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Alexander founded many cities that bore his name. This one he named Alexandria Eschate, meaning "the furthest".
Here, on the edge of the known world, beset by foes and vexed by the barren landscape, Alexander raised his improbable city: an attestation that every last parasang of the Persian empire was his to order.
Yet beyond the borders of the empire he had just conquered, there were lands vaster and richer than even the sprawling Persian realm.
India: a place little understood by the Greeks, who traded tales of a land where giant ants dug for gold in the rich hillsides; where rivers of honey flowed from rocks; where men lived a hundred, or even two hundred years, untroubled by pains.
They spoke of men with one giant foot, with which they sheltered themselves from the sun, men with the heads of dogs, and men with no heads at all, who had their faces in their chests.
I shall let you decide the veracity of these stories for yourself.
In one respect, though, the land of the five rivers was much like anywhere else: it was endlessly contested by rival kings.
On one side of the River Hydaspes lay the realm of Taxila, ruled by the young king Ambhi, who had recently gained the throne after his father was murdered.
On the other side of the Hydaspes, another king ruled: Porus, the man who had recently murdered Ambhi's father.
This being as good a pretext as any for another round of fighting, the two kings gathered their armies, made extravagant promises to their mercenaries, and prepared to wage war.