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indication that any Indians returned to the west with him.
     
    Among the grievances of the Macedonians in 324 Arrian (7.6.4) mentions the (recent) creation of a fifth cavalry regiment consisting, if we accept Professor Badian’s emendation of Arrian’s text, 17 almost entirely of Iranians. This means that the division of the Companion cavalry into eight regiments had been abandoned and that for a brief period after the return from India there were only four. It is sometimes said that the change reflects the losses sustained in the march through the Gedrosian desert. This need not be the case. Hephaestion’s command is described (7.14.10) as a ‘Chiliarchy’, a group of 1,000 men, and, although it is true that he was ‘Chiliarch’ or ‘Vizier’, it is not self-evident that the preservation of his
name
required that his unit be called ‘the chiliarchy of Hephaestion’ rather than ‘the regiment of Hephaestion’. It is probable, it seems to me, that the new regiments were (nominally) 1,000 strong. If this is so, the change will have been a change in organization, a consolidation of the cavalry into fewer and stronger units.
     
    In 324 the 30,000 young Persians (the ‘Successors’), who had been undergoing training in Macedonian fashion for the last three years, joined Alexander at Susa. Later in the same year, after the mutiny at Opis, Alexander sent home those Macedonians who were unfit or past the age for service, about 10,000 infantry and perhaps 1,500 cavalry, probably the bulk of his Macedonian forces. In323 strong reinforcements reached Babylon. Philoxenus brought an army from Caria and Menander one from Lycia, while Menidas came with the cavalry under his command. It is likely that, as Brunt suggests, 18 these were fresh drafts from Macedon to replace the veterans now on their way home; Alexander had not drawn on the manpower of the homeland since 331 and it is not likely that he wished the Macedonian element in his army to be reduced to negligible proportions. In addition, Peucestas brought 20,000 Persian archers and slingers, as well as a considerable force of Cossaean and Tapurian troops, presumably infantry. Alexander now carried out his last reform. The Persians were integrated into Macedonian units in such a way that each platoon consisted of 4 Macedonian NCOs and 12 Persians, each armed in their national fashion.
     
    For the future, then, or at least for the immediate future, the army in Asia was to consist predominantly of Iranian troops. The only indication of the size of the Macedonian component is given in a speech in Quintus Curtius purporting to have been delivered by Alexander but certainly the historian’s own composition. There (10.2.8) the king mentions an army of 13,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, surely all Macedonians, excluding the garrisons already in being.
     

BOOK ONE
     
    W HEREVER Ptolemy and Aristobulus in their histories of Alexander, the son of Philip, have given the same account, I have followed it on the assumption of its accuracy; where their facts differ I have chosen what I feel to be the more probable and interesting. 1 There are other accounts of Alexander’s life – more of them, indeed, and more mutually conflicting than of any other historical character; it seems to me, however, that Ptolemy and Aristobulus are the most trustworthy writers on this subject, because the latter shared Alexander’s campaigns, and the former – Ptolemy – in addition to this advantage, was himself a King, and it is more disgraceful for a King to tell lies than for anyone else. Moreover, Alexander was dead when these men wrote; so there was no sort of pressure upon either of them, and they could not profit from falsification of the facts. Certain statements by other writers upon Alexander may be taken to represent popular tradition: some of these, which are interesting in themselves and may well be true, I have included in my work.
     
    If anyone should wonder why I should have