PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION En inventant l’histoire, la Grèce inventa le jugement du monde, et, dans ce jugement, l’arrêt de la Grèce fut sans appel. A celui dont la Grèce n’a pas parlé, l’oubli, c’est-à-dire le néant. A celui dont la Grèce se souvient, la gloire, c’est-à-dire la vie.—_Discours de M. Ernest Renan du 5 Mai 1892._ This work is the fifth of a series which may be entitled _Ancient India as described by the Classical Writers_, since it was projected to supply annotated translations of all the accounts of India which have descended to us from classical antiquity. The volumes which have already appeared contain the fragments of the _Indika_ of Ktêsias the Knidian, and of the _Indika_ of Megasthenês, the _Indika_ of Arrian, the _Periplous of the Erythraian Sea_ by an unknown author, and Ptolemy’s _Geography of India and the other Countries of Eastern Asia_. A sixth work, containing translations of the chapters in Strabo’s _Geography_ which describe _India and Ariana_, is in preparation, and will complete the series. I cannot at present say whether this work will appear as a separate publication, or will be included in a volume containing new and revised editions of the three _Indikas_ mentioned above, which are now nearly out of print, as are also the other two works of the series. In the present work I have translated and annotated all the earliest and most authentic records which have been preserved of the Macedonian invasion of India under Alexander the Great. The notes do not touch on points either of grammar or of textual criticism, but are mainly designed to illustrate the statements advanced in the narratives. When short, they accompany the text as footnotes, and when of such a length as would too much encumber the pages, they have been placed together in an appendix by themselves. Such notes again as refer to _persons_ have been placed, whether short or long, in a second appendix, which I have designated a _Biographical Appendix_. In preparing the translations and notes I have consulted a great many works, of which the following may be specified as those which I found most useful:— Droysen’s _Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen_. Williams’s _Life of Alexander_. Sainte-Croix’s _Examen Critique des Anciens Historiens d’Alexandre le Grand_. C. Müller’s _collection of the remaining fragments of the Historians of Alexander the Great_. Thirlwall’s _History of Greece_, vols. vi. and vii. Grote’s _History of Greece_, vol. xii. Duncker’s _History of Antiquity_, vol. iv., which treats of India exclusively. Talboys Wheeler’s _History of India_. Le Clerc’s _Criticism upon Curtius_, prefixed to Rooke’s Translation of Arrian’s _Anabasis_. Lassen’s _Indische Alterthumskunde_. General Sir A. Cunningham’s _Geography of Ancient India_.