The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.223

c10.s2.223

Alexander, after much fighting west of the Indus, had reached Taxila and made it his advanced base for the conquest of the Punjab. He had a veteran and ever-victorious army; his infantry was of finer quality than anything Demetrius was likely to possess; he was drawing on the same regions of Iran as Demetrius for cavalry; he himself was among the greatest of known commanders. He fought his way across the Punjab as far as the Beas; by the time he reached that river half his remaining force was on his communications with Taxila and he was using Porus’ troops for the necessary garrisons,² while the difficulty of the advance and the severity of the fighting had been such that the morale of his veterans broke at the Beas and they refused to go farther. If the reader will look at the distance on the map from Taxila to the Beas, and then at the distances from Taxila to Pāṭaliputra on the one hand and to Kathiawar and Barygaza on the other, he will see at a glance that the Greeks were most certainly not fighting their way through a consistently hostile land, as Alexander had tried to do; whatever their conquest meant, it did not mean *that*.