"2,300 years ago," "Alexander the Great invaded Asia, his goal to conquer the Persian Empire." "We followed in his footsteps, a 20,000-mile journey from Greece to the plains of India." "By the eighth year of the war, Alexander had defeated the peoples of Central Asia." "Now he turned towards India, heading for what he believed would be the end of the earth." "Our journey now brought us from Afghanistan into the north-west frontier of Pakistan, by the Khyber Pass." "In the spring of 326 BC, astonished local people would have seen 60,000 Greeks tramping down these hills." "We came into Pakistan with some British trainspotters." "Being Ramadan, there's no tea!" "Or beer." "I could do with a British Rail sandwich!" "I could do with a beer, never mind a sandwich." "They'd come to see the Khyber railway, built under the British Empire." "I was looking for traces of an older past, but the strategic importance of the Khyber has never changed since the dawn of history." "It's always been the main invasion route into India, and the Macedonians crossed it that spring to enter an exotic and mysterious land." "In those days, 1,000 years before the coming of Islam," "Hindu India began at the Indus." "That's where the name comes from." "Indian people were a source of rumor and myth to the Greeks." ""They have the strangest customs on earth,"" "they said." "To Alexander, it must have been simply irresistible." "We now followed his track up into the north-west frontier of Pakistan." "You can imagine Alexander driving his troops over these passes." "29 now." "No longer young." "Tough, stocky, hard-bitten little man." "His iron constitution not yet wrecked by the wounds, malaria, the drinking bouts, the sexual excess." "As he came over these passes, he'll have remembered the words of Aristotle, who said that from here one could see the ends of the earth and the ocean the Greeks believed surrounded it." "Alexander now knew for sure that this was wrong, that vast and densely populated lands lay ahead, and he was driven to see them." "The question now becomes not when's he going to stop, but how far can he go?" "Alexander planned the invasion of India as a two-pronged attack." "The main army headed down through Peshawar to the Indus." "Alexander himself cut north, perhaps to explore as much as to fight." "And there we discovered a living connection with his story." "These are the Kalash, the black pagans of the Hindu Kush, a tiny survival in a surrounding sea of Islam." "They follow ancient gods and speak a language distantly akin to Greek." "The people welcomed Alexander and they told him an amazing story." "They, too, were worshippers of the Greek god of ecstasy, Dionysus." "Alexander had once again hit gold." "From his mother's knee," "Alexander had been told tales of Dionysus, how he'd been born far out to the east." "Now the people took him to sacrifice on the mountain where they said Dionysus was born." "To Alexander, it was an unmistakable sign." "The god was here." "Alexander joined them, wearing an ivy crown, drunk on their wine, dancing for the god, just as his mother used to do." "And today the Kalash add another twist to the tale." "They say some of the Greeks stayed on here under Alexander's general Shalaksha." ""They married local women, and we, the Kalash, are their direct descendants."" "If the story was true," "I drank wine that night with the descendants of Alexander's army." "Alexander now marched on up the valley of the River Swat." "In their thousands, refugees now fled in terror eastwards." "They took shelter on a rock fortress high above the Indus valley, a place the Greeks called Aornos." "The rock was said to be impregnable." "The Greeks were told even Hercules failed to take it when he wandered the earth on his twelve labors." "It towered a mile above the river Indus, its summit a long, curving ridge with enough cultivation to keep a thousand men busy." "Today it's called Pir Sar." "There was only one path up, which joined the mountain along the ridge from the west." "On Pir Sar, Alexander would surpass even himself." "We set out to climb Pir Sar in the Macedonians' footsteps." "It's wild here, and the district officer gave us guides and armed police to drive off wolves and bandits." "Thank you very much." "Come on!" "The path was back-breaking." "Five miles along a narrow saddle, a tortuous trek which Alexander's men did at night, with snow still in the gullies." "According to the Greeks, their advance guard was led by local guides onto the rock and they came on a secret path." "There's only one way that could be." "It's this." "It comes across this narrow neck of land, the only way onto the rock." "The ground, as you can see, falls away dramatically, with huge crags on either side." "So this must be the route that the Greeks took." "As the path got worse and worse," "I found myself wondering why he'd bothered." "Were the people on top such a threat to him?" "The only explanation I could come up with was what the Greeks called Alexander's "pothos", his desire to surpass even the gods." "By nightfall, we'd become separated." "Hello, have you seen Hadji Khan?" "Our guides were lost." "We are going to stop here." "It was pitch-dark before we found somewhere to stay, an abandoned mosque used in summer by the shepherds." "It's been an absolutely terrible walk." "The terrain is just up and down." "Even the donkeys could hardly make it." "Much worse than crossing the Khawak Pass in the Hindu Kush." "It almost made me believe they couldn't have come this way." "It's so difficult." "You couldn't get an army through." "But if they did, if this was the way, then it is the most amazing demonstration of their absolute determination to overcome their enemies, to show the Indian people that there was nowhere to hide and that all resistance would be futile." "Next day, in a chill dawn, we looked down on the Indus from 8,000 feet." "At six o'clock, after cold water and biscuits, we blearily prepared to carry on." "It never ceased to amaze me how Alexander was able to inspire his men." "They must have been tough old birds, these Macedonians, that's all I can say." "We're nearly there." "Come here." "Come on." "Come on." "At nearly 9,000 feet we reached the top of the ridge above Pir Sar." "To the north, the snow-capped peaks of the Karakorum." "Alexander's men now discovered that a deep ravine lay between them and Pir Sar itself, and, unbelievable as it may seem," "Alexander ordered his troops to bridge it." "There was about a 500-yard gap that the Greeks needed to bridge." "One tradition says it took seven days and nights with the soldiers working in relays." "Each soldier had to cut 100 stakes, and the engineers presumably were digging big piles in the side of this space here, and they laid a mat of trees, earth and so on." "And it rose higher and higher until maybe more than 100 feet above my head." "It must have looked like one of those trestle railway bridges you see in the Wild West." "Within the week, they'd built the causeway up enough to allow their catapults and artillery to concentrate on the Indian defenders, and then the fate of the rock was sealed." "The Indians tried to surrender, but Alexander swept along the ridge and massacred them or drove them off the cliffs." "On top he left an altar to Athena, as goddess of victory." "Looking towards the roof of the world," "Alexander could reflect he had surpassed even Hercules himself." "Back on the Indus, Alexander's engineers had built a huge bridge of boats, ready for the crossing." "It must have taken them several days." "By now the army was like a moving city." "There were 64,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, camp followers, women, children, scientists, poets, even entertainers." "And the surveyors who were still measuring every step from Greece to the end of the earth." "And that was getting closer every day." "Alexander paused briefly at the ancient city of Taxila, on the Grand Trunk Road." "Here a Greek city grew up, the first in the subcontinent." "A city of neat lines, a place of colonists, set apart from the hubbub of the native town next door." "For centuries after, Greek was spoken in these streets, just as English is now." "In bazaars you can still find the coins of Alexander's successors," "Greek maharajahs lording it in a Greek raj," "This is Greek." "Eucratides the Great." "Where did the coin come from?" "Does he know?" "Afghanistan" "And on their coins, the heirs of Alexander proudly sport the cavalry hat and scarf of Alexander's crack units with all the swagger of fighter aces." "The viciously valiant Greeks, as the Indians called them." "So began the meeting of two of the great civilizations in history." "Alexander, too, was shown with the headdress of elephant hide." "Conqueror of India." "That was his ambition now." "He marched on south towards the Great Salt Range." "Long before the Grand Trunk Road, this was the ancient route into India." "When you come over the Great Salt Range, suddenly a wonderful view opens up." "The Jhelum river, the first of the five rivers of the Punjab, and beyond, the plains of India, stretching as far as the Ganges, the heartland of Indian civilization." "For the Greek troops it must have been an extraordinary moment after the thousands of miles they'd traveled." "And from now on, they'd be marching into the unknown." "Across the Jhelum, the local Indian rajah, Porus, had massed a powerful army with 200 war elephants." "He was determined to stop Alexander crossing." "Somehow Alexander had to get his forces over in secret." "The Greeks said he did it where a spur of the Salt Range comes down to form a headland." "I went looking for it at the little village of Jalalpur." "And there I met the general." "General Shafgat." "Michael Wood." "Nice to meet you." "Very nice to meet you." "What a wonderful place this is." "General Shafgat's family owns the shrine here." "A veteran of latter-day campaigns, he'd lectured on Alexander at staff college and he'd got it all worked out." "The battlefield is right in front of you." "Right here?" "Across the river." "Why are you so sure?" "If you go through the Greek historians, they mention a headland from the main range of the hills, and it's the only place we have here, we're on top of it." "On the far side, according to the historian, was a ravine where he hid his cavalry and other forces during the day and the night and crossed it across to the island which still exists." "Out of this whole range of hills, this is the only place he could have crossed." "Wonderful." "The general offered to show us how Alexander did it." "They're bringing punt poles over there, aren't they?" "Alexander's plan was to hold Porus in front of him and then cross higher upstream, a flanking move repeated through history down to the Napoleonic Wars and Desert Storm." "That is a classic movement of encircling, or outflanking move, where you have either both flanks or the center lean across the enemy's force to attract their attention." "Show as if they were going to cross, or keep them amused, in general terms." "And go round on a flanking movement and hit them on the flank or at the back." "Napoleon tried it again and again." "Austerlitz is one of the most classical examples." "We took a small force of cavalry in the boats." "Our infantry crossed on bales of straw, just as the Greeks did." "According to the historian Arrian," "Alexander also had some prefabricated boats." "Alexander went in a 30-oared boat, so they could probably take a lot of troops." "But the cavalry, he says, came across on rafts that they'd prepared beforehand." "They must be... with planks on top, stuffed with straw, local rush and things." "We make them in a different manner, only to take the infantry across." "You still use them in the army?" "We do, yes." "During World War Two in the Burma campaign, most of the troops always crossed on these rafts." "The general decided I was so woefully ignorant of military matters," "I needed first-hand experience of what Alexander's men did." "...this kind of stuff." "This went on in Burma in World War Two." "Most of the crossings were done on this, at night." "Yeah." "Alexander had done it before, of course." "But this time it was at night, pitch-dark, pouring rain and rising flood waters." "Is that far enough?" "Alexander used tents made of sewn animal skins, which were watertight." "We had an old tarpaulin." "And just before we reached the deep channel..." "Should have gone first the middle one, and the two others climb on simultaneously." "Otherwise you will tilt it and get water aboard." "The battle took place near the little village of Sikanderpur." "Surrounded and surprised," "Porus had little chance against one of the hardest armies ever." "It was a horrible scene; rain, churned-up rice paddies, the Macedonians jabbing their long spears into the elephants' eyes." "The elephants were maddened by their suffering, says Arrian, trampling friend and foe alike." "Porus's army was wiped out and he surrendered." "But Alexander was impressed by his bravery and gave him his kingdom back." "Porus became his ally." "The march restarted around midsummer, right in the middle of the monsoon rains." "It must have been the last straw for the Greeks - the wet, the muggy heat, the mosquitoes." "As any old India hand will tell you, during the rains nothing gets dry." "Your gear and weapons rust, clothes rot, wounds don't heal." "There was no end to the fighting." "Casualties remounted remorselessly." "We followed Alexander by road and entered today's India north of the Sikh holy city of Amritsar." "Nearby we picked up two taxis to take us on to Alexander's appointment with destiny, by the banks of the river Beas." "In early September Alexander reached the Beas at the crossing place of one of the ancient routes through north India." "As he started out across the river," "Alexander still thought the end of the earth was near." "His teacher Aristotle had taught him" "India was a short peninsula jutting into the great ocean which circled the earth." "As far as he knew, they didn't have far to go." "But here at the Beas, when Alexander questioned local people about the road ahead, new and unexpected information came into his hands." "The end of the earth was not near." "Two or three weeks' march from the Beas was a far bigger river, the Ganges." "And a great kingdom with a vast army and thousands of war elephants." "How many kilometers is it from here to Delhi?" "The Greek army could do about 30 kilometers a day... so they could do that in three weeks." "Looking out across the river," "Alexander was all for pushing on, but now after eight years and 17,000 miles, the troops had reached breaking point." "The king urged them to one last great effort, but was greeted with silence." "No one dared speak." "They were too frightened." "And then one of the senior commanders, Coenus, plucked up the courage." ""Sir, you said you would never lead us as a dictator,"" "he began, rather daringly." ""You always said you were open to persuasion." ""Let me speak now not on our behalf, but on behalf of the rank and file of the army." ""Most of the men who came with us from Greece have left their bones on the roads of Asia." ""Those that remain are battered in body and weary in spirit." ""Look at them." "Their gear's ruined, they're wearing patched-up Indian clothes." "They've had enough." ""Sir, under your leadership our achievements have been simply wonderful." ""But the will of the gods can't forever be taken for granted." ""Surely the time has come now to set a limit to our endeavors."" "The king had reached the moment on which his life would turn." "It's been the subject of legend ever since." "It's even in the Hindi movies." "The king was beside himself with fury." "For three days he sulked in his tent." "Then, seeing the army's mood," "Alexander asked the gods for a sign." "The army waited on tenterhooks." "The omens were bad." "Alexander accepted the will of the gods and agreed to turn back." "And what if they'd gone on to the Ganges, China, even?" "History might have been different." "But it was not to be." "Before he turned back, he made altars to the gods who'd brought him so far " "Dionysus, Apollo, Hercules." "And an inscription; "Alexander stopped here."" "On the Jhelum river, he'd ordered a fleet to be built to journey down the Indus to the ocean." "1,000 vessels all told, they included Greek galleys." "The last of the master boat-builders on the Indus chuckled." "These Greek warships, he said, wouldn't cope with the Indus." "He sketched a few modifications to Alexander's naval plans." ""Flat bottoms," he said." ""That's what's needed."" "So if they were going to build a fleet like this in six months, they would need a very big workforce." "He says it's not possible." "Not possible, but Alexander did it." "He set sail mid-November, the main army marching with him along the river bank." "They cast off to the sound of bands and were watched by the Indians, who followed for a while in amazement." "With the army were thousands of women, children," "Indians, Bactrians, Central Asians, all captives of war." "Among them was Alexander's teenage wife, Roxane." "That autumn, Roxane gave birth to a baby boy." "The king had finally produced an heir." "But the child died and was buried by the banks of the Jhelum." "How did Alexander feel?" "Did he see this as a sign?" "All we know is that he plunged himself back into war." "The journey down the Indus took seven months." "It led them through great kingdoms and past ancient cities." "Everywhere in today's Pakistan," "Alexander met resistance whose ferocity perplexed him." "It's with the journey down the Indus that the tenor of the expedition changes." "The Greeks had been through heavily populated countries like Iraq and Egypt, but the people hadn't resisted." "Here they did." "Now we start to get the first reports of atrocities and the large-scale massacre of civilians." "In the New Year he attacked a big city in the lower Punjab." "The city of a people called the Mallians, today's Multan." "The city was then, as it still is, surrounded by high walls of brick, walls which have been assaulted many times since then, the last being the British siege of 1849." "Local legend says Alexander's siege broke through at a place called the Tower of Blood." "The Greeks were outside the walls." "It can't have been this spot, but it's as good a place to tell the story as any." "Alexander thought the troops were slacking." "He put a siege ladder against the wall and he went up himself, led the troops." "Behind him were only three men, two of his bodyguards, one holding the sacred shield from Troy, and an NCO, Abreas." "And Alexander held his shield above him and up he went." "And here's the Macedonian siege ladder itself." "...the Macedonian siege ladders were as wobbly as this one." "At the top, the weight of the troops behind broke the ladder, leaving the four men alone." "Salaam." "It's all right, I'm only a Macedonian soldier." "When Alexander got onto the top, he crouched on top of the wall, says Arrian, behind his shield." "The other three men came up, too." "And then, at that moment, surrounded by Indian defenders, exposed on the wall, he took his life into his own hands and leapt into the fortress rather than outside, leaving the rest of the army behind." "The Indian defenders closed in on him and he was forced to throw stones at them, beat them off with his sword." "The rest of the army behind, panic-stricken, tried to find a way of getting into the city while the four men desperately defended themselves." "Abreas was hit by an arrow and killed." "And then Alexander was struck by an arrow that went in the open bit underneath his armor, straight into his lung." "He collapsed on the floor, bleeding profusely." "The bodyguard Peucestas straddled him, holding the sacred shield from Troy, trying to beat off the Indian attackers." "You can imagine the paramedics rushing Alexander back to the camp." "Meanwhile panic spread through the army." "They feared that with Alexander dead, they'd never see home again." "They went berserk and massacred everyone in the city." "Alexander's surgeon prepared to operate." "Kritobolos of Kos had been his father's doctor." "He'd once taken an arrow from King Philip's eye." "Over the years, Alexander had taken punishment which would have stopped an ox." "Leg and thigh wounds, a catapult bolt in the shoulder, 21 wounds in all." "This, though, was the most serious." "His lung was pierced." "The story here is that the arrow was poisoned and Alexander never really recovered." "Now, the Greek historians don't mention this, but the traditional doctors here, the Hakeems, claim descent from Alexander's doctors." "They practice what they call Greek medicine, so perhaps they should know." "But poison or not, both doctor and patient knew that Alexander was very close to death." "For a week," "Alexander's life hung in the balance." "Then they gently floated him along the river so the army could see he was alive." "They cried with relief." "They still loved him." "The journey down the Indus took from November until summer, fighting all the way." "Alexander founded another Alexandria at the confluence of the rivers." "In July he reached the Indus delta." "His fleet explored the arms of the Indus, and its journey has been pieced together by Monique Kervran." "We drove across the bay where Alexander coasted that summer." "All this plain was sea then, but it's silted now, leaving the islands high and dry." "Maybe you want to see the position of this tower." "Alexander's admiral, Nearchus, says he built fortifications at a place he called" "Alexander's Harbor." "They were here on this spot?" "Yes, that is clearly written in the ancient text." "And they survived eating oysters." "Arrian mentions this?" "Yes, oysters and mussels of a very big size." "So it is possible, then, that these are left by the Greek soldiers during their stay here." "I let you tell it, but I believe." "The oysters couldn't be from Islamic times because eating shellfish is against Islam." "Most likely it was Alexander's Greeks who left these shells." "And they were very happy, after such a long time away from their country, to have seafood." "Alexander's last act in India was to build altars, just as he'd done in Central Asia and the Punjab." "He put them on a tiny island in the sea." "It's never been found." "But in the middle of the delta plain is another long-forgotten island, the last before the open sea." "This was perhaps Alexander's last landfall in India." "Perhaps he stood on this spot, staring out to sea, as his fleet set sail for the Gulf, following the line of the setting sun." "Alexander planned his return from India as a combined operation by land and sea." "With the help of the Pakistan navy, we tried to trace his fleet's progress along the bleak coast of the Makran." "The logbook of Alexander's admiral Nearchus survives." "An eyewitness we could still follow after 2,000 years." "The Greek logbook of the expedition..." "He actually mentions a number of places." "For instance," ""They went round a great promontory or a cape which stuck far out into the sea and was very high."" "This is Ras Ormara." "It's a big mountain here." "It's about 1,400 feet high." "It's 1,400 feet high and it's sticking out in sea." "There's one other little story that he tells in this, which is particularly interesting." "He says that about ten miles off the shore, roughly, there was an island, and it was uninhabited, no human being ever went there." "In fact, it was something of an ill-omened place." "This is right in front of you." "This is Astola Island." "On a bigger chart, you can see." "Astola Island is uninhabited." "You can see the distance." "My divider is open 10 miles." "From Astola, the land is about 12 miles." "The water must have receded." "The water must have receded 2 miles." "The Greeks were frightened of stories that you shouldn't step on this island." "They sailed round the island, shouting to check there weren't any spirits before they went on it." "In my 20-year naval career we have never been there." "In October, Alexander began his return journey with the land army, 100,000 strong now, with tens of thousands of camp followers, and we followed, into the dreaded Makran desert." "This part of the Makran has flash floods in the autumn, when Alexander came through." "The local Baluchis told us whole villages can be swept away." "This is what happened to Alexander." "One night the army camped in a stream bed and a flash flood killed many people." "Worse was to follow." "Alexander's route led him to Turbat, an ancient fortress on the road to Iran." "He must have stayed here." "...all the Islamic city?" "It's a rich and fertile oasis." "What a view!" "Yes, you call it the..." "From Turbat, the main route to Iran goes straight as a die westwards up the Kech valley." "But Alexander didn't take it." "He now turned off the main route and headed south for the sea." "It's only 100 miles but it goes through the harshest terrain." "The Greeks found impoverished settlements of aboriginal people they called the fish-eaters, too poor to give them supplies." "Oh God!" "We've been on this road now for ten hours." "We've had half a liter of water and two oranges each." "I don't think we took the preparations for this leg very seriously." "But I don't think Alexander did either." "Coming this way makes me think it was a crazy notion to bring an army through here." "The last big spring is 50 kilometers back." "The Greeks, you can be sure, were in trouble before they even hit the sea." "At the sea there was no sign of the fleet, only the fish-eaters' boats." "Alexander should have gone back now the way he'd come." "But that wasn't his way." "He decided to push on, sticking to the coast." "Perhaps he was hoping to establish ports to link his empire." "Perhaps he still hoped to meet the fleet." "We don't know." "From here, the only way to follow him was by camel." "Let me check this." "An outsider will die on this route, is that right?" "An outsider will die." "He won't be able to find any water." "Great." "That's extremely comforting to know." "Is there water on the route?" "Are there waterholes or do we have to carry the water?" "He says that there is very few water springs." "That's great!" "If I go, I can't find them." "Well, we'd better take somebody with us who can, then." "And so we left the burning shore by the great rock of Pasni in the footsteps of Alexander's last epic march." "The journey for Alexander's army soon became a nightmare." "The Greeks came into an area of great hills of sand and then Arrian says their feet sank in like treading into untrodden snow." "The horses and mules couldn't cope with that." "They didn't have camels as we do." "Sometimes, Arrian says, they had to go through the whole night without water and in the morning they'd leave people behind who were sick or too tired or absolutely dying of thirst." "Those people were never seen again." "They were lost, says Arrian, like people fallen overboard and lost at sea." "Now, for the first time in his life, he was staring at defeat." "Why did he come here to the Makran?" "I just don't know." "He was trying to get back to Iran, I guess." "But why he came here to this coast," "I don't understand." "I don't understand." "Alexander became greatly distressed because they were traveling through such awful terrain, says the geographer Strabo." "According to one source, only a quarter of the army survived." "The truth will never be known." "Even though he was in desperate straits," "Alexander still showed flashes of his old self." "He was leading the army on foot, as he often did to encourage the troops, and everybody was absolutely desperate for thirst." "Some soldiers found a tiny bit of water in a dried-up stream bed and brought it to him in a helmet." "In front of the whole army, he poured it away into the sand." "If they couldn't drink, then he wouldn't." "The Greeks always cited this story as being proof of his noble character." "I find it a little frightening that after all he'd put them through, they could still be won over by his tricks." "But the truth is, they still loved him and still needed his leadership to pull them through." "And he still needed them in order to be Alexander." "Out here you really do wonder why on earth he brought his army through this appalling wilderness." "It makes you wonder whether he wanted to punish them for not following him to the ends of the earth." "But among the Greeks, the most popular explanation was this." "Simply that it was there." "He'd been told the journey was impossible for an army, and because of his inner demon he just had to do it." "He had to excel everybody." "He had to do what nobody else had done." "And, of course, in the past his gambles had always paid off." "It took him 60 days to get through the Makran." "In the spring he arrived back in Persepolis, from where he'd set off east seven years before." "He walked through the burnt palace of the Persian kings, destroyed at his orders, and with hindsight he regretted what he'd done." "After all, he was the king now." "He was now wearing the robes and tiara of the Persian shah." "He could no longer be a mere conqueror, a seeker after glory." "Now he had to rule the biggest empire the world had ever seen." "And Iran was now the center of his universe." "He still had great plans, among them to conquer the West, but fate, or the will of the gods, was closing in." "There, suddenly, after a massive binge, his dearest friend and lover, Hephaestion, died." "Alexander was almost suicidal in his grief." ""Others loved me because I was king," he said." ""Hephaestion loved me for myself."" "The bazaars were rife with rumor." "Some spoke of poison." "That the king, too, did not have long to live." "That the omens were against him." "That he'd lost his sense of purpose." "The legend is still told by the traditional tale-tellers in Iran." "That last spring, he moved back into Iraq." "Now obsessed with every omen, the king dithered while his soothsayers argued over the flight of birds." "The signs, they said, were plain." "He must not enter Babylon." "Till now he'd never ignored the gods, but now he did." "By the banks of the Euphrates, after another heavy drinking session, the king fell ill." "The wounds, alcohol, grief had finally taken their toll." "Imagine; the claustrophobia of the palace, the hanging gardens with their forest of palms, the somnolent heat of the river." "There's a diary of those last days." "It's one of the most dramatic records in history." "This is the account of the king's last days." "It comes almost word for word from the royal diaries." "On 29th May he slept in the bathroom because he was feverish." "He spent the next day playing dice." "The 31st he bathed and lay down, listening to Nearchus tell the story of the return of the fleet from India." "On 1st June the fever grew more intense." "He had a bad night and all through the next day his fever was very high." "5th June they moved him to the other side of the river." "There he slept a little, but the fever did not abate." "The Macedonian veterans now believed he was dead, and pushed their way into the palace to see him a last time." "The motive in almost every heart was grief and a sort of helpless bewilderment at the thought of losing him." "Lying speechless as the men filed by, he still struggled to raise his head, and with his eyes gave a look of recognition to each individual as he went past." "On 10th June, towards evening, he died." "After 20,000 miles, our journey was over." "It ended where it began, in the shadow of Mount Olympus, the home of the gods." "Alexander's search for eternal glory was cut short, and ever since he's carried the weight of an unfulfilled destiny, the hero who flew too close to the sun and whose wings were burned." "But today the verdict of history is harsher." "A man broken in the end by the loneliness and insanity of absolute power." "Is that how we should see Alexander's career now?" "As self-destructive madness rather than everlasting glory?" "I'll tell you what I think, for what it's worth, having followed in his footsteps for this far." "And that is that all the evils unleashed by men of war in our own time teach us that we should reject Alexander's ideals." "But Alexander was a man of his time, not of ours." "He believed in the gods, and he would have accepted their verdicts, both for good and ill." "If he could answer us here now," "I'm sure he would say, like the tragic hero that he is," ""Let the gods be my judges," ""for in every sign that they gave me, they told me no lies.""