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readily complied ; and Bessus was brought, manacled in the fetters 

 with which he had insulted his sovereign, to the Macedonian camp. 

 Like a furious savage, unworthy to wear the garb of a man, Spita- 

 menes himself, according to Curtius, led him, stark naked, by a 

 chain that encircled his neck, into the presence of Alexander, 

 who, ordering his nose and ears to be cut off, delivered him over to 

 Oxyartes, the brother of Darius, that, after suffering all the refined 

 Before ciirist, tortures due to his unprovoked cruelty, he might be shot to death 

 with arrows, in the same manner as he had dispatched Darius*. 



Had Alexander's sole object been the capture and punishment of 

 Bessus, now that object was accomplished, he probably would have 

 yielded to the wishes of a harassed army, and have returned to 

 Babylon, or, at least, to Candahar and the provinces adjoining India, 

 the invasion of which country he seems early to have meditated. 

 But it was his intention not to be the nominal sovereign over any 

 part of Asia ; he meant to found his claim to the title of sovereign on 

 actual conquest. Animated by this hope, he determined to march 

 to Maracanda, the capital; and having procured, from the hardy 

 breed of the country, a considerable addition of horses to supply the 

 place of those that had perished in crossing the snows of Paropamisus 

 and at the passage of the Oxus, he now pursued his progress into the 

 heart of Sogdia, and even to the laxartes, (the modern Sihon, or 

 Sir,) that bounds it northward. The same species of vanity that 

 led the Macedonians to term Paropamisus the Caucasus, induced 

 them to denominate this river the Tanais, whereas that river (now 

 the Don) rolls at a great distance to the north, separating Asiatic Scy- 

 thia from Europe. Near the banks of the laxartes, a body of thirty 

 thousand natives having assembled, had greatly annoyed the advanced 

 detachments, and cut off the foraging parties. Elated with this tem- 



* Curtius, lib. vii. cap. 2Q. Anian, lib. iii. cap. 30. 



