The Hellenistic World. F. Walbank W.

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СКАЧАТЬ Arrian’s view (Anabasis, iii, 18, 11), though other writers explain the incident, less probably, as arising out of a drunken escapade, inspired by a courtesan. At any rate, ‘on reaching Ecbatana Alexander sent back to the sea the Thessalian cavalry and the rest of the allies, paying each the agreed pay in full and himself making a largess of 2000 talents’ (Arrian, Anabasis, iii, 19, 5). Henceforth Alexander was to be waging a personal war. Placing the treasure under the control of Harpalus and leaving Parmenion, one of Philip’s generals, to control communications, he now pressed on at high speed after Darius. But Darius had been deposed by a usurper, Bessus, and Alexander found him stabbed and dying near Shahrud. Nothing now stood in the way of his claim to be the Great King, and a dedication of arms and bulls’ skulls at Lindus, probably in 330, was accompanied by the record:

      King Alexander having defeated Darius in battle and become lord of Asia sacrificed to Lindian Athena in accordance with a prophecy in the priesthood of Theogenes, son of Pistocrates (Timachidas, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 532, c. 38).

      The wording shows that Alexander’s new pretensions were now conveyed to the Greeks at home.

      Crossing the Elburz mountains the king now advanced into Hyrcania, which lay to the south of the Caspian Sea, and after a short westward diversion towards the region of Amol, he accepted the surrender of Darius’ Greek mercenaries. He then marched east through Aria and Drangiana where at Phradah he found an excuse to eliminate the now irksome Parmenion. Parmenion’s son, Philotas, the commander of the élite Companion cavalry, was here accused of plotting against Alexander’s life and having been found guilty by the Macedonians was executed. At once a secret messenger was dispatched to Media to ensure the assassination of his father:

      possibly because. . . Parmenion was already a grave danger, if he survived when his own son had been put to death, being so highly thought of both by Alexander himself and throughout all the army (Arrian, Anabasis, iii, 26, 4).

      In the winter of 330/29 Alexander continued from Phradah along the Helmand into the Paropamisadae, where he founded Alexandria-by-the-Caucasus before crossing the Hindu Kush northwards into Bactria in pursuit of Bessus, who fled beyond the Oxus. There Bessus was deposed by the Sogdian leader Spitamenes and was taken prisoner by the Macedonian general Ptolemy; he was flogged, mutilated and in due course executed at Ecbatana. As Great King, Alexander thus in true Persian fashion avenged Darius, his predecessor.

      Meanwhile he had crossed the Jaxartes to attack and defeat the Scythians with the aid of catapults and had founded Alexandria Eschate, ‘the farthest’, on the site of modern Leninabad in Tadzhikistan but it took him till autumn 328 to crush the national rising led by Spitamenes. A marriage with Roxane, the daughter of a Sogdian baron, Oxyartes, helped to reconcile his opponents in those outlying areas. His stay thereabouts was marked by incidents within his own camp which indicated a growth in royal absolutism and will be considered below (pp. 38–9).

      In summer 327 Alexander recrossed the Hindu Kush and took his forces in two divisions over separate passes into India, and the following spring after some remarkable feats of warfare, including the capture of the almost impregnable pinnacle of Aornus (Pir-Sar), he crossed the Indus at Attock. The ruler of this area near the Jhelum and Chenab, the powerful prince Taxiles, now offered him elephants and troops in return for help against his rival Porus and on the left bank of the Hydaspes (modern Jhelum) Alexander won his last great victory against Porus, who now became his nominal ally. How much of India beyond the Punjab was known to Alexander is uncertain but he would have marched yet further east had not his troops mutinied. Reluctantly he agreed to return. On the Jhelum he built a fleet of 800 to 1000 ships and proceeded downstream to the Indus and so to the Indian Ocean, fighting and massacring as he went. At Patala, at the head of the delta, he built docks and a harbour and explored the two arms of the river. Then at last in October 325 he set off with part of his forces through Gedrosia (mod. Baluchistan) while the fleet under Nearchus sailed along the coast. An officer, Craterus, had already been sent with the baggage and siege train, the elephants and the sick and wounded, via Kandahar and the Helmand valley, whence he was to join Alexander on the river Minab in Carmania. Here eventually Alexander’s forces were reunited after he had suffered appalling losses in Gedrosia.

      Both while he was in India and after his return to Mesopotamia Alexander carried out a drastic policy of dismissing and even executing many of his satraps.

      Alexander is said to have grown at this time more ready to listen to any accusations, as if they were wholly reliable and to punish severely those who were convicted of slight errors because he felt they might, in the same frame of mind, commit heavier crimes (Arrian, Anabasis, vii, 4, 3).

      Whether in fact this campaign is to be regarded as a somewhat severe but justifiable disciplining of errant governors or a reign of terror inflicted by a despot is a matter on which historians disagree but Arrian’s comments are the more telling in that he usually judges the king favourably. The Persian satraps in Paropamisadae, Carmania, Susiana and Persis are all known to have perished and at least three generals had already been brought from Media to Carmania, there convicted of extortion and executed. It was in this context that on his arrival at Susa, Alexander discovered that Harpalus, his treasurer, had fled with 6000 mercenaries and 5000 talents to Athens. He was later arrested, but escaped to Crete, where he was murdered.

      Alexander’s stay in Susa was marked by a great feast held to celebrate the conquest of the Persian empire and also to encourage a new policy – that of fusing Macedonians and Persians into a master race. Alexander, his friend Hephaestion, and 80 officers all took Persian wives (almost all of whom were discarded after Alexander’s death). This policy led to several acts which aroused bitter resentment among the Macedonians, for instance the arrival of 30, 000 Asian youths who had been given a Macedonian military training, and the incorporation of orientals from Bactria, Sogdiana and Arachosia into the Companion cavalry. These and other steps designed to iron out the distinctions between conquerors and conquered came to a head at Opis in 324, when all but the royal bodyguard mutinied. Whereupon Alexander – for, says Arrian (Anabasis, vii, 8, 3) ‘he had grown worse-tempered at that time and oriental subservience had made him less disposed than before to the Macedonians’ – had the thirteen ringleaders executed and dismissed the rest. The opposition collapsed, and a vast banquet was held to celebrate the reconciliation. At this ‘Alexander’ prayed for all sorts of blessings and especially for harmony and fellowship in the empire between Macedonians and Persians’ (Arrian, Anabasis vii, 11, 9), indicating very clearly his concept of a joint condominium of the two peoples (though not of others too, as some scholars have thought). The same year Alexander sent two requests to Greece. First a decree was brought by Nicanor of Stagira to Europe and proclaimed at Olympia, requiring the Greek cities to receive back all exiles and their families (except for the Thebans). The second, a sequel to Hephaestion’s death at Ecbatana, was a request that he be honoured as a hero and (perhaps at the same time) that Alexander himself should be accorded divine honours. What these demands implied will be discussed below.

      The following spring (323) Alexander received embassies from various parts of the Mediterranean world at Babylon, and busied himself with plans for exploration (which included the Caspian) but in June he suddenly fell ill after a prolonged banquet and drinking bout and on 13 June he died at Babylon, in his thirty-third year, after a reign of twelve years and eight months.

      II

      Alexander’s career has necessarily been sketched only in outline; it gives rise to many problems which cannot be considered here. It is however of special interest to consider to what extent his actions foreshadow and point forward to institutions and attitudes characteristic of the hellenistic world of which he was in some sense the initiator. The rest of this chapter will be devoted to some such aspects of Alexander’s life.

      (a) First, the change in Alexander’s attitude towards Persia and his attempt to transform his army СКАЧАТЬ