In vain Dareios summoned reinforcements from the Upper Satrapies, despite the fact that Alexander was delayed at Persepolis awaiting news of the outcome of Agis’ war and the clearing of the passes through the Zagros. When in May 330 Alexander finally crossed the Zagros into Media, Dareios had little choice but to retreat to solitudes of Central Asia, following the caravan route (later to be known as the ‘Silk Road’) that led from Rhagai through the Caspian Gates (the Sar-i-Darreh pass) between the Great Salt Desert and the Elburz mountains. But the cumbersome train of women and eunuchs, and the other impedimenta of royalty, made slow progress, while Alexander closed the distance between himself and his prey. Dareios thus felt compelled to decide the matter in battle, with an army that had dwindled to fewer than 40,000 barbarian troops and 4,000 Greeks. And these lacked the fighting spirit or the leadership to decide the matter on the battlefield: Bessos, satrap of Baktria and Sogdiana, and the chiliarch Nabarzanes were intent upon flight to Baktra (Balkh), where new forces could be enlisted for a guerrilla war against Alexander; Dareios had lost all authority. He was arrested and placed in chains, allegedly of gold, as if to mitigate the crime, and his remaining followers slipped away to make submission to the advancing conqueror. Finally, in a vain hope of buying time or winning Alexander’s goodwill, the conspirators murdered their king and left him by the roadside. Arrian dates Dareios’ death to the month Hekatombaion in the archonship of Aristophon, that is, July 330 (Arrian 3.22.2; Bosworth 1980a: 346 suggests a miscalculation and postpones the event to August). Not long after, Alexander reached Hekatompylos and dismissed the remainder of his allied troops. The pressure to declare an end to the Panhellenic war had been mounting since the fall of Persepolis, and some forces had been sent home from Ekbatana. Despite the loss of the allied contingents, there was still a ready supply of mercenary soldiers and regular reinforcements from Macedonia and Thrace. Furthermore, since the king was anxious to bring about an accommodation with the Persian aristocracy, and indeed to present himself as the legitimate successor of Dareios III, it was necessary to abandon the slogans of Panhellenism and vengeance.
Those who supported Bessos hastened in the direction of the Merv Oasis and the Upper Satrapies of Baktria and Sogdiana. Others, however, rejected Bessos and his clique. Bagisthanes, Antibelos (or, as Curtius 5.13.11 renders the name in Latin, Brochubelus) son of Mazaios, and Melon, the king’s interpreter, had surrendered even before the conspirators seized Dareios. Now, upon Bessos’ usurpation, the number and importance of these defectors increased: Phrataphernes, Autophradates, Artabazos and his sons, all found their way to Alexander’s camp. The king did not disappoint them, assigning to Phrataphernes the rule of the Parthians, and Auto-phradates the Tapourians. Artabazos and his sons remained with Alexander - he had known them since they had taken refuge at Philip’s court, and would reward them later. Even the regicide Nabarzanes surrendered to Alexander and was pardoned through the efforts of the younger Bagoas, an attractive eunuch who found favour with Alexander (Badian 1958b). Perhaps he lived out his life in obscurity, although it is possible that the ‘Barzanes’ who attempted to gain control of Parthia and Hyrkania, and was subsequently arrested and executed, was in fact the former chiliarch (Heckel 1981: 66-7).
It soon became known that the regicide, Bessos, had assumed the upright tiara and styled himself Artaxerxes V, and it is perhaps no mere coincidence that Alexander adopted Persian dress at about the same time (Plutarch 45.1-3). At Sousia (Tus), Alexander accepted the surrender of Satibarzanes, whom he confirmed him as satrap of the Areians and sent back to his satrapy (in the vicinity of modern Herat) accompanied by forty javelin-men under Anaxippos. These were soon butchered by Satibarzanes’ forces and Alexander, who had set out for Margiana, was forced to divert his army to Artakoana. Caught off guard by the suddenness of his arrival, the treacherous satrap fled to Baktria with 2,000 horsemen, but he soon returned to challenge the Persian Arsakes, whom Alexander had installed in his place. Not much later, Satibarzanes was killed in single combat with Erigyios.
Alexander himself followed the Helmand river valley eastward in the direction of Arachosia. On the way, he encountered the Ariaspians, a people known also as the ‘Benefactors’ (euergetai) for the aid they gave Kyros the Great in the 530s; now they provisioned another great conqueror over the winter of 330/29. In Arachosia, in the vicinity of modern Kandahar (but cf. Vogelsang 1985: 60, for pre-Alexandrian settlement), the king founded yet another Alexandreia in the satrapy abandoned by the regicide Barsaentes, whom Sambos now sheltered. The Macedonians then entered Baktria via the Khawak Pass, which led to Drapsaka (Qunduz). Their speed and determination were beginning to take a toll on the barbarian leaders, who sought reprieve by surrendering Bessos. The regicide was arrested, stripped naked and left in chains to be taken (by Ptolemy) to Alexander, but the conspirators who betrayed him were not yet ready to test the conqueror’s mercy.
The punishment of Bessos - Alexander sent him back to Ekbatana to be mutilated in Persian fashion (which involved the cutting off of the ears and nose) and then executed - should have ended the affair. But the northeastern frontier was unstable, and the semi-nomadic peoples there were inclined to trust the vastness of its open spaces and its seemingly unassailable mountain fortresses. Furthermore, Alexander’s campaign to the laxartes, and the establishment of Alexandreia Eschate, to replace the old outpost of Kyroupolis, threatened the old patterns of life and trade in Sogdiana (Holt 1988: 54-9). Hence the local dynasts, Spitamenes, Sisimithres, Oxyartes, Arimazes, took up the fight, and two years of guerrilla warfare followed before the political marriage of Alexander and Oxyartes’ daughter, Rhoxane, could bring stability to the region.
Alexander’s treatment of Bessos had perhaps sent the wrong message: the rebels should expect no clemency from the conqueror. Invited to a council at Baktra (Zariaspa), the chieftains of Baktria and Sogdiana suspected treachery and renewed their opposition. Spitamenes, perhaps an Achaimenid, emerged as the leader of the resistance, striking at Marakanda while Alexander carried the war beyond the laxartes. Next he caught the force sent to relieve the town in an ambush at the Polytimetos, inflicting heavy casualties and inspiring the natives’ hopes. But the following year, he was hemmed in by the contingents of Krateros and Koinos and eventually betrayed by his Scythian allies, who sent his head to the Macedonian camp while they themselves made good their escape into the desert.
In the late autumn of 328, large numbers of rebels and their families took refuge with Sisimithres on the so-called ‘Rock of Chorienes’, now known as Koh-i-nor (Chorienes was, in all likelihood, Sisimithres’ official name; Heckel 1986b; but: Bosworth 1981; 1995: 124-39), frighteningly high and of even more imposing circumference and surrounded by a deep ravine. But Alexander induced his surrender through the agency of Oxyartes, who must have defected to the Macedonians in the hope of saving his family. By his voluntary submission Sisimithres averted a fate similar to that of Ariamazes, and he was allowed to retain his territory (probably the region of Gazaba), although his two sons were retained as hostages in Alexander’s army. In early 327, Sisimithres was able to provision Alexander’s army with supplies for two months, ‘a large number of pack-animals, 2000 camels, and flocks of sheep and herds of cattle’ (Curtius 8.4.19). Alexander repaid the favour by plundering the territory of the Sakai and offering Sisimithres a gift of 30,000 head of cattle. It was almost certainly at this point that the banquet at which Rhoxane was introduced to Alexander occurred, and the king took his first oriental bride.
Alexander had never entirely trusted mercenaries - perhaps he had bitter memories of their betrayal of Philip (Curtius 8.1.24) - and he found it convenient to settle not fewer than 10,000 of them in military outposts beyond the Oxos (Amu-darya). The king had, of course, founded numerous ‘cities’ throughout the east - several, though not all, named for himself - and would continue to do so in India: Plutarch (Moralia 328e: De Fortuna Alexandri 1.5) speaks of more than seventy, but many of these involved either the resettling of old cities (e. g., Alexandreia Troas, or Prophthasia at Phrada, modern Farah) or the establishment of military colonies ( katoikiai), though some twelve to eighteen Alexandreias deserve serious attention (Stephanos Byzantios, entry ‘Alexandreiai’; Fraser 1996; cf. Tarn 1997: 2 232-59). In Baktria and Sogdiana, the short-term prognosis for these settlements was not good: for the mercenaries felt abandoned in the solitudes of Central Asia and, prompted by the false news of Alexander’s death in India, considered a bold escape to the west - thus imitating on a grander scale the achievement of the Ten Thousand - but the plan was suppressed in 326/5 and again, with great slaughter, in 323/2 (Holt 1988; cf. Tarn 1997). Paradoxically, Baktria and Sogdiana were destined to become an outpost of Hellenism between the Mauryan kingdom in the east and the Parthians in the west.
World History
