Chapter VII · —Alexander visits Nysa and Mount Merus—Receives the submission of Queen Cleophis and captures the Rock (Aornos)

... After this he advanced towards India that he might make the ocean and the remotest East the limits of his empire. In order that the decorations of his army might be in keeping with this grandeur, he overlaid the trappings of the horses and the arms of his soldiers with silver. He then called the army his argyraspids, because the shields they carried were inwrought with silver. When he had reached the city of Nysa, and found that the inhabitants offered no resistance, he ordered their lives to be spared, from a sentiment of reverence towards Father Bacchus, by whom the city had been founded; at the same time congratulating himself that he had not only undertaken a military expedition like that god, but had even followed his very footsteps. He then led his army to view the sacred mountain, which the genial climate had mantled over with vine and ivy, just as if husbandmen had with industrious hands laboured to make it the perfection of beauty. Now the army on reaching the mountain, in a sudden access of devout emotion, began to howl in honour of the god, and to the amazement of the king ran unmolested all about the place, so that he perceived that by sparing the citizens he had not so much served their interests as those of his own army. Thence he marched to the Daedali mountains[399] and the dominions of Queen Cleophis,[400] who, after surrendering her kingdom, purchased its restoration by permitting the conqueror to share her bed, thus gaining by her fascinations what she had not gained by her valour. The offspring of this intercourse was a son, whom she called Alexander, the same who afterwards reigned as an Indian king. Queen Cleophis, because she had prostituted her chastity, was thereafter called by the Indians the royal harlot. When Alexander after traversing India had come to a rock of a wonderful size and ruggedness, unto which many of the people had fled for refuge,[401] he came to know that Hercules had been prevented from capturing that very rock by an earthquake. Being seized, therefore, with an ambitious desire of surpassing the deeds of Hercules, he made himself master of the rock with infinite toil and danger, and then received the submission of all the tribes in that part of the country.