Edwyn Robert Bevan and Margaret Bryant

“ It is true that our best authority, Arrian, fails to substantiate the traditional view satisfactorily; on the other hand those who maintain it urge that Arrian’s interests were mainly military, and that the other authorities, if inferior in trustworthiness, are completer in range of vision. Of those, again, who maintain the traditional view, some, like Niebuhr and Grote, regard it as convicting Alexander of mad ambition and vainglory, whilst to Kaerst Alexander only incorporates ideas which were the timely fruit of a long historical development. ”

“ Darius fled eastwards into Media and again Alexander waited till he had secured the provinces to the south. He followed the Tigris into Babylonia, the central seat of the empire and its richest region, and from Babylon went on to seize the fabulous riches which the Persian kings had amassed in their spring residence, Susa. Thence he at last ascended upon the Iranian plateau. The mountain tribes on the road (the Oxii, Pers, Huzha) , accustomed to exact blackmail even from the king’s train, learnt by a bitter lesson that a stronger hand had come to wield the empire. ”

“ The Ethiopic versions are of great interest as a striking example of literary “accommodation.” Not only is the whole atmosphere Christian in colouring, but we actually find the Greek gods in the guise of Enoch, Elijah, &c., while Philip is a Christian martyr, and Alexander himself a great apostle, even a saint; quotations from the Bible are frequent. Syriac and Armenian versions were made in the 5th century. Persians and Arabs told the deeds of Iskander; and Firdousi made use of the story in the Sháhnáma. Another early Persian poet, Nizami, made the story specially his own. ”

“ He had determined that the Indus fleet should be used to explore this new world and try to find a waterway between the Indus and the Persian Gulf. A great part of the land-forces had been already sent off under Craterus in the earlier summer to return west by Kandahar and Seistan; the fleet was to sail under the Greek Nearchus from the Indus mouth with the winter monsoon; Alexander himself with the rest of the land-forces set out in October to go by the coast of Baluchistan, through the appalling sand-wastes of the Mekran. ”

“ When it fell, Alexander had the old Tyrian people scattered to the winds, 30,000 sold as slaves. Gaza offered a resistance equally heroic, lasting two months, and here too the old population was dispersed. The occupation of the rest of Syria and Palestine proceeded smoothly, and after the fall of Gaza Alexander’s way lay open into Egypt. [4] Egypt was the last of the Mediterranean provinces to be won, and here no defence was made. To the native Egyptians Alexander appeared as a deliverer from the Persian tyranny, and he sacrificed piously to the gods of Memphis. ”

“ They included the philosopher Callisthenes, put to death by Alexander in 327, whose history went up to the death of Darius, Alexander’s general Ptolemy, afterwards king in Egypt, Nearchus who commanded the fleet that sailed from the Indus to the Persian Gulf, Onesicritus who served as pilot in the same fleet, Aristobulus who was with Alexander in India, Clitarchus, a contemporary, if not an eye-witness, important from the fact that his highly coloured version of the life of Alexander became the popular authority for the succeeding centuries. ”

“ The machine of empire had not functioned altogether smoothly while the king had been absent, and on Alexander’s re-appearance many incapables and rogues in high office had to be replaced by better men. In Carmania, in Persis, complaints from the provinces continued to reach him, as well as the news of disorders in Macedonia and Greece. New orders and appointments served to bring the empire into hand again, and at Susa in the spring of 324 Alexander rested, the task of conquering and compassing the Achaemenian realm achieved. ”

“ His passage through Cilicia was marked by a violent fever that arrested him for a while in Tarsus, and meantime a great Persian army was waiting for him in northern Syria under the command of Darius himself. In the knot of mountains which close in about the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta, Alexander, following hard by the coast, marched past the Persian army encamped on the plains to the east. To cut Alexander’s communications with the rear, Darius now committed the error of entangling his large force in the mountain Battle of Issus. ”

“ The embassy from Rome, however, is almost certainly a later, and an inevitable, invention. The exploration of the waterways round about the empire was Alexander’s immediate concern, the discovery of the presumed connexion of the Caspian with the Northern Ocean, the opening of a maritime route from Babylon to Egypt round Arabia. The latter enterprise Alexander designed to conduct in person; under his supervision was prepared in Babylon an immense fleet, a great basin dug out to contain 1000 ships, and the water-communications of Babylonia taken in hand. ”

“ It was a cavalry mêlée, in which the common code of honour caused Macedonian and Persian chieftains to engage hand to hand, and at the end of the day the relics of the Persian army were in flight, leaving the high-roads of Asia Minor clear for the invader. Alexander could now accomplish the first part of the task belonging to him as captain-general to the Hellenes, that liberation of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, for which Panhellenic enthusiasts had cried out so long. ”

“ Alexander left the conquered portion of India east of the Indus to be governed under Porus, Omphis of Taxila, and Abisares, the country west of the Indus under Macedonian governors, and set out to explore the great river to its mouth (for the organization of the Indian The return.provinces, see especially Niese, vol. i. pp. 500 f.) . The fleet prepared on the Hydaspes sailed in October, while a land army moved along the bank. The confluence of the Hydaspes and Acesines passed, the Macedonians were once more in a region of hostile tribes with towns to be stormed. ”

“ In these further provinces of Iran the Macedonian invader had for the first time to encounter a serious national opposition, for in the west the Iranian rule had been merely the supremacy of an alien power over native populations indifferent or hostile. Here the ruling race was at home. In Asia Alexander learnt that Bessus had taken the diadem as Darius’ successor in Bactria, but so soon as he marched against him Arīa rose in his rear, and Alexander had to return in all haste to bring the revolt under. ”

“ Of the French prose versions of the Historia de proeliis may be noticed the late romance, L’Histoire du noble et vaillant roy Alixandre le Grant (1506) . After an account of the ancient history of Macedonia and of the intrigue of Nectanebus we are told how Philip dies, and how Alexander subdues Rome and receives tribute from all European nations. He then makes his Persian expedition; the Indian campaign gives occasion for descriptions of all kinds of wonders. ”

“ Greece might now be trusted to lie quiet for some time to come. The Panhellenic alliance (from which Sparta still stood aloof) against the barbarians was renewed. Athens, although known to be hostile at heart to the cities of Macedonian power, Alexander treated all through with eager courtesy.
In the spring of 334, Alexander crossed with an army of between 30,000 and 40,000 men, Macedonians, Illyrians, Thracians and the contingents of the Greek states, into Asia. The place of concentration was Arisbe on the Hellespont. ”

“ As the story was reproduced, variations were freely introduced according to the bent of different times and peoples; in the Persian version Alexander (Iskander) became a son of Darius; among the Mahommedans he turned into a prophet, hot against idols; the pen of Christian monks made him an ascetic saint.
The Alexander romance found its way into Europe through the medium of Latin, but originated mainly from the versions of the pseudo-Callisthenes, not from the more sober narrative of Quintus Curtius. ”

“ Porus held the opposite bank with a powerful army, including 200 elephants. Alexander succeeded in taking a part of his forces across the river higher up during a night of torrential rain, and then he fought the fourth and last of his pitched battles in Asia, the one which put to proof more shrewdly than any of the others the quality of the Macedonian army as an instrument of war, and yet again emerged victorious. ”

“ A discontent began to work among the Macedonians, and at Prophthasia the commander of the Macedonian cavalry Philotas, the son of Parmenio, and certain others were arraigned before the army on the charge of conspiring against the king’s life. They were condemned and put to death. Not satisfied with procuring this, Alexander had Parmenio himself, who had been left in command in Media, put to death by secret orders. It is perhaps the worst crime, because the most cold-blooded and ungenerous, which can be laid to his charge. ”

“ A Persian fleet still held the sea, but it effected little, and presently fresh Graeco-Macedonian squadrons began to hold it in check. It was, however, the need to ensure command of the sea and free all lines of communication behind him that determined Alexander’s plan for the next campaign. If he mastered the whole coast-line of the Levant, the enemy’s fleet would find itself left in the air. The Syrian coast was accordingly his immediate objective when he broke up from Gordium for the campaign of 333. ”

“ Alexander himself first visited the site of Troy and there went through those dramatic acts of sacrifice to the Ilian Athena, Invasion of Asia Minor. assumption of the shield believed to be that of Achilles and offerings to the great Homeric dead, which are significant of the poetic glamour shed, in the young king’s mind, over the whole enterprise, and which men will estimate differently according to the part they assign to imagination in human affairs. ”

“ He obtains a magic glass cage, yoked with eight griffins, flies through the clouds, and, thanks to enchanters who know the language of birds, gets information as to their manners and customs, and ultimately receives their submission. The excessive heat of the upper regions compels him to descend, and he next visits the bottom of the sea in a kind of diving-bell. ”

“ It was Nineveh that Darius was waiting with the immense host which a supreme effort could muster from all parts of the empire. The happy coincidence of a lunar eclipse gives us the 20th of September 331 as the exact day upon which the Macedonian army crossed the Tigris. Alexander came within sight of the Persian host without having met with any opposition since he quitted Tyre. He had now to settle the most serious problem which had yet faced him, for in the plains the Persian army was Battle of Arbela. formidable by sheer bulk. But the day showed the Macedonian army equal to the task. ”

“ The first book also relates his conquests in Italy, Africa, Syria and Asia Minor; his return to Macedonia and the submission of Greece. The second book continues the history of his conquests, and the third contains the victory over Porus, the relations with the Brahmins, the letter to Aristotle on the wonders of India, the histories of Candace and the Amazons, the letter to Olympias on the marvels of Farther Asia, and lastly the account of Alexander’s death in Babylon. ”

“ Nor did he, when this was accomplished, again strike directly at Bactria, but made a wide turning movement through Seistan over Kandahar into the Kabul valley. It was on the way, in Seistan at Prophthasia (mod. Farrah?) , that the alienation between Alexander and his Macedonian followers, which becomes sensible in the latter part of his career, first showed itself in an ugly form. Alexander had come to merge the characters of Macedonian king and Hellenic captain-general, with which he had set out, in that of Oriental despot (Spieker. Hof u. Hofordnung Al. d. Gr., 1904) . ”