The men were at least encouraged by the expectation that after more than four years in Asia they would all soon be going home. In due course Alexander called an assembly to make an announcement. He took care to revert to Greek dress for the occasion, for he did not expect his news to be welcome.
Alexander began by praising his troops’ historic achievement, telling them that no army, not even the storied Ten Thousand, had marched farther or overcome greater odds. When they did turn back for Greece, it would be as living legends, and as rich men, for Alexander would discharge every man with enough wealth to make him a figure of substance in his city.
“But the job is not finished!” he said. “I have received word from Bactria that Bessus, the betrayer of Darius, has taken the headdress of Persian kings and now styles himself ‘Artaxerxes V, king of Asia.’ Can any of us doubt that he will soon gather an army around him, and if we do not seek him he will come west, to take away what we have so dearly earned? The Bactrians are tough soldiers, and cannot be trusted behind our backs. Can it be long, do you think, before Bessus spreads tales that the Greeks are afraid to confront a competent enemy, instead of the hapless Darius? For this reason, we march tomorrow, so that we may show ‘Artaxerxes’ the true depth of his folly.”
Against a campaign to preserve Macedonian honor, there could be no argument. The army struck east across the eastern satrapies of Parthia and Aria. On the way Alexander either accepted or exacted the submission of all the tribes. In cases of voluntary allegiance he showed great lenience, often confirming the suppliant in his current domains or enlarging them at the expense of those who refused him. Word of this policy of course spread ahead of him, so that actual resistance became more and more exceptional.
Bessus had probably expected that Alexander would proceed carefully, consolidating his hold over the lowlands and assuring his lines of supply before forcing the passes into Bactria. In anticipating how his enemy would fight, Bessus proved as unsuccessful as old Darius, for the Macedonians came on as inexorably as winter itself.
The crossing of the Paropamisus mountains came at great cost, with Alexander’s troops unprepared for the great cold and the fainting sickness often seen in high places; Bessus had furthermore torched all the villages and farms in the region, hoping that hunger would force the Macedonians to retreat. They froze but most did not starve, having brought with them prized luxuries, such as honey, from the palaces of Darius. With the end of these, Alexander ordered the men to stalk as many of the wild, spiral-horned goats of the region as they could find, and after they were gone, to root underground for the native herbs, just as the goats did.
When grubbing in the dirt proved less than sustaining, he diverted the troops by showing them a great landmark of the area: the famous crag of Prometheus, high above the clouds, on a ridge at the crest of the Paropamisus. This was the very place where the Titan was bound in punishment for bringing fire to men, condemned for all eternity to have his guts devoured by an eagle. Alexander paused long enough to allow those who were interested in the crag to go up to it in small parties, where they marveled at the very spot where the victim suffered, his rusty shackles still in place. They were further cheered by the implication that Alexander’s army would surely have freed Prometheus, had the King’s ancestor, that underachiever Heracles, not been lucky enough to get there first.
It was in these mountains that I suffered my only wound of the campaign. As you see here, I am marked by the experience in a way that trifling, but permanent…
Machon held up his right hand, revealing that the index and middle fingers ended above the last knuckle.
The fault is entirely mine that I didn’t notice my fingers turning black. The handiest treatment-if I might put it that way!-would have been to warm my fingers in the snow, which was as warm as a blanket compared to that cutting wind. But I was lucky compared to others, who lost whole fingers, feet, or the ends of their noses.
Aeschines speaks of the crossing of the Paropamisus as a feat of logistics and a tribute to his leadership, which I suppose it was. But consider this question: how many people had to starve for each mile Alexander’s army was provisioned in that country? In these matters I saw more than anyone in the Macedonian general staff did, including Alexander. The task of separating the native people from their food was left in the hands of low-level officers. When the Macedonians came to a place with a significant concentration of families, soldiers went out to demand all their stores be deposited in a central place by a certain day. Crimes of opportunity were not uncommon during these visits, including murders of recalcitrant men and abductions of young women.
Alexander frowned on these practices. He even punished an inveterate rapist, a certain Hero, son of Alcaemon, with a run through the gauntlet. But as his comrades took turns punching Hero, the ‘punishment’ took on the quality of a mass congratulation of the man. Nor was he removed from the duty that seemed to trouble him with so much temptation.
Some of the villages held back supplies and were destroyed. The rest submitted, though the “donation” of their winter stores would inevitably reduce them to starvation in the months to come. Like living reproofs of these outrages, women with stick-thin babes and shriveled breasts hung around the army’s camp for the whole time Macedonians campaigned in Bactria. The soldiers were not immune to pity-on several occasions I saw them toss a morsel or two out to these victims. The women fought over them like ravening dogs.
This was how Alexander’s triumph in the mountains was supplied. I don’t say that he was unique in this regard, or that the Persians didn’t do the same in their marches through territories of the Greeks. In lands of wealthier people the Macedonians were content to buy their supplies, though such people were, ironically, far better able to survive outright theft than the mountaineers. What I am saying is that you should not believe that the burden of cold, hunger, or disease fell only on Alexander’s gallant soldiers, as the current stories lead you to believe. For every hungry soldier who didn’t get enough to eat there were three villagers who got nothing; for every cold soldier there was a family robbed of its bedclothes.
In this way, he crossed the mountains with a loss of only a twentieth of his army. Before the winter ended he descended from the highlands and, after setting beacon-fires to guide the rest of his men down from the mountains, raced to take the towns of Drapsaca and Bactra with whatever forces he had with him. Bessus, hoping to find reinforcements in the lands of the Scythians, retreated north across the Oxus River. To forestall pursuit, he burned anything within a thousand stades that would float. The Macedonians followed by resurrecting a trick Alexander had used to cross the Danube years before, rafting across the river on tents stuffed and sewn shut with grass, leaves and wood chips.
With his failure to stop Alexander at the Oxus, the Persians had seen enough of their new king. Riders delivered the message that Bessus was arrested and waiting for Alexander a short distance ahead of his army. Thus ended, as dishonorably as it had begun, the short reign of ‘Artaxerxes V.’
Alexander had definite plans for disposing of the traitor. Ptolemy was sent ahead to secure the prisoner, strip him naked, and place him at the side of the road where the Greeks marched. As the troops went by, they saw him humiliated there, a dog collar around his neck. Riding in his chariot, Alexander turned to the prisoner with a sneer, as if confronted with a pile of dung.
“Why did you betray and murder your king?” asked Alexander.
Bessus responded with equal arrogance, asking “Alexander, why did you betray and murder your father, Philip?”