The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

When all this business was done, Perdikkas made a last proposal. It was the ancient custom of Macedon, after civil war (another ancient custom) to exorcise discord with a sacrifice to Hekate. He proposed that all the troops in Babylon, horse and foot, should assemble on the plain for the Purification.

  Meleager willingly agreed. He planned an impressive appearance, proper to his new rank. He would have his helmet topped with a double crest, like Alexander’s at Gaugamela. Conspicuous; and a lucky omen.

  Shortly before the rite, Perdikkas asked the Bodyguard to a private supper. He was back, now, at his house in the royal park. The generals rode or strolled over in the falling twilight, under the ornamental trees brought from far and wide by the Persian kings to adorn the paradise. A simple occasion, a meeting of old friends.

  When the servants had left them with the wine, Perdikkas said, “I have chosen the men and briefed them. I think that Philip—I suppose we must get used to calling him that—will have learned his part.”

  Till Krateros, his new guardian, could take charge of him, Perdikkas was doing so. Since he lived in his accustomed rooms, with his accustomed comforts, he had scarcely noticed the change, except for the welcome absence of Meleager. He was getting new lessons; but that was to be expected.

  “He has taken to Eumenes,” Ptolemy said. “Eumenes doesn’t bully him.”

  “Good. He can help to coach him. Let us hope the noise and spectacle won’t confuse him … There will be the elephants.”

  “Surely,” said Leonnatos, “he has seen elephants by now?”

  “Of course he has,” Ptolemy said impatiently. “He traveled from India with them, in Krateros’ convoy.”

  “Yes, true.” Perdikkas paused. There was a silence, a sense of more to come. Seleukos, to whose command the elephant corps belonged, said, “Well?”

  “King Omphis,” said Perdikkas slowly, “had a certain use for them in India.”

  There were sharply drawn breaths all round the supper-couches. It was Niarchos who said distastefully, “Omphis maybe. Never Alexander,”

  “Alexander was never in our dilemma,” said Leonnatos unwisely. “No,” returned Ptolemy. “Nor like to be.”

  Perdikkas cut in, with brusque authority. “No matter. Alexander knew very well the power of fear.”

  The men were astir at cockcrow, to march to the Field of Purgation at break of day, and get the rite finished before the crushing heat of noon.

  The rich wheatfields, which bore three crops a year, had been lately harvested. The sun, floating up from the flat horizon, slanted its first beams over miles of stubble, gleaming like golden fur. Here and there, scarlet pennants marked the limits of the parade ground, which were significant to the rite.

  Thick and squat, their ancient Assyrian brick mortared with black bitumen, jagged and crumbling with the centuries and with the lassitude of a long-conquered race, the walls of Babylon, impassive, overlooked the plain. They had seen many deeds of men, and looked incapable of amazement. A wide stretch of their battlements had been flattened down into a new, smooth platform. Its smoke-blackened bricks still smelled of burning; streams of molten pitch had hardened down its sides. In the ditch below was a great pile of debris; half-charred timber with broken carvings of lions and ships and wings and trophies, still dimly picked out with gilding. It was the remains of the two-hundred-foot pyre on which, not long before his death, Alexander had burned the body of Hephaistion.

  Long before dawn, the crowds had started to gather along the walls. They had not forgotten the splendors of Alexander’s entry into Babylon; a free show, for it had surrendered peacefully, and he had forbidden his men to plunder it. They remembered the streets flower-strewn and wafted with frankincense; the procession of exotic gifts, gold-bedizened horses, lions and leopards in gilded cages; the Persian cavalry, the Macedonian cavalry; and the gold-plated state chariot with the slight, glittering figure of the victor like a transfigured boy. He had been twenty-five, then. They had hoped for more splendors when he came back from India; but he had given them only that stupendous funeral.

  Now they waited, to see the Macedonian men of war march out in their pride, and offer their gods appeasement; the citizens, the soldiers’ women and children, the smiths and tentmakers and sutlers and wagoners and whores, the shipwrights and seamen from the galley-slips. They loved a show; but under expectation was a deep unease. A time had gone, a time was coming; and they did not like the auspices of its birth.

  Most of the army had crossed the river overnight, by Queen Nitokris’ Bridge, or by the innumerable ferryboats of reed and pitch. They slept in the open, and polished their gear for the morrow. The watchers on the walls saw them getting up by torchlight, the sound of their stirring like a murmuring sea. Further away, the Companions’ horses whinnied.

  Hooves drummed on the timbers of Nitokris’ Bridge. The leaders arrived, to direct the sacrifice which would cleanse men’s hearts from evil.

  The rite was very old. The victim must be dedicated, killed and disemboweled, its four quarters and its entrails carried to the boundaries of the field. The army would march into the space thus purified, would parade, and sing a paean.

  The sacrifice was, as it had always been, a dog. The finest and tallest wolfhound had been chosen from the royal kennels; pure white, handsomely feathered. Its docility, as the huntsman led it forward to the altar, promised the good omen of a consenting sacrifice; but when its leash was handed to the sacrificer, it growled and flew at him. Even for its size, it was immensely strong. It took four men to overpower it and get the knife to its throat; they finished with more of their own blood on them than the victim’s. To make things worse, in the midst of the struggle the King had rushed up shouting, and only with trouble had been coaxed away.

  Hastily, before there could be brooding on the augury, the four horsemen, appointed to asperse the plain, galloped to its four corners with their bloody offerings. The lumps of white and scarlet were flung outward with averting invocations to Triple Hekate and the infernal gods; and the exorcised field was ready to receive the army of Alexander.

  The squadrons and the phalanxes were ready. The burnished helmets of the horsemen gleamed; their crests of red or white horsehair, the pennants on their lances, stirred in the morning breeze. Their short sturdy Greek ponies whinnied at the tall horses of the Persian troops. Most of the Persian foot had melted away, trudging dusty caravan trails to their distant villages. The Macedonian foot was present to a man. They stood in close order, their whetted spear-tips making a glitter about them.

  A square had formed on the wide stubbled plain. Its base was the wall of Babylon; its left side was the infantry; its right, the cavalry. Between them, making the fourth side, were the royal elephants.

  Their mahouts, who had come with them from India, and knew them as a mother knows her child, had worked on them all yesterday in the high thatched elephant-sheds among the palm-trees; crooning and clucking and slapping, washing them in the canal; painting on their foreheads, in ochre or scarlet or green, sacred symbols enlaced with elaborate scrollwork; draping their wrinkled flanks with tasseled nets brilliantly dyed and threaded with gold bullion; fastening jeweled rosettes through slits in their leather ears; grooming their tails and toes.

  It was a year since the mahouts had had a chance to make their children fine. They had had their schooling on the royal maidan at Taxila; their children also. They had talked to them softly, reminding them of old days beside the Indus, while they reddened their feet with henna, as the custom had always been for such occasions. Now in the pink early light they sat proudly on their necks, wearing their ceremonial silks and turbans with peacock feathers, their beards freshly dyed blue or green or crimson; each holding the gold-bound ivory goad, studded with gems, which King Omphis in his magnificence had presented with each elephant to King Iskandar. They had served two famous kings; the world should see that they and their children knew how things were done.

  The generals, who had been pouring their libations a
t the bloody altar, went off to join their detachments. As Ptolemy and Niarchos rode side by side towards the ranks of the Companions, Niarchos rubbed a splash of blood from his bridle-arm, saying, “The gods below don’t seem disposed to cleanse us.”

  “Are you surprised?” said Ptolemy. His craggy face was set in creases of disgust. “Well, God willing, I shall be far away before long.”

  “And I, God willing … Do the dead watch us, as poets say?

  “Homer says the unburied dead do … He never did let go easily.” He added, not altogether to Niarchos, “I shall make him what amends I can.”

  It was time for the King to take his time-honored place at the right of the Companions. His horse was ready. He had been well rehearsed. Eager to produce him and get to business, Perdikkas was grinding his teeth in the effort to keep his temper.

  “Sir, the army awaits you. The men are watching. You cannot let them see you cry. You are the King! Sir, compose yourself. What is a dog?”

  “He was Eos!” Philip was scarlet-faced, tears running into his beard. “He knew me! We used to play tug-of-war. Alexander said he was strong enough to look after himself. He knew me!”

  “Yes, yes,” said Perdikkas. Ptolemy was right, Alexander should have had him smothered. Most of the crowd had thought he was assisting in the sacrifice; but all the omens had been disquieting. “The gods required him. It is done now. Come.”

  Obedient to authority and to a voice far more impressive than Meleager’s, Philip wiped his eyes and nose with the corner of his scarlet cloak, and let a groom hoist him up on his embroidered saddle-cloth. His horse, a seasoned veteran of parades, followed each maneuver of the one beside it. Philip felt the leading-rein must still be there.

  The troops awaited the final ceremony; the sound of the trumpet, giving the note of the paean for them to sing.

  Perdikkas, the King beside him, turned to the officers strung out behind him, leading their squadrons. “Forward!” he barked. “Slow—march!”

  The pipers struck up, instead of the paean, the cavalry walk familiar at parades. The sleek and glittering lines paced smoothly forward, rank upon rank, stepping delicately as they had done on triumphant days in the years of miracle, at Memphis, at Tyre, at Taxila, at Persepolis, and here on this very field. At their head rode Perdikkas, and, carried by his wise charger, the King.

  The infantry, taken unawares by this maneuver, stood in their ranks and muttered. The decay of discipline showed; spears dipped or leaned askew. They were light parade spears, not the tall sarissas; suddenly their bearers felt half-armed. The advancing cavalry looked formal and ceremonious; had there been some muddle in the briefing? Such doubts, once unthinkable, were common nowadays. Under Meleager their morale was low, their bonding shaky.

  Perdikkas gave an order. The left and center wings reined to a halt; the right, the royal squadron, still advanced. He said to Philip, “When we stop, sir, make your speech. You remember?”

  “Yes!” said Philip eagerly, “I’m to say—”

  “Hush, sir, not now. When I have said ‘Halt!’”

  Neatly, stylishly, the royal squadron advanced till it was fifty feet from the phalanx. Perdikkas halted it.

  Philip lifted his arm. He was used by now to his comfortable horse. Set firmly on the embroidered saddle-cloth, in a loud and unexpectedly deep voice, surprising even to himself, he shouted, “Surrender the mutineers!”

  There was a moment of absolute, stunned silence. This was their own, their chosen Macedonian King. The front ranks, staring across incredulous, saw his face strained in the simple effort of a child getting his lesson right; and knew at last what they had done.

  Voices broke out among the lines, suddenly raised, appealing for support. They came from Meleager’s ringleaders. Among uncertain undertones, their own noise isolated them; it could be heard how few they were.

  Slightly at first, looking almost accidental, spaces began to open around them. It was coming home to their former comrades that they themselves were not precisely threatened. And who, after all, had been to blame? Who had foisted on them this hollow King, the tool of anyone who, for the moment, owned him? They forgot the peasant spearman who had first called for Philip’s son; remembering only how Meleager had dressed the fool in Alexander’s robe, and tried to profane Alexander’s body. What did anyone owe his creatures?

  Perdikkas beckoned the herald, who rode up with a paper in his hand. In his trained, carrying voice, he read out the names of Meleager’s thirty. Meleager’s own name was not called.

  In his station of honor before the right-wing phalanx, he felt, around him, the last lees of loyalty ebb away, leaving him high and dry. If he stepped forward, challenged Perdikkas’ perfidy—that was the signal they were waiting for over there. He froze, the statue of a soldier, sweating cold under the brazen Babylonian sun.

  Sixty men dismounted from Perdikkas’ squadron. On foot they formed pairs; one holding a set of fetters, the other a coil of rope.

  There was a crucial pause. The thirty turned here and there, protesting. Some spears were waved, some voices urged resistance. In the confusion, the trumpet spoke again. Quietly, seeming only to confer with him, Perdikkas had been rehearsing Philip in his next speech.

  “Deliver them up!” he shouted. “Or we will ride against you!” He began, unprompted, to gather up his reins.

  “Not now!” hissed Perdikkas, to his relief. He had no wish to go any nearer the spears. They used to point all one way, when Alexander was there.

  The spaces widened around the thirty as the fetter-men approached them. Some gave up and submitted; some struggled, but their captors had been picked for strength. All were soon standing, with fettered feet, in the space between the lines. They awaited they knew not what. There had been something odd in the faces of their captors, who had not met their eyes.

  “Bind them,” said Perdikkas.

  Their arms were trussed to their sides. The cavalry fell back to its first line, leaving once more a hollow square. The fetter-bearers pushed the bound men over; they fell forward helplessly, twisting in their bonds, alone under the sky in the field hallowed to Hekate.

  From the far side came the shrilling of an eastern pipe and a roll of drums.

  The hot sun flashed on the goads of gold and ivory, King Omphis’ gifts. Gently the mahouts pricked the necks of their good children, shouting the old command.

  Rising like one, fifty trunks curled backward. The troops heard with awe the high blare of their war-cry. Slowly, then at a steady thudding roll, their tread felt through the ground, the huge bedizened beasts moved forward.

  The mahouts in their gleaming silks flung off their well-trained silence. They drummed with their heels, hallooing, slapping the necks of their mounts with their jeweled hands or the butts of the goads. They sounded like boys let out of school. The elephants fanned out their great ears, and, squealing with excitement, began to run.

  A kind of groan, of horror and a dreadful fascination, ran through the watching lines. Hearing it, the men on the ground writhed to their knees, staring about them. At first they looked at the goads; then one man, still struggling, saw the hennaed feet as they drummed closer, and understood. He screamed. Others tried to roll away in the thick grey dust. They had only time to move a yard or two.

  With drawn hissing breath, the army of Alexander saw the treading of the human vintage; the bursting of the rind, the scarlet juices running from the pounded flattened flesh. The elephants moved with well-trained intelligence, catching the rolling bodies with their trunks, and steadying them while the feet came down, trumpeting as the war-smell steamed up from the ground.

  From his station besides Perdikkas, Philip uttered little breathless cheers. This was not like the killing of Eos. He was fond of elephants—Alexander had let him ride one—but nobody was hurting them. His eye was filled with their splendid trappings, his ear with their proud brayings. He hardly noticed the bloody mash below them. In any case, Perdikkas had told him that those were al
l wicked men.

  The mahouts, seeing the work well done, calmed and praised their children, who willingly came away. They had done such things in battle, and several still bore the scars. This had been painless and quick. Following their leader, an elephant of great age and wisdom, they formed in line, red to the knees; paraded past Perdikkas and the King, touching brow with trunk in a grave salute; then went their way to the shady elephant-houses, the reward of palm-kernels and melons, the cool pleasant bathe which would sluice off the scent of war.

  As indrawn breaths escaped, and the silence in the ranks was breaking, Perdikkas signed to the herald to blow again, and rode forward, a length ahead of the King.

  “Macedonians!” he said. “With the death of these traitors the army is truly cleansed, and fit again to defend the empire. If there is anyone among you who, deserving these men’s fate, has today escaped it, let him thank his fortune and learn loyalty. Trumpeter! The paean.”

  The stirring air sang out; the cavalry took it up. After a dragging moment, the infantry came in. Its ancient fierceness was reassuring as a lullaby. It took them back to days when they knew who and what they were.

  It was over. Meleager left the ground, alone. His confederates were dead; out of all his hangers-on, not one came near him. He might have had the plague.

  The servant who had held his horse seemed to look at him not with meant insolence, but with an inquisitiveness which was worse. Behind, in the vacant square, two covered wagons had appeared, and men with pitchforks were heaving the corpses into them. Two cousins and a nephew of his were there; he ought to arrange their funerals, there was no one else. The thought of searching that trampled meat for shreds of identity revived his nausea; dismounting, he vomited till he was cold with emptiness. As he rode on, he was aware of two men behind him. When he stopped they had drawn rein while one adjusted his saddle-cloth. Now they moved on.

  He had fought in many battles. Ambition, comradeship, the bright fierce certainty radiated by Alexander, enemies on whom one could revenge and redeem one’s fear, all these had carried him along and made him brave. Never before had he faced a lonely end. His mind began to run, like a hunted fox’s, upon likely refuge. Above him, thick and ragged and pitch-black, sullen with the blood of worked-out slaves, loomed the walls of Babylon and the crumbling ziggurat of Bel.