Valerio Massimo Manfredi · 1998 · overland

The last volume: from Gaugamela to the ends of the world. Alexander breaks Darius on the plain and takes Babylon, Susa and Persepolis, burns the palace of Xerxes, hunts his enemy east to a murdered corpse in a cart, and drives on through Bactria and Sogdiana and over the Hindu Kush into India - until at a river in the Punjab his own army refuses to go a step further, and the road turns for home through the Gedrosian desert to Babylon, where he dies at thirty-two.

1. 1
   Gaugamela

   On a plain levelled for his scythed chariots, Darius brings the whole empire against him and loses it in an afternoon; the Great King flees his own field a second time.

2. 2
   Babylon

   The greatest city in the world opens its gates without a blow, and he enters along the Processional Way between walls of glazed lions.

3. 3
   Susa

   The Persian treasury falls into his hands, wealth beyond any reckoning.

4. 4
   Persepolis

   The ceremonial heart of the empire, where the palace of Xerxes burns - whether by drunken revel or cold policy, nobody afterwards agrees.

5. 5
   Ecbatana

   Darius abandons his summer capital and runs east; Alexander rides his men half to death to catch him and finds him stabbed by his own satraps, dying in a cart. Now avenger and successor both, he takes the war after the usurper Bessus through Areia, Drangiana and Arachosia.

6. 6
   Bactra

   Beyond the mountains, in the country at the edge of the maps, the hunt for Bessus ends and a longer, dirtier war begins.

7. 7
   Maracanda

   Sogdiana, which will not be conquered: two years of insurrection, the storming of the rock where he finds Roxane - and the night here when, drunk, he runs Cleitus the Black through with a spear at his own table, the man who saved his life at the Granicus.

8. 8
   Alexandria in the Caucasus

   The city he plants beneath the Hindu Kush, and the pass over the mountains that costs him men to cold and hunger, opening the road into India.

9. 9
   Taxila

   Across the Indus into a country of philosophers and elephants, welcomed by a king who prefers alliance to war.

10. 10
    The Hydaspes

    In a night of thunder and rain he crosses the flooded river and beats Porus and his elephants - the last of his great battles, and the field where old Bucephalas dies, with a city raised over him.

11. 11
    The Hyphasis

    The furthest east he will ever stand. Beyond it, he is told, lie the Ganges and the Ocean at the end of the world - but the army, eight years from home and rotting in the monsoon, will not cross. Alexander shuts himself in his tent for three days and then turns back: the only defeat of his life, and his own men deal it.

12. 12
    Patala

    Back at the Hydaspes he builds a fleet and takes the whole army down the rivers to the delta and out onto the Ocean at last - fighting through the Malli on the way, and taking an arrow in the chest that very nearly ends him.

13. 13
    The Gedrosian Desert

    The march that breaks the army: waterless sand along the Makran while Nearchus feels his way west by sea, and thousands die of heat, thirst and flash floods.

14. 14
    Susa

    The weddings: Alexander takes Darius's daughter and marries eighty of his officers to Persian noblewomen in a single ceremony, and his Macedonians hate him for it.

15. 15
    Babylon

    Ten thousand plans - Arabia, Carthage, the Ocean that encircles the world - and then a fever. He dies in Nebuchadnezzar's palace at thirty-two, and asked to whom he leaves the empire, says: to the strongest.