Classical Studies 2902B

Alexander’s March towards the West

[Note that Information about the Final Exam is now posted on the first page of this website. CLM]

This period runs from July to late December, 325.

[I have managed to find a clip from the Hindi-language film Sikander (1941), which I mentioned in class last time. Since it shows Alexander reacting to the troops’ refusal to go further East than the Hyphasis River (Beas) and the consultation of the omens, which turned out to be bad (so that A. could save face in turning back), we shall look at this first and then resume our account of his progress from Pattala.]

After his arrival at the Indus delta in July, 325, Alexander explored the whole area by ship; much of this area is now completely silted up so that modern archaeological investigations have succeeded in locating sites mentioned by A.’s admiral Nearchus in his work entitled Indica; also, the island in the Ocean where A. built altars to Oceanus and mother Earth (Tethys) has been located with a high degree of probability.

In the autumn of 325 (?late August) A.’s army set off for S. Iran from the neighbourhood of modern Karachi, a march of about 1,000 km. The first part was not too bad (Karachi to Rhambacia [modern Bela], where a new city was founded and Apollophanes was appointed Satrap of Gedrosia, with Leonnatus as military commander); and even though the terrain became very difficult, the road ahead was clearly defined as far as Turbat, though there was severe loss of life when the army camped in a wadi, which was inundated by a flash-flood. At Turbat, A. left the main road towards the West and turned South towards the sea at Pasni—a terrible journey of 140 km; aim seems to have been to provide wells and water supplies for his fleet which was going to come along the coast. (This would seem to be an attempt to reconnoitre suitable places for anchorages and harbours for projected trade and other sea communications between India and the Persian Gulf area.) After Pasni, A. carried on along the coast towards Gwadar, in the “land of the fish-eaters”, a journey even today accomplishable only by camel train. And from there he headed towards Pura (modern Bampur) in Iran (this was the worst part of the journey, because the Macedonians ran out of water and couldn’t find much anywhere: casualties in this section were appalling). They arrived in Pura 60 days after leaving Turbat; that is, it took them almost two months to traverse the Makran Desert.

Losses in this journey are hard to estimate: possibly 85,000 people had started out, many of them non-combatants; but at the end only about 25,000 were left. This was A.’s worst logistical blunder in his entire career—and why he did it has never been clear: Arrian (6.24) says it was a desire to outdo Semiramis and Cyrus the Great, both of whom had had catastrophes there (see Romm pp.145-146); Nearchus talks about provisioning the fleet; but several moderns say that it was to punish the army for refusing to advance beyond the Hyphasis.

To give you some idea of the appalling conditions, we shall view an excerpt from Michael Wood’s TV series In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great.

It should be noted that Craterus, on the more northerly route, did not have great difficulty in taking his troops west; nor, for that matter did Nearchus with the fleet. However, A., as soon as he could get messengers out, sent to several satraps nearby, demanding help and emergency supplies. This was probably an impossible demand, since his exact whereabouts were not known, nor could anything much be done by way of rapid transfer of bulk goods. At any rate, when things went badly wrong, A. seems to have gone on a hunt for scapegoats. Equally, when news began to spread that he was alive and on his way back towards the centre of his realm, panic began to set in among various satraps, who had been acting as if they were independent rulers and generally throwing A.’s money about. A leader in this evolving kleptocracy was the imperial Treasurer, Harpalus.