The Campaigns of Alexander (Classics) Read Online Free PDF

policy so universally detested if it were nothing more than a ‘device’ to win Persian favour.
     
    Plutarch, perhaps exaggerating, puts the number of cities founded by Alexander at seventy. In his
Campaigns
Arrian mentions fewer than a dozen foundations; not a cause for complaint, for he was not compiling a catalogue. But we are not told what Alexander’s motives were, military or economic or, as some scholars believe, part of his mission to spread Greek culture throughout Asia. It is from the
Indica
that we learn that cities were established among the conquered Cossaeans to encourage them to forsake their nomadic habits and become a settled people.
     
    Alexander took his religious duties very seriously indeed, as the account of his last days makes plain. Arrian frequently records that the king offered sacrifice or made drink-offerings, and the prophecies made by his seers, notably Aristander, are faithfully reported. Only once, before the siege of Tyre, is he provoked to sarcasm; ‘The plain fact’, he writes, ‘is that anyone could see that the siege of Tyre would be a great undertaking’. But Arrian’s hostile or sceptical attitude to the ruler cult of his day – an attitude he shares with Plutarch and the historian Appian – prevents him from doing justice to Alexander’sdivine aspirations. That Alexander believed himself to be the son of Ammon-Zeus, as his ancestor Hercules was son of Zeus, is very probable, although admittedly not susceptible of proof. Arrian will have none of this. Alexander set out for Siwah ‘hoping to learn about himself more accurately, or at least
to say that he had so learnt
’. For him Alexander’s claim was merely another ‘device’, to impress his subjects. He displays the same sceptical attitude towards Alexander’s divinity. In 324 the Greek states, probably in response to a ‘request’ from the king himself, sent
theoroi
(envoys sent on sacred missions) to crown him with a golden crown at Babylon. That the envoys were
theoroi
admits of no doubt; the fact that they themselves wore crowns proves it. If Arrian writes that ‘they came as
theoroi
forsooth’, using a Greek particle implying disbelief or sarcasm, he is suggesting that Alexander, as a mortal, could never be a god. Gods were immortal, men were not, and ‘after all’, as Arrian drily comments, ‘Alexander’s death was near’.
     
    Arrian set out to produce the best and most reliable account of Alexander’s expedition, avoiding the exaggerations of his predecessors and correcting their errors. That he succeeded few will dispute. The histories of Diodorus and Curtius and, particularly, the biography of Plutarch throw light (and sometimes darkness) on the character of Alexander and occasionally even on his military exploits, but Arrian’s book is the basis of our knowledge. It impresses one as the work of an honest man who has made a serious and painstaking attempt to discover the truth about Alexander – a task perhaps impossible by his time – and who has judged with humanity the weaknesses of a man exposed to the temptations of those who exercise supreme power. We need not deny the limitations of the work, but it is proper to remember that Alexander’sidea of an empire in whose rule conquering Macedonians and conquered Persians were to share perished with him. To spare the conquered was one thing, to associate them with one in government was another, an idea that was not to reach fulfilment until long after Alexander’s death.
     
Alexander’s Army
12
     
    In the spring of 334 Alexander set out from Macedonia, leaving Antipater with 12,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry to defend the homeland and to keep watch on the Greek states. The size of the army with which he crossed the Hellespont has been variously reported, totals ranging from 30,000 to 43,000 for infantry and 4,000 to 5,500 for cavalry. But the detailed figures given by Diodorus (17. 17), 32,000 infantry and 5,100 cavalry, agree essentially