[572] Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. B. C. 325, also Append. p. 232) places the arrival of Alexander in Susiana, on his return march, in the month of February B. C. 325; a year too early, in my opinion. I have before remarked on the views of Mr. Clinton respecting the date of Alexander’s victory over Porus on the Hydaspes, where he alters the name of the month as it stands in the text of Arrian (following Schmieder’s conjecture), and supposes that battle to have occurred in August B. C. 327 instead of April B. C. 326. Mr. Clinton antedates by one year all the proceedings of Alexander subsequent to his quitting Baktria for the last time in the summer of B. C. 327. Dr. Vincent’s remark—“that the supposition of _two winters_ occurring after Alexander’s return to Susa is not borne out by the historians” (see Clinton. p. 232), is a perfectly just one; and Mitford has not replied to it in a satisfactory manner. In my judgment, there was only an interval of sixteen months (not an interval of twenty-eight months, as Mr. Clinton supposes) between the return of Alexander to Susa and his death at Babylon (Feb. 324 B. C. to June 323 B. C.). [573] Arrian, vii. 5. 9; Arrian, Indica, c. 42. The voluntary death of Kalanus the Indian Gymnosophist must have taken place at Susa (where Diodorus places it—xvii. 107), and not in Persis; for Nearchus was seemingly present at the memorable scene of the funeral pile (Arrian, vii. 3, 9)—and he was not with Alexander in Persis. In Susa and Susiana Alexander spent some months. For the first time since his accession to the throne, he had now no military operations in hand or in immediate prospect. No enemy was before him, until it pleased him to go in quest of a new one;—nor indeed could any new one be found, except at a prodigious distance. He had emerged from the perils of the untrodden East, and had returned into the ordinary localities and conditions of Persian rule, occupying that capital city from whence the great Achæmenid kings had been accustomed to govern the Western as well as the Eastern portions of their vast empire. To their post, and to their irritable love of servility, Alexander had succeeded; but bringing with him a restless energy such as none of them except the first founder Cyrus had manifested—and a splendid military genius, such as was unknown alike to Cyrus and to his successors.