so that they might hold more soldiers, and fitted out in the manner of tents, some with white awnings, some with costly cloth.

10.26. First went his friends and the royal cohort, wreathed with various flowers and garlands: in one place the sound of pipers was heard, in another the strain of the lyre: likewise the army feasted on wagons adorned according to each man's means, with the arms that were most splendid hanging round about. The king himself and his fellow-feasters a chariot bore, weighed down with golden mixing-bowls and huge cups of the same material.

10.27. In this manner, for seven days, the army marched along, given over to revelry, an easy prey if the conquered had had any spirit at all against revellers: a thousand men, by Hercules, only sober, could have taken in their own triumph men heavy with the carousal of seven days.

10.28. But fortune, which establishes for things their fame and their worth, turned this disgrace of soldiering too into glory. And both the present age and posterity afterward marvelled that they had marched, drunk, through nations not yet sufficiently subdued—the barbarians believing that to be confidence which was rashness.

10.29. This array was followed by an executioner: for the satrap Astaspes, of whom mention was made before, was ordered to be killed:

10.30. so true is it that cruelty offers no hindrance to luxury, nor luxury to cruelty.