Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/233

ALEXANDER IN BAKTRIA AND SOGDIANA. ^Ql Towards the close of winter he crossed over the mighty range of the Hindoo-Koosli ; a march of fifteen days through regions of snowj and fraught with hardship to his army. On reaching the north side of these mountains, he found himself in Baktria. The Baktrian leader Beesus, who had assumed the title of king, could muster no more than a small force, with which he laid waste the country, and then retired across the river Oxus into Sogdiana, destroying all the boats. Alexander overran Baktria with scarce any resistance ; the chief places, Baktra (Balkh) and Aomos surrendering to him on the first demonstra- tion of attack. Having named Artabazus satrap of Baktria, and placed Archelaus with a garrison in Aornos,^ he marched north- ward towards the river Oxus, the boundary between Baktria and Sogdiana. It was a march of extreme hardship ; reaching for two or three days across a sandy desert destitute of water, and under very hot weather. The Oxus, six furlongs in breadth, deep, and rapid, was the most formidable river that the Mace- donians had yet seen.^ Alexander transported his army across it on the tent-skins inflated and stuffed with straw. It seems surprising that Bessus did not avail himself of this favorable op- poi'tunity for resisting a passage in itself so difficult ; he had however been abandoned by his Baktrian cavalry at the moment when he quitted their territory. Some of his companions, Spita- probabilit}' that it was at the place called Beghram, twenty-five miles north- east of Kabul — in the way between Kabul on the south side of the Hindoo- Koosh, and Anderhab on the north side. The prodigious number of coins and relics, Greek as well as Mohammedan, discovered by Mr. Masson at Beghram, supply better evidence for identifying the site with that of Alex- andria ad Caucasurex, tlian can be pleaded on behalf of any other locality. See Masson's Narmtive of Journeys in Afghanistan, etc., vol. iii. ch. 7.p 148 neqq. In crossing the Hindoo-Koosh from south to north, Alexander probably marched by the pass of Bamian, which seems the only one among the four posses open to an army in the winter. See Wood's Journey to the Oxus. p. 195. 1 Arrian, iii. 29. -3 ; Curtius, vii. 5, 1. " Arrian, iii. 29. 4 ; Strabo, xi. p. 509. Evidently Ptolemy and Aristobu- lus were much more awe-struck with the Oxus, than with either the Tigris or the Euphrates. Arrian (iv. 6, 13) takes his standard cf comparison, in regard to river"?, from the river Feneius in Thessaly.