Tippling Point | The binge competition that Alexander organised

Alexander the Great Receiving News of the Death by Immolation of the Indian Gymnosophist Calanus, painting by Jean-Baptiste de Champaigne, 1672. (Image: Creative Commons/Wikimedia)

"We shall meet again in Babylon."

When Calanos uttered those words Alexander had already stepped away. He didn't have the stomach to witness his friend immolating himself in a pyre Calanos asked the soldiers of Alexander to make.

The King of Macedonia was devastated at the death of Calanos. And might be a bit intrigued too at the dying statement. How could he meet Calanos again in Babylon!

Alexander came across many naked Indian sadhus during his Asian invasion. Already tempered by the philosophy of Aristotle, his guru, the king was quick to see the wisdom of the almost naked sadhus of our country, whom the Greek called gymnosophists. Soon he made friendship with one of them named Calanos alias Kalyan.

Alexander wanted the mendicant friend to join his train as a philosopher-counsel. Calanos was reluctent and when the party reached Susa in Persia, he decided to gave up his life Calanos asked his king-friend to get his soldiers make a pyre so that he could immolate his old, wearied body in it.

Alexander did his best to dissuade Calanos from his decision.

After the tragic event, the king wanted to organise a competition after the style of the Olympics in memory of the departed. There were political reasons too. An event like that would weld together the Greeks and Persians, into single cultural force. But to Alexander's utter despair, the native Indians and Persians weren't familiar with any athletic event they could compete with the Macedonian soldiers. How about a drinking competition then! Someone suggested.

The rules were simple. The one who drinks the maximum quantity of wine would be awarded with a talent of gold. Mind it, a talent in Greek terms means 26 kg of the yellow metal! A prize worthy of all that hard work, right?

But what did they know alas, poor Persians, they were no match to Macedonians, worshippers of Dionysus, the Greek God of wine. The Greeks who even saw it barbaric to add water to wine, grew up consuming ridiculous quantities of alcohol. How could you fight with them! Fifty one competitors were selected for the competition.

Imagine the bloody scene at the end, out of those 51 participants, 35 (most probably Persians) collapsed dead on the spot, poisoned by the filthy wine. Shortly after 6 more succumbed.

The victor was Promachus, no wonder, one of the foot soldiers of Alexander. Consuming 4 gallons of the notoriously polluted wine, he sustained his victory celebration but for four days before he too collapsed to the ground breathing his last.

A celebration held to honour the memory of one person ended up in the burial of 41.  The entire event was branded later as a fiasco.

But the death dance that began on the pyre of Calanos hadn't finished. On the way back to Babylon more soldiers died, a few were lost and many walked under the sun hanging their heads in dejection. Even Alexander the Great fell before the wrath of Dionysus when he died a year later in Babylon. Damaged by too much alcohol.