The Anabasis of Alexander/Book V/Chapter III
CHAPTER III.
Incredulity of Eratosthenes.—Passage of the Indus.
Any one who receives these stories may believe or disbelieve them as he pleases. But I do not altogether agree with Eratosthenes the Cyrenaean,[1] who says that everything which was attributed to the divine agency by the Macedonians was really said to gratify Alexander by their excessive eulogy. For he says that the Macedonians, seeing a cavern in the land of the Parapamisadians,[2] and hearing a certain legend which was current among the natives, or themselves forming a conjecture, spread the report that this forsooth was the cave where Prometheus had been bound, that an eagle frequented it to feast on his inward parts, that when Heracles arrived there he killed the eagle and set Prometheus free from his bonds. He also says that by their account the Macedonians transferred Mount Caucasus from the Euxine Sea to the eastern parts of the earth, and the land of the Parapamisadians to that of the Indians;[3] calling what was really Mount Parapaniisus by the name of Caucasus, in order to enhance Alexander's glory, seeing that he forsooth had gone over the Caucasus. He adds, that when they saw in India itself some oxen marked with the brand of a club, they concluded from this that Heracles had penetrated into India. Eratosthenes also disbelieves the similar tale of the wandering of Dionysus. Let me leave the stories about these matters undecided as far as I am concerned.
When Alexander arrived at the river Indus, he found a bridge made over it by Hephaestion, and two thirty- oared galleys, besides many smaller craft.[4] He moreover found that 200 talents of silver,[5] 3,000 oxen, above 10,000 sheep for sacrificial victims, and thirty elephants had arrived as gifts from Taxiles the Indian; 700 Indian horsemen also arrived from Taxiles as a reinforcement, and that prince sent word that he would surrender to him the city of Taxila,[6] the largest town between the rivers Indus and Hydaspes.[7] Alexander there offered sacrifice to the gods to whom he was in the habit of sacrificing, and celebrated a gymnastic and horse contest near the river. The sacrifices were favourable to his crossing.
- ↑ The celebrated Geographer and Mathematician, who was born B.C. 276 and died about B.C. 196. His principal work was one on geography, which was of great use to Strabo. None of his works are extant. He was made president of the Alexandrian library, b.c. 236.
- ↑ Cf. Arrian (Indica, v. 11).
- ↑ The earliest mention of India which has descended to our times is in Aeschylus (Suplices, 284).
- ↑ Arrian frequently uses the Ionic and old Attic word, σμικρος.
- ↑ About £480,000.
- ↑ Alexander probably crossed the Indus near Attock. The exact site of Taxila cannot be fixed.
- ↑ The Hydaspes is now called Jelum, one of the five great tributaries of the Indus.