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

608 THE INDUS REACHED.had finished the war, the one thousand best men of the Oxydracians.These they sent with five hundred chariots, eachfitted for two warriors. This brave and interesting peopleclaimed that they had been free ever since Bacchus had passedthrough their land ; but that Alexander, who claimed descentfrom the gods and as his deeds showed, rightly, was entitledto their submission ; and they were glad to bring it.Alexander api^ointed Philip viceroy over the Oxydraciansand the surviving Mallians, his satrapy extending to the confinesof Porus and Taxiles. Many vessels had been builthere and others were brought by the Xathrians on Alexander'sorder, and a much larger part of the army—seventeenhundred cavalry Companions, ten thousand foot and the archersand Agrianians — was now transferred by water downstream to the mouth of the Acesines where the Indus takesup all the waters of the Five Kivers country. Here Alexanderawaited the arrival of Perdiccas with the rest of the army.This had marched by land and on the way had received thesubmission of many tribes, the Abastanians alone needingreduction by force.Other nations, among them the Ossadians, likewise broughtin their submission and here too Alexander founded one moreAlexandria and began the construction of a dockyard. Thejunction of the Indus and the other great rivers seemed tohim to be a promising place for a great mart. This city wasto be the limit of Philip's satrapy. And he left with him allthe Thracians and such other troops as seemed to him sufficientto hold the land and foster commerce and Hellenism. Oxyartes,the father of Roxana, also came hither, and to him Alexandergave the viceroyalty over the Parapamisans in lieuof the former satrap Tyriaspes, who had been exercising hisauthority with cruelty and injustice.