The Anabasis of Alexander/Book VI/Chapter XVII
CHAPTER XVII.
Musicanus Executed.—Capture of Patala.
Meantime he was informed that Musicanus had revolted. He despatched the viceroy, Peithon, son of Agenor, with a sufficient army against him, while he himself marched against the cities which had been put under the rule of Musicanus. Some of these he razed to the ground, reducing the inhabitants to slavery; and into others he introduced garrisons and fortified the citadels. After accomplishing this, he returned to the camp and fleet. By this time Musicanus had been captured by Peithon, who was bringing him to Alexander. The king ordered him to be hanged in his own country, and with him as many of the Brachmans as had instigated him to the revolt. Then came to him the ruler of the land of the Patalians,[1] who said that the Delta formed by the river Indus was still larger than the Egyptian Delta.[2] This man surrendered to him the whole of his own land and entrusted both himself and his property to him. Alexander sent him away again in possession of his own dominions, with instructions to provide whatever was needful for the reception of the army. He then sent Craterus into Carmania with the brigades of Attains, Meleager, and Antigenes, some of the archers, and as many of the Companions and other Macedonians as, being now unfit for military service, he was despatching to Macedonia by the route through the lands of the Arachotians and Zarangians. To Craterus he also gave the duty of leading the elephants; but the rest of the army, except the part of it which was sailing with himself down to the sea, he put under the command of Hephaestion. "He transported Peithon with the cavalry-lancers and Agrianians to the opposite bank of the Indus, not the one along which Hephaestion was about to lead the army. Peithon was ordered to collect men to colonize the cities which had just been fortified, and to form a junction with the king at Patala, after having settled the affairs of the Indians of that region, if they attempted any revolutionary proceedings. On the third day of his voyage, Alexander was informed that the governor of the Patalians[3] had collected most of his subjects and was going away by stealth, having left his land deserted. For this reason Alexander sailed down the river with greater speed than before[4]; and when he arrived at Patala, he found both the country and the city deserted by the inhabitants and tillers of the soil. He however despatched the lightest; troops in his army in pursuit of the fugitives; and when some of them were captured, he sent them away to the rest, bidding them be of good courage and return, for they might inhabit the city and till the country as before. Most of them accordingly returned.
- ↑ These people inhabited the Delta of the Indus, which is now called Lower Scinde. Their capital, Fatala, is the modern Tatta.
- ↑ Cf. Arrian (Indica, ii.).
- ↑ Aristobulus, as quoted by Strabo (xv. 1), said that the voyage down the Indus occupied ten months, the fleet arriving at Patala about the time of the rising of Sirius, or July, 325 B.C.
- ↑ Curtius (ix. 34) calls this king Moeris.