Child of a Dream

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Wishful thinking, my son. Let’s suppose the girl gives birth to a boy . . .’

  Alexander was speechless, assailed by a sudden feeling of dread.

  ‘Explain what you mean exactly. Tell me what you think – no one can hear us.’

  ‘Let’s suppose Philip repudiates me and declares Eurydice Queen, something which is within his power: Eurydice’s son becomes the legitimate heir and you are the bastard, the son of the repudiated foreigner.’

  ‘But why should he? My father has always loved me, he has always wanted the best for me. He has had me groomed for the throne.’

  ‘You don’t understand. A beautiful, determined young girl can completely upset the mind of a mature man, and a newborn baby will attract all of his attention because it will make him feel young again. A new son will reverse the inexorable passage of time.’

  Alexander was dumbstruck, and it was clear his mother’s words had upset him deeply.

  He sat on a chair and rested his forehead on his left hand, as though trying to collect his thoughts. ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ the Queen admitted. ‘I am indignant, humiliated, furious over this affront he has inflicted upon me. If only I were a man . . .’

  ‘I am a man,’ Alexander said.

  ‘But you are his son.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing. The humiliation I must endure is driving me out of my mind.’

  ‘Well . . . in your opinion what should I do?’

  ‘Nothing. There is nothing to be done now. But I wanted to tell you, to put you on your guard, because from now onwards anything might happen.’

  ‘Is she really such a beauty?’

  Olympias lowered her head and it was clear how painful it was for her to reply to this question. ‘More than you can possibly imagine. And her father Attalus made sure Philip found her in his bed. It’s clear he has a definite plan and has many members of the Macedonian nobility on his side. They hate me, I know.’

  Alexander stood to take his leave.

  ‘Don’t you want to stay for supper? I’ve had them cook things for you, all your favourite things.’

  ‘I’m not hungry, Mother. And I am tired. Excuse me. We’ll see each other soon. Try not to worry about this too much. I really don’t think there’s much that can be done for the moment.’

  This conversation with his mother left him shattered. The idea that his father could suddenly eliminate him from his thoughts and from his plans had never occurred to him, and he would never have expected it at a moment when he was receiving just praise for his crucial role in the great victory at Chaeronaea and in leading the delicate diplomatic mission to Athens.

  To chase these unsettling thoughts away he went down to the stables to see Bucephalas and the horse immediately recognized his voice, stamping and neighing. The stall was in perfect order and smelled of fresh hay. The animal’s coat was shining, its mane and its tail brushed as carefully as a girl’s hair. Alexander moved closer and embraced the animal, stroking his neck and muzzle.

  ‘So you’re back finally!’ came a voice behind him. ‘I knew you’d be here. Well? How does Bucephalas look? See how I’ve taken care of him? Just as if he were a beautiful woman. I promised I’d do it.’

  ‘Hephaestion, it’s you!’

  The young man moved towards his Prince and gave him a clap on the back. ‘You rogue, I’ve missed you.’

  Alexander returned the gesture. ‘I’ve missed you too, Horsethief!’

  They threw themselves into each other’s arms and embraced long and hard, harder than friendship, than time, than death.

  That night Pancaspe waited for him in vain.

  *

  Philip came back a few days later and straight away called Alexander to his rooms where he embraced him warmly as soon as he entered.

  ‘By the gods you look fine! How did things go for you in Athens?’ But he immediately sensed his son’s unease in returning the affection.

  ‘What’s wrong, my boy? Those Athenians haven’t made you lily-livered with all their culture, have they? Or have you fallen in love? Oh, by Hercules, you don’t mean to say you’ve fallen in love? Ha! I arrange the most expert of “companions” and he falls in love with . . . with who? A beautiful Athenian? Don’t say a word . . . I know, there’s nothing to match Athenian charm. Ah, yes, this is a good one, I’ll have to tell Parmenion all about this.’

  ‘I haven’t fallen in love, Father. But I hear you have.’

  Philip suddenly froze for a moment and then began pacing the room with long strides. ‘Your mother! Your mother!’ he exclaimed. ‘She’s resentful, consumed by jealousy and by bad faith. And now she’s trying to turn you against me. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?’

  ‘You have another woman,’ Alexander stated coldly.

  ‘And so? She’s not the first and she won’t be the last. She’s a rose . . . as beautiful as the sun . . . like Aphrodite. Even more beautiful! I found her naked in my arms – two tits like ripe pears, her body soft, hairless and perfumed, and she opened her legs for me. What was I supposed to do? Your mother hates me, she detests me, she’d spit on me every time she sees me if she thought she could get away with it! And then this girl is as sweet as honey.’

  He let himself collapse into a chair and with a rapid flick of his wrist pulled his cloak over his knees, a sure sign he was furious.

  ‘I can’t hold you to account for who you take to bed, Sire.’

  ‘Stop calling me “Sire” . . . we’re alone here!’

  ‘But this time my mother feels humiliated, rejected, and she is worried.’

  ‘I get it!’ shouted Philip. ‘I understand! She really is trying to turn you against me. And with no good reason. Come, come with me! Come and see the surprise I’d prepared for you before you ruined my day with this nonsense. Come on!’

  He dragged Alexander down a stairway and then to the end of a corridor, near the various workshops of the palace. He threw open a door and almost pushed his son inside.

  ‘Look!’

  Alexander found himself in the middle of a room illuminated by a large window to one side. Sitting on a table was a round clay sculpture, a circular relief depicting him in profile and with a crown of laurel around his head, like the god Apollo.

  ‘Do you like it?’ asked a voice from a dark corner.

  ‘Lysippus!’ exclaimed Alexander, turning suddenly to embrace the artist.

  ‘Do you like it?’ repeated Philip behind him.

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘It’s the model for a stater, for a gold coin of the realm of Macedon which will be minted from tomorrow onwards as a memorial to your victory at Chaeronaea and your role as heir to the throne. Ten thousand of them will be struck and it will circulate throughout the world,’ replied the King.

  Alexander lowered his head in bewilderment.

  27

  PHILIP’S GESTURE and the presence of Lysippus at court for a while helped clear the clouds that had cast their shadow on relations between father and son, but Alexander soon realized for himself just how strong was the bond between his father and young Eurydice.

  Nevertheless, pressing political commitments distracted both the King and the Prince from private court affairs.

  The response from Arses, King of Persia, had been even more contemptuous than Philip’s letter. Eumenes read it to the King as soon as it arrived with the messenger:

  Arses, King of the Persians, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans and Lord of the Four Corners of the Earth, to Philip of Macedon.

  The actions of my father, Artaxerxes, third of this name, were good and true and rather it is you who should pay us tribute – as did your predecessors – for you are our vassals.

  The King immediately called Alexander and let him read the message as he said, ‘Exactly as I imagined. My plan is taking shape in all its detail. The Persian refuses to pay compensation for the damage caused by his father and this
is more than sufficient excuse for declaring war on him. My dream becomes reality. I will unite all the Greeks of the homeland and the eastern colonies, I will save Hellenic culture and spread it throughout the world. Demosthenes has not understood my plan and he fought me as a tyrant, but just look around you! The Greeks are free and I have installed a Macedonian garrison only on the acropolis of the Theban traitors. I have protected the Arcadians and the Messenians and more than once I have been the champion of the sanctuary at Delphi.’

  ‘Do you really want to move into Asia?’ Alexander asked, having been struck by this affirmation alone in the midst of his father’s bragging.

  Philip looked into his eyes.

  ‘Yes. And I will announce this enterprise to our allies at Corinth. I will ask all of them to provide men and warships for the undertaking that no Greek has ever managed to complete.’

  ‘And do you think they will follow you?’

  ‘I have no doubt,’ replied Philip. ‘I will explain to them that the aim of the expedition is to free the Greek cities of Asia from barbarian domination. They won’t be able to decline.’

  ‘But is this really the aim of the expedition?’

  ‘We have the strongest army in the world, Asia is enormous, and there is no limit to the glory that a man may conquer, my son,’ said the King.

  A few days later another guest arrived at Pella – the painter Apelles, who was considered by many people at that time to be the best in the world. Philip had summoned him to have his portrait painted alongside the Queen, naturally with the required corrections and embellishment. It was an official painting to be hung in the sanctuary in Delphi, but Olympias refused to pose next to her husband and for his preparatory sketches Apelles had to spy on her at a distance.

  Philip was in any case very pleased with the final result and he asked the painter to depict Alexander as well, but the Prince refused.

  ‘I’d rather you painted a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Nude.’

  ‘Nude?’ Apelles asked.

  ‘Yes. I miss her beauty when I am far away. You’ll have to paint a picture that isn’t too big – so that I can carry it with me – but it must be a good likeness.’

  And so it was that Pancaspe, said to be the most beautiful woman in the Greek world, posed nude in all her splendour for the greatest of all painters.

  Alexander was impatient to see the result of this extraordinary confluence of talent and every day he stopped by to see the progress being made on the work, but he was soon aware of the fact that there was no progress at all, or almost none. Apelles was simply drawing and redrawing his sketches.

  ‘But this painting is like Penelope’s shroud, it’s never-ending,’ the young man commented. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘The fact is, Sire . . . the fact is that I simply cannot bear the thought of ever having to part from such splendid beauty.’

  Alexander took a good look at Pancaspe and the artist and he realized that in those long sittings they had been busying themselves with something more than just pictorial artistry. ‘I see,’ he said. At that moment he thought of Leptine, whose eyes were always red from crying, and he considered that there would be no shortage of equally beautiful women in the future as and when and how he wanted them. He was also painfully aware of the fact that Pancaspe was becoming more and more petulant and demanding every day. He moved closer to the painter and whispered in his ear: ‘I have a proposal to make. You leave me the painting and I’ll leave you the girl. That is, of course, if she agrees.’

  ‘Oh, Sire . . .’ the great artist started stammering with emotion. ‘How can I possibly thank you? I . . . I . . .’

  The young Prince clapped Apelles on the back. ‘The important thing is that you are both happy and that the painting is a good one.’ Then he opened the door and left.

  *

  Philip and Alexander went down to Corinth towards the end of the summer and they were both hosted at the city’s expense. The choice of venue was not a chance one: it was at Corinth some one hundred and fifty years previously that the Greeks had sworn to resist the Persian invaders and it was from there that a new pledge was to be made now, uniting all the Greeks on the continent and the islands into one big mission to invade Asia. This was an undertaking that would make the glories of the Trojan War, as sung by Homer, pale into insignificance.

  In a passionate speech to the delegates, Philip recounted the various phases of the history of the conflict between Europe and Asia, even those episodes to be found only in mythology. He recalled the dead of Marathon and Thermopylae, the burning of the acropolis and the temples of Athens. And although these were all remote events from several generations back, they were still very much alive in popular culture, partly because Persia had never stopped interfering in the Greek states’ internal affairs.

  But more important than these faded memories of the Persian invasions was Philip’s determination to convince them of the necessity of his plan, to make them realize that there was no alternative to his will and that his political method included war as an instrument. The sad fate of Thebes and its allies was still there for everyone to see.

  At the end of the assembly the King of Macedon was officially granted his role as pan-Hellenic leader of a great expedition to invade Persia, but many delegates thought it was simply a sort of propaganda stunt. They were wrong.

  Alexander was able to see something of Corinth, a city he had never visited before, during the days spent there. He went up with Callisthenes to the acropolis, almost impregnable, and admired the ancient temples of Apollo and Poseidon, the sea god and protector of the city.

  The thing that most impressed him was the ‘naval tow’, the slipway along which ships were hauled so that they could pass from the Saronic to the Corinthian gulfs across the isthmus separating them, thus avoiding the circumnavigation of the Peloponnese with its many rocky headlands and deadly shallows.

  The tow was a wooden slide to which ox grease was applied continually as it climbed to the high point of the isthmus and then descended on the other side to the Gulf of Corinth. The ship was dragged by oxen to the top and waited there until another ship arrived below and was then attached to it. The ship at the top was pushed down on the other side so that as it descended it helped pull the second ship up, which in its turn functioned as a brake to the descent of the first. The second ship, having reached the top, then had a third ship attached to it, while the first was able to set sail, and so on.

  ‘Has no one ever thought of digging a canal to connect the two gulfs?’ Alexander asked his Corinthian hosts.

  ‘If the gods had wanted there to be sea where there is land, they would have made the Peloponnese an island, don’t you think?’ the guide replied. ‘One is reminded of what happened to the Great King of the Persians at the time of his invasion of Greece. He built a bridge over the sea so that his troops could cross the Straits and he cut the peninsula of Mount Athos with a canal so that his navy could sail through, but then he suffered heavy defeats, punishment for his hubris.’

  ‘It is true,’ admitted Alexander. ‘My father once took me to see that enormous canal and he told me all about the Great King’s achievements. That was exactly why I thought of a canal.’

  His hosts also told him that nearby there lived Diogenes, the celebrated cynical philosopher who inspired all sorts of incredible stories.

  ‘Oh yes, I know,’ replied Alexander. ‘Aristotle explained the theories of the cynics to me. Diogenes maintains that only by depriving oneself of everything that is superfluous can one hope to free oneself of all desire and therefore of all unhappiness.’

  ‘A bizarre theory,’ Callisthenes said. ‘Depriving oneself of everything not to achieve happiness, but simple imperturbability would seem to me to be a rather dull exercise, not to mention a waste. It’s like burning wood just to sell its ash, don’t you think?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Alexander. ‘And yet I would like to meet him. Is it true that he lives inside an oil churn?’

/>   ‘Yes, indeed. During the last war, at the height of your father’s siege, all the citizens were rushing about strengthening the walls and busying themselves in all sorts of preparations. Suddenly Diogenes started pushing his churn up a hill and then he let it roll back down again before pushing it once more. “But why are you doing this?” they asked him. And he replied, “For no reason at all. But everyone else seems so busy I didn’t want to be seen as a shirker.” That just about sums the man up. Imagine – his only household utensil was a little bowl for taking drinking water from the fountain, but one day he saw a boy drinking with his hands cupped together and he threw away his bowl. Are you sure you’d like to meet him?’

  ‘Yes please,’ replied Alexander.

  ‘If you really want to,’ Callisthenes sighed impatiently. ‘I assure you it won’t be such an edifying spectacle. You know why Diogenes and his followers are called “cynics”, don’t you? It’s because according to their theories nothing that is natural can be judged obscene and so they do everything in public, just like dogs.’

  ‘Exactly,’ their guide confirmed. ‘Come, he doesn’t live – if we can call it living – very far from here. He’s on the edge of the road, where it’s easy to receive alms from passers-by.’

  They walked for a while along the road that led from the naval tow to the Sanctuary of Poseidon. Alexander was the first to spot Diogenes from far off.

  He was an old man of about seventy, completely naked, and he was sitting with his back against a big terracotta urn in which Alexander could just make out a bed of straw and a tattered blanket. Peritas’ kennel, he thought, is certainly more comfortable. Sitting nearby was a little puppy, a small mongrel that probably ate the same food as the philosopher and shared his sleeping quarters.

  Diogenes was sitting with his arms resting on his knees, his head leaning back on his wretched home, while the last rays of summer warmed his skinny limbs. He was almost completely bald, but the hair at the back of his neck had grown to reach virtually halfway down his back. His face was thin, furrowed by thick and deep wrinkles, framed by a thin, straggling beard, while his cheekbones stood out and above them his eyes were sunken under his large forehead, which in some way seemed luminous.