[565] Curtius, ix. 10; Diodor. xvii. 106; Plutarch, Alex. 67. Arrian (vi. 28) found this festal progress mentioned in some authorities, but not in others. Neither Ptolemy nor Aristobulus mentioned it. Accordingly Arrian refuses to believe it. There may have been exaggerations or falsities as to the details of the march; but as a general fact, I see no sufficient ground for disbelieving it. A season of excessive license to the soldiers, after their extreme suffering in Gedrosia, was by no means unnatural to grant. Moreover, it corresponds to the general conception of the returning march of Dionysus in antiquity, while the imitation of that god was quite in conformity with Alexander’s turn of sentiment. I have already remarked, that the silence of Ptolemy and Aristobulus is too strongly insisted on, both by Arrian and by others, as a reason for disbelieving affirmations respecting Alexander. Arrian and Curtius (x. 1) differ in their statements about the treatment of Kleander. According to Arrian, he was put to death; according to Curtius, he was spared from death, and simply put in prison, in consequence of the important service which he had rendered by killing Parmenio with his own hand; while 600 of his accomplices and agents were put to death. During the halt in Karmania Alexander had the satisfaction of seeing his admiral Nearchus,[566] who had brought the fleet round from the mouth of the Indus to the harbor called Harmozeia (Ormuz), not far from the entrance of the Persian Gulf; a voyage of much hardship and distress, along the barren coasts of the Oritæ, the Gedrosians, and the Ichthyophagi.[567] Nearchus, highly commended and honored, was presently sent back to complete his voyage as far as the mouth of the Euphrates; while Hephæstion also was directed to conduct the larger portion of the army, with the elephants and heavy baggage, by the road near the coast from Karmania into Persis. This road, though circuitous, was the most convenient, as it was now the winter season;[568] but Alexander himself, with the lighter divisions of his army, took the more direct mountain road from Karmania to Pasargadæ and Persepolis. Visiting the tomb of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire, he was incensed to find it violated and pillaged. He caused it to be carefully restored, put to death a Macedonian named Polymachus as the offender, and tortured the Magian guardians of it for the purpose of discovering accomplices, but in vain.[569] Orsines, satrap of Persis, was however accused of connivance in the deed, as well as of various acts of murder and spoliation: according to Curtius, he was not only innocent, but had manifested both good faith and devotion to Alexander;[570] in spite of which he became a victim of the hostility of the favorite eunuch Bagoas, who both poisoned the king’s mind with calumnies of his own, and suborned other accusers with false testimony. Whatever may be the