Текст книги "Alexander the Great"

Wounded and repulsed, Alexander took thought for his machines. A mound was ordered, as at Gaza, from which the catapults and siege-towers could bring their barrage within range, but the natives had the pleasure of seeing their first drawbridge collapse beneath the weight of its Macedonians. The catapults were more formidable, and when one of the arrow-shooters killed the Indian chieftain, the tribesmen gave in to superior engineering. Their hired troops surrendered and were taken into Alexander's ranks, only to be massacred when they tried to escape on the following night. The rest were spared, including the chieftain's mother, who made up for the loss of her son to a catapult by sleeping with Alexander and conceiving a replacement.

It was now midwinter, and the storming of two more highland citadels kept the army busy well into the new year; the righting continued to be strenuous and the weather chilly but food was no distress: only three months' earlier, a herd of 230,000 cattle had been captured, the finest of which had been chosen by Alexander who 'wished to send them back to Macedonia to work the land', a tribute to his keen eye for the agriculture on which all ancient economies depended: the rest sufficed to feed the army for several months on milk or meat, two rare luxuries in the diet of the classical world. Meanwhile the drift of the campaign was ever eastwards. Beyond the Swat hills, on the eastern side of the river Indus, lived a rajah whose people throughout history had always supported Alexander's present enemies on the near bank. Agitators and hired troops had already come to cause trouble and as Alexander sacked and resettled one city after another on the edge of the Indus, the survivors kept retreating towards this one source of help. By early March they had been penned up into the north-east highlands overlooking the Indus itself and had fled to a steep spur north of Attock which even the hero Heracles, men said in Alexander's army, had never been able to capture. At last, the scene was set for the climax to Alexander's career as the greatest besieger in history.

In 1926 the site of this spur called Aornos was fixed by the explorations of Sir Aurel Stein, and his remarkable search has since been confirmed by archaeologists. Aornos is indeed as impressive as Ptolemy's history suggested. Where the river Indus crooks westwards above the Nandihar valley, a complex of spurs and ridges are enclosed inside its bend. Among them is Pir-Sar, the 'peak of the holy man', a long flat-topped cliff which stands over a height of 7,000 feet, guarded on the east by the broad river Indus to which it descends in a series of slippery gorges. Due north, the even higher spur of Bar Sar rises to a sharply conical point and meets Pir-Sar first by grass slopes, then by a particularly treacherous ravine, while to the west, sheer cliffs drop 2,000 feet to a strip of valley and thence rise straight to the highest peak of the whole range. To the south, Pir-Sar's terminal hillock breaks into three narrow branches, each more inaccessible than the next. As for Pir-Sar itself, its own flat summit commands a view dramatic enough to stir the most hardened Macedonian bodyguard, whether he looked away to the icebound caves of the Upper Swat headwaters or south beyond the Indus to the metallic green of the plains round Peshawar. It was a site for mountaineers, but emphatically not for warriors.

From such a vantage point Alexander's looping march up the bank of the Indus was sure to be detected. On no side of the rock could his army hope for easy access, and they had to choose between a ridgeway or a ravine. As for starving out the enemy, that was impossible because Pir-Sar had its own water-springs and a summit wide enough to grow crops for its occupiers, as it still does for the local Gujars. The cliffs and gorges were far too sheer for the catapults to come within range: when the natives talked of their Hindu god Krishna, worshipped by men dressed in lion skins, it was only natural for the Macedonians to equate him with their own royal ancestor Heracles and spread the word that not even Heracles had been able to storm Pir-Sar. To Alexander, that was another reason for attempting it himself.

From the pass, he briefly visited the Indus to check on Hephaistion's bridge-building; he then approached Pir-Sar up river from the south. At the nearest base the heaviest troops and most of the cavalry were left to prepare supplies against a long siege, while the Horse-archers and all the crack skirmishing troops continued for a day and a half up the western bank until they met with a decisive stroke of luck: nearby tribesmen surrendered, offering to lead the army to the easiest point of assault. As usual, they were believed for lack of any alternative. Ptolemy and Alexander's secretary Eumenes were sent on a reconnaissance, and striking due north from the river they seized the spur of Little Una, due west of Pir-Sar itself, helped by its covering of pine-trees and wild rhododendrons. After putting up a stockade on the hilltop, they lit a fire signal as prearranged. Alexander saw it, but so did the defenders, and it took two days' skirmishing and the despatch of a native Indian messenger before king, secretary and historian were safely united on their advance ridge.

From Little Una, the outlook was very much more favourable. Pir-Sar, said the guides, was vulnerable on its hidden north face, so Alexander

scrambled towards it along the Burimar plateau until he came to rest at the great natural fosse of the Burimar-Kandao ravine, some 800 feet deep. Here he was vulnerable from above and quite unable to fight back, as the ravine was too wide and too deep for his catapults' range. Undeterred, he once more ordered the landscape to be changed to suit him. Stakes were to be cut from the many nearby fir trees, some conveniently fallen, and a mound was to be built across a ravine as broad as a Punjab river until the catapults could find their mark. These amazing earthworks began at dawn, Alexander moving the first heap himself and then standing by 'to watch and praise those who worked eagerly but to punish those who gave up for a moment'. After one day, sixty yards were already finished, but as the sides of the ravine dropped away, the work slowed down and it was three more days before men were within fighting range of the nearest tip of Pir-Sar itself. Presumably the mound was more a platform than a complete filling; its crisscross pattern of stakes and brushwood was one more credit to the troops' skill in carpentry.

A foothold on Pir-Sar was not to be easily won. Alexander chose thirty advance guards, and 'at the sound of the trumpet, he turned to them and ordered them to follow him, for he would be the first up the rock'. Nearing the top ledge, he changed his mind and sent the guards ahead, only to see them crushed by boulders rolled down from above: he was lucky to escape with his life, and so he withdrew for the next two days. Day and night the Indians beat drums to celebrate the repulse, but the third night brought silence, a blaze of torchlight and their attempt at a surprise retreat. Hauling himself up the rockface by a rope, Alexander this time led his Shield Bearers up to the attack, killing several fugitives and clearing the summit for the building of altars to Athena goddess of victory, possible traces of which were discovered by Aurel Stein. The rock was measured by the surveyors, whose geometry was remarkably accurate, and it was then time to climb down, the last threat to the lines from Balkh to the Indus having been forcibly dispersed. 'I could only wonder,' wrote Stein, with the evidence of the landscape before him, 'that the story of Aomos should have escaped being treated altogether as a mythos. ... I had no victory to give thanks for, and yet I too felt tempted to offer a libation to Pallas Athene for the fulfilment of a scholar's hope, long cherished and long delayed.'

The last spring snows were melting along the Barandu valley as Alexander left Pir-Sar and marched to the natives' final city through forests of rhododendron, primula and alpine clematis. Animals, not plants, were now his anxiety, for once in the great plain of the Indus, he would be in elephant territory: two units of Shield Bearers were sent to spy out the land beyond, with special orders to interrogate captives about the numbers of elephants in the service of rajahs. Alexander encouraged the local mahouts to hunt out beasts for his own use, which they duly did, mounting them and bringing them into the ranks with the very briefest training, except for two rogue bulls who stampeded over a precipice. Mahouts and Macedonians then marched a hundred miles down the banks of the Indus towards its crossing point at Hund, which had long been bridged by the obedient Hephaistion.

At Hund the Indus is in lazy and expansive mood. Resting between the Himalayan foothills and the gorges of Attock, it spills across the plains to a width of six miles, inviting the traveller to take it at his leisure. Ambhi, rajah of Taxila, had been feeding Hephaistion's advance army with grain, another happy chance for the supply corps. He now sent presents in advance to the far bank, including 3,000 bulls, 10,000 sheep, many talents of silver and thirty elephants. Alexander first sacrificed the bulls 'to his usual gods', Ammon presumably among them, 'and held athletic games and a horse-show'. The sacrifices proved favourable, so he entrusted himself to Hephaistion's boats and bridge and perhaps to stuffed leather skins as well, and crossed the Indus to sacrifice again on the far bank, thankful that the rafts had not collapsed. Ambhi greeted him on the far side, 'his elephants appearing like castles between his troops', and as soon as they had established friendship, they inarched into the plain north-west of Rawal-Pindi to a first true taste of Indian life.

In the shadow of the Murree hills, beside the Tamra-Nala river, the mudbrick town of Taxila lay open to the most outlandish visitors it had seen. Unlike the forts of Upper Swat, it stood at the meeting-point of three main roads, and had prospered accordingly. It was a seat of Hindu teachers and doctors, though probably not already of Buddhists too, whose founder the Greeks called Bouddhas, explaining him as the son of a fellow-soldier of Dionysus. But Taxila had none of the outward refinements of a university town. Its wide main street twisted through old and unplanned houses whose flat roofs caught the heat, each a different height from its neighbour, and whose walls of mud and rough-cut stone encroached on the passers-by; the simple rooms behind were floored with earth and let on their street side by the narrow slit of a single window. Only one public building stood in the town centre, a long and curving hall supported by wooden rafters; to left and right ran the narrow alleys of an Indian slum, where dirt and darkness were little improved by the presence of communal dustbins. While Alexander rode in to sacrifice, meet the local rajahs and hold a durbah in the city hall, his officers took closer note of their surroundings.

Physically, the Indians are slim [wrote Alexander's admiral Nearchus]. They are tall and much lighter in weight than other men.... They wear earrings of ivory (at least, the rich do), they dye their beards, some of the very whitest of white, others dark blue, red or purple or even green. Their clothes are of linen, cither brighter than all other linen or made to seem so by the people's black skin: they dress in a tunic down to the mid-calf and throw an outer mantle round their shoulders: another is wound round their head.. .. They wear shoes of white leather, elaborately decorated, the soles of which are thickened to make them seem tall. And all except the very humblest carry parasols in summer.

Their hair, as Persian sculptures show, was gathered into a bun or topknot and as for their customs:

Those who are too poor to give their daughters a dowry [wrote Aristobulus], put them up for sale in the market in their prime, summoning a crowd of buyers by the noise of shells and drums. When a customer steps forward, first, the girl's back is bared for inspection as far as the shoulders, then, the parts in front; if she pleases him and also allows herself to be persuaded, she lives with him on agreed terms.

Among other Indian tribes, impecunious virgins were bestowed as prizes in boxing-matches, where their lack of money did not matter, but the rich needed only to press their suit with the gift of an elephant to be sure of success. When the husband died, 'some people said that the wives would burn themselves on his pyre and that those who refused to do so were held in disgrace'. This, the custom of suttee, was accompanied by a practice which Alexander had already tried to ban in outer Iran: the exposure of dead bodies to dogs and vultures. For a happy after-life, nothing mattered more to Greeks than a proper burial, and Alexander could not bear to see his subjects ignore it.

Other discoveries were more delightful. Wise men were to be seen in the market-place where they anointed all passers-by with oil as a sign of their favour and chose whatever they wanted free of charge, whether figs, grapes or honey. Remarking on their two different sects, the one with long hair, the other with shaven heads, Alexander was keen to meet their leaders, and so he sent his Greek steersman of the Fleet, Onesicritus, to search them out. He had chosen his man carefully, for Onesicritus knew philosophy as well as the sea, having studied with the great Diogenes, master of the Greek Cynic school. Eastern and western wisdom met for polite discussion: fortunately, Onesicritus was also writing a history.

Two miles from Taxila he came on fifteen wise men, sitting or lying naked in various postures. One, whom the Greeks called Calanus, laughed aloud 'seeing that the visitor was wearing a cloak, a broad-brimmed Maccdonian hat and knee-length boots'. Onesicritus was asked to take off his clothes and sit down if he wished to hear their teaching: 'But the heat of the sun', he later explained 'was so scorching that nobody could have borne to walk barefoot on the ground, especially at midday.' Less hardy than his master Diogenes, he hesitated in embarrassment, until the oldest and wisest guru, named Mandanis, excused him and began to talk. 'Mandanis,' he said, 'commended Alexander for his love of wisdom, even though he ruled so vast an Empire: he was the only philosopher in arms he had ever seen. ... He went on to ask about Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes, remarking that they seemed to be decent and easy men, though they paid too much attention to conventions and not enough to nature.' Three interpreters were needed for the conversation. 'Because my interpreters only understand the simplest language,' Mandanis was believed to have said, 'I cannot prove to you why philosophy is useful. It would be like asking pure water to flow through mud.' But Onesicritus filtered the dark wisdom of the gurus through his own Greek preconceptions: he could barely understand them, so 'steersman of fantasy, not of the fleet', he took them to be agreeing with his own philosophy. Hindus, therefore, vouched in his history for the truths of Diogenes the Cynic.

Even if misunderstood, two of these naked wise men did make their way down to occupied Taxila. There, they dined at Alexander's table and 'ate their food while standing ...: the younger and fitter of the two balanced on one leg and held up a wooden beam, about five feet long, with both of his hands; when the leg became tired, he shifted on to the other and stood there all the day long.' As proof of his self-control he left the camp and refused all inducements to return, as they would put him at Alexander's beck and call. The elder one, Calanus, had finished his thirty-seven years of prescribed asceticism and was free to adapt his way of life: for the next two years, he followed the army from Taxila to Susa and lectured to any officers who were interested. His death, aged seventy-nine, was to cause a remarkable stir.

Legend could hardly leave this meeting between East and West as it had happened. The theme was embellished with variations and for two thousand years, the name of the Gymnosophists, or Naked Philosophers, remained part of the common culture of lettered men. In India their meetings with Alexander passed through his Romanceinto the Sayings of Milinda,a classic Buddhist text; in the Mediterranean, they were prominent in the works and poems of scholars in Renaissance Florence; in England, after the death of Cromwell, Puritan gentlemen still pinned their revolutionary fervour on the Gymnosophists' ideal, praising the Indians in pamphlets for being Puritans before their time, and denouncing Alexander as the type of a monarch like Charles II. The Gymnosophists' fame had spread far beyond their town by the Murree hills, and all because a pupil of Aristotle had crossed the Hindu Kush in search of the eastern Ocean and a pupil of Diogenes had left the boats on his native island of Cos, joined the expedition and agreed, in India, to go out in the midday sun.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Among the peculiarities of Taxila there was one which was to matter more to Alexander than any Gymnosophist or elephant: the first spring rains had begun to fall. But he paid no attention, though his Indian wise men were famed for their knowledge of the weather, and he turned to the task in hand. This was plain enough. The rajahs of the Punjab had their local animosities and, as usual, Alexander meant to play them off against each other. Ambhi of Taxila told of his neighbour Porus, who ruled to the south-east across the boundary river Jhelum: he had elephants and a large army and was likely to prove troublesome. Friendlier rajahs to the north were received and reinstated, as Alexander's thoughts had now turned eastwards, unwilling to interfere with native government provided his lines were assured: Ambhi was allowed to wear the royal diadem, happy in his reward of a thousand talents of booty, gold and silver tableware, Persian dress and thirty caparisoned horses, to the disgust of at least one Macedonian officer who could not see any merit in a decadent Indian.

In early May Alexander recruited 5,000 Indians and left Taxila, never to return to the Tamranala river and its province. His campaign in Swat had been no more immediately successful than any other attempt in history to exterminate mountain guerrillas. He had built walls, left Macedonian garrisons and restored the native chieftains wherever possible, but within three months, the tribesmen round Pir-Sar were to rise in revolt and murder his satrap. It needed harsher punishment to put them down for another eight years. As for Taxila, it too received a garrison and a settlement of invalided soldiers, but it was not for another two hundred years that the presence of Greeks in Iran and India forced it to break with its past. Then, had Alexander returned, he would have found a very different city, no longer the shambling disorder of an Indian slum but the neat rectangle of a Greek street plan, eventually to be defended by a stone-built wall whose twenty-foot width was buttressed with square towers.