238 ALEXANDER. dance of villages. To another government, three times as large as this, he appointed Philip, one of his friends. Some little time after the hattle with Porus, Bucepha- las died, as most of the authorities state, under cure of his wounds, or as Onesicritus says, of fatigue and age, be- ing thirty years old. Alexander was no less concerned at his death, than if he had lost an old companion or an intimate friend, and built a city, which he named Buce- phalia, in memory of him, on the bank of the river Hy- daspes. He also, we are told, built another city, and called it after the name of a favorite dog, Peritas, which he had brought up himself. So Sotion assures us he was informed by Potamon of Lesbos. But this last combat with Porus took off the edge of the Macedonians' courage, and stayed their further pro- gress into India. For having found it hard enough to de- feat an enemy w T ho brought but tw r enty thousand foot and two thousand horse into the field, they thought they had reason to oppose Alexander's design of leading them on to pass the Ganges too, which they were told was thirty- two furlongs broad and a hundred fathoms deep, and the banks on the further side covered with multitudes of ene- mies. For they were told that the kings of the Gandari- tans and Praesians expected them there with eighty thou- sand horse, two hundred thousand foot, eight thousand armed chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants. Nor was this a mere vain report, spread to discourage them. For Androcottus,* who not long after reigned in those parts, made a present of five hundred elephants at once to Seleucus, and with an army of six hundred thousand
- Or Sandracottus, as the name of Seleucus. met apparently some
i } given in Arrian and other wri- of the Buddhist ascetics and philoso- ters, identical, it is generally pre- phers. Calanus and the gymnoso- sumed, with the Sandragupta of phists, whom we read of here, were Indian history and literature. At pretty certainly of the old Brahmin- his court, Megasthenes, the envoy ical religion.
