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in Alexander’s camp, the king allowed—even assisted—the preparation of an elaborate funeral ritual culminating in the man’s astonishing self-immolation on a blazing pyre.¹¹ At Pasargadae in Persia, Alexander took special care to restore the aged tomb of Cyrus, and he later punished those who defiled that hallowed ground.¹² Alexander accommodated all sorts of local traditions on his long march from Greece to India, but at Bactra he bristled and would not budge: the Devourer dogs had to go. This decision gave the first hint of an epic struggle that would become as political and religious as it was military. Bactria would be treated unlike any other part of Alexander’s immense empire. The Greeks and Macedonians saw it as particularly alien and developed a singular distaste for its population. In the eyes of Alexander’s troops, nowhere needed civilizing more than this bleak landscape where warlords hid in the hills and a cruel religion brutalized the streets.

      Of course, the tired and ill-tempered invaders were not entirely fair. As one Greek author complained when he later read of the Devourer dogs, Alexander’s compatriots “tell us nothing but the worst” about the native peoples they met in central Asia.¹³ Their biased accounts left out the extraordinary local achievements revealed to us today through the great efforts of archaeologists. The region was certainly urbanized, wealthy, and well irrigated. We must therefore be wary of the ancient propaganda that the conquering Greeks first brought civilization, high art, and economic prosperity to the backward Bactrians. In fact, the land was enjoying one of its periodic golden ages. Thus, Alexander’s army did not find the region in quite the ruined condition that exists today, although the invaders soon did their part to level its towns and cities, burn its croplands, and scatter its population. For a time, the Greeks and Macedonians themselves turned Bactria into a tempestuous wasteland that had to be rebuilt in order to regain something of its former (unacknowledged) glory. That cycle would continue down through the ages, with repeated invasions and periods of rehabilitation, as noted in chapter 1. Some of these eras were worse than others (the Umayyads and Mongols stand out for the long-term effect of their incursions), but it began with Alexander: the extent to which he actually brought high civilization to Afghanistan is the extent to which he destroyed what had been there since the Bronze Age.

      Just a few weeks before Alexander arrived in Bactra, a warlord named Bessus held a raucous war council in the city. If we can trust a deserter’s account of that meeting, passed down through the centuries, this Bessus put on quite a show.¹⁴ Amid great feasting and drinking, Bessus tried to rally the martial spirit of his assembled friends and followers. He boasted of their power and belittled that of the invaders. He invoked the gods of the land to aid his cause and reminded his listeners of his own personal stake in their war against the Greeks.

      Two years earlier, Bessus had fought against Alexander in the Battle of Gaugamela (October 1, 331 B.C.E.) near modern-day Irbil in Iraq.¹⁵ At that time, Bessus was the satrap of Bactria under Darius III, the “King of Kings” who ruled the Persian Empire. The Persian king and his satrap were kinsmen, and Darius desperately needed Bessus and the renowned cavalry from Bactria to help stop the relentless progress of the Greeks and Macedonians.¹⁶ Alexander’s troops had already captured the western third of the empire, and at Gaugamela the fate of everything else would be decided in a few desperate hours of dusty fighting. Darius’s plan, captured after the battle, clearly assigned Bessus and the Bactrian contingent the main task of meeting— and destroying—Alexander’s personal assault against the Persian left wing.¹⁷ During the battle, Bessus and his soldiers fought well, but found themselves pinned down while Alexander charged through a gap in the line and chased Darius from the field. With his own cavalry still intact, Bessus disengaged. According to one modern analysis of Bessus’s conduct that day, “no commander could be blamed for ordering a withdrawal in such circumstances. Later he [Bessus] could reasonably claim that others had let him down, that it would have been suicidal to remain where he was, and that he had not been defeated.”¹⁸

      When Darius and Bessus met again, what remained of the Persian army and its officers must surely have struggled to explain how they had lost to an invading force five times smaller than their own. Whose cowardice had caused such a debacle? No doubt Bessus was still defending his actions when, at Bactra in 329 B.C.E., he argued along the lines quoted above and blamed everything on Darius: It was Darius’s incompetence, not his own poor judgment or Alexander’s generalship, that had gotten everyone in this mess.¹⁹ That is why Bessus had arranged the assassination of Darius in 330 B.C.E. The Persian King of Kings had first been deceived, arrested, and shackled and then shut into a locked wagon to be hauled along like a doomed animal.²⁰ The Bactrian cavalry saluted Bessus as Darius’s royal successor, calling him Artaxerxes V. In time, as Alexander drew near, the conspirators stabbed Darius and left him for dead. They hastened to the safety of Bactria’s hills, as warlords are still wont to do.

      Alexander had not taken this news well. He had beaten Darius, torched the largest palace at Persepolis to settle old scores, and begun to see himself as the rightful new King of Kings in conquered Persia. The brutal murder of Darius deprived Alexander of his coup de grâce and destabilized the newly won empire. The war should have been over, but instead this criminal Bessus claimed Darius’s throne—Alexander’s throne—and defied the superpower to stop him. Alexander would have to invade Bactria to bring this madman to justice. To prepare the way, the king made a speech at Hecatompylus (cited in chapter 1), in which he denounced Bessus and his cabal as a threat to the civilized world. This operation would carry the leader of the Greek and Macedonian world well beyond the original mandate of the League of Corinth. Technically, the alliance had finished its job with the fall of Persia. If necessary, however, Alexander was prepared to go it alone against Bessus. He allowed the unwilling to turn back homeward and paid the rest handsomely to sign on as volunteers with his Macedonians. That is why Alexander needed to frame an essentially personal war in terms of a new, grander, more abstract cause. This was no longer to be a war of conquest and Hellenic retribution against a rival state, but rather an unavoidable struggle to keep the peace and protect all nations of law from organized criminals. Alexander meant to hunt down the outlaw Bessus and all who harbored him, not conduct a conventional war against a foe deserving the title of King Artaxerxes V.²¹

      Alexander had to take some diplomatic gambles in order to strengthen his case against Bessus and his followers. In a precarious balancing act, he simultaneously acted the part of Macedonian king, leader (hegemon) of the Greeks, and ruler of all Persian territories. Rather than sweep away every vestige of Darius’s old regime, Alexander adopted some elements of Persian royal dress and protocol. He also chose a few Persians to hold high office. This put a less imperious face on the occupation of Persia and provided some leverage against the rhetoric of Bessus, but it angered many of the Greeks and Macedonians. Alexander nevertheless rushed into a policy of reconciliation toward men of dubious reliability. Even some of Darius’s murderers were pardoned and put into positions of authority, an expedience that Alexander very soon regretted.²²

      Bessus, of course, was the key exception: he would have to pay an extraordinarily painful and public price for his royal pretensions. Rather than barge straight into Bactria, Alexander circled his prey. He fought a campaign in the area of modern Herat in western Afghanistan because the native governor there, named Satibarzanes, had, after surrendering, suddenly renounced his allegiance to Alexander and massacred the foreigners stationed in his province. Alexander’s policies were already backfiring. This man was clearly acting in conjunction with Bessus, so Alexander moved quickly to isolate the danger. The insurgents were soundly defeated, although Satibarzanes escaped.²³ Alexander’s generals would deal with him later. Meanwhile, Alexander appointed another Persian as governor. The army then swept south into the district of Drangiana. At Phrada (modern Farah), the recent attempts by Alexander to legitimize his power in Persia exposed a serious rift in his entourage. Traditionalist Macedonians resented some of Alexander’s new policies, such as his appointment of former enemies to prestigious posts and his wearing of Persian regalia. An assassination plot formed in response to the king’s apparent betrayal of his own people. The conspiracy failed and the traitors were executed. The most prominent victims were the great Macedonian generals Philotas and his father, Parmenio, who, in spite of their apparent innocence, were purged nonetheless in order to clear the king’s court of naysayers. A fresh coterie of loyalists closed ranks around Alexander;

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