Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/611

 EMPIRE.] PERSIA 583 ditary enemies the Turanian nomads. Prestige rather than material advantage was gained by the rapid fall of the supposed impregnable rocky nests of Arimazes in Sogdiana, of Chorienes or Sisimithres in the mountain region of the upper Oxus, 1 and, above all, of the Indian fortress Aornus. Though usually clement to the conquered, Alexander was terrible to those who rose against him to the Arians, for example, and to the strong cities that headed the insur rection in Sogdiana ; when the movement was crushed, he laid the land waste far and wide and slew all the males ; 120,000 Sogdians are said to have thus lost their lives. Alexander too, like Caesar, did not shrink from a breach of faith if it served his purpose ; this was seen in the massacre of the Indian mercenaries who had defended Massaga, which was meant to spread terror before him as he entered India. 2 The Achaamenian power at its climax had never crossed the Indus ; Alexander passed the river and pushed into India proper. This adventurous march was under taken wholly for the sake of prestige, and was specially meant to impress the imagination of the Greeks, to whom India was a land of marvels. Alexander proposed to reach the Ganges and the ends of the habitable earth ; and it was sorely against his will that his own soldiers forced him to confine his plans to the rational scope of securing the Indus as his frontier and adding to his realm its com mercially important delta. 3 Alexander had now accom plished what, in the eyes of the Arian peoples, was neces sary to give the last stamp of legitimacy to the new empire ; he had led his armies round all the frontiers and taken personal possession of his lands. To close the circle he had still to march back through Gedrosia and Car- mania. But it may well be doubted if he would have faced this last exploit had he known beforehand the full terrors of the burning desert ; not a fourth part of the forces that began the march from India survived a jour ney which has been fitly compared with the retreat from Moscow. A series of minor expeditions completed the work of the great campaigns by reducing a number of mountain tribes, which had shaken off the weak yoke of the Achsemenians, exacted tribute at the chief passes, and in their irreclaim able savage habits of plunder were like the modern Kurds, the born foes of the Iranian peasant. Such were the Uxians, the Mardians in Persis, and the people of the same name to the south of the Caspian, and finally the Cossasans, whom Alexander disposed of in his last cam paign in forty mid-winter days. The future obedience of these brigands was secured by planting fortresses at the most difficult points of the roads, and they were compelled to settle down and take to husbandry. 4 Alex- These vast results were only obtained by the aid of ander s continual fresh levies in Europe, and strong garrisons had &amp;gt; omes. Q j^ ig{. - n j^g con q uerec [ lands. Alexander s work could not last unless the European occupation became perma nent ; and therefore he planned a great netAvork of new cities, in which colonies of Greek or Macedonian soldiers were planted. According to Plutarch (De Alex, fort., i. 5, p. 328 F) more than seventy cities owed their origin to Alexander ; some forty of these can still be traced. 5 In Media, in the Cossaean neighbourhood, and in Carman ia we 1 The last two places are identical. All the sources know only two fortresses taken by Alexander in these regions : those which mention Sisimithres omit Chorienes and vice versa ; and the essential points are the same in Arrian (iv. 21) and Curtius (viii. 2, 19-33). 2 Diod., xvii. 84. The official Macedonian account in Arriau (iv. 27) ignores the treachery. 3 As the Greeks then knew India only from Ctesias, whose geography is of the vaguest, Alexander probably under-estimated the vast size of the peninsula. 4 Arrian, Ind., 40, 8. 5 See the careful enumeration in Droysen, Gesch. d. JIdlenismus, 2d ed., vol. iii. pt. 2, p. 187 sq. know only two by name, though we are told that in the 331-323. first two districts there were really a large number of such towns, seemingly inconsiderable places. In the east of Iran the settlements were more important, and twenty-six can be enumerated in Aria, the country of the Paropanisus, Bactria, Sogdiana, India, and the land of the Oritae, Bactria and Sogdiana alone claiming eight of these. 6 The composition of these settlements is illustrated by the details given for Alexandria in the Indian Caucasus ; according to Diodorus, the city and one or more minor settlements within a day s journey of it received 7000 barbarians, 3000 camp-followers, and as many of the mercenaries as volunteered to stay ; but Curtius, who cer tainly reproduces the common source more accurately than Diodorus, names 7000 Macedonian veterans and a number of mercenaries whose engagement had expired. The Greek element in this colony must have been large, for the town still keeps its Greek name (Alasadda) in an Indian book of the 4th century A.D. Alexandria on the Tanais (Jaxartes), again, was partly peopled by Sogdian insur gents, forcibly transplanted from their homes, which the conqueror had destroyed. Some of Alexander s last orders refer to the founding of cities and the transplanting of Europeans to Asia and Asiatics to Europe, a measure designed to promote the assimilation of all parts of the empire. Macedonia alone did not suffice for this gigantic scheme of colonization, and it was chiefly Greeks who were planted in the most eastern satrapies, in Bactria and Sogdiana. At such a distance from home the Greeks could have no other interest than loyalty to Macedon ; it was the same policy as dictated to the Romans the establishment of Latin colonies in their new conquests. But the antagonism between Greeks and Macedonians was too great to allow the former to forget that they were, after all, really men deported by the great king (avda-iraa-rot) ; and so even from the first there were seeds of discord between them and the rest of the empire. Alexander s capital was Babylon, the natural centre of Satrapies an empire that embraced both Iran and the West, and and recommended also by its command of the great lines of gov A rn &quot; international traffic, and by its historical traditions of empire. The Acha?menian system of satrapies was re tained ; kingships were left only in the exceptional case of India. 7 The satrapies of the upper country seem to have been fourteen : Persis, Paraetacene, Carmania, Media, Tapuria with the Mardian country, Parthia with Hyrcania, Bactria, Aria with Drangiana, Gedrosia with the Oritae, 8 Arachosia, the Paropanisus country (which probably was quite independent under the later Achaemenians, and was first placed under a satrap by Alexander), India on this side the Indus, India beyond the Indus (from the Bactrian frontier to the confluence of the Indus and the Acesines), and beyond this the province of the lower Indus extending to the sea. The last three satrapies were also new. Alex ander retained the old satraps of Darius in three provinces ; in Paraetacene and Tapuria it would have been impossible to drive the old rulers from their mountains without a tedious campaign, and in Aria Satibarzanes was confirmed in his post to detach him from Bessus. But in all three 6 Strabo, xi. p. 517. Alexandria on the Tanais and twelve other towns are spoken of by Justin (xii. 5, 16), but xii. is perhaps a cor ruption of vii. 7 Oxyartes is sometimes called king by a mere inaccuracy. Dexippus, ap. Phot., cod. 82, p. 64, b. xxii. (Bekker), makes Alexander give Oropius the Zoydiavwv fiaffiXfiav. The geographical order, and the fact that Sogdiana has been mentioned before, demand the correction ^ovfftavuv, and for KOIVWS we must read KOLVOS ; see Justin, xiii. 4, 14. Oropius was the successor of Abulites. The province seems to have been officially designated a kingdom, but that does not make its governor a king. 8 Tli is province was perhaps formed by Alexander ; it was after wards joined to Arachosia.