Books
Battle
Battle of the Hydaspes
326 BCE
The Battle of the Hydaspes took place in 326 BC against King Porus in the Punjab. Alexander crossed the river under difficult conditions and defeated an army that included war elephants. The battle was hard-fought and marked the eastern limit of his major battlefield victories.
Hydaspes mattered because it showed both Alexander’s tactical brilliance and the exhaustion of his army. After the campaign in India, his soldiers refused to march farther east. The victory therefore stands close to the limit of conquest rather than the beginning of a new expansion.
Fiction about the subject frequently turns on Alexander at the edge of the known world. Mary Renault’s and Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s Alexander narratives use the Indian campaign to show strain, awe, and alienation within the army.
Related people for Battle of the Hydaspes
Alexander of Lyncestisc. 5th century BCE–331 BCE Alexander the Great357 BCE–324 BCE Antigonus I Monophthalmusc. 382–301 BCE Antipater398 BCE–320 BCE Bagoasc. 5th century BCE–c. 4th century BCE Cassander356 BCE–297 BCE Darius III381 BCE–331 BCE Hephaestionc. 356 BCE–324 BCE Olympias376 BCE–317 BCE Parmenion401 BCE–330 BCE Perdiccas366 BCE–322 BCE Philip III of Macedon360 BCE–318 BCE Philip II of Macedonc. 382–336 BCE Ptolemy I Soter369/368–282 BCE Roxana348 BCE–311 BCE
Non-Fiction
2 Best Non-Fiction Books About the Battle of the Hydaspes
Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.
