athenas owl wrote: I think what drives me nuts about the 'Alexander was so mean to the Indians" meme is that it leaves out the bit about the huge Indian armies. There is an implication that the Indians were peace loving innocents not interested in warfare or conquest...the ancient Sanskrit texts should tell you otherwise.
It seems I’ve succumbed to a “meme” and, by implication, am indulging a “received” construct not necessarily based in reality?
There is no implication that the Indians were “peace loving innocents not interested in warfare or conquest” in anything that I have read or, I would imagine, anything I had written. The Indians were possibly no more “peace loving” than were the Greeks or the Macedonians. Given that 7,000 mercenaries “from the interior of India” were plying their trade here might seem to indicate that the citizens of these Indian cities were just as capable of killing each other (and hiring others to do it) as were the Greeks who’d been doing so with monotonous regularity for centuries.
That, of course is utterly irrelevant. You see, the Indians did not march across half a continent, cross the Hellespont and vent their martial wrath upon the Macedonians and Greeks. Rather it was Alexander and the Macedonians who crossed the Hellespont, marched half a continent and
invaded India with the express desire to conquer it. Strangely enough the Indians, by and large, resisted this invasion. For this, on the whole, they were slaughtered.
Diodorus and Plutarch relate this slaughter in similar terms and most likely from a similar source. Arrian too relates the slaughter in the same terms but adds that the Mercenaries were planning to go back on their word and not take service under Alexander. Diodorus 17.84 1-5:
The mercenaries straightway under the terms of the truce left the city and encamped without interference at a distance of eighty furlongs, without an inkling of what would happen. Alexander, nevertheless, nursed an implacable hostility toward them; he held his forces in readiness, followed them, and falling upon them suddenly wrought a great slaughter. At first they kept shouting that this attack was in contravention of the treaty and they called to witness the gods against whom he had transgressed. Alexander shouted back that he had granted them the right to leave the city but not that of being friends of the Macedonians forever.
Not daunted at the greatness of their danger, the mercenaries joined ranks and, forming a full circle, placed their children and women in the centre so that they might effectively face those who were attacking from all directions. Filled with desperate courage and fighting stoutly with native toughness and the experience of previous contests, they were opposed by Macedonians anxious not to show themselves inferior to barbarians in fighting ability, so that the battle was a scene of horror. They fought hand to hand, and as the contestants engaged each other every form of death and wounds was to be seen. The Macedonians thrust with their long spears through the light shields of the mercenaries and pressed the iron points on into their lungs, while they in turn flung their javelins into the close ranks of their enemies and could not miss the mark, so near was the target.
As many were wounded and not a few killed, the women caught up the weapons of the fallen and fought beside their men, since the acuteness of the danger and the fierceness of the action forced them to be brave beyond their nature. Some of them, clad in armour, sheltered behind the same shields as their husbands, while others rushed in without armour, grasped the opposing shields, and hindered their use by the enemy. Finally, fighting women and all, they were overborne by numbers and cut down, winning a glorious death in preference to basely saving their lives at any cost.
Women and children. Arrian reduces it to far fewer lines and simply notes that they were “slaughtered”. It is odd – relating to Amyntoros’ post on the “Mind” thread” – that were these decamping under the agreement to join Alexander’s army that the mercenary troop, in all accounts, marches away to a hill and camps at some distance from the Macedonians.
athenas owl wrote: As for the wholesale slaughter of the Indians...are these the same Indians that the Mauryas managed to kill in reportedly huge numbers, Asoka the Great in the Kalinga War causing the death of over a 100,000 civilans, not to mention the warriors killed… Alexander was a piker when it came to "wholesale" slaughter in India. Asoka's grandfather, Chandragupta and Asoka's father was also quite the conquerors.
Sigh…not to excuse these others’ slaughter but comparative religions I have indulged in, comparative slaughter is another subject.
athenas owl wrote: Sigh...not to excuse the murder of Cleitus, but it is a certainty that Alexander was not the only one there alcohol feuled...
Indeed he wasn’t. He was the only one to take a lonche or sarisa to another though.
athenas owl wrote: "Barbarian drinking habits"? Hello...Macedonia, drinking like fish. Alexander didn't have to "adopt" that habit, it followed him on the long campaign and at least anecdotally tripped Philip up on his way to skewer Alexander in Macedonia some years earlier. Plutarch was centuries removed from the old kingdom and strikes me as rather prissy...
It is not Plutarch who remarked on Alexander’s drinking, rather it was Arrian. He notes – amongst other barbarian habits Alexander was adopting – that “in drinking, another innovation, he now tended to barbarian excess”. He is remarking, from his reading of whichever source he is following, that Alexander’s drinking was increasing; that it was like the Persians who drink and feast all night. Further, he chooses to note this just prior to Alexander’s running through of Clietus.
athenas owl wrote:As for the party of Eumenes not liking Hephaistion, well duh...he was in direct competition with Hephaistion for access to the King. Chares may have been none to pleased either.
As were Craterus, Perdiccas and the others.
I'm a big fan anyway.)
