“Just Rage”: Causes of the Rise in Violence in the Eastern Campaigns of Alexander the Great _______________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _____________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________________ by Jenna Rice MAY 2014 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled “JUST RAGE”: CAUSES OF THE RISE IN VIOLENCE IN THE EASTERN CAMPAIGNS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT presented by Jenna Rice, a candidate for the degree of master of history, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Ian Worthington Professor Lawrence Okamura Professor LeeAnn Whites Professor Michael Barnes τῷ πατρί, ὅς ἐμοί τ'ἐπίστευε καὶ ἐπεκέλευε ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee, Professors Worthington, Okamura, Whites, and Barnes, for the time they spent reading and considering my thesis during such a busy part of the semester. I received a number of thoughtful questions and suggestions of new methodologies which will prompt further research of my topic in the future. I am especially grateful to my advisor, Professor Worthington, for reading through and assessing many drafts of many chapters and for his willingness to discuss and debate the topic at length. I know that the advice I received throughout the editing process will serve me well in future research endeavors. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................ iv INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. THE GREEK RULES OF WAR ..............................................................................5 2. ALEXANDER IN PERSIA ...................................................................................22 3. BACTRIA ...............................................................................................................37 4. INDIA .....................................................................................................................84 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................136 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................139 The following frequently cited ancient authors are abbreviated as follows: Arr. Arrian, Anabasis Alexandrou Curt. Quintus Curtius Rufus Diod. Diodorus Siculus Hdt. Herodotus Plut. Plutarch Thuc. Thucydides Xen. Xenophon The following frequently cited modern works are abbreviated as follows: Bosworth, Alexander and the East Bosworth, A.B. Alexander and the East:The Tragedy of Triumph. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Bosworth, “Calanus” Bosworth, A.B. “Calanus and the Brahman Opposition.” Alexander der Grosse: Eine Welteroberung und Ihr Hintergrund (Vorträge des Internationalen Bonner Alexanderkolloquiums). Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1998. Bosworth, Commentary [I-II] A.B. Bosworth, Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, 1995. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire Bosworth, A.B. Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great. Cambridge: Canto Classics, 1993. iv Fuller, Generalship of Alexander the Great Fuller, J.F.C. The Generalship of Alexander the Great. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1958. Hanson, Western Way of War Hanson, Victor D. The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Heckel, Conquests of Alexander the Great. Heckel, Waldemar. The Conquests of Alexander the Great. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Holt, Alexander the Great and Bactria Holt, Frank. Alexander the Greatand Bactria: The Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central Asia. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Holt, Into the Land of Bones Holt, Frank. Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great and Afghanistan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Kern, Ancient Siege Warfare Kern, Paul. Ancient Siege Warfare. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Pritchett, Greek State at War [I-V] Pritchett, William. The Greek State at War vols. I-V. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974- 1985. Rawlings, Ancient Greeks at War Rawlings, Louis. The Ancient Greeks at War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Romm, Landmark Arrian Romm, James. The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander. Translated by Pamela Mensch. New York: Pantheon Books, 2010. v Tritle, From Melos to My Lai Tritle, Lawrence. From Melos to My Lai: A Study in Violence, Culture, and Social Survival. New York: Routledge, 2000. Worthington, Philip II Worthington, Ian. Philip II of Macedonia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Worthington, By the Spear Worthington, Ian. By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Translations Translations of Arrian’s Anabasis come from The Landmark Arrian. Translations of Herodotus, and Thucydides come from the Penguin Classics as cited in the bibliography. The translation of the title, a quote from Curtius, comes from the Penguin translation of The History of Alexander. All other translations of ancient authors come from the Loeb Classical Library except where otherwise noted. vi Introduction Alexander the Great of Macedonia (356-323) is perhaps the best known secular figure of antiquity. Acceding to the throne aged twenty in 336, in thirteen years he forged an empire that stretched from Greece and Macedonia in the west to India in the east, and its collapse drastically altered the political and intellectual spectrum of the Near East. The construction of this Macedonian Empire led Alexander and his army to the edges of the world; they travelled farther and for a longer time than any Greek army before them, spreading Hellenic culture in their wake. Given the extent of Alexander’s influence and the number of works written about him in antiquity, it is astounding that not one contemporary source survives intact; all are fragmentary. The only extant intact histories of Alexander’s reign were written centuries after his death and under Roman influence by Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE), Pompeius Trogus (epitomized by Justin in the 2nd century CE ), Quintus Curtius Rufus (1st century CE), and Arrian (2nd century CE). To these we can add the 1-2nd century biographer Plutarch, who wrote a biography of Alexander. The way in which these later authors used the earlier (now mostly lost) sources is unknown, and for this reason their accounts should be treated with caution.1 Nevertheless, without them it would be impossible to proceed in the study of Alexander, and many of the obstacles the sources present may be overcome through consideration of credibility, purpose, and by presenting a reader with variations of an account. 1 See E. Baynham, “The Ancient Sources for Alexander the Great,” Brill’s Companion to Alexander the Great ed. J. Roisman (Leiden: Brill, 2003): 1-29; A.B. Bosworth, From Arrian to Alexander: Studies in Historical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 1 It is the nature of the ancient sources to center their reports on Alexander or his generals, making the perspectives of unranked men, the majority of the campaign’s participants, difficult to determine. Such is the general state of accounts of war throughout history, but in his 1976 work The Face of Battle Keegan has shown that it is possible to reconstruct some degree of the common soldier’s experience.2 By considering the points of view of all participants in a battle, Keegan offered a fresh understanding of war through three case studies from between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. Hanson followed in his footsteps by reconstructing the experience of the ancient Greek hoplite soldier in his The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece.3 In my thesis, I attempt to use a similar methodology on a smaller scale to investigate the type and acceleration of violence in Alexander’s army, aspects of his campaign in the East that bear further scrutiny. The Macedonian invasion of Bactria, Sogdiana, and India in the latter half of the campaign stands out as distinct from operations in West Asia, the traditional Persian Empire. The degree of slaughter involved in the conquest and occupation of these lands is emphasized in the ancient sources and used by some modern historians as a basis for forming a “new…orthodoxy”4 in order to combat the romanticized Alexander of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, I do not think that something as complex as human brutality can be easily explained, and attributing the rise of violence to 2 J. Keegan, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme (London: Penguin Books, 1983). 3 V. Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 4 P. Briant, Alexander the Great and His Empire, trans. A. Kuhrt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 140. 2 Alexander’s personality or suggesting that “killing was what he did best” is not sufficient.5 Rather, the causes of heightened violence are numerous, multifaceted, and unique to time and location. In my thesis, I argue that the rise in carnage and incidence of