The Anabasis of Alexander/Book VI/Chapter XVI

by Arrian

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CHAPTER XVI.

Campaign against Oxycanus and Sambus.

Then he took the archers, Agrianians, and cavalry sailing with him, and marched against the governor of that country, whose name was Oxycanus,^[1] because he neither came himself nor did envoys come from him, to offer the surrender of himself and his land. At the very first assault he took by storm the two largest cities under the rule of Oxycanus; in the second of which that prince himself was captured. The booty he gave to his army, but the elephants he led with himself. The other cities in the same land surrendered to him as he advanced, nor did any one turn to resist him; so cowed in spirit^[2] had all the Indians now become at the thought of Alexander and his fortune. He then marched back against Sambus, whom he had appointed viceroy of the mountaineer Indians and who was reported to have fled, because he learned that Musicanus had been pardoned by Alexander and was ruling over his own land. For he was at war with Musicanus. But when Alexander approached the city which the country of Sambas held as its metropolis, the name of which was Sindimana, the gates were thrown open to him at his approach, and the relations of Sambus reckoned up his money and went out to meet him, taking with them the elephants also. They assured him that Sambus had fled, not from any hostile feeling towards Alexander, but fearing on account of the pardon of Musicanus.^[3] He also captured another city which had revolted at this time, and slew as many of the Brachmans^[4] as had been instigators of this revolt. These men are the philosophers of the Indians, of whose philosophy, if such it may be called, I shall give an account in my book descriptive of India.^[5]

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1. This king is called Porticanus by Curtius (ix. 31), Diodorus (xvii. 102), and Strabo (xv. 1).
2. An expression imitated from Thucydides (iv. 34). Cf. Arrian, ii. 10; v. 19; where the same words are used of Darius and Porus.
3. Diodorus (xvii. 102) says that Sambas escaped beyond the Indus with thirty elephants.
4. See note, page 327 supra.
5. The Indica, a valuable work still existing. See chapters x. and xi. of that book.