[The following is an incident that occurred as Alexander the Great marched through Persia during his conquests.]
A little way beyond the river their first deputation met them. But these shabby creatures were very different from the elegant, time-serving [Greek] collaborators with whom Alexander had hitherto dealt. Their cries of welcome, and the suppliant branches they bore, revealed them as Greeks: middle-aged or elderly for the most part, perhaps mercenaries who had fought on the wrong side against that ferocious monarch Artaxerxes Ochus.
What made them so ghastly and pitiable a sight was the fact that each one of them had been appallingly mutilated. Ears and noses had been lopped off wholesale, a typical Persian practice. Some lacked hands, others feet. All were disfigured by brand-marks on the forehead. ‘They were,’ says Diodorus, ‘persons who had acquired skills or crafts and had made good progress in their instruction; then their other extremities had been amputated and they were left only those which were vital to their profession.’
Alexander at first offered to repatriate them. After discussion, however, they told him they would rather stay where they were and form a separate community. Back in Greece they would be isolated objects of pity, social pariahs. Here they at least were among their own kind, companions if only in misfortune.
The king applauded their choice, provided them with all they needed to set up as small farmers – oxen, seen-corn, sheep, cash subsidies – and made them tax-exempt in perpetuity. The local administration became directly responsible for their safety and well-being.
Author’s Note:
Their numbers [of the mutilated Greeks] are variously given as 800 or 4,000.
Source:
Green, Peter. “The Lord of Asia.” Alexander of Macedon: 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography. Univ. of California Press, 2005. 313. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Diod. 17.69.
QC 5.5.5-24.
Justin 11.14.11-12.
Further Reading:
Alexander III of Macedon / Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας (Alexander the Great)
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