LXI.  After this battle with Porus, Alexander’s horse Boukephalus died, not immediately, but some time afterwards.  Most historians say that he died of wounds received in the battle, but Onesikritus tells us that he died of old age and overwork, for he had reached his thirtieth year.  Alexander was greatly grieved at his loss, and sorrowed for him as much as if he had lost one of his most intimate friends.  He founded a city as a memorial of him upon the banks of the Hydaspes, which he named Boukephalia.  It is also recorded that when he lost a favourite dog called Peritas, which he had brought up from a whelp, and of which he was very fond, he founded a city and called it by the dog’s name.  The historian Sotion tells us that he heard this from Potamon of Lesbos.

LXII.  The battle with King Porus made the Macedonians very unwilling to advance farther into India.  They had overcome Porus with the greatest difficulty, as he brought against them a force of twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, and now offered the most violent opposition to Alexander, who wished to cross the river Ganges.  This river, they heard, was thirty-two furlongs wide and a hundred cubits deep, while its further banks were completely covered with armed men, horses and elephants, for it was said that the kings of the Gandaritae and Praesiae were awaiting his attack with an army of eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand foot soldiers, eight thousand war chariots, and six thousand elephants; nor was this any exaggeration, for not long afterwards Androkottus, the king of this country, presented five hundred elephants to Seleukus, and overran and subdued the whole of India with an army of six hundred thousand men.

Alexander at first retired to his tent in a rage, and shut himself up there, not feeling any gratitude to those who had prevented his crossing the Ganges, but regarding a retreat as an acknowledgment of defeat.  However, after his friends had argued with him, and his soldiers had come to the door of his tent, begging him with tears in their eyes to go no farther, he relented, and gave orders for a retreat.  He now contrived many ingenious devices to impress the natives, as, for instance, he caused arms, and bridles and mangers for horses to be made of much more than the usual size, and left them scattered about.  He also set up altars, which even to the present day are reverenced by the kings of the Praesiae, who cross the river to them, and offer sacrifice upon them in the Greek fashion.  Androkottus himself, who was then a lad, saw Alexander himself and afterwards used to declare that Alexander might easily have conquered the whole country, as the then king was hated by his subjects on account of his mean and wicked disposition.