or a pike, to be seen, but all along the road the soldiers were dipping cups, and horns, and earthenware vessels into great jars of liquor and drinking one another’s healths, some drinking as they marched along, while others sat by the roadside.  Everywhere might be heard the sound of flutes and pipes, and women singing and dancing; while with all this dissolute march the soldiers mingled rough jokes, as if the god Dionysus himself were amongst them and attended on their merry procession.  At the capital of Gedrosia, Alexander again halted his army, and refreshed them with feasting and revelry.  It is said that he himself, after having drunk hard, was watching a contest between several choruses, and that his favourite Bagoas won the prize, and then came across the theatre and seated himself beside him, dressed as he was and wearing his crown as victor.  The Macedonians, when they saw this, applauded vehemently, and cried out to Alexander to kiss him, until at length he threw his arms round him and kissed him.

LXVIII.  He was now much pleased at being joined by Nearchus and his officers, and took so much interest in their accounts of their voyage, that he wished to sail down the Euphrates himself with a great fleet, and then to coast round Arabia and Libya, and so enter the Mediterranean sea through the pillars of Herakles.[427] He even began to build many ships at Thapsakus, and to collect sailors and pilots from all parts of the world, but the severe campaigns which he had just completed in India, the wound which he had received among the Malli, and the great losses which his army had sustained in crossing the desert, had made many of his subjects doubt whether he was ever likely to return alive, and had encouraged them to revolt, while his absence had led many of his satraps and viceroys to act in an extremely arbitrary and despotic manner, so that his whole empire was in a most critical condition, and full of conspiracies and seditious risings.  Olympias and Kleopatra[428] had attacked and driven out Antipater, and had divided the kingdom between themselves, Olympias taking Epirus, and Kleopatra Macedonia.  When Alexander heard this, he said that his mother had proved herself the wiser of the two; for the Macedonians never would endure to be ruled by a woman.  He now sent Nearchus back to the sea, determining to make war all along the coast, and coming down in person to punish the most guilty of his officers.  He killed Oxyartes, one of the sons of Abouletes (the satrap of Susiana) with his own hands, with a sarissa or Macedonian pike.  Abouletes had made no preparations to receive Alexander, but offered him three thousand talents of silver.  Alexander ordered the money to be thrown down for the horses; and as they could not eat it, he said “What is the use of your having prepared this for me?” and ordered Abouletes to be cast into prison.