1 Persepolis put on
2 ire,
3 Conquest of Asiatic
4 vountrics,
5 Mas information
6 rooproting India
7 60 HISTORY OF THE PANJAB.
8 the high priests as a son of Jove. Turning then northwards, he entered
9 Messopotamia, the seat of the earliest kingdoms, and crossing the Tigris,
10 entered Assyria, on the return of spring. On the plains of Arbela, washed
11 by the Tigris on the west, and about sixty miles east of the ruins of the cele-
12 brated Nineveh, a great battle was fought between Alexander and Darius,
13 in which the latter was defeated and his army dispersed with great slaughter.
14 Alexander was avxious to see his enemy alive, but the latter had been pierc-
15 ed by the javelins of the invaders and died of his wounds, before his wish
16 could be fulfilled, in the fiftieth year of hisage. The victor mourned over his
17 unfortunate rival and sent his body to Persia, there to be interred in the mauso-
18 leum of his royal predecessors. He pursued Bessus, the powerful satrap of Bac-
19 triana, who aspired to the throne of Persia, but the rebel was surrendered to
20 him by Spitamenes, the satrap of Sogdiana (Bokhara). According to Curtius,
21 Bessus was led, stark-naked, with a chain encircling his head, into the pre-
22 sence of the Macedonian sovereign, as a savage unworthy to wear the garb of
23 a man. Alexander had his nose and ears cut off, and he was subsequently
24 put to death with arrows.
25 In a fit of drunkenness, and at the instigatien of Thais, an Athenian
26 courtezan, Alexander set fire to the far-famed Persepolis, the capital of
27 Persia and the wonder of the world, and reduced that magnificent city
28 to a heap of ashes. He then overthrew the Scythians and conquered
29 Sogdiana (Bokhara), where he married the beautiful Roxana, the daughter of
30 Oxyartes, brother of Darius, said to have been the handsomest of the virgins
31 of Asia. He conquered Susa, where he found extensive treasures, entered
32 Hyrcania, the modern Mazindran, marched through Khorasdén and, invad-
33 ing Bactria, conquered the kingdom of Marcanda, the modern Samar-
34 kand. Wherever Alexander went, he subdued nations, built strong forts
35 and founded new cities, though the sites of many of them cannot without
36 much difficulty be now traced.
37 Having then conquered Drangiana, Archosia, Gedrosia and Seistan and
38 reduced the western part of Kébul lying between Ghazni and Kandahar,
39 Alexander crossed the Hindu Kush, in ten days, by the same route which
40 he had pursued in following Bessus, the rebel satrap. He had previously
41 collected his information concerning India at Bactria, from the Indiat
42 fugitives in that country, who told him what prospects of success India
43 presented to an invader. He was thus fully informed of the magrificence
44 of the country and of its riches in gold, gems and pearls. Even the shields
45 of Indian soldiers, so the Macedonian monarch was told, glittered with gold
46 and ivory. He grounded his claim to the Empire of India on the right
47 of the ancient monarchs of Persia, whose dynasty he had subverted. It is
48 highly interesting to trace the events which happened in the Panjéb and on its
49 north-western border more than two thousand years ago, ‘I'he names of
50 the places visited by the armies of Alexander, in his great expedition
51 to India, have changed since that time; but eminent scholars and travellers
52 rs Burnes, Wood, Morier, Smith,* Abbot, Archdeacon Williams, General
53 Neg a ae Rennel, D’Anville, Wilson and others, have taken much pains
54 entify them with modern names. The peculiar character of the
55 country visited and the general faithfulness of the accounts given by the
56 mis peas fee ae ues as to their identity, notwithstanding the
57 The tikes oa seas ‘ee as are since these memorable events took place.
58 Sa ae e tr ae the Panjéb and in the neighbourhood of Kabul
59 ; rude then as they now are, and Alexander had to
60 * See Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography.
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