Comment le Roy alixandre ploura de pitie quil ont de son cheual Buciffal qui se mouroit ALEXANDER THE GREAT MOURNING THE DEATH OF BOUKEPHALOS THE INVASION OF INDIA BY ALEXANDER THE GREAT AS DESCRIBED BY ARRIAN, Q. CURTIUS, DIODOROS PLUTARCH AND JUSTIN Being Translations of such portions of the Works of these and other Classical Authors as describe Alexander’s Campaigns in Afghanistan the Panjâb, Sindh, Gedrosia and Karmania WITH AN INTRODUCTION CONTAINING A LIFE OF ALEXANDER COPIOUS NOTES, ILLUS

Since this volume was written, three works have appeared which not only make important additions to our knowledge of Alexander’s campaigns in Turkestan, Lower Sindh, and Makran respectively, but which also serve to correct some current errors with regard to the identification of places which lay in the route of the great conqueror, as he passed through these obscure regions. As the works referred to have been written by scholarly men, who possess an intimate personal knowledge of the localities

En inventant l’histoire, la Grèce inventa le jugement du monde, et, dans ce jugement, l’arrêt de la Grèce fut sans appel. A celui dont la Grèce n’a pas parlé, l’oubli, c’est-à-dire le néant. A celui dont la Grèce se souvient, la gloire, c’est-à-dire la vie.— Discours de M. Ernest Renan du 5 Mai 1892. This work is the fifth of a series which may be entitled Ancient India as described by the Classical Writers , since it was projected to supply annotated translations of all the accounts of India wh

“Of the life of Alexander we have five consecutive narratives, besides numerous allusions and fragments scattered up and down various Greek and Latin writers.... Unluckily, among all the five there is not a single contemporary chronicler.... The value of all, it is clear, must depend upon the faithfulness with which they represent the earlier writings which they had before them, and upon the amount of critical power which they may have brought to bear upon their examination. Unluckily again, amo

Arrian, who is universally allowed to be by far the best of all Alexander’s historians, was at once a philosopher, a statesman, a military commander, an expert in the tactics of war, and an accomplished writer. He was born towards the end of the first century of our aera at Nikomêdeia (now Ismiknid or Ismid), the capital of Bithynia, situated near the head of a deep bay at the south-eastern end of the Propontis or Sea of Marmora. He became a disciple of the Stoic philosopher Epiktêtos (much in t

Nothing is known with any certainty respecting either the life of this historian or the time at which he lived. Niebuhr makes him contemporary with Septimius Severus, but most critics with Vespasian. Zumpt again, who, like some other eminent scholars, identifies him with the rhetorician Q. Curtius Rufus, of whom Suetonius wrote a life now lost, places him as early as Augustus. [5] The style in which his history is written certainly shows him to have been a consummate master of rhetoric. He was p

There are but few works in the wide circle of literature which have afforded so much instruction and entertainment to the world as Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of the Famous Men of Greece and Rome . These Lives , which are forty-six in number, are arranged in pairs, and each pair contains the life of a Greek and a Roman, followed, though not always, by a comparison drawn between the two. Alexander the Great and Caesar are ranked together, but no comparison follows. In his introduction to the life o

Diodôros was born at Agyrium, a city in the interior of Sicily, and was a contemporary of Julius Caesar and the Emperor Augustus. It was the great ambition of his life to write an universal history, and having this in view he travelled over a great part of Europe and Asia in order to acquire a more accurate knowledge of countries and nations than could be obtained from merely reading books. In Rome, where a far greater number of the ancient documents which he required to consult had been collect

Justin, in the preface to his work entitled De Historiis Philippicis , informs us that it was “a kind of anthology”— veluti florum corpusculum —extracted from the forty-four volumes published by Pompeius Trogus on Philippic ( i.e. Macedonian) history. As these volumes included histories of nearly all the countries with which the Macedonian sovereigns had transactions, they embraced such a very wide field that they were regarded as a cyclopaedia of general history. Justin remarks that while many

Fig. 1.—Lysimachos. Fig. 2.—Aristotle. Alexander III., King of Macedonia, surnamed the Great, was born at Pella in the year 356 B.C. He was the son of Philip II. and Olympias, who belonged to the royal race of Epeiros, which claimed to be descended from Achilles, the hero of the Iliad . The education of the prince was in the outset entrusted to Lysimachos, an Akarnanian, and to his mother’s kinsman Leonidas, a man of an austere character, who inured his pupil to Spartan-like habits of hard exerc

After capturing the Rock of Choriênês, Alexander went himself to Baktra, but despatched Krateros with 600 of the Companion Cavalry [24] and a force of infantry, consisting of his own brigade with that of Polysperchôn and Attalos and that of Alketas, against Katanês and Austanês the only chiefs now left in the country of the Paraitakênai [25] who still held out against him. In the battle which ensued Krateros after a severe struggle proved victorious. Katanês fell in the action, while Austanês wa

Alexander, not to foster repose which naturally sets rumours in circulation, advanced towards India, always adding more to his glory by warfare than by his acts after victory. India lies almost entirely towards the east, [204] and it is of less extent in breadth than in length. [205] The southern parts rise in hills of considerable elevation. [206] The country is elsewhere level, and hence many famous rivers which rise in Mount Caucasus traverse the plains with languid currents. The Indus is col

When the capitulation on those terms had been ratified by oaths, the Queen [of Massaga], to show her admiration of Alexander’s magnanimity, sent out to him most valuable presents, with an intimation that she would fulfil all the stipulations. Then the mercenaries at once, in accordance with the terms of the agreement, evacuated the city, and after retiring to a distance of eighty stadia, pitched their camp unmolested without thought of what was to happen. But Alexander, who was actuated by an im

... When the Macedonians were hesitating to attack the city called Nysa, because the river which ran past it was deep, “Unlucky man that I am,” Alexander exclaimed, “why did I not learn to swim?” and so saying he prepared to ford the stream. After he had withdrawn from the assault, envoys arrived from the besieged with an offer to surrender. They were at first surprised to find him clad in his armour, and still stained with the dust and blood of battle. A cushion was then brought to him, which h

... After this he advanced towards India that he might make the ocean and the remotest East the limits of his empire. In order that the decorations of his army might be in keeping with this grandeur, he overlaid the trappings of the horses and the arms of his soldiers with silver. He then called the army his argyraspids, because the shields they carried were inwrought with silver. When he had reached the city of Nysa, and found that the inhabitants offered no resistance, he ordered their lives t

Alexander had founded this city at the foot of Paropanisos in the spring of 329 B.C. , before he crossed into Baktria. For distinction’s sake it was called Alexandreia “under Kaukasos,” or “of the Paropamisadai.” Its position has been a subject much discussed. Sir A. Burnes and Lassen fixed it at Bamiân, but to this there is the objection that Bamiân is situated in the midst of the mountains, and is reached from Kâbul after the main ridge of the Hindu-Kush has been crossed. A position which woul

Abisares is called by Arrian the King of the Indian Mountaineers, and may perhaps be not improperly described as the King of Kâśmîr. His name is derived from that of his kingdom, Abhisâra , which designated the mountainous country to the east of the Indus now known as Hazâra , a name in which some traces of the old seem to survive. After the fall of Mazaga, he sent troops across the Indus to aid the inhabitants in resisting Alexander. He sent embassies, however, to the conqueror both before and

N.B. —When a person or place is designated by two or more names more or less different, these names are generally given together. The modern names of ancient cities, rivers, etc., are bracketed in italics. Proper names which appear in one part of the text spelled after the Greek form, and in another after the Latin, will be found indexed under the Greek form; hence names which commonly begin with C should be looked for under K....