012: The Age of Alexander - India, and the Journey's End

The Hellenistic Age Podcast

History

4.7 • 558 Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elephants and atrocities mark the brutal Indian Campaign, culminating in the Battle of the Hydaspes, and the Macedonians decide enough is enough with the mutiny at the Beas in the Summer 326 BC. Twitter: https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hellenistic-age-podcast/id1377920930?mt=2 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-103425037 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=225541&refid=stpr Title theme by Lina Palera (https://soundcloud.com/user-994392473) Distributed by suRRism-phonoethics (https://surrism-phonoethics.bandcamp.com/) Sources Used: The Anabasis of Alexander – Arrian The Histories - Herodotus Life of Alexander – Plutarch Library of History – Diodorus Siculus The History of Alexander – Quintus Curtius Rufus Bosworth, A.B. Alexander in the East: Tragedy and Triumph. 1996, Oxford University Press Carney, E. Macedonians and mutiny: discipline and indiscipline in the army of Philip and Alexander. 1996. Classical Philology, 91(1). Charles, M.B. Elephants, Alexander and the Indian Campaign. 2010. Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada 10(3) Edmunds, L. The Religiosity of Alexander. 1971 Head, D. (2018, Aug/Sep). Coined Indians: Infantry archers at the Hydaspes. Ancient Warfare Magazine 13(2) Holt, F.L. Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions. 2003 Sinha, B.C. 1973. Studies in Alexander’s Campaigns. Varanasi: Bhartiya Publishing House. Stoneman, R. “The Indian Campaign”. The Landmark Arrian http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Climate_of_India

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there. You're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast. Episode 12, The Age of Alexander, India and The journey's end.
0:32.0	In our last episode, we followed the progress of Alexander in the lands of Bactri and Sagdiana.
0:33.3	Though the region was now pacified, the toll of the campaign was visibly wearing down the Macedonian army.
0:40.3	The murder of Clytus the Black and the conspiracy of the pages caused great concern for the soldiers and officers.
0:47.1	But Alexander, never one to miss an opportunity for further glory, could not rest on his laurels.
0:57.3	Beyond the Hindu Kush laid the reaches of a land hitherto unknown to most Greeks, a land more myth than reality. Alexander sought to invade the
1:04.5	last of his great conquests, the realm of India. Now, before we begin, I need to clarify what exactly do I mean when I say India.
1:17.0	The region of the world that Alexander would conquer between the years 327 and 325 BC
1:23.3	would actually be located in modern-day Pakistan and the Punjab, the border of his empire
1:29.7	snaking down the Indus River to the Arabian Sea, and he technically never entered the
1:36.2	India of our time. Now, for the sake of simplicity, I will continue to refer to this as India,
1:47.0	the term used by the Greeks to refer to the lands and peoples of the Indus Valley. In fact, the Greek Indoi, or Indian, translates to the people of the Indus River. These people,
1:58.0	described as being extremely tall and excellent warriors, had only appeared on the peripheral in the Greek historical tradition, being listed as soldiers in the exotic armies of the great king of Persia.
2:10.9	The rest is in the realm of legends and myth.
2:13.9	I mean, one only needs to read about the gold-digging ants in Herodont, which in general reality is probably just a species of marmot, a large mountainous rodent.
2:24.6	The tropical weather and climate of the region was very alien as well, completely different from the seasonality of the Mediterranean.
2:33.2	India's climate is dominated by the South Asian
2:36.0	monsoon. A period of time between June and October, where a reversal of ocean winds results in
2:42.9	one of the world's most productive rainy seasons, with massive amounts of precipitation that
2:48.2	grant life-sustaining water, turning formerly arid regions into
2:52.0	agricultural hotspots. The downside to all of this rainfall is that it completely changes
2:58.3	the landscape, making dirt roads a logistical nightmare of soupy muck-filled passes, and the
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