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nations, attracted by his renown or compelled by motives of terror, 

 to seek his friendship. Among these, Arrian particularly enumerates 

 the Abian Scythians, celebrated by Homer for their inflexible love 

 of justice and their honest poverty; and the Scythians of Europe, 

 who were received with kindness and treated with respect. Thus, 

 by his generosity or his valour, all the circumjacent nations being- 

 brought under the Macedonian yoke, Alexander returned to Sogdia, 

 fully determined, in the ensuing spring, to commence his long- 

 meditated Indian expedition. Maracanda remained still besieged 

 by the Sogdian and other forces under Spitamenes, but, on the 

 approach of the army, that restless chief fled into Bactria, where 

 he was afterwards massacred by his own troops*. 



The lofty, craggy, and scarcely accessible fortress, denominated 

 by classical writers Petra Oxiana, or the Rock of- Oxus, whither a 

 body of thirty thousand Sogdians had retired, with ammunition and 

 provisions sufficient to support them for two years, and in the firm 

 determination of defending it to the last extremity, was the next 

 important object of this campaign. Like many similar fortresses 

 in India, it arose from a broad base to a vast height, and had only 

 one ascent to its summit, by a steep narrow winding path, strongly 

 guarded at proper distances ; the whole rendered still more diffi- 

 cult of approach by the deep snow and ice, (for the winter was now 

 far advanced,) which had incrusted its surface. The Barbarians, 

 from the eminences, insultingly told Alexander that he must not 

 expect to take that fortress without winged soldiers, which so irri- 

 tated him, that he offered a reward of no less than twelve talents to 

 the first man who should gain the summit of the rock, and in pro- 

 portion to others ; appointing three hundred picked men, among 

 those most accustomed to scale walls, to that arduous and hazardous 



* Arriao, lib. iv. cap, 17. 



