Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) (46 page)

God with your silver bow, shining Phoebus,

Who brings light now to the lands of Elysium,

And the Isles of the Blessed, lost in the turbulent waters of the Ocean,

Return, return now, Oh godly one! Bring us the dawn tomorrow,

Your shining smile, after the dark night,

Mother of nightmares, daughter of Chaos

 

Ptolemy to Aristotle, Hail!

The fourth day of the month of Elaphebolion of the third year of the one hundred and thirteenth Olympiad, your nephew Callisthenes, official historian of Alexander’s expedition, was found dead in his tent and Philip, the King’s physician, certified that the death was the result of his having taken a powerful poison. A group of young squires had conspired to kill the King, and although none of the accused during the trial mentioned Callisthenes by name, nevertheless there were those who attributed your nephew with a sort of moral responsibility for the criminal plot. It is indeed strange that such young men should take the decision to kill their King, without someone having planted the thought in their minds. There is reason to believe that by his suicide your nephew sought to avoid the pain of public judgement.

The King feels unable to write to you, his soul troubled as it is by so many and such conflicting feelings, and I decided to do this in his stead.

I know that this news will reach you with a great delay because as I began writing our army had already moved through some extremely inhospitable country in preparation for the invasion of India. I have also chosen to send you a copy of the
History of the Expedition of Alexander
, which Callisthenes had his own scribe make. Unfortunately the regrettable matter of his death leaves his work incomplete.

I thought anyway that it was best to send you news of events up to this point and the most important episodes in the Indian expedition, in case you want to finish the work of your nephew in whichever way you deem fit.

I would also like to tell you a story you may find interesting. A man from Elis, by the name of Pyrrho lived in the camp with us for some time. He had begun his career as a poor, almost unknown painter and had followed our expedition in the hope of making his fortune, but over the years he met the magi in Persia and then the wise men in India, after having spent much time with Callisthenes. From all these experiences he is elaborating a new scheme of thought that may, as far as I can understand, enjoy some considerable renown throughout the world.

I hope this letter finds you in good health. Take good care.

 

The army set off through the Paropamisus or Indian Caucasus – as some prefer to call it – and this move cost great sacrifices. The cold was so severe at the pass that one night some sentries were found dead, still leaning against the trees at their posts, their eyes staring straight ahead and their moustaches and beards encrusted with ice. Alexander once again distinguished himself by virtue of his great humanity. He saw a veteran whose strength was obviously failing, shaking with cold, and had him take his throne, which was made of wood, and told him to burn it so that he might warm himself. After nine days’ march we reached the city of Nisa, where the inhabitants claimed Dionysius had passed through on his journey towards India. The proof they offer for this is the presence of Mount Meru, which in Greek means ‘thigh’, for Dionysius was born of one of Zeus’s thighs. What is more they maintain that this is the only place in all India where ivy grows, a plant that is sacred to the god.

Everyone crowned themselves with ivy and celebrated with great feasts and orgies, drinking, dancing the
komos
and shouting, ‘
Euoè
! ’

There the army was divided into two contingents: Hephaestion and Perdiccas marched down the valley of a torrent from the highlands to its confluence with the Indus and built a bridge there; the other, of which I formed part together with the King and the other Companions, marched towards the high course of the Indus to take the cities lying in those valleys – Mas-saga, Bazeira and Orus, all of which fell after repeated attacks. The largest of them all was Aornos, over twenty miles in circumference and located at a height of eight thousand feet, defended by a deep gully all around.

The King had a dyke built and a ramp and I took up position one night at an outpost from which it was possible to attack the city at one of its weakest points. The Indians defended valiantly, but in the end the battering rams managed to open a breach and the army burst inside. We united our two divisions and took the city with a simultaneous attack. Alexander offered the Indians the opportunity to join his army as mercenaries, but they preferred to flee rather than fight against their brothers.

In these cities we captured a certain number of elephants, animals that Alexander was most pleased to have. They are truly extraordinary in their enormous mass, with their great tusks protruding from their mouths. They can carry towers with armed warriors on their backs and are led by a man who sits on their neck and spurs them on with his heels. If this man is killed in battle then the elephant loses all sense of direction and knows not which way to go.

The Indians are a tall people, darker than all other men, with the exception of the Ethiopians, and they are most valiant in combat. After conquering Aornos, the King installed a garrison there, and as governor an Indian prince who initially had been with Bessus but then moved over to our side. His name is Sashagupta, in his language, but the Greeks call him Sisycottos. At Aornos we took two hundred and fifty thousand oxen as loot, out of which the strongest and the most handsome were chosen to be sent back to Macedonia to plough the fields and improve our breeds. Alexander then had boats built and even two ships, each with twenty-five oars, and we started moving down the River Indus, which is very wide and completely navigable, as far as I know, for its entire course.

Thus we reached the point where Perdiccas and Hephaestion had finished building their bridge over the river near a city called Taxila, whose people welcomed us in friendship. The Indian King of Taxila, who goes by the name of Taxiles, offered twenty-five elephants and three hundred talents of silver to Alexander. I have seen very little gold. As for the legends according to which there are giant ants in these lands that dig gold out of the mountains, which is then guarded by winged griffins, I found no evidence of this worthy of credit and I believe they must be considered groundless stories.

From there we went on as far as the banks of the River Hydaspes, the largest of all the Indus’s tributaries, wide and fast-flowing because of the rains that had fallen on the mountains. On the other side was an Indian king by the name of Porus with a large army – thirty thousand foot soldiers, four thousand horsemen, three hundred war chariots and two hundred elephants. It was impossible to cross the river because Porus shifted his own position each time we moved, preventing us from fording. Alexander then gave orders to the troops to move continuously, even at night, shouting and making as much noise as possible as they did so, and in this way our enemies no longer had any idea what our plans were and Porus had to pitch camp at one point and wait for us there.

We left Craterus opposite their camp with a certain number of soldiers and followed Alexander up the river with the
hetairoi
cavalry, the mounted archers, the Agrianians and the heavy infantry. In the meantime a storm had broken out, with deafening thunder and blinding lightning, which discouraged the Indians from venturing along the banks of the Hydaspes. The ford was extremely difficult, made possible only by the presence of an island in the middle of the river. The men crossed with the water up to their shoulders, while the horses sank up to their withers. Alexander, even though he had promised not to take Bucephalas into battle any more after Gaugamela, decided to mount him on that occasion because only a horse of his size would allow him to crush the enemy cavalry with their faster, but smaller mounts.

At dawn Porus heard that the Macedonian troops had crossed the river and he sent his son at the head of a thousand horsemen to do battle with us. We crushed them at their first charge and the young Prince himself was killed. Porus then realized that it was Alexander who had crossed the Hydaspes during that stormy night and he sent his entire army after him. He lined up the war chariots first of all, behind them the elephants and behind them again the foot soldiers, with the cavalry to the sides. He himself, built like a giant, rode an enormous elephant and as soon as the battle was under way he led the attack, shouting and spurring on his animal.

The chariots were the first to attack, but the terrain was so sodden with rain that they were slowed down to the point where it was an easy matter for our mounted archers to find their range and pick off the drivers.

On moving past the line of chariots, Alexander sent his cavalry to attack on the wings, engaging in furious hand-to-hand combat against the Indian cavalry that fought back with great valour. Porus in the meantime sent the elephants forward into our centre and these enormous beasts massacred our men, crashing through the tight ranks of the phalanx. Then Perdiccas and Hephaestion gave orders to break ranks and to let the elephants through while Lysimachus, having finally managed to assemble the engines after the river crossing, started aiming the catapults at them. We sent the mounted archers into the attack against those monsters as well, together with the javelin throwers who caused them all sorts of grief. The foot archers then came into play, taking aim at their riders and cutting them down one after another. Wild with pain and fear, the elephants started swaying and running amok, even among their own soldiers, no longer able to distinguish enemies from friends.

At this point, with the elephants out of action, Perdiccas ordered the phalanx to close ranks again and sent them off to attack, shouting his war cry to encourage his men and taking up position in the front line. On the other side, Porus continued to move forward, fighting with incredible energy. His elephant was a fury, crushing everything in its path, its feet and legs dirty with blood and scraps of innards right up to its knees, while Porus, encased in his impenetrable armour, threw what seemed to be a constant stream of javelins with the force of a catapult.

The battle lasted eight hours, ceaseless, until in the end Alexander, leading the Vanguard out on the right flank, and Koinos, who led the left wing, managed to force the enemy cavalry into retreat and to converge on the centre. The Indians were completely surrounded now and they surrendered. Porus himself, wounded on his right shoulder, the only point of his body not protected by armour, began swaying.

It was touching to see how the elephant realized that his master was in trouble. The animal slowed down to a halt and knelt down, allowing Porus to slide gently to the ground and then, when it saw him lying there, it tried to draw the javelin from the wound. The elephant riders led it away, so that the Indian King could be handed over to our surgeons who immediately gave him treatment.

Alexander wanted to meet Porus as soon as he heard that he was able to stand and he was amazed at his enormous stature: more than seven feet tall and his shining steel armour clung to his body like a second skin. He had initially sent King Taxiles, Porus’s ally, as interpreter, but the giant King considered him a traitor and had tried to kill him. So he went in person with another interpreter and saluted him with great respect, praising him for his valour and expressing his sympathy for the loss of his sons, both of whom had fallen in battle. At the end of their meeting he asked, ‘How do you wish to be treated?’

And Porus replied, ‘Like a King.’

And he was treated like a King: Alexander let him govern over all the territories he had conquered up to that moment and let him take up his position again in his palace.

However, our joy at such a hard-fought victory over an almost superhuman enemy and against such monsters of physical strength and frightening appearance – animals that no Macedonian had ever come into contact with before – our joy was saddened by an event that threw the King into the deepest dismay. His horse Bucephalas, wounded during the battle and lamed in a clash with an elephant, died after four days of suffering.

The King cried for Bucephalas as though an intimate friend had passed away and he remained with him until he breathed his last breath. I was there and I saw him stroke the animal sweetly, speaking to him softly, reminding him of all the adventures they had lived together and Bucephalas neighed weakly as though seeking to reply. I saw the tears run down the King’s cheeks and I saw his body racked by his sobbing when the animal slipped out of this world.

He had a tomb of stone constructed and founded a city in his honour, calling it Alexandria Bucephala, an honour that no horse had ever received, not even the most famous victors of the races at Olympia. Alexander also buried a piece of his heart and the happiest period of his lost youth in that tomb.

Near the battlefield where he had defeated Porus, he founded another city, giving it the name of Alexandria Nicaea, in commemoration of the victory; he celebrated games there and offered sacrifices to the gods. From there we went eastwards, encouraged by Porus who gave us five thousand of his soldiers and we came to the Acesines, second largest tributary of the Indus, another fast-flowing river with many rapids and rocks with boiling, foaming waters. Several of our boats were dashed against the rocks and sank with their men, but then we found a point where the river was wider and calmer and we managed to cross. We conquered seventy cities, of which more than half had over five thousand inhabitants, and finally we have come to a halt under the walls of Sangala, on the banks of the Hydraotes.

I do not know what will happen now, whether we will succeed in taking this city too, whether we will cross this river as well. And after the river there is a desert and then an impenetrable forest and then other realms with hundreds of thousands of warriors. Our fatigue has become unbearable. In the forests there are snakes of fearful proportions, true monsters – Leonnatus killed one with his axe that measured sixteen cubits.