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True Valor

The Battle Both Sides Still Claim

Every surviving account calls it an Alexander victory. Every surviving account was also written thirty generations later, and what happened in the weeks right after the battle doesn't read like the aftermath of anyone's clean win.

Every account we have calls it a Macedonian victory. Every account we have was written between three and five centuries after it happened.

By people who were not there. Working from books that no longer exist.

Where Alexander was

By 326 BCE Alexander had been campaigning for eight years. He had destroyed the Persian Empire, taken Egypt and Babylon, burned Persepolis and marched further east than any Greek force before him.

At the Hydaspes, the river now called the Jhelum, in the Punjab, he came up against Porus, king of the Pauravas.

Several smaller rulers along the route had already submitted before the army arrived. Porus declined to.

Porus put his force on the far bank and waited, with a corps of war elephants the Macedonians had no real experience of fighting.

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