CHAP. it is said, seven nations and above 2000 cities, with, it seems, a title which established his superiority over all the chiefs east of the Indus. During the preparations for the voyage Coenus died; more regretted probably by the army, whose cause he had pleaded, than by the king. Alexander however honoured him with a magnificent funeral, but, it is said, could not forbear to remark, that it was to little purpose Cœnus had made that long speech, and shown so much anxiety to return to Macedonia.2 J Arrian, vi. 2. * Curtius, IX. 3. Propter paucos dies longam orationem eum exorsum, tamquam solus Macedoniam visurus esset. The last part of the remark may not have been correctly reported; but altogether, the sneer was a natural expression of Alexander's vexation. Whether it was, as it has been called, brutal, cannot be deter mined by its present appearance on paper. 35 CHAPTER LIV. ALEXANDER'S PASSAGE DOWN THE INDUS AND RETURN Preparations for the Navigation of the Indus.- Confluence of HOWEVER reluctantly Alexander may have abandoned the immediate prospect of further conquests and discoveries in the East, there was still enough to fill his mind, and to gratify his passion for heroic adventures, in the enterprise which he was next to begin. So vague had been, almost down to this time, his notions as to the geography of the regions which he was to traverse on his return to Persia, that when he found crocodiles in the Indus, he conceived a fancy that this river was a branch of the Nile; and this conjecture seemed to him strongly confirmed, when he met with the lotus, such as he had seen in Egypt, on the banks of the Acesines. He even mentioned, in a letter to his mother, that he believed he had discovered the land which contained the springs of the Nile; he thought that, in its course from India to Ethiopia, it might flow through some vast desert, in which it lost its original name. little inquiry among the natives must have sufficed A СНАР. LIV. CHAP. Preparations for tion of the Indus. to correct this error which seems to prove that he was not well read in Herodotus, and that the expedition of Scylax had excited but little attention in Greece and that he remained so long ignorant of the truth, shows how singly his views were at first bent toward the East. The fleet, which was probably for the most part the naviga- collected from the natives, numbered, according to Ptolemy, nearly 2000 vessels of various kinds, including eighty galleys of war. Arrian gives a list of thirty-three, which were nominally under the command of the principal officers of the army, most of whom nevertheless continued to serve on shore. As we learn from another author, that Alexander's finances were at one time, before he left India, in so low a state, that he was obliged to solicit con Mr. Williams (Life of Al. p. 293.) has thought proper to transcribe this list for sundry weighty reasons; first, as useful to show who the master-spirits were who worked the great revolution in the eastern world. His readers might otherwise have imagined that there was but one master-spirit, Alexander, seconded by several able and active officers, whom he and his father had formed. Another purpose is, to show that the list does not contain the name of a single citizen of any of the southern republics; and particularly no Athenian. So we are led to an important consequence. The Republicans of Greece had no part or portion in the glory of the war. Hence arose that jealousy of the Macedonian fame, that bitter hostility to Alexander, who had so dimmed and obscured their exploits by the splendour of his renown, and, as the literature of Greece was in their hands, that systematic attempt to depress his fame and blacken his character. This last remark will prebably appear not the least notable to those readers who are aware, that perhaps no history was ever so much disfigured by gross exaggeration and extravagant flattery, as Alexander's; who remember Strabo's complaints about the constant tendency of his historians to magnify their hero's exploits (xv. 252. ceμvývoVTES — 253. πλάσματα τῶν κολακευόντων ̓Αλέξανδρον — 269. πάντες οἱ περὶ ̓Αλέξανδρον τὸ θαυμαστον ἀντὶ τἀλήθους ἀπεδέχοντο μᾶλλον) and Plutarch's treatise. The truth is, that the Greeks were proud of Alexander, as they well might be and had a right to be for he belonged to them, both by blood, and by education: in this last respect more particularly to Athens. His conquests were one of their sources of consolation under the Roman yoke. Greece indeed produced few men comparable to him; but the same thing may be said of all the rest of the world, including even China, with its admirable constitution. But as to the other master-spirits, from Hephæstion down to the eunuch Bagoas, there was certainly no Greek state, however inconsiderable, that had any reason to be jealous of their glory. We know what the most illustrious among them were, and did. Notwithstanding the conspicuous theatre on which fortune placed them, they permit us to assert, that, out of the royal Greek family, Macedonia never gave birth to a great man. But such an effusion of purblind and impotent ill-will toward the people which has conferred greater benefits than any other on the world, would scarcely have deserved notice, except as a specimen of that systematic attempt to which I have adverted elsewhere. - Vol. III. p. 25. n. 3. PREPARATIONS FOR THE NAVIGATION OF THE INDUS. tributions from his friends, it seems very probable that these officers fitted out the vessels at their own charge. The crews of the larger vessels-the natives no doubt manned their own small craft-were composed partly of Phoenicians and Egyptians, and partly of Greeks, from the islands and coast of the Ægæan. The command of the whole fleet was entrusted to Nearchus. Alexander divided his forces into four corps. The main body, with about 200 elephants, was to advance along the eastern bank under the command of Hephæstion. Craterus was to lead a smaller division of infantry and cavalry on the opposite side of the river. Philippus, with the troops of his satrapy, was ordered to take a circuitous route toward the point where the two other generals were to wait for the fleet, in which the king himself was to embark with the hypaspists, the bowmen, and a division of his horseguard, in all 8000 men. On the morning of the embarkation, Alexander himself, under the direction of his soothsayers, offered the libations and prayers which were deemed fittest to propitiate the powers of the Indian streams, Hydaspes and the impetuous Acesines, which was soon to join it, and the mighty Indus, which was afterwards to receive their united waters. Among the gods of the west, Hercules and Ammon were invoked with especial devotion; then, at the sound of the trumpet, the fleet began to drop down the river. The most judicious arrangements had been made to prevent confusion, and to keep its main divisions, the galleys of war, the horse-transports, and the vessels loaded with the baggage, at a convenient and invariable distance. from each other. It was a spectacle such as the bosom 1 Plutarch, Eum. 2. Νέαρχον ἐκπέμπων μετὰ νεῶν ἐπὶ τὴν ἔξω θάλασσαν, ήτει χρήματα τοὺς φίλους· οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἐν τῷ βασιλείῳ. A passage not noticed by Schmieder, who first proposed the opinion adopted in the text in his note on Arrian, Ind. 18. LIV. 37 CHAP. Confluence of the Hy daspes and Acesines. of the Hydaspes had never before witnessed, nor has it since. Its high banks were crowded with the natives, who flocked from all quarters with eager curiosity to gaze, and accompanied the armament in its progress to some distance before they could be satiated with the sight of the stately galleys, the horses, the men, the mighty mass of vessels gliding down in unbroken order; and as the adjacent woods rang with the signals of the boatswains, the measured shouts of the rowers, and the plash of numberless oars, keeping time with perfect exactness, the Indians too testified their delight in strains of their national music. On the third day Alexander found Hephæstion and Craterus encamped at the place appointed, and, having waited there two days, was joined by Philippus. He immediately sent Philippus across to the Acesines, with orders to pursue his march along its banks, while Hephæstion and Craterus moved forward in advance of the fleet on opposite sides of the Hydaspes. He himself, as he proceeded, landed his troops wherever he found a display of force necessary to extort submission from the neighbouring tribes, though it was with reluctance that he spent any time in these incursions; he was anxious, as soon as possible, to reach the frontiers of the Malli, a warlike race, from whom he expected a vigorous resistance, and whom he therefore wished to surprise before they had completed their preparations, and had been joined by their allies, particularly their southern neighbours the Oxydracæ or Sudraca. In five days he arrived at the second place of rendezvous, the confluence of the Hydaspes and the Acesines. His Indian pilots had warned him of the danger which the fleet would have to encounter at this point: yet it did not escape. The united rivers were at that time pent into a narrow space, where their conflicting waters roared and chafed |