New cities

and posts to be established on the Indus -Alexander

reaches the Ocean

first sight

of tides.

was at first reported to be dead, to the great consternation and distress of the army. However, he became soon sufficiently recovered to show himself, and to receive their ardent congratulations, in the camp established at the point of junction between effect of the the Hydraotes (Ravee) and (Akesines) Chenab1. His voyage down the river, though delayed by the care of his wound, was soon resumed and prosecuted, with the same active operations by his landforce on both sides to subjugate all the Indian tribes and cities within accessible distance. At the junction of the river Akesines (Punjnud) with the Indus, Alexander directed the foundation of a new city, with adequate docks and conveniences for ship-building, whereby he expected to command the internal navigation2. Having no farther occasion now for so large a land-force, he sent a large portion of it under Kraterus westward (seemingly through the pass now called Bolan) into Karmania3. He established another military and naval post at Pattala, where the Delta of the Indus divided ; and he then sailed with a portion of his fleet down the right arm of the river to have the first sight of the Indian Ocean. The view of ebbing and flowing tide, of which none had had experience on the scale there exhibited, occasioned to all much astonishment and alarm1.

1 Arrian, xi. 13.

3 Arrian, xi. 17, 6; Strabo, xv. p. 721.

2 Arrian, xi. 15, 5.

p. 692).

4 Arrian, xi. 18, 19; Curtius, ix. 9. He reached Pattala towards the middle or end of July, περὶ κυνὸς ἐπιτολήν (Strabo, xv. The site of Pattala has been usually looked for near the modern Tatta. But Dr. Kennedy, in his recent Narrative of the Campaign of the Army of the Indus in Scinde and Kabool' (ch. v. p. 104), shows some reasons for thinking that it must have been considerably higher

CHAP. XCIV.] SUFFERINGS IN THE DESERT OF GEDROSIA. 317

March of

Alexander by land westward

through the

desert of

The fleet was now left to be conducted by the B.c.325. admiral Nearchus, from the mouth of the Indus round by the Persian Gulf to that of the Tigris; a memorable nautical enterprise in Grecian antiquity. Alexander himself (about the month of August) Gedrosiabegan his march by land westward through the territories of the Arabitæ and the Oritæ, and afterwards through the deserts of Gedrosia. Pura, the principal town of the Gedrosians, was sixty days' march from the boundary of the Oritæ1.

Here his army, though without any formidable. opposing enemy, underwent the most severe and deplorable sufferings; their march being through a sandy and trackless desert, with short supplies of food and still shorter supplies of water, under a burning sun. The loss in men, horses, and baggage-cattle, from thirst, fatigue, and disease, was prodigious; and it required all the unconquerable energy of Alexander to bring through even the diminished number 2. At Pura the At Pura the army obtained repose and refreshment, and was enabled to march forward into Karmania, where Kraterus joined them with his division from the Indus, and Kleander with the division which had been left at Ekbatana. Kleander, accused of heinous crimes in his late

up the river than Tatta; somewhere near Sehwan. "The Delta commencing about 130 miles above the sea, its northern apex would be somewhere midway between Hyderabad and Sehwan; where local traditions still speak of ancient cities destroyed, and of greater changes having occurred than in any other part of the course of the Indus."

The constant changes in the course of the Indus, however (compare p. 73 of his work), noticed by all observers, render every attempt at such identification conjectural-see Wood's Journey to the Oxus, p. 12. 1 Arrian, vi. 24, 2; Strabo, xv. p. 723.

2 Arrian, vi. 25, 26; Curtius, ix. 10; Plutarch, Alex. 66.

sufferings

and losses

in the

army.

B.C. 325324, winter.

and the

army come

back to

Persis.

command, was put to death or imprisoned; several of his comrades were executed. To recompense the soldiers for their recent distress in Gedrosia, the king conducted them for seven days in drunken bacchanalian procession through Karmania, himself and all his friends taking part in the revelry; an imitation of the jovial festivity and triumph with which the god Dionysus had marched back from the conquest of India'.

During the halt in Karmania Alexander had the Alexander satisfaction of seeing his admiral Nearchus 2, who had brought the fleet round from the mouth of the Indus to the harbour called Harmozeia (Ormuz), Conduct of not far from the entrance of the Persian Gulf; a voyage of much hardship and distress, along the barren coasts of the Oritæ, the Gedrosians, and ment of the the Ichthyophagi3. Nearchus, highly commended

Alexander

at Perse

polis.

Punish

satrap Orsines.

1 Curtius, ix. 10; Diodor. xvii. 106; Plutarch, Alex. 67. Arrian (vi. 28) found this festal progress mentioned in some authorities, but not in others. Neither Ptolemy nor Aristobulus mentioned it. Accordingly Arrian refuses to believe it. There may have been exaggerations or falsities as to the details of the march; but as a general fact, I see no sufficient ground for disbelieving it. A season of excessive licence to the soldiers, after their extreme suffering in Gedrosia, was by no means unnatural to grant. Moreover, it corresponds to the general conception of the returning march of Dionysus in antiquity, while the imitation of that god was quite in conformity with Alexander's turn of sentiment.

I have already remarked, that the silence of Ptolemy and Aristobulus is too strongly insisted on, both by Arrian and by others, as a reason for disbelieving affirmations respecting Alexander.

Arrian and Curtius (x. 1) differ in their statements about the treatment of Kleander. According to Arrian, he was put to death; according to Curtius, he was spared from death, and simply put in prison, in consequence of the important service which he had rendered by killing Parmenio with his own hand; while 600 of his accomplices and agents were put to death.

2 Nearchus had begun his voyage about the end of September, or beginning of October (Arrian, Indic. 21; Strabo, xv. p. 721). 3 Arrian, vi. 28, 7; Arrian, Indica, c. 33-37.

CHAP. XCIV.] ALEXANDER REACHES SUSA.

319

and honoured, was presently sent back to complete his voyage as far as the mouth of the Euphrates; while Hephæstion also was directed to conduct the larger portion of the army, with the elephants and heavy baggage, by the road near the coast from Karmania into Persis. This road, though circuitous, was the most convenient, as it was now the winter season'; but Alexander himself, with the lighter divisions of his army, took the more direct mountain road from Karmania to Pasargadæ and Persepolis. Visiting the tomb of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire, he was incensed to find it violated and pillaged. He caused it to be carefully restored, put to death a Macedonian named Polymachus as the offender, and tortured the Magian guardians of it for the purpose of discovering accomplices, but in vain. Orsines, satrap of Persis, was however accused of connivance in the deed, as well as of various acts of murder and spoliation: according to Curtius, he was not only innocent, but had manifested both good faith and devotion to Alexander3; in spite of which he became a victim of the hostility of the favourite eunuch Bagoas, who both poisoned the king's mind

2

Arrian, vi. 28, 12-29, 1.

* Plutarch, Alex. 69; Arrian, vi. 29, 17; Strabo, xv. p. 730.

3 Arrian, vi. 30, 2; Curtius, x. 1, 23-38. "Hic fuit exitus nobilissimi Persarum, nec insontis modo, sed eximiæ quoque benignitatis in regem." The great favour which the beautiful eunuch Bagoas (though Arrian does not mention him) enjoyed with Alexander, and the exalted position which he occupied, are attested by good contemporary evidence, especially the philosopher Dikæarchus-see Athenæ. xiii. p. 603; Dikæarch. Fragm. 19. ap. Hist. Græc. Fragm. Didot, vol. ii. p. 241. Compare the Fragments of Eumenes and Diodotus (Ælian, V. H. iii. 23) in Didot, Fragm. Scriptor. Hist. Alex. Magni, p. 121; Plutarch De Adul. et Amic. Discrim. p. 65.

B.C. 324,

early spring.

to Susa

junction

with calumnies of his own, and suborned other accusers with false testimony. Whatever may be the truth of the story, Alexander caused Orsines to be hanged; naming as satrap Peukestes, whose favour was now high, partly as comrade and preserver of the king in his imminent danger at the citadel of the Malli,-partly from his having adopted the Persian dress, manners, and language, more completely than any other Macedonian 1.

It was about February, in 324 B.C.2, that Alexander marched out of Persis to Susa. During this He marches progress, at the point where he crossed the Pasitigris, he was again joined by Nearchus, who having comfleet under pleted his circumnavigation from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Euphrates, had sailed back with the fleet from the latter river and come up the the mouth Pasitigris. It is probable that the division of He

with the

Nearchus,

after it had sailed

round from

of the

Indus.

1 Arrian, vi. 30; Curtius, x. 1, 22-30.

2 Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. B.C. 325, also Append. p. 232) places the arrival of Alexander in Susiana, on his return march, in the month of February B.C. 325; a year too early, in my opinion. I have before remarked on the views of Mr. Clinton respecting the date of Alexander's victory over Porus on the Hydaspes, where he alters the name of the month as it stands in the text of Arrian (following Schmieder's conjecture), and supposes that battle to have occurred in August B.C. 327 instead of April B.C. 326. Mr. Clinton antedates by one year all the proceedings of Alexander subsequent to his quitting Baktria for the last time in the summer of B.c. 327. Dr. Vincent's remark"that the supposition of two winters occurring after Alexander's return to Susa is not borne out by the historians" (see Clinton, p. 232), is a perfectly just one; and Mitford has not replied to it in a satisfactory manner. In my judgement, there was only an interval of sixteen months (not an interval of twenty-eight months, as Mr. Clinton supposes) between the return of Alexander to Susa and his death at Babylon (Feb. 324 B.C. to June 323 B.C.).

3 Arrian, vii. 5, 9; Arrian, Indica, c. 42. The voluntary death of Kalanus the Indian Gymnosophist must have taken place at Susa (where Diodorus places it-xvii. 107), and not in Persis; for Nearchus was