Plutarch on the Indian Subcontinent
Name:Plutarch
Dates: c. 46 - c. 122
Birthplace: Chaeronea, in Boeotia, Greece
Plutarch of Chaeronea in Boeotia, Greece, a mid-first century A.D. biographer rather than an historian, who may have tutored Trajan, served as a magistrate in Chaeronea, and as priest. Although he wrote moral material and essays, he is best known for his 46 lives of famous Greeks and Romans. These biographies are paired and some of the pairs are followed by a comparison between the two men. Plutarch paired his biography of Alexander the Great with his life of Julius Caesar, but there is not a comparison of the two men. In the course of writing the biography of Alexander, Plutarch describes his travels in India including a description of the battle between Alexander and Porus that Plutarch says he derived from Alexander's own letters.
"Alexander, in his own letters, has given us an account of his war with Porus. He says the two armies were separated by the river Hydaspes, on whose opposite bank Porus continually kept his elephants in order of battle, with their heads towards their enemies, to guard the passage; that he, on the other hand, made every day a great noise and clamor in his camp, to dissipate the apprehensions of the barbarians; that one stormy dark night he passed the river, at a distance from the place where the enemy lay, into a little island, with part of his foot, and the best of his horse. Here there fell a most violent storm of rain, accompanied with lightning and whirlwinds, and seeing some of his men burnt and dying with the lightning, he nevertheless quitted the island and made over to the other side. The Hydaspes, he says, now after the storm, was so swollen and grown so rapid, as to have made a breach in the bank, and a part of the river was now pouring in here, so that when he came across, it was with difficulty he got a footing on the land, which was slippery and unsteady, and exposed to the force of the currents on both sides. This is the occasion when he is related to have said, "O ye Athenians, will ye believe what dangers I incur to merit your praise?" This, however, is Onesicritus's story. Alexander says, here the men left their boats, and passed the breach in their armor, up to the breast in water, and that then he advanced with his horse about twenty furlongs before his foot, concluding that if the enemy charged him with their cavalry, he should be too strong for them; if with their foot, his own would come up time enough to his assistance. Nor did he judge amiss; for being charged by a thousand horse, and sixty armed chariots, which advanced before their main body, he took all the chariots, and killed four hundred horse upon the place. Porus, by this time guessing that Alexander himself had crossed over, came on with his whole army, except a party which he left behind, to hold the rest of the Macedonians in play, if they should attempt to pass the river. But he, apprehending the multitude of the enemy, and to avoid the shock of their elephants, dividing his forces, attacked their left wing himself, and commanded Coenus to fall upon the right, which was performed with good success. For by this means both wings being broken, the enemies fell back in their retreat upon the center, and crowded in upon their elephants. There rallying, they fought a hand to hand battle, and it was the eighth hour of the day before they were entirely defeated. This description the conqueror himself has left us in his own epistles."
Plutarch's Life of Alexander
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The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great As Described by Arrian Q. Curtius Diodoros Plutarch and Justin, by J. W. McCrindle (1893)]
