Horratus launched his javelin, but Dioxippus evaded it ‘by a slight bending of his body’ and proceeded to break Horratus’s long pike with a single blow of his club. Next, he tripped Horratus, snatched his sword and ‘planted his foot on his neck as he lay prostrate’. Only Alexander’s intervention prevented Dioxippus from smashing his challenger’s skull. It was a huge disappointment for the assembled Macedonians, and they set about plotting their revenge. At another feast a few days later, they falsely accused Dioxippus of stealing a precious golden cup. He blushed at the suggestion, since ‘it often enough happens that one who blushes at a false insinuation has less control of his countenance than one who is really guilty.’ A proud man, Dioxippus ‘could not bear the glances which were turned upon him as if he were a thief’, so he quit the banquet, wrote a letter of farewell to Alexander, and fell on his sword.3
Such unseemly events could hardly have impressed the envoys of the Indian kings, and Macedonian pride was doubtless bruised, but a brief moment of humiliation could not mar Alexander’s spectacular achievements. He had quashed residual Greek resentment (even daring to raze the city of Thebes to the ground), conquered Persia, and by the time of his death at the age of thirty-two he had carved out an empire that stretched from the Danube, through Egypt, to the mouth of the Indus River. The pilgrimage he had reputedly made to Troy, to place wreaths on the tombs of the Homeric heroes Achilles and Patroclus, now seemed less like hubris and more like a fitting prelude to a glorious military career.
Redoubtable soldier that he was, Alexander had always honoured diplomacy and had treated its officers with great respect. As a young man he had received a party of Persian ambassadors and had been so affable, and had asked them such pertinent questions, that they thought the much-vaunted abilities of his father Philip were as nothing in comparison with the precocious talents of his son. Years later, the envoys of some other defeated Indian towns visited Alexander to offer their submission. They were surprised to find him still in his armour and without anyone waiting in attendance upon him. At length, a cushion was brought in so that Alexander might rest his battle-wearied body. Instead, he made the eldest of the ambassadors take it and sit down upon it. Delighted by such courtesy, the envoys readily agreed to the terms of surrender that were proposed. Alexander could, as the occasion required, feast, charm or flatter all and any ambassadors.
He had won his empire through a combination of military prowess and diplomatic politesse. The empire was as fragile as it was vast, however. When he died, Alexander’s relatives, counsellors and generals squabbled over his inheritance and a series of smaller Macedonian states sprang up. The easternmost of these was centred on Syria and Persia, where one of Alexander’s most successful generals, Seleucus Nicator (358–281 BC), established a dynasty that would survive until the Roman invasion in 64 BC. Seleucus dreamed of emulating Alexander’s military forays into northern India. Unfortunately, in the period since Alexander’s death a formidable new power had arisen in that region.
ii. Megasthenes
The Mauryan Empire does not enjoy the place it deserves in the popular historical imagination. Between 321 and 180 BC, the Mauryans ruled over 500 million people, easily matching the grandeur of either the Moghul Empire or the British Raj. By the fifth century BC the numerous tribal groups of India had been reduced to four dominant monarchies, or mahajanpadas, who set about battling for primacy. By the beginning of the fourth century BC. the kingdom of Magadha, with its capital at Pataliputra, had emerged victorious. In the wake of Alexander’s military adventures in India, Chandragupta Maurya ascended to the Magadhan throne and, along with his successors, established the first genuine Indian empire, ranging from the borders of Persia to those of Afghanistan and Bengal.
Pataliputra (on the site of present-day Patna) was likely the largest city in the world at the time. Surrounded by 570 towers and a 900-foot moat, it boasted elegant houses, ponds and orchards, plentiful food and hardly any crime. With an army of 3,000 cavalry, 9,000 war elephants and 600,000 foot soldiers, the Mauryans were fully equipped to repulse any Greek invasion. Seleucus realized that his plans to conquer India were stillborn. After suffering military defeat in 305 BC, he instead made a treaty with the Mauryans, abandoning claims to the Punjab in exchange for several hundred battle elephants. With the prospect of hostilities averted, diplomacy was able to flourish.
In 302 BC a Macedonian ambassador named Megasthenes was sent to formalize relations between two civilizations recently at war. He travelled down the Kabul Valley, over the Khyber Pass, and headed across the Ganges Valley towards the Mauryan capital. He would stay there for ten years. While the workaday detail of his diplomatic encounters has vanished, the reports he took home would define the West’s understanding of India for centuries to come, and would be endlessly cited, if not always uncritically, in the works of historians and scholars like Arrian and Pliny. India was suddenly more tangible: a land ‘of such vast extent, it seems well-nigh to embrace the whole of the northern tropic zone of the earth’. It had ‘many huge mountains which abound in fruit trees of every kind, and vast plains of great fertility’.
The Indian people were not hapless savages but, ‘distinguished by their proud bearing’, were ‘well skilled in the arts, as might be expected of men who inhale a pure air and drink the very finest water’. They were generally frugal, but entirely capable of appreciating finery, favouring robes ‘ornamented with precious stones’ and ‘flowered garments made of the finest muslin’. They had ‘a high regard for beauty, and avail themselves of every device to improve their looks’.
There was much to admire in Mauryan culture. Even during military campaigns, those who worked the land were left unmolested, ensuring a steady supply of food. There were no slaves anywhere in the empire and visitors like Megasthenes were guaranteed courteous treatment: ‘officers are appointed even for foreigners whose duty is to see that no foreigner is wronged. Should any of them lose his health, they send physicians to attend him…and if he dies they bury him, and deliver over such property as he leaves to his relatives. The judges also decide cases in which foreigners are concerned, with the greatest care, and come down sharply on those who take unfair advantage of them.’
The sophistication of Indian thought was perhaps the greatest revelation. ‘Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem. Hence they accord no special privileges to the old unless they possess superior wisdom.’ Death was ‘a very frequent subject of discourse. They regard this life as, so to speak, the time when the child within the womb becomes mature, and death as a birth into a real and happy life for the votaries of philosophy.’ And when the old finally passed on, the Indians did not raise monuments in their honour but considered ‘the virtues which men have displayed in life, and the songs in which their praises are celebrated, sufficient to preserve their memory after death’.
Like so many later visitors, Megasthenes was especially fascinated by Brahmin priests, men who ‘abstain from animal food and sexual pleasures, and spend their time in listening to serious discourse, and in imparting their knowledge to such as will listen to them’. They were much revered, and any man who came to listen to their discussions was ‘not allowed to speak, or even to cough, and much less to spit, and if he offends in any of these ways he is cast out from their society that very day, as being a man who is wanting in self-restraint’.4
Megasthenes’ epic survey of Indian life, his Indika, did not survive antiquity intact. All that remain are fragments and the countless references to his work by later authors. His influence was profound, though not uncontroversial. Megasthenes would be criticized for his inaccuracies and wilder speculations. Unversed in Indian languages, he only ever heard stories and reports in presumably imperfect translation. He certainly made gross generalizations about a society made up of hundreds of millions of people, and gave too much credence to the more fabulous stories he heard. He told the Greek world about races of Indians who lacked noses, others whose feet
