Arrian, a Greek writing in the Roman Empire in the second century, retells Alexander the Great’s campaigns from officers who were there. This is Book 7 of his Anabasis of Alexander, the last. Book 6 was the return from India: an arrow in the lung, the Makran desert of southern Iran and Pakistan, and satraps hanged for thinking the king would not come home.

Alexander now tries to fuse Macedonians and Persians. At Susa in southwestern Iran he marries his Companions — inner cavalry officers — to Persian wives, a policy the veterans hate. At Opis on the Tigris the army mutinies at being sent home; he gives their commands to Medes of western Iran and waits until they beg. His closest friend Hephaestion dies at Ecbatana (Hamadan). Plans for Arabia and a navy sit unfinished. In Babylon the Chaldean priests warn him off the city; he enters anyway. After a night of drinking, fever. Soldiers file past a silent bed. He is thirty-two and names no heir. Someone says the strongest should have it. The marshals already look at one another.