Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s17: 5. Historians of Alexander
Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s17
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5. Historians of Alexander
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But the expedition of Alexander was the first occasion when the West began to hear a good deal about India that was based on the direct personal observation of the reporters. By that time the Greeks had begun to take an active interest in scientific pursuits, and Alexander was himself a disciple of one of the greatest masters of human knowledge. Though in his wars and campaigns the first place was given to military considerations, other interests of a wider character were by no means forgotten, and among his lieutenants and companions there were many scientists and literary men who later employed their pens in describing what they had seen and heard wherever they went no less than in celebrating the martial successes of Alexander. They were the first to communicate to the outside world more or less accurate knowledge of India, its physical features and products, its inhabitants and their social and political institutions. Three or four writers stand out among the contemporaries of Alexander because of the frequent references made to them by later writers. First is Nearchus, who in his account of his voyage in the Persian Gulf gave generally dependable information on many topics he happened to touch on. A Cretan by birth, he had been brought up at the Macedonian court and educated along with Alexander. His memoirs are no longer extant, but the works of Strabo and Arrian contain copious extracts from them. Then comes Onesicritus, the chief pilot of Nearchus' fleet, who wrote a life of Alexander which is now lost. He was a follower of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, and was on this account chosen by Alexander as best fitted to initiate contact with the Indian sages of Takshaśilā. His love of the marvellous often led him into exaggerations and Strabo says tartly that ‘he may as well be called the master fabulist as the master pilot of Alexander’.¹ Modern writers also differ in their estimates of his credibility. Aristobulus was another writer who accompanied Alexander and wrote a history of his wars which was one of the principal sources used by Arrian in his *Anabasis* and by Plutarch in his life of Alexander. His interest seems to have been mainly geographical; he is said to have begun writing his work very late in life when he was over eighty years of age, and the historical parts of his work seem to have suffered from the influence of a new rhetorical mode, and the Alexander myth that was already beginning to take shape. Among the contemporary historians of Alexander there was none to beat Kleitarchus;
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¹ XV, 129: *Anc. Ind.*, pp. 34-5: Breloer, *KS*, ii, p. 26.
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he was the son of Deinon, a historian of Rhodes, and he accompanied the expedition of Alexander. His history of the expedition was full of invention and romance and was held in little esteem by those who came after him. One of Kleitarchus' stories preserved by Aelian (and Strabo) is to the effect that Alexander and his army were once, while marching through a jungle, thrown in to a panic by mistaking a group of big-sized apes for a hostile army.¹
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¹ *Anc. Ind. in Class. Lit., pp. 148-49.*