Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/270

 1^8 HISTORY OF GREECE. testimony. Whatever may be the truth of the stor}-^, Alexander caused Orsines to be hanged ; naming as satrap Peukestes, whose favor was now high, partly as comrade and preserver of the king in his imminent danger at the citadel of the Malli, — partly from his having adopted the Persian dress, manners, and language more completely than any other Macedonian.^ It was about February, in 324 b. c.,^ that Alexander marched out of Persis to Susa. During this progress, at the point where he crossed the Pasitigris, he was again joined by Nearchus, who having completed his circumnavigation from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Euphrates, had sailed back with the fleet from the latter river and come up the Pasitigris.^ It is probable that the division of Heph^stion also rejoined him at Susa, and that the whole army was there for the first time brought together, after the separation in Karmania. In Susa and Susiana Alexander spent some months. For the first time since his accession to the throne, he had now no mili- tary operations in hand or in immediate prospect. No enemy was before him, until it pleased liim to go in quest of a new one ; 1 Arrian, vi. 30 ; Curtius, x. 1, 22-30. the arrival of Alexander in Susiana, on his return march, in the month of February b. c. 323 ; a year too early, in my opinion. I have before remarked on the views of Mr. Clinton respecting the date of Alexander's victory over Porus on the Ilydaspes, where he alters the name of the month as it stands in the text of Arrian (following Schmieder's conjecture), and supposes that battle to have occurred in August b. c. 327 instead of April b. c. 326. Mr- Clinton antedates by one year all the proceedings of Alexander subsequent to his quitting Baktria for the last time in the summer of b. c. 327. Dr. Vin- cent's remark — "that the supposition of two icinters occurring after Alex- ander's return to Susa is not borne out by the historians "' (see Clinton, p. 232), is a perfectly just one ; and Mitford has not replied to it in a satisfac- tory manner. In my judgment, there was only an interval of sixteen months (not an interval of twenty-eight months, as Mr. Clinton supposes) between the return of Alexander to Susa and his death at Babylon (Feb. 324 b. c. to June 323 b c). =• Arrian, vii. 5, 9 ; Arrian, Indica, c. 42. The voluntary death of Kalaniis the Indian Gymnosophist must have taken place at Susa (where Diodoras places it — xvii. 107), and not in Persis; for Nearchus was seemingly pres- ent at the memorable scene of the funeral pile ( Arrian. vii. .3, 9) — and h6 was not with Alexander in Persis.
 * Mr. Fyncs Clinton (Fast. Hellen. b. c. 32.5, also Append, p. 232) places