Alexander presses on during the winter of…

Alexander now advances with his army from the Sogdian capital of Maracanda (modern Samarkand) …

…by way of Cyropolis to the Jaxartes (modern Syr Darya), the boundary of the Persian Empire.

Here, he breaks the opposition of the Scythian nomads by his use of catapults and, after defeating them in a battle on the north bank of the river, …

...pursues them into the interior.

On the site of modern Leninabad (Khojent) on the Jaxartes in Sogdiana, Alexander founds a city, Alexandreschate, “Alexandria the Farthest,” not far from the site of Cyropolis, a city of Cyrus II the Great, whom he highly admires. (There is evidence of Achaemenid irrigation at the interesting Bactrian site of Ai Khanum, which cannot definitely be identified as an Alexandria.)

Alexandreschate is a prestige foundation, designed, as explicitly stated by Arrian, for both military and commercial success.

Alexander has already planted a number of new Alexandrias in central Iran, including Alexandria in Areia (Herat), Alexandria in Arachosia, and almost certainly Kandahar (on the exciting evidence of a metrical inscription found there by a British excavation team in 1978).

Outflanked by Alexander, Bessus flees beyond the Oxus (modern Amu Darya).

Alexander, marching west to Bactra-Zariaspa (modern Balkh [Wazirabad] in Afghanistan), appoints loyal satraps in Bactria and Aria.

Crossing the Oxus, he sends Ptolemy in pursuit of Bessus, who has meanwhile been overthrown by the Sogdian Spitamenes.

Bessus is captured, flogged, and sent to Bactra, where he is later mutilated after the Persian manner (losing his nose and ears); in due course, he is publicly executed, by crucifixion, at Ecbatana.

Meanwhile, Alexander threatens to severely punish the Daylamites (an Iranian people of northern Iran) for kidnapping his beloved war-horse Bucephalus, which they promptly return to him.

From Phrada, Alexander and his army …

…pass the site of modern Kabul …

…into the country of the Paropamisadae, where Alexander founds Alexandria by the Caucasus at an important junction of communications in the Hindu Kush.

Crossing the Hindu Kush northward over the Khawak Pass (11,650 feet), Alexander, despite food shortages, brings his army to Drapsaca (sometimes identified with modern Banu [Andarab], probably farther north at Qunduz).

Spitamenes has meanwhile raised all Sogdia in revolt behind him, bringing in the Massagetai, a people of the Saka confederacy, and besieging the Macedonian garrison in Maracanda.

Alexander sends an army under the command of Pharnuches of Lycia that is promptly annihilated with a loss of more than two thousand infantry and three hundred cavalry.

Understanding now the danger represented by his enemy, Alexander moves personally to relieve Maracanda, only to learn that Spitamenes has left Sogdiana.

It takes Alexander until the autumn of 328 to crush the most determined opponent he encounters in his campaigns.

An incident that occurs at Maracanda widens the breach between Alexander and many of his Macedonians.

He murders Cleitus, one of his most trusted commanders, with his own hands in a drunken quarrel; but his excessive display of remorse leads the army to pass a decree convicting Cleitus posthumously of treason.

The event marks a step in Alexander's progress toward Eastern absolutism, and this growing attitude finds its outward expression in his use of Persian royal dress.

Spitamenes is badly defeated in December by Alexander's general Coenus at the Battle of Gaba, at which point Spitamenes' allies, feeling the situation desperate, kill their leader and send his head as a gift to Alexander.

Alexander attempts at Bactra to impose the Persian court ceremonial, involving prostration (proskynesis), on the Greeks and Macedonians too; but to them this custom, habitual for Persians entering the king's presence, implies an act of worship and is intolerable before a man.

Even Callisthenes, whose ostentatious flattery has perhaps encouraged Alexander to see himself in the role of a god, refuses to abase himself.

(It is known that Callisthenes alluded to the story of Alexander's divine birth and may have been the first to do so.)

Macedonian laughter causes the experiment to founder, and Alexander abandons it.

Late in 328, Alexander attacks Oxyartes and the remaining barons who hold out in the hills of Paraetacene (modern Tadzhikistan); volunteers seize the crag on which Oxyartes has his stronghold, and among the captives is his daughter, Roxana.

In reconciliation, Alexander marries her, and the rest of his opponents are either won over or crushed.