The Anabasis of Alexander or, The history of the wars and conquests of Alexander the Great
half the archers, with orders to make a forced march to Spitamenes
and Dataphernes. Ptolemy went according to his instructions, and
completing ten days’ march in four days, arrived at the camp where on
the preceding day the barbarians under Spitamenes had bivouacked.
CHAPTER XXX.
CAPTURE OF BESSUS.—EXPLOITS IN SOGDIANA.
Here Ptolemy learned that Spitamenes and Dataphernes were not firmly
resolved about the betrayal of Bessus. He therefore left the infantry
behind with orders to follow him in regular order, and advanced with
the cavalry till he arrived at a certain village, where Bessus was
with a few soldiers; for Spitamenes and his party had already retired
from thence, being ashamed to betray Bessus themselves. Ptolemy posted
his cavalry right round the village, which was enclosed by a wall
supplied with gates. He then issued a proclamation to the barbarians
in the village, that they would be allowed to depart uninjured if they
surrendered Bessus to him. They accordingly admitted Ptolemy and his
men into the village. He then seized Bessus and departed; but sent a
messenger on before to ask Alexander how he was to conduct Bessus into
his presence. Alexander ordered him to bind the prisoner naked in a
wooden collar, and thus to lead him and place him on the right-hand
side of the road along which he was about to march with the army. Thus
did Ptolemy. When Alexander saw Bessus, he caused his chariot to stop,
and asked him, for what reason he had in the first place arrested
Darius, his own king, who was also his kinsman and benefactor, and
then led him as a prisoner in chains, and at last killed him? Bessus
said that he was not the only person who had decided to do this, but
that it was the joint act of those who were at the time in attendance
upon Darius, with the view of procuring safety for themselves from
Alexander. For this Alexander ordered that he should be scourged, and
that the herald should repeat the very same reproaches which he had
himself made to Bessus in his inquiry. After being thus disgracefully
tortured, he was sent away to Bactria to be put to death. Such is the
account given by Ptolemy in relation to Bessus; but Aristobulus says
that Spitamenes and Dataphernes brought Bessus to Ptolemy, and having
bound him naked in a wooden collar betrayed him to Alexander.[502]
Alexander supplied his cavalry with horses from that district, for many
of his own horses had perished in the passage of the Caucasus and in
the march to and from the Oxus. He then led his army to Maracanda,[503]
which is the capital of the land of the Sogdianians. Thence he
advanced to the river Tanais. This river, which Aristobulus says the
neighbouring barbarians call by a different name, Jaxartes, has its
source, like the Oxus, in mount Caucasus, and also discharges itself
into the Hyrcanian Sea.[504] It must be a different Tanais from that
of which Herodotus the historian speaks, saying that it is the eighth
of the Scythian rivers, that it flows out of a great lake in which it
originates, and discharges itself into a still larger lake, called
the Maeotis.[505] There are some who make this Tanais the boundary
of Europe and Asia, saying that the Palus Maeotis, issuing from the
furthest recess of the Euxine[506] Sea, and this river Tanais, which
discharges itself into the Maeotis, separate Asia and Europe,[507]
just in the same way as the sea near Gadeira and the Nomad Libyans
opposite Gadeira separates Libya and Europe.[508] Libya also is said
by these men to be divided from the rest of Asia by the river Nile.
In this place (viz. at the river Tanais), some of the Macedonians,
being engaged in foraging, were cut to pieces by the barbarians.
The perpetrators of this deed escaped to a mountain, which was very
rugged and precipitous on all sides. In number they were about 30,000.
Alexander took the lightest men in his army and marched against these.
Then the Macedonians made many ineffectual assaults upon the mountain.
At first they were beaten back by the missiles of the barbarians, and
many of them were wounded, including Alexander himself, who was shot
right through the leg with an arrow, and the fibula of his leg was
broken. Notwithstanding this, he captured the place, and some of the
barbarians were cut to pieces there by the Macedonians, while many
also cast themselves down from the rocks and perished; so that out of
30,000 not more than 8,000 were preserved.[509]
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
REBELLION OF THE SOGDIANIANS.
A few days after this, envoys reached Alexander from the people called
Abian Scythians, whom Homer commended in his poem, calling them the
justest of men.[510] This nation dwells in Asia and is independent,
chiefly by reason of its poverty and love of justice. Envoys also came
from the Scythians of Europe, who are the largest nation dwelling
in that continent.[511] Alexander sent some of the Companions with
them, under the pretext indeed that they were to conclude a friendly
alliance by the embassy; but the real object of the mission was rather
to spy into the natural features of the Scythian land, the number of
the inhabitants and their customs, as well as the armaments which they
possessed for making military expeditions.[512] He formed a plan of
founding a city near the river Tanais, which was to be named after
himself; for the site seemed to him suitable and likely to cause the
city to grow to large dimensions. He also thought it would be built
in a place which would serve as a favourable basis of operations for
an invasion of Scythia, if such an event should ever occur; and not
only so, but it would also be a bulwark to secure the land against the
incursions of the barbarians dwelling on the further side of the river.
Moreover he thought that the city would become great, both by reason of
the multitude of those who would join in colonizing it, and on account
of the celebrity of the name conferred upon it.[513] Meantime the
barbarians dwelling near the river seized upon the Macedonian soldiers
who were garrisoning their cities and killed them; after which they
began to strengthen the cities for their greater security. Most of the
Sogdianians joined them in this revolt, being urged on to it by the men
who had arrested Bessus. These men were so energetic that they even
induced some of the Bactrians to join in the rebellion, either because
they were afraid of Alexander, or because their seducers assigned as a
reason for their revolt, that he had sent instructions to the rulers
of that land to assemble for a conference at Zariaspa, the chief city;
which conference, they said, would be for no good purpose.[514]
CHAPTER II.
CAPTURE OF FIVE CITIES IN TWO DAYS.
When Alexander was informed of this, he gave instructions to the
infantry, company by company, to prepare the ladders which were
assigned to each company. He then started from the camp and advanced
to the nearest city, the name of which was Gaza; for the barbarians
of the land were said to have fled for refuge into seven cities. He
sent Craterus to the one called Cyropolis, the largest of them all,
into which most of the barbarians had gathered.[515] The orders of
Craterus were to encamp near the city, to dig a trench round it, to
surround it with a stockade, and to fix together the military engines
which were required for use, so that the men in this city, having had
their attention drawn to his forces, might be unable to render aid to
the other cities. As soon as Alexander arrived at Gaza, without any
delay he gave the signal to his men to place the ladders against the
wall all round and to take it by assault at once, as it was made merely
of earth and was not at all high. Simultaneously with the assault of
the infantry, his slingers, archers, and javelin-throwers assailed
the defenders on the wall, and missiles were hurled from the military
engines, so that the wall was quickly cleared of its defenders by the
multitude of the missiles. Then the fixing of the ladders against the
wall and the mounting of the Macedonians were matters soon effected.
They killed all the men, according to Alexander’s injunctions; but
the women, the children, and the rest of the booty they carried off
as plunder. Thence he immediately marched to the city situated next
to that one; and this he took in the same way and on the same day,
treating the captives in the same manner. Then he marched against the
third city, and took it on the next day at the first assault. While
he was thus occupied by these matters with the infantry, he sent out
his cavalry to the two neighbouring cities, with orders to guard the
men within them closely, so that when they heard of the capture of the
neighbouring cities, and at the same time of his own near approach,
they should not betake themselves to flight and render it impossible
for him to pursue them. It turned out just as he had conjectured; and
his despatch of the cavalry was made just at the nick of time. For
when the barbarians who occupied the two cities still uncaptured,
saw the smoke rising from the city in front of them which was then
on fire, (and some men, escaping even from the midst of the calamity
itself, became the reporters of the capture which they had themselves
witnessed,) they began to flee in crowds out of the cities as fast as
each man could; but falling in with the dense body of cavalry drawn up
in array of battle, most of them were cut to pieces.
CHAPTER III.
STORMING OF CYROPOLIS.—REVOLT OF THE SCYTHIANS.
Having thus captured the five cities and reduced them to slavery in two
days,[516] he went to Cyropolis, the largest city in the country. It
was fortified with a wall higher than those of the others, as it had
been founded by Cyrus. The majority of the barbarians of this district,
and at the same time the most warlike of them, had fled for refuge
thither, and consequently it was not possible for the Macedonians
to capture it so easily at the first assault. Wherefore Alexander
brought his military engines up to the wall with the determination
of battering it down in this way, and of making assaults wherever
breaches might be made in it. When he observed that the channel of the
river, which flows through the city when it is swollen by the winter
rains, was at that time nearly dry and did not reach up to the wall,
and would thus afford his soldiers a passage by which to penetrate
into the city, he took the body-guards, the shield-bearing guards,
the archers, and Agrianians, and made his way secretly into the city
along the channel, at first with a few men, while the barbarians had
turned their attention towards the military engines and those who were
assailing them in that quarter. Having from within broken open the
gates which were opposite this position, he gave an easy admittance to
the rest of his soldiers. Then the barbarians, though they perceived
that their city was already in the hands of the enemy, nevertheless
turned against Alexander and his men and made a desperate assault upon
them, in which Alexander himself received a violent blow on the head
and neck with a stone, and Craterus was wounded with an arrow, as were
also many other officers. Notwithstanding this, however, they drove
the barbarians out of the market-place. Meantime, those who had made
the assault upon the wall, took it, as it was now void of defenders.
In the first capture of the city about 8,000 of the enemy were killed.
The rest fled for refuge into the citadel; for 15,000 warriors in all
had gathered together in the city. Alexander encamped around these
and besieged them for one day,[517] and then they surrendered through
lack of water. The seventh city he took at the first assault. Ptolemy
says that the men in it surrendered; but Aristobulus asserts that this