capture of bessus.—exploits in sogdiana.

here ptolemy learned that spitamenes and dataphernes were not firmly resolved about the betrayal of bessus. he therefore left the infantry behind with orders to follow him in regular order, and advanced with the cavalry till he arrived at a certain village, where bessus was with a few soldiers; for spitamenes and his party had already retired from thence, being ashamed to betray bessus themselves. ptolemy posted his cavalry right round the village, which was enclosed by a wall supplied with gates. he then issued a proclamation to the barbarians in the village, that they would be allowed to depart uninjured if they surrendered bessus to him. they accordingly admitted ptolemy and his men into the village. he then seized bessus and departed; but sent a messenger on before to ask alexander how he was to conduct bessus into his presence. alexander ordered him to bind the prisoner naked in a wooden collar, and thus to lead him and place him on the right-hand side of the road along which he was about to march with the army. thus did ptolemy. when alexander saw bessus, he caused his chariot to stop, and asked him, for what reason he had in the first place arrested darius, his own king, who was also his kinsman and benefactor, and then led him as a prisoner in chains, and at last killed him? bessus said that he was not the202 only person who had decided to do this, but that it was the joint act of those who were at the time in attendance upon darius, with the view of procuring safety for themselves from alexander. for this alexander ordered that he should be scourged, and that the herald should repeat the very same reproaches which he had himself made to bessus in his inquiry. after being thus disgracefully tortured, he was sent away to bactria to be put to death. such is the account given by ptolemy in relation to bessus; but aristobulus says that spitamenes and dataphernes brought bessus to ptolemy, and having bound him naked in a wooden collar betrayed him to alexander.502

alexander supplied his cavalry with horses from that district, for many of his own horses had perished in the passage of the caucasus and in the march to and from the oxus. he then led his army to maracanda,503 which is the capital of the land of the sogdianians. thence he advanced to the river tanais. this river, which aristobulus says the neighbouring barbarians call by a different name, jaxartes, has its source, like the oxus, in mount caucasus, and also discharges itself into the hyrcanian sea.504 it must be a different tanais from that of which herodotus the historian speaks, saying that it is the eighth of the scythian rivers, that it flows out of a great lake in which it originates, and discharges itself into a still larger lake, called the maeotis.505 there are some who make this tanais the boundary of europe 203and asia, saying that the palus maeotis, issuing from the furthest recess of the euxine506 sea, and this river tanais, which discharges itself into the maeotis, separate asia and europe,507 just in the same way as the sea near gadeira and the nomad libyans opposite gadeira separates libya and europe.508 libya also is said by these men to be divided from the rest of asia by the river nile. in this place (viz. at the river tanais), some of the macedonians, being engaged in foraging, were cut to pieces by the barbarians. the perpetrators of this deed escaped to a mountain, which was very rugged and precipitous on all sides. in number they were about 30,000. alexander took the lightest men in his army and marched against these. then the macedonians made many ineffectual assaults upon the mountain. at first they were beaten back by the missiles of the barbarians, and many of them were wounded, including alexander himself, who was shot right through the leg with an arrow, and the fibula of his leg was broken. notwithstanding this, he captured the place, and some of the barbarians were cut to pieces there by the mace204donians, while many also cast themselves down from the rocks and perished; so that out of 30,000 not more than 8,000 were preserved.