A Conqueror Has No Friends
When Alexander the Great threatened the people of Scythia, their ambassadors reminded him that a conqueror has many more burdens to carry than an ally has.
329 BC
Macedonian Empire 359 - 323 BC
© Шухрат Саъдиев (Shukhrat Sadiev), Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of a series of modern mosaics in the Historical Museum of the Sugdh Region in Khujand, Tajikistan, showing scenes from the life of Alexander the Great. Khujand stands on the River Syr Darya, known to the Greeks as Jaxartes, and dates back to the Persian Empire founded by Cyrus the Great (?600-530 BC). In 329 BC, Alexander raised a citadel (in just seventeen days) near this spot, hard by the ancient Persian city of Cyropolis. To the Scythians it was ‘a yoke upon their necks’, and its chafing brought to two sides to war. After the battle, so Arrian (?86-?160) tells us, Alexander rebuilt Cyropolis as Alexandria Eschate, ‘the Uttermost Alexandria’, and peopled it with Macedonian mercenaries and such Scythians as were willing to live there.
Introduction
In 329 BC, during his Persian Campaign, Alexander the Great defeated the Scythians at the Battle of Jaxartes near Cyropolis, now Khujand in Tajikistan. Prior to the battle, the Scythians (a people of the steppes) warned him that allies were better then enemies, and customers better than slaves, and that those who thought themselves exceptional should not behave like everyday tinpot tyrants.
“WHAT have you to do with the Scythians, or the Scythians with you? We have never invaded Macedon; why should you attack Scythia? We inhabit vast deserts and pathless woods, where we do not want to hear of the name of Alexander. We are not disposed to submit to slavery; and we have no ambition to tyrannize over any nation. [...]
“It suits the character of a god to bestow favours on mortals, not to deprive them of what they have. But if you are no god, reflect on the precarious condition of humanity. You will thus show more wisdom, than by dwelling on those subjects which have puffed up your pride, and made you forget yourself. You see how little you are likely to gain by attempting the conquest of Scythia. On the other hand, you may, if you please, have in us a valuable alliance. We command the borders of both Europe and Asia. There is nothing between us and Bactria* but the river Tanaïs,* and our territory extends to Thrace, which, as we have heard, borders on Macedon.*
* Bactria lay to the south of Scythia; its capital, Alexandria-Bactra, is now Bactra (Balkh) in Afghanistan.
* From the texts we have, it is evident that the geography of the region was unclear to Greek and Roman writers. The River Tanaïs is properly speaking the River Don, which flows into the Black Sea from the northeast and lies some 1,500 miles away to the west of Khujand — on the far (western) side of the Caspian Sea, and in quite another direction to Bactria. The river between Scythia and Bactria may be the nearby River Jaxartes itself (known today as the Syr Darya), or possibly the Oxus (the Amu Darya) further south. The ancients seem to have thought they were much closer to the Black Sea than they were, not unlike those explorers of the New World who thought they had reached the East Indies.
* Thrace is a large region west of the Black Sea, today covering parts of Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. The Kingdom of Macedon lay in what is now northeastern Greece: it is not to be confused with the modern state of North Macedonia, which is named after an Ottoman province that partially overlapped the ancient kingdom but was geographically and ethnically distinct.
