 their spears. Then, when he gave the order, they charged the natives while those on the ships unleashed a hail of arrows and missiles down upon them.
The tribesmen didn’t even try to fight back. Nearchus described the scene of the massacre with pride, writing:
“They, astounded at the flash of the armor, and the swiftness of the charge, and attacked by showers of arrows and missiles, half-naked as they were, never stopped to resist but gave way. Some were killed in flight; others were captured; but some escaped into the hills.”
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The battle of Issus as painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder. ( Public Domain )
The Slaughter of an Innocent Town
It wouldn’t be his only massacre. Nearly every encounter with a technologically inferior tribe ended in slaughter.
A little while after, Nearchus and his men came upon a tribal town surrounded by a wooden wall. They were running low on provisions now, and Nearchus was afraid his men would grow hungry. He told his men he would move in close and scope them out, then give the signal to attack.
When the tribesmen spotted him, though, they did something he didn’t expect. They rushed out to greet him with fish, cakes, and dates, inviting the Greek explorer to come into their town and join them in a great feast. They were thrilled to have visitors, and they were happy to share anything he needed.
Nearchus pretended to be thankful and followed into the city walls. But as soon as he was in, he climbed the city wall and signaled to his men to attack.
These people had offered him anything he needed – but he just used their hospitality to fling open their town’s gates and let his men storm in and slaughter them. Then he forced them to submission and threatened them until they gave him every bit of food that they had.
The people, he learned, had little more than his men. They barely had any corns of barley; instead, they would make flour by grinding up dried fish. The cakes they’d brought him were a delicacy that were only brought out on the most momentous of occasions.
Still, he and his men took everything they had. They loaded up their boats with everything they could carry and left the natives behind to starve.
The Heart of Darkness
These are horrifying stories, but they don’t come from enemies who were trying to slander a great man. Every one of these stories comes from Nearchus himself, each one written without the slightest show of remorse.
To Nearchus and the Greeks who read his writings, there wasn’t any need to justify what he’d done. He and his men needed food and these people were savages. Killing them was little different from killing animals.
It’s an eerie line our species has drawn time and time again: the line between civilized men and backward savages. There’s an unspoken idea that technology makes a people more human; that an advanced people’s lives are more valuable than those who lag behind.
We’ve seen how that line gets drawn countless times before – but what the story of Nearchus reveals is that it’s been there for thousands of years.
Perhaps this is a glimpse into a dark side of man: an instinct at work within us all, constantly weighing the value of other men’s lives and never coming up with an equal score.
Top image: 1893 Reconstruction of the Alexander Mosaic. Source: Public Domain
By Mark Oliver
Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri. “Book VIII”. Indica. Trans. E. Iliff Robson, 1933. Fordham University. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/arrian-bookviii-india.asp
Lawson, Russel M. “Nearchus.” Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, 2004. https://books.google.com/books?id=1AY1ALzh9V0C&pg=PA165&dq=nearchus&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjU54nJvO3bAhWqy4MKHQtsDN0Q6AEISDAF#v=onepage&q=nearchus&f=false
Lendering, Jona. “Nearchus.” Livius.org. April 1, 2018. http://www.livius.org/articles/person/ne