200 HISTORY OF GREECE. sacrifices and festivities to the gods. He planted in it some Macedonian veterans and Grecian mercenaries, together with volunteer settlers from the natives around.^ An army of Scy- thian Nomads, showing themselves on the other side of the river, piqued his vanity to cross over and attack them. Carrying over a division of his army on inflated skins, he defeated them with little difficulty, pursuing them briskly into the desert. But the weather was intensely hot, and the army suffered much from thirst ; while the little water to be found was so bad, that it brought upon Alexander a diari'hcea which endangered his life.* This chase, of a few miles on the right bank of the Jaxartes (seemingly in the present Khanat of Kokand,) marked the ut- most limit of Alexander's progress northward. Shortly afterwards, a Macedonian detachment, unskilfully con- ducted, was destroyed in Sogdiana by Spitamenes and the Scy- thians : a rare misfortune, which Alexander avenged by over- running the region^ near the river Polytimetus (the Kohik), and putting to the sword the inhabitants of all the towns which he took. He then recrossed the Oxus, to rest during the extreme season of winter at Zariaspa in Baktria, from whence his commu- nications with the West and with Macedonia were more easy, and where he received various reinforcements of Greek troops.'* Bessus, who had been here retained as a prisoner, was now brought forward amidst a public assembly ; wherein Alexander^ having first reproached him for his treason to Darius, caused his nose and ears to be cut off — and sent him in this condition to Ekbatana, to be finally slain by the Medes and Persians.^ Mu- tilation was a practice altogether Oriental and non-Hellenic: 1 Anian, iv. 3, 17 ; Curtius, vii. 6, 25.
- Arrian, iv. 5, 6 ; Curtius, vii. 9.
' Arrian, iv. 6, 11 ; Curtius, vii. 9, 22. Tiie river, called by the Macedo- nians Polytimetus (Strabo, xi. p. 518), now bears the name of Kohik or Zu- rnfshan. It rises in the mountains east of Samarkand, and flowing west- ward on the north of that city and of Bokhara. It does not reach so far as the Oxus; during the full time of the year, it falls into a lake called Kara- kul: during the dry months, it is lost in the sands, as Arrian state* (Burner's Travels, vol. ii. ch. xi. p 299. cd. 2nd.).
- Arrian, iv. 7, 1 ; Curtius, vii. 10, 12.
- Arrian, iv. 7, 5.
