Shortly afterwards, a Macedonian detachment, unskilfully conducted, was destroyed in Sogdiana by Spitamenes and the Scythians: a rare misfortune, which Alexander avenged by overrunning the region[493] near the river Polytimêtus (the Kohik), and putting to the sword the inhabitants of all the towns which he took. He then recrossed the Oxus, to rest during the extreme season of winter at Zariaspa in Baktria, from whence his communications with the West and with Macedonia were more easy, and where he received various reinforcements of Greek troops.[494] Bessus, who had been here retained as a prisoner, was now brought forward amidst a public assembly; wherein Alexander, having first reproached him for his treason to Darius, caused his nose and ears to be cut off—and sent him in this condition to Ekbatana, to be finally slain by the Medes and Persians.[495] Mutilation was a practice altogether Oriental and non-Hellenic: even Arrian, admiring and indulgent as he is towards his hero, censures this savage order, as one among many proofs how much Alexander had taken on Oriental dispositions. We may remark that his extreme wrath on this occasion was founded partly on disappointment that Bessus had frustrated his toilsome efforts for taking Darius alive—partly on the fact that the satrap had committed treason against the king’s person, which it was the policy as well as the feeling of Alexander to surround with a circle of Deity.[496] For as to traitors against Persia, as a cause and country, Alexander had never discouraged, and had sometimes signally recompensed them. Mithrines, the governor of Sardis, who opened to him the gates of that almost impregnable fortress immediately after the battle of the Granikus—the traitor who perhaps, next to Darius himself, had done most harm to the Persian cause—obtained from him high favor and promotion.[497] [493] Arrian, iv. 6, 11; Curtius, vii. 9, 22. The river, called by the Macedonians Polytimetus (Strabo, xi. p. 518), now bears the name of Kohik or Zurufshan. It rises in the mountains east of Samarkand, and flowing westward on the north of that city and of Bokhara. It does not reach so far as the Oxus; during the full time of the year, it falls into a lake called Karakul; during the dry months, it is lost in the sands, as Arrian states (Burnes’s Travels, vol. ii. ch. xi. p. 299. ed. 2nd.). [494] Arrian, iv. 7, 1; Curtius, vii. 10, 12. [495] Arrian, iv. 7, 5. [496] After describing the scene at Rome, when the Emperor Galba was deposed and assassinated in the forum, Tacitus observes—“Plures quam centum et viginti libellos præmia exposcentium, ob aliquam notabilem illà die operam, Vitellius posteà invenit, omnesque conquiri et interfici jussit: _non honore Galbæ, sed tradito principibus more, munimentum ad præsens, in posterum ultionem_” (Tacitus, Hist. i. 44). [497] Arrian, i. 17, 3; iii. 16, 8. Curtius, iii. 12, 6; v. 1, 44.