Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

506 GOVERNMENT OF SOGDIANA.ued him in command as his viceroy of all he had ruledbefore.Alexander now returned to Bactra, and dispatched Crateruswith six hundred Companions and four brigades, hiscvvn and those of Polysperchon, Attains and Alcestas, againstthe onl}^ two remaining rebels in this Paraetacenian mountaindistrict, Catanes and Austanes. Craterns did his work well.He was growing to be one of Alexander's best generals.These chiefs were defeated in a bloody battle, in which Catanesand sixteen hundred men were killed, and Austanes wascaptured. This event ended the subjvigation of the territory.Craterus returned to Bactra. Spring had now come.For two years Alexander had been laboring to reduce thistrans-Caucasian territory to a condition something like submission.He had found the people of an entirely differentstamp from the inhabitants of the plains. In this most easternland he had encountered the fiercest opposition ever madeto him, and he had all but reduced a flourishing land to adesert — to a condition which only the care of years couldimprove — before he could call it his own. He found, too,that different measures were desirable to keep this land insubjection from those employed elsewhere. Alexander endeavoredto leave the trans-Oxian region under a sort of dependentking. There are few details given of just what was done,or who was left in power. Sogdiana, filled with newlygrounded Greek cities, and having Bactria and Margiana asa sort of reserve force in its rear, made a perfect bulwarkagainst the incursions of the ro^^ng Scythians. Alexandercarried with him no less than thirty thousand youths fromBactria and Sogdiana to serve not only as soldiers, but equallyas hostages for the good behavior of their native land. It isfar from improbable that the marriage with Roxana was asmuch a bold stroke of policy as it was a case of love at first