Heracles and Dionysus

Abstract

This chapter discusses how Alexander came to India with a determination to stamp on the alien land a character that he and his fellow Macedonians could recognize. In the next generation, the ethnographic approach of Megasthenes to his subject was determined in many ways by Alexander's vision of India. One notable example is his treatment of the most prominent “gods of India,” Heracles and Dionysus. Why was Alexander expecting to find these two gods there, and why did he attach such importance to them? The origin of their prominence lies in the role of both gods in Macedonian royal ideology, and hence in Alexander's mythologization of his expedition in heroic terms. That is why Megasthenes expected to find them in India.