India – 7 B.C
PTOLEMY (vo):
India, the land where the sun was born, fabled to be even richer than Persia, had never been explored or conquered. From the beginning, we struggled to unify a land without a center. Kings who conspired against one another. A labyrinth of tribes urged on by zealots and philosophers to die by the thousands for theirs strange gods.
We saw things we’d never dreamed and could hardly describe. We saw birds that could talk and men that couldn’t. Craterus, in the advance party, fought against men with hairy skins who were tiny and lived in the tops of trees.
Soldier:
Over there!
Hephaistion:
They’re animals.
PTOLEMY (vo):
Until Hephaistion convinced us these were animals who imitated men, but wore their own skin. They called this tribe “monkey.”
Alexander:
Monkey. Monkey.
PTOLEMY (vo):
But we saw little difference with the tribes who lived among them.
Alexander:
Look at his hand.
Hephaistion:
It’s so much like ours.
(To the monkey) Hello, little man.
(To Hephaistion) Do they speak?
Hephaistion:
No, but they do sing and make noises from the roofs of the forests.
PTOLEMY (vo):
We saw men who walked naked in public and spent hours at a time staring and doing nothing. Some who lived 200 years.
And then, there was the rain.
Never before had we seen water that fell from the gods for 60 days and nights.
Alexander:
Well done today. Make sure the women and children are fed.
You know better, Machatas. What’s your son going to say? Come on, man. The older you get, the stronger.
Machatas:
Right, my king. You’re my horse, Alexander. I’ll be with you at your side.
PTOLEMY (vo):
Everything rotted in this rain and scores of men died miserably from the tiny serpents that were everywhere in this evil land.
Crateros:
What happened?
Alexander:
It’s to the neck.
Crateros:
Oh, no. Zeus, no. Hold on, hold on. Be brave. Be brave. Oh, Zeus…
PTOLEMY (vo):
Our quest for gold and glory evaporated as we realized there was none to be had. Tempers worsened. We massacred all Indians who resisted. And with the local water putrid, we drank the strong wine.
And as we moved south and east, Alexander often returned the lands we’d conquered to their defeated kings, so as to make them allies. But this did not sit well with the army who began to wonder:
Were we here for riches? Or had Alexander in some remorseless and crazed quest to imitate the glory of Herakles forgotten them?
One thing an army knows quickly in their bones is which way the gods are blowing.
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