by H A CULLEY
‘But not to me,’ his son retorted stubbornly.
‘I suppose a stripling like you can manage him, can you?’ Philip sneered. The sycophantic courtiers around him sniggered but quickly looked away when Alexander’s eyes swept over them contemptuously.
‘Of course. Even better, I’ll ride him now.’
‘He’ll kill you.’
‘No, he won’t. I’ll make a bet with you father. If I can ride him to the end of this meadow and back without any problems, you’ll make a gift of him to me.’
‘And how will you pay me when you lose; if you’re still alive that is?’
‘I won’t need to. I know I can do it.’
‘No, your mother would never forgive me if I allowed you to try.’
He turned away intending that to be the end of the matter. Instead of admitting defeat, the boy walked up to the edgy animal and took the leading rein from the two grooms who were fearfully holding onto it whilst the horse tugged and bucked, trying to free itself from their grip. He took off his wide brimmed straw hat and held it between the sun and the horse’s head so that the stallion wasn’t blinded by it anymore. It immediately calmed down and the boy talked soothingly to it whilst he stroked its neck.
‘See, it was nervous because it was blinded by the sun, that’s all.’
Philip had turned when he heard the gasps from the crowd and was about to yell at his son when he paused and watched the boy quiet the stallion and then, grasping its mane, leap up onto its back. Given the disparity in their sizes, that in itself was quite an athletic feat. He stood in amazement as Alexander kicked his sandal clad heels into the horse’s flanks and, gripping its mane, urged it into a canter and then a gallop.
The boy’s legs were so short that his knees couldn’t grip the sides of the horse properly; instead he had to use his calves. He was only able to do it because of the strength of the muscles he had developed through running. Once confident of his control of the galloping stallion, he managed to lean right forwards so that the air through which he was moving didn’t push him backwards. He could feel it rushing past his face and, as he glanced to the side, he realised that he was travelling much faster than ever he had done in the past on the ponies and small horses that he normally rode. The end of the meadow was coming up fast and he started to worry about how he was going to stop this great horse and turn it round for the return journey. The slope of the hills that marked the end of the meadow with their vines and olive groves were now no more than a hundred yards away.
As if sensing his rider’s thoughts, the stallion started to slow to a canter and then a walk. Alexander reached forward and, throwing his hands around its neck, he slid off its back and dropped to the ground. He quickly grabbed the loose leading rein, but he needn’t have bothered. As soon as he had dismounted the horse had stopped. The boy led him around to face back across the meadow before lithely springing onto its back again.
He slowed back to a gentle canter as they neared the horse fair and he heard cheering faintly at first, then louder. He basked in the crowd’s adulation as he once more leaped off the stallion and handed the leading rein to a groom. His father watched him with a mixture of emotions: pride in his son and admiration for the boy’s horsemanship conflicted with fury that he had been contradicted and then made to look a fool.
However, Alexander was the hero of the hour and he would look small minded if he didn’t join in the general praise for him. He clapped him on the back in congratulation and agreed to buy the stallion for him.
‘What will you name him?’
Alexander thought for a moment.
‘Bucephalus, I think.’
‘Ox head?’ Philip queried, taken by surprise.
It was true that the huge head looked a bit like that of an ox but he considered it a rather ordinary name for what was obviously a quite exceptional steed.
‘Yes, Bucephalus,’ Alexander confirmed. ‘Thank you for buying him for me, father.’
He smiled up at his father as his friends crowded around him and hoisted him on their bony shoulders before parading him around the enclosure to the rapturous approbation of the onlookers. Philip smiled back at him as he was whisked away but deep inside he recognised the beginning of a feeling he didn’t often experience - jealousy.
-X-
Two years later Alexander rode alongside his father on Bucephalus to the Nemean Games where he was to take part in the dolichos for boys. The games took place every two years at Nemea in the Peloponnese and were part of the cycle of Panhellenic Games held in four separate locations – Delphi, Nemea, the Isthmus of Corinth, and Olympia.
The dolichos was the long distance race and was for men: that is those males over the age of eighteen. It was raced over five miles, the first and last laps being inside the stadium and the rest through the countryside around it. There was also a version for ephebes, who were youths between the ages of fourteen and seventeen inclusive. This consisted of a shorter three mile course, again starting and ending in the stadium. This was the race that Alexander had been entered for.
It was unusual for a boy who was not yet an ephebe to be allowed to participate but an exception had been made for the son of the King of Macedon. Philip just hoped that Leonidas was correct and that Alexander wouldn’t let him down.
Whilst Philip was a little nervous about the event, his son wasn’t. Alexander knew that he was fast over such a short distance. Compared to the runs he was used to, he regarded this as little more than a sprint rather than an endurance race.
The games took part over five days and included various equestrian events and foot races over different distances as well as the pyx, a contest similar to boxing in which the competitors bound their hands and wrists with long leather strips before attempting to knock their opponent out; the pankration, which was a blend of boxing and wrestling with very few rules; wrestling, in which the winner had to throw their opponent from an upright position to the ground three times; and the pentathlon. This consisted of a race over two hundred yards, wrestling, javelin, discus and the long-jump.
The ephebes’ dolichos was the concluding event on the first day and some one hundred boys and youths had been entered for it. Of these, Alexander was the youngest and the smallest. The mass of runners started in one group and, as there was only room for ten abreast at the start line Alexander found himself being shoved to the rear of the jostling mass. Like the rest he was naked and had bare feet. However, the soles of his feet were like leather and by stamping on the feet of others, elbowing them aside, kicking them behind the knee so that their leg collapsed briefly and grabbing the scrotum of a few and squeezing he managed to fight his way to the front.
Of course, this made him a lot of enemies but he had no intention of letting any of them catch him during the race. Afterwards he didn’t need to worry about them; he was well protected in his father’s camp.
He managed to struggle forward to the second row before the horn was blown to announce the start of the race. Alexander knew that he had to pace himself and he didn’t make the same mistake as some of those around him by sprinting away, trying to grab the lead. He was content to stay in the middle of the front group of runners as they ran around the stadium. By the time that they raced through the gates out into the open countryside he was lying twentieth.
He was running well when he suddenly found himself boxed in by five runners, two ahead of him, one either side and another at the back. They were all bigger than him and looked to be around sixteen or seventeen. They slowed down and he was forced to do the same. After three or four had overtaken his little group he decided that it was time to do something about it.
He stopped suddenly and stepped to his right, sticking out his left leg. The ephebe who had been close on his heels was taken by surprise and, tripping over Alexander’s leg, he went sprawling. As he went to rise Alexander kicked him hard in the face and broke his nose. Before the other four could intervene he had run around them and sprinted away. He later found ou
t that they were a group of Athenians who weren’t interested in the dolichos, but just wanted to make sure that the Macedonian prince came in near the back of the field. It was something that Alexander wasn’t likely to forget or forgive.
Now free to run at his own pace the boy started to pick it up and overtook eleven of the thirty boys ahead of him. Now he was back in twentieth place, the same position as he had been in when they had exited the stadium. The problem was that over a third of the race had been run. He pushed himself harder and started to overhaul the stragglers who had fallen back from the leading group. In the main these were youths who had set off at too fast a pace initially.
At the halfway point Alexander was lying fourteenth and started to overtake another boy. This one was a Spartan who was only a year or two older than him. The Spartan lengthened his stride and ran a little faster as Alexander drew level with him. Then suddenly he threw out his arm, punching the prince in the shoulder. Without pausing in his stride, Alexander grabbed the other’s wrist before he could recover it and yanked the boy towards him. The boy lost his balance and fell into the dust behind Alexander as the latter sprinted forward to get well clear of him.
He passed several more boys and, as the gates of the stadium came into sight, he counted and found that he was lying in seventh place. The leader was at least three hundred yards in front of him and he knew that he had no hope of catching him, but the rest of the front runners were in a group no more than a hundred yards or so ahead. He matched his pace to theirs and then sped up as they neared the gates. It was too much for three of them, their last reserves had been expended and Alexander swept past them to enter the stadium in fourth place.
As the leader reached the point where he would start his straight run to the finish Alexander put in one last effort and, ignoring the pain in his side, his laboring lungs and his feet, which had been cut by sharp stones despite their leather like soles, he put in a sprint to overtake the two ephebes who were now only a few yards away.
One couldn’t match his final sprint and fell away but the other boy held on, his face a contorted mask from the pain and the effort. Alexander could only see him from the rear but he appeared to be no more than a year or so older than him. The prince ignored him and, putting his head down, he ran for the line. He crossed it and collapsed, his chest heaving and sucking in air. He didn’t know whether he had finished second or third until someone offered him his hand.
The other boy pulled him to his feet.
‘Well done, Alexander, you beat me; only by a few inches but you came in second. It’s a pity that an Illyrian won but at least Macedon claimed second and third place. Not bad for boys who aren’t yet old enough to be ephebes.’
The prince looked up into the smiling blue eyes of a boy he was immediately attracted to.
‘By the way, I’m Hephaestion, the son of Amyntor. I’ve just entered your father’s School of Pages.’
‘Well run Hephaestion; I only just managed to beat you. I’ll ask the king if you can join me when I train with Leonidas.’
‘I’d like that’ the other boy replied, grinning with pleasure.
They didn’t take their eyes off each other until the prince’s excited friends rushed over to congratulate him and tell him that the king was waiting impatiently to do the same.
Chapter Two – Hephaestion
Amyntor had greeted the news of his son’s birth with his usual indifference. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other sons, and several daughters, already. The baby was sickly, he was told, and unlikely to live. He had intended to name the baby after the god of fire and volcanos, Hephaestus, but this seemed inappropriate for such a feeble child. Nevertheless, he acceded to his wife’s request and named the tiny scrap of humanity Hephaestion before taking him out to expose him on the mountainside that evening. There was no place in Macedon, or indeed in Greece as a whole, for a disabled, sickly or deformed child and death by exposure in such cases was commonplace.
Had King Philip realised that his son Arrhidaeus, Alexander’s elder brother, was weak in the head when he was a baby, he too would have been left out in the hills to die. As it was, it was too late to expose him by the time that his impaired brain became apparent.
Without milk or shelter the new-born weakling was likely to die and, even if he didn’t, the wolves or the buzzards would tear him to pieces and feast on the remains. However, his wife nagged him to agree that, should the child survive until noon the next day, he would accept that the boy was meant to live and welcome him back into his house. He considered the chances of that were slim to non-existent and so he shrugged and nodded to placate her.
He went out the next day to make certain for himself that his weakling son was dead. There were too many stories in myth and legend of exposed babies being rescued by childless goatherds and then causing mayhem when they were fully grown for him to trust the word of another. When he got near to where he had abandoned the baby he was amazed to hear the lusty cries of a healthy child. The little boy who had struggled to move when he was born and fought to breathe was now wriggling and wailing in hunger. He scooped up the child and took it back to his wife, forbidding her to ever mention his exposure to the boy as he grew up.
However his wife never really forgave him and when Hephaestion was seven she fell ill and, before she died, she told him the story of his traumatic birth. The boy never said anything to his father but deep down he began to hate him. He swore that one day he would pay him back for trying to kill him.
The thought that he had been considered a weakling galled him and he began to train hard to outdo every other boy he knew, including the brother who was two years older than he was. He didn’t have a mentor but he learned how to run, wrestle and throw the javelin from watching others. Soon he was as good an athlete as his fifteen year old brother and he was far better than the latter at the dolichos. It was then that he had asked his father to enter him for the event in the Nemean Games.
-X-
‘Father, I would like Hephaestion to join me when Leonidas trains me.’
Philip looked at his son curiously. He had noticed Hephaestion himself, although he had only recently joined his School of Pages. He was a handsome boy with a broad face and a strong jaw. His lips were full, almost pouting, framing a slightly small mouth beneath a rather delicate nose. His fair hair framed his face nicely, growing in natural curls which he kept trimmed shorter than was the fashion. His body was slim and graceful and was beginning to show some muscle development. The overall effect might have been slightly effeminate had the boy not carried himself and acted in a way that was entirely masculine.
He knew his father, Amyntor, a nobleman of Athenian extraction originally who owned land in Northern Macedon close to the border with Illyria. He was exactly the sort of man who he needed to keep loyal. He had recently promoted him from chiliarch to be a taxiarch and made him deputy commander of the army commanded by Strategos Attalus.
The boy was said to be bright mentally as well as an outstanding athlete, notably so for one who was still thirteen. Philip thought that his son couldn’t have picked a better boy to become one of his companions and so he agreed.
Hephaestion had thought that Alexander was teasing him when he explained his morning routine to him. He was soon to realise that, if anything, the tough programme of exercise and existence on a minimum of sustenance was even more demanding than his friend had said. He had practiced long and hard for the three mile dolichos and he thought that he was at the peak of physical fitness. On the first day he and Alexander had run fifteen miles and both were exhausted. However, Leonidas seemed as fresh at the end as he was at the start.
After the boys had broken their fast with a small goblet containing barely an inch of water and eaten a small thin disc of unleavened bread they were handed over to their military tutor for two hours practice with shield and sword followed by an hour’s javelin throwing. Alexander was better at the former but Hephaestion could throw his javelin further. Far from b
eing annoyed, Alexander seemed pleased that his new friend could give him the competition he needed.
After a lunch of a few olives, a scrap of unleavened bread and some yoghurt they went riding, not for fun but to learn how to fight on horseback. This was followed by an hour’s wrestling before their academic tuition started. Lessons on mathematics and philosophy were broken briefly for the final meal of the day: more water, a little fruit and some cheese so hard that it practically broke Hephaestion’s teeth.
Hephaestion had trouble keeping awake during an erudite discussion on the merits of a monarchy as opposed to a democracy on the Athenian model and got a sharp rap on the knuckles with the tutor’s cane to wake him up. At last the day was over and both boys collapsed into bed too tired to even talk.
After a week of this grueling regime Hephaestion suggested to Alexander that they could at least have their academic lessons in the morning straight after their meagre breakfast when they might be better able to stay alert. This made sense to Philip and so he agreed, their day now ending with a bout of wrestling.
Alexander’s other companions joined them for everything except the early morning run but the prince always chose Hephaestion as his wrestling partner, saying that he could beat the others too easily. This did not endear the newcomer to the rest and several of them, including Parmenion’s son, Nicanor, plotted against him.
At first their bullying tactics took the form of minor pranks like putting a snake in his bed or pissing on him when he was asleep. If Hephaestion was angry at their petty behavior he didn’t show it, treating it all as a huge joke. This earned him the respect of most of his fellows and his charismatic nature soon made friends of his former enemies. However a few remained immune to his charm. They included Nicanor and Leonnatus, a member of the royal house of Lyncestis, a small kingdom that had been absorbed into Macedon by King Philip early in his reign.