The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  They had households of their own in wagon trains, with chamberlains and stewards. Their courtesans lived as fine as Darius’ women. They themselves after exercise were rubbed down by masseurs with oil of myrrh. Alexander only laughed at them, as at the foibles of friends. I could not bear to see how he let them surpass him in state and pride. I knew what Persians would make of it.

  He himself had no time for show; or, often, for me. At the end of every march there would be a day’s business waiting; envoys and scouts and engineers and petitioners, and the common soldiers who brought him their troubles as of right. After all that, he wanted his bed only for sleep.

  Darius, when he found desire to fail him, would feel wronged by nature, and send for someone, such as me, whose skill was to put things right. Alexander, his eyes upon tomorrow, thought nature meant him to get a good night’s rest.

  There are things one can’t explain to a whole man. With people like me, sex is a pleasure but not a need. Much more I loved his body just to be near it, like a dog or a child. There was life in his warmth, and sweetness. But I never said to him, “Let me in, I’ll be no trouble.” Never be importunate, never, never. There were other things for which he needed me every day; and the nights of reward would come.

  On one of these, he said to me, “Were you angry that I burned Persepolis?”

  “No, my lord; I was never there. But why did you burn it down?”

  “Up. We burned it up. The god inspired us.” By the night-lamp, I saw his face like a rapt singer’s. “Curtains of fire, hangings of fire; tables, spread with great feasts of fire. And the ceilings were all of cedarwood. When we had done throwing on the torches, and the heat drove us outside, it was going up like a torrent into the black sky, a great fire-fall pouring upward with sparks for spray; roaring and blazing right up to heaven. And I thought, No wonder they worship it. What is there on earth more godlike?”

  He liked to be talked to after the act of love; there was still something in him that rebuked desire as weakness. At these times I would speak to him of serious things; laughter and play were for beforehand.

  Once he said, “Here we lie like this, and still you call me My Lord. Why do you do it?”

  “It is what you are; in my heart, in everything.”

  “Keep it in your heart, my dear, before the Macedonians. I have seen some looks.”

  “You will always be my lord, whatever I call you. What must it be?”

  “Alexander, of course. Any Macedonian trooper can call me that.”

  “Iskander,” I said. My Greek accent was not very good yet.

  He laughed and told me to try again. “That’s better. When they hear you lording me, they think, ‘So he’s setting up as Great King.’”

  He had given me my chance at last. “But my lord, my lord Iskander, you are the Great King of Persia. I know my people; they’re not like the Macedonians. I know the Greeks say that the gods envy great men, that they punish hu—” I had been working hard at my books, but the word escaped me.

  “Hubris,” he said. “And they are watching me for that already.”

  “Not the Persians, my lord. In a great man they look for grandeur. If he seems to hold himself cheap, they withhold respect.”

  “Cheap?” he said from the bottom of his chest. It was too late to go back.

  “My lord, courage and victory we honor. But the King … he must be apart; great satraps must approach him like a god. For him they make the prostration, which only peasants would make for them.”

  He was silent. I waited fearfully. At last he said, “Darius’ brother wanted to tell me that. But he did not dare.”

  “Now my lord is angry?”

  “Never, at counsel given in love.” He pulled me closer to prove it. “But remember, Darius lost, and I’ll tell you why. One can rule satraps that way; but never soldiers. They don’t want to follow some royal image they have to approach on their bellies. They want to know you remember them in some action a year ago, and whether they’ve a brother serving; they like a word if he dies. If they’re snowed on, they like to see the general snowed on too. And if rations are short, or water, and you keep ahead of the column, they want to know you’re doing it on the army issue; then they’ll follow you. And they like to laugh. I learned what they laugh at in my father’s guardhouse when I was six years old. They made me Great King of Persia, remember…. No, I’m not angry; you were right to speak. You know, I have the blood both of Greeks and Trojans in me.”

  I knew nothing of it, but devoutly kissed his shoulder.

  “Never mind. Say I like your people; or find something of myself in them. Why say yours or mine? They should all be ours. Kyros did not rest till he had achieved it. Now it’s time to make a new thing again. The god does not lead us all this way for nothing.”

  I said, “I have talked too much. Now you are wide awake again.”

  Last time I’d said this, he had replied, “Why not?” Tonight he said, “Yes,” and went on thinking. I fell asleep beside his open eyes.

  We were coming into Baktria, over huge rough uplands already touched with autumn, cut by harsh winds from the freezing mountains. I bought myself a coat of scarlet cloth lined with marten-skins, having lost my lynx-skin one at the Kaspian Gates. Camp-followers and soldiers bundled on extra warmth with sheep and goat skins; the officers had cloaks of good woolen cloth; but it was only the sleeved and trousered Persians who looked really warm. Sometimes Macedonians gave me a glance of envy; but they would have died before they put on the garb of the defeated, the soft and rotten Mede. They’d as soon have eaten their mothers.

  The first rains fell; the wet ground made heavy going, streams were in spate; we seemed now to move as cumbrously as Darius’ train. I learned the difference, when news came in that Satibarzanes, satrap of Areia, had rebelled behind us. He had given himself up freely at Zadrakarta; Alexander had offered him his right hand, asked him to dine, confirmed his satrapy, and given him a guard of forty Macedonians to help man his strongpoint. All these he’d murdered, once Alexander was gone; and was calling his tribesmen out to fight for Bessos.

  Over our vast straggling horde, a trumpet sounded. The horse-train trampled and whinnied; orders barked in the snapping air; in less time than one could believe, the cavalry came out in column. Alexander mounted his war-horse; they plunged off into the weather, the ground shuddering under them. It was as if a slow giant had opened his cloak, and hurled a javelin.

  We made camp and waited among all the winds of heaven; men and women were scratching the plain for firewood. I went to my Greek lessons with Philostratos, a grave young Ephesian, who did not despair of me. (To him I owe it that King Ptolemy lets me use his library, and I have read most Greek authors worth mentioning, though I cannot to this day make out the simplest inscription in my native tongue.)

  The clerks kept up the records, so I got the news. The tribesmen had fled at the mere rumor of Alexander; the satrap had escaped to Bessos. Alexander had marked him down for death; he could never abide treachery. Nonetheless, the new satrap he had appointed for Areia was another Persian. He rode back in a snowstorm, and settled to his load of business.

  The returning troops made a great rush for women, or whatever their fancy was. I knew better than to await any such summons. When he poured out his strength in war, he kept nothing back; and there was a half-month’s work of government saved up for him. He got through it in five days. Then he asked in some friends, and they sat up all night drinking. He grew talkative, and fought over the whole war again. Then he slept all day, and on through the next night.

  It was not the wine, though he had had a lot of it; he could have slept that off in half the time. Wine was what he used, to bring his mind to a stop when it had forgotten rest. Drunk as he was, he managed to take a bath, which he liked at bedtime. He never laid a hand on me, except to steady his steps. Wine brings out hidden things, and it did with him; but coarseness in the bedchamber was never one of them.

  The day after, he woke
as fresh as a foal; got through another mountain of work; and said to me at bedtime, “How can it have been so long?”

  I made him welcome in every way I knew, and some I had only just thought of. It was a joke of his that I was making a Persian of him; the truth was that I was forgetting already how to please anyone else. A gentle subtlety was better for him than passion. Though I had the art to draw men into violent pleasures, and had done it also with him, it left a cloud on him; and for me it was only a taught skill. I should have obeyed my heart from the first; but no one before him had ever let me have one. Now I had shown him his way about the garden of delight, or as much of it as ever would delight him, he wanted a companion there, not an entertainer. He was never clumsy; it was his nature to be a giver, here as elsewhere. And, here as elsewhere, if he was vain it was never about nothing.

  Prince Oxathres had been promoted into the King’s Bodyguard. Alexander liked handsome men there, and thought it due to his rank. He was within a thumb-breadth of Darius for height; Alexander said to me laughing that it was a change for Philotas, to have someone look down at him. I replied with constraint, which I hoped he noticed. This Philotas had been on my mind.

  He was the grandest of the generals, Commander of the Companions, thought handsome, though too red for a Persian taste. Of all those who put on more state and luxury than the King, he was the chief. I swear he went hunting with more gear and attendance than Darius had, and the inside of his tent was like a palace. I had taken a message there, and he had looked at me with contempt. It did him no good with me, even that Hephaistion disliked him too.

  When one knows the ways of courts, one knows what to look for. Sometimes I would post myself outside the audience room, as I’d done at Babylon, to watch faces as men came out. There would be the usual run of relief, disappointment, pleasure, familiar ease; but Philotas’ smile used to drop off his face too quickly, and once I could have sworn I saw a sneer.

  I kept it in my heart. I dared say nothing. Alexander had known him all his life; with boyhood friends, he was loyal beyond sense. Not only that; the man’s father, Parmenion, outranked every other general, even Krateros who outranked all others here. Parmenion had been King Philip’s chief commander. I had never seen him, because his army was guarding the western roads behind us, a trust on which all our lives depended. So I held my peace; only praising Oxathres’ Nisaian chargers and their splendid trappings, and adding, “But of course, my lord, even at Darius’ court he was never as rich as Philotas.”

  “No?” he said, and I could see it had made him think; so I clasped him laughing, and went on, “But now not you yourself are as rich as I.”

  The only upshot of this, that I could see, was his looking at Oxathres’ horse-trappings, and liking them so much that he had them copied for old Oxhead. No Greek horse looks wonderful to a Persian; but now he was fed, tended and fresh, you could believe he had carried Alexander in battle for ten years and never once shown fear. Most horses would have been bothered by the new finery, the headstall with the cockade, the silver cheekpieces and the hanging plaques on the collar; but Oxhead thought very well of himself, and paced along making the most of them. There was a good deal in him of Alexander.

  I was thinking this, as I sponged him down before dinner. He liked that as well as his bath at bedtime; he was the cleanest man I ever knew, when his wars allowed it. I used to wonder at first what faint pleasant scent he used, and would look about for the phial; but there was none, it was the gift of nature.

  I praised the horse-trappings, and Oxhead’s looks in them, and he said he was having more made as gifts for his friends. I toweled him down; all muscle, not overbuilt as those clumsy Greek wrestlers are. I said, “How well, my lord, you would wear the clothes that match the trappings.”

  He looked round quickly. “What put that in your head?”

  “Only seeing you now.”

  “Oh, no. You are a seer, I told you so. I have been thinking, in one’s own kingdom one should look less like a stranger.”

  His words delighted me. The wind was whistling round the tent. “I can tell you, my lord, in this weather you’ll be much warmer in trousers.”

  “Trousers?” he said, staring at me in horror, as if I had proposed he should paint himself blue all over. Then he laughed. “My dear boy, on you they are enchanting; on Oxathres, they decorate the Guard. But to a Macedonian, there is something about trousers … Don’t ask me why. I’m as bad as all the rest.”

  “We’ll think of something, my lord. Something more like Persian court dress.” I longed to make him beautiful in the fashion of my people.

  He sent for a bolt of fine wool, for me to drape on him. But I had hardly started, when it turned out that not only would he not wear trousers; he would not have long sleeves either. He said they would fidget him, but I could tell it was just a pretext. I told him it was Kyros himself who’d put the Persians into Median dress; what’s more, it was true; but even this magic name had no power upon him. So I had to resort to the antique Persian robe, so terribly old-fashioned that no one had worn it in a hundred years, except the King at festivals. If I’d not seen Darius being put into it, I’d never have known how it was made. It has a long skirt, stitched in folds on a waistband; a kind of cape, with a hole for the head to go through, covers the upper part and hangs over the arms to the wrists. I cut it all out and tacked the skirt together, put it on him, and moved the mirror about for him to see.

  “I remember this,” he said, “in the wall-reliefs at Persepolis. What do you think?” He moved sideways to the mirror. He was like a woman for dressing up, whenever he got a good excuse.

  “It has great dignity,” I said. He could carry it off, though it really called for height. “But do you like it to move in?”

  He paced about. “If one doesn’t need to do anything. Yes, I’ll have it made up. In white, with purple borders.”

  So I found the best robe-maker (there were so many Persians in camp, that craftsmen followed them) and he made it with the real elaborate drapings. The King wore it, with a low open tiara, when entertaining Persians. I could see it increased respect. There are ways and ways of doing the prostration, which he did not see as I did. I had never told him, not wishing to betray my people; it hurt their pride, to see lower-born Macedonians make no reverence at all.

  I told him now that they were well pleased with the robe. I did not say, though I longed to, that Philotas had looked down the length of the table and caught some crony’s eye.

  As I expected, Alexander soon found the robe tiresome; he said one could not stride out in it. I could have told him no one strode out at a Persian court. He had another made, pretty much like a long Greek chiton, except that the top overhung the arms. He wore a broad Median sash with it; purple on white. It suited him; but as far as the Macedonians were concerned, it might as well have had sleeves. He was so sure he had struck a happy mean, I hadn’t the heart to tell him.

  Hephaistion, as always, was on his side, and had taken to Persian horse-trappings. I heard murmurs about sycophancy as he passed; but I knew them mean. I had had time to consider Hephaistion. How easily he could have had me poisoned, or accused me through false witnesses, or had jewels hidden in my pack and charged me with their theft; something like that would have happened long ago at the Persian court, if I’d displeased a powerful favorite. He had a rough tongue among fellow soldiers, yet had never used it on me. If we had to meet, he would just speak to me as if to some wellborn page, civil and brisk. In return I offered respect without servility. Often I wished him dead, as, no doubt, so he did me; but we had reached an unspoken understanding. Neither of us would have robbed Alexander of anything he valued; so we had no choice.

  Marching east over bare dun upland, and through rich valleys on which we fed, we halted at the king-house of the Zarangians. It was a rude old castle, rambling about over massive rocks with crazy roughhewn steps, the windows mostly arrow-slits. The local chief moved out of the tower rooms; they smelled of his hor
ses which had been stabled below. Alexander moved in, knowing he would lose face with the tribesmen if he did not. The squires had a guardroom halfway up; above were the King’s chamber and an anteroom; a sort of closet, used by the squire who had the care of his weapons; and another closet for me. Outside of that, the other rooms, where his friends were lodged, were reached by going outdoors.

  I had a brazier brought up for him to take his bath by; the place had a whistling draft, and after the march, he wanted a good clean-up before supper. The water was good and hot; I was rubbing down his back with ground pumice, when with a groaning creak the crude door flew open, and one of the squires burst in.

  Alexander, sitting in the bath, said, “Whatever is it, Metron?”

  The youth stood breathless. This one had made efforts, and shaped quite well; if only from respect for Alexander, he was civil even to me. But he now stood white as a bed-sheet, trying to find his voice. Alexander told him to take a hold of himself, and speak up. He swallowed.

  “Alexander. There’s a man here says he knows of a plot to kill you.”

  I rinsed the pumice off Alexander’s back. He stood up. “Where is he?”

  “In the armory, Alexander. There was nowhere else to put him.”

  “His name?”

  “Kebalinos, sir. Leonnatos’ squadron. Sir, I brought your sword.”

  “Good. You put a guard on him?”

  “Yes, Alexander.”

  “Good boy. Now tell me what he said.”

  I was still drying and dressing him. Perceiving I was not to be sent out, Metron said, “He’s here for his brother, sir, young Nikomachos. He didn’t dare come himself, they’d have guessed why. That’s why he told Kebalinos.”

  “Yes?” said Alexander, very patiently. “Told Kebalinos what?”

  “About Dymnos, sir. He’s the one.”

  Alexander’s brows went up a moment. Metron buckled his sword-belt on.

  “He’s—well, a friend of young Nikomachos, sir. He wanted him to join in, but Nikomachos said no. Dymnos had counted on his saying yes to anything; so he lost his head, and told Nikomachos they’d kill him if he didn’t join. So then he pretended he would, and told his brother.”