Soldier, Priest, and God

by F S Naiden

  Now both Alexander and the Thessalians advanced farther and encountered the Greek mercenaries that the Persians had left in reserve. For a second time, the Macedonians re-formed. They followed a version of the battle plan Philip had used twenty years before, against Bardylis and the Illyrians. The phalanx and shield bearers advanced to engage the enemy. Alexander and the cavalry moved to the side and rear, closing off retreat. The enemy formed a square but broke under pressure. Unlike Philip, who had let the Illyrians escape, Alexander ordered more attacks. The Macedonians killed all but 2,000 mercenaries. These were the best enemy troops in Anatolia, and he did not wish to encounter them again. He also wished to warn other Greeks against serving on the Persian side.

  Macedonian casualties amounted to a few hundred, Persian casualties to some thousands. Memnon survived, but two satraps were dead, and one who had fled committed suicide. The Macedonians had destroyed the Persian field army in Anatolia and decapitated the Persian administration, but they had not eliminated the Persians. The cavalry escaped, and many Persian garrisons remained. Nor had they destroyed all potential local resistance. The invaders would now have to deal with dozens of cities, valleys, and regions.16

  After the battle, Alexander dispatched Parmenio, the previous year’s loser, to Dascylium for the money and supplies there. Alexander’s personal physician checked to see whether he had suffered a dent to his skull as well as his helmet. If Alexander was badly wounded, who would give the orders to care for the enemy, a courtesy that armies did not always extend? Who would make sure that the troops immediately received all their pay but the creditors were put off? Who would bury the dead?

  The next day, Alexander did this duty, and also buried the dead enemy mercenaries. Flames sanctified by libations consumed the hundreds of bodies, and then the victors shoveled all manner of bones into the funeral mound—shinbones with cut marks, skulls rent front to back or temple to temple by sword blows, or punctured by butt-spikes of spears. Bone buttons survived from the men’s shoes. The Greeks lay beside their sword handles and straight and curved sword blades. The Macedonian army could not afford to waste usable weapons, and buried their dead without them.17 Alexander saved his largesse for the families of the dead, giving them cash and tax exemptions.18

  Next Alexander returned to Troy, to give thanks. Like Achilles, he had defeated an opponent named Memnon, and he had done it near Troy. He commissioned equestrian statues of the twenty-five Macedonian dead who were companion cavalry, plus an accompanying statue of one companion who had survived—himself.19

  This gesture was tantalizing. Was he truly just one more companion, or was he the most powerful man in Europe and Asia Minor? The same question arose from a commemoration that he made with Greeks in mind. To Athens he sent some gold and silver valuables taken from the abandoned Persian baggage train. On the biggest piece, he wrote this inscription:

  Alexander, the son of Philip,

  And the Greeks save for the Spartans dedicate

  These spoils taken from the Barbarians dwelling in Asia.

  He did not call himself a king. He did imply that his accomplishments surpassed those of the Spartans who had refused to help him. Absurdly, he shared these accomplishments with “the Greeks.” More Greeks fought against him than for him, and he sold the 2,000 survivors into slavery.20

  Last, he set his engineers to digging wells and making other preparations for building the city that he had vowed to found, to be called Alexandria, among the Trojans. He now possessed a mere smidgen of Anatolia. If the Persians had concentrated even more on killing him and had succeeded, they would have driven the Macedonians back into Europe. No one could immediately replace Alexander as chief priest and as king, and without a priest-king the army could not function.

  after the granicus battle, Alexander experienced what for him, as for other ancient conquerors, was the best part of victory—accepting the supplications of local people who were fearful, if not defeated, and came to him to surrender. That introduced him to the worst part of a victory over the Persian Empire. How would he rule these people? He was not king of Persia. He did not wish to take the throne of each and every local king; it would take too long.

  To get money, he laid down a rule that all income paid to the Persians would now go to him or his representatives. To make sure the money was collected, he preserved the Persian post of satrap, and appointed one of his companions. He also replaced any Persian garrisons with new ones, under companions who would report to him. Besides being his subordinates, the satraps and the garrison commanders would need to remember they were companions, and act independently yet cooperatively.

  Alexander and his generals discussed Memnon, who was now organizing a fleet of Phoenician ships. Memnon might counterattack and hit Alexander in the rear in Greece, using his fleet and his remaining mercenaries. If Memnon could manage that, the Persians in Anatolia would fight harder, and the Greeks there would be less welcoming to the Macedonians. Rich now, thanks to Dascylium, Alexander might eventually be unable to pay his men. To quash Memnon before that happened, the army would move south, targeting the enemy fleet.21

  The Macedonians marched down the coast, going from one market town to the next, and Alexander’s ships accompanied them. The grain was now high, and Parmenio and the others in charge of logistics, such as the king’s close friend Hephaestion, seized supplies in some places and bought them in other places, especially towns and islands with which Alexander made alliances. In return for being given tax breaks, these places would refuse to supply Memnon’s navy. In the biggest town, Miletus, the Persian garrison resisted, but the people stayed in Alexander’s good graces by supplicating. To announce themselves, they waved palm leaves. Although this supplicatory gesture was common in Asia, the Macedonians might not have seen it before.22

  In a week or two the Macedonians reached Sardis, the capital of the wealthy satrapy of Lydia. They seized the treasury, which was far bigger than Dascylium’s, and Alexander paid more of his debts. He also spent some of the money and built a shrine to Zeus (who thundered in approval). Since the Persian in charge of the place surrendered without a fight, Alexander made him part of his entourage. Alexander also left behind many of his Greek allied troops, giving them the task of occupying this region, one Greeks had known for centuries. This was the first of many exchanges in which Europeans left Alexander and Asians joined him.23

  To satisfy his curiosity, he and some of the companions visited Sardis’s well-known garden and game park next to the Persian palace. Here they discovered the Persian version of an old religious idea. To keep chaos at bay, the Persian kings built a high wall and put a garden behind it. That was their tidy and attractive response to the Greek tradition of building walls around shrines. No doubt the visitors were charmed. They had seen many Greek gardens, small places devoted to education and romance. Now they saw a grand one, devoted to kings and lions.

  Alexander’s first religious problem arose at Ephesus, a few more days down the road. This port city surrendered but took advantage of Alexander’s arrival to expel the tyrant who had governed the city under Persian rule. A crowd dragged the tyrant from an altar he had run to for refuge and put him to death. As a suppliant, he deserved a hearing; as a tyrant, he might not. Perhaps his death was sacrilegious, but Alexander was not sure he had the authority to interfere.24

  The altar stood before the newly finished temple of Artemis, the largest building in the Greek world. The city assembly invited Alexander to celebrate his Granicus victory there, and he did, bringing his troops. The Persians had taken down the temple’s statue of Philip, and the assembly let Alexander put it back up. He wanted to do more than that, and asked them to let him dedicate the temple to the goddess. The assembly refused. Dedicating the temple was their prerogative, and giving this prerogative to a king would deprive them of their autonomy. The king of Persia had never tried to impose himself on the Ephesians in this way, and they would not let the king of the Macedonians do it. He might enter the shri
ne and honor their customs, sacrificing goats rather than fancier species and using altars made entirely of pairs of goat horns. They might even let him worship, but they would not let him be the chief worshipper.25

  This attitude should not have surprised either Alexander or companions who had dealt with Athens and other Greek cities. These cities were hypersensitive and legalistic—and Ephesus was nearly as large and as rich as Athens, with a marketplace and public buildings to match, and more sumptuous marble than in all the cities of Macedon together. He marched out of town, dissatisfied. He had got no dedication and he had set a precedent for letting Greek cities in Asia Minor replace unpopular governments with democracies. Even a commission Alexander gave to the painter Apelles went badly. The famous artist happened to be in Ephesus, and Alexander asked him to paint Bucephalas carrying him into battle. Apelles could not get the horse right, even after Alexander had the animal brought into the studio.26

  On the Macedonians marched. If a port lay out of the way, Alexander would dispatch Parmenio or other companions to extract a surrender. At Priene another, less imposing temple was going up. By letting the townspeople establish a democracy and giving them tax breaks, Alexander got to dedicate the temple. That put him ahead of the Persian kings and their policy of benign neglect of Greek religion. It also raised Alexander’s position among the Greeks. He was now doing what the city itself would otherwise do.27

  Memnon fled again, farther south, to the southwestern tip of Anatolia. He was running out of strongholds, and also out of ports. The Macedonians overtook him at Halicarnassus, on a desolate peninsula where the rocky fringe of Anatolia spills down into the water. Memnon and his forces withstood a siege of weeks. When Alexander called a halt to the Macedonian attacks, Memnon and his Persians set fire to the city and abandoned it, but kept two fortified strongholds. The exhausted Macedonians largely withdrew, leaving Memnon his strongholds. A few troops stayed on to prevent the enemy from moving by land. The Persians could still move by sea.28 Memnon had fought Alexander to a draw.

  Unable to vanquish Memnon, Alexander gained a victory of a sort over Pixodarus, who had refused to become his father-in-law. Passing through Pixodarus’s kingdom of Caria, Alexander gave it to his sister, Ada, who had ruled the country before but lost it to her brother. Using an odd turn of phrase, he said that Ada was like a mother to him. Ada, in turn, adopted him as her son. That way he could inherit the throne of Caria once she died. Alexander was giving the first example of how he would disassemble the Persian Empire kingdom by kingdom, and then reassemble it as so many appanages of his own. The religious implication of this policy was that he would have as many gods as he had thrones.29

  The invaders had been fighting in Anatolia for six months and they were no closer to Babylon or Susa, Persia’s capitals, than when they started. Yet Alexander would now lead the army on a colossal detour.

  after the withdrawal from Halicarnassus, Alexander and the council faced another choice of route. If they wanted to be quick and safe, they ought to go back to Sardis and pick up the main road used by the Persian kings’ couriers. This road ran northeast to Gordium, an old Anatolian town, then east, past ancient and modern Ancyra, then south, toward the best exit from Anatolia, the narrow road at the Cilician Gates. If they chose this route, they would have to winter in Gordium. They could get out of Anatolia sometime early the next year, 333. If they wanted to be quick but not safe, they could go east and follow the dry and barren route used by Xenophon and the mercenaries. That led toward the Gates, too.

  A third route went south, toward the southwest coast of Anatolia, a more rugged country than any the Macedonians had encountered. The mountains broke apart in gray cliffs piled thousands of feet high. At this time of year, early winter, snow capped the heights. Torrents of water rushed down into ravines, leaving room for a highway but allowing no bridges and no navigation. The Persians had once sent an army down the road, and when it reached the main town, the citizens, amazed that any enemy had come so far, took their families and slaves to the acropolis and burnt them alive before making a suicide attack. The Persian grasp on the region was tenuous.

  Alexander proposed to take this route and seize coastal towns that might be used by the Persian navy. The baggage train and most of the infantry would follow Parmenio in the opposite direction, north, on the safe, swift route to Sardis and the Persian road. The council agreed. Many of them, after all, would go with Parmenio. Besides, they had no navy to attack the ports with.

  Alexander and his force turned into the mountains and debouched into a valley some twenty miles wide, where friends of Homer’s Trojans had held estates. When Alexander reached the Xanthos River, he seized on an omen that would justify these new, avoidable risks. In the riverbed someone had found a bronze tablet with incomprehensible markings. That did not keep Alexander and his priests from reading it after a fashion. The markings, which were letters of some long-lost Near Eastern alphabet, happily predicted the overthrow of the Persian Empire. That interpretation kept the Macedonians from feeling lost. When they passed the tomb of Sarpedon, a son of Zeus who died in battle, Alexander avoided acknowledging this reminder of heroic mortality. They pressed on, to the first coastal port. The diviner Aristander, who was serving Alexander as he had Philip, happened to be from this town. That made the town’s surrender all the easier to arrange.30

  Like the mountain road, the coastal road was rough. For the first time, the army built itself a highway. Near the town of Phaselis, below a mountain called the Ladder, there was no room for a road, and the army marched along the beach, another first. Only favorable winds kept them from drowning, and Callisthenes was surely not the only one who called it a miracle that the troops survived. Supplications were few, and the army had to settle for conditional surrenders instead. At Phaselis, the people crowned Alexander with a golden wreath, a Greek way of putting a crown on his head. A crown of this kind implied that he was their ruler but that they were free. Accepting the compliment, he led revelers through the street in order to pay honors to a statue of a local man who had been a pupil of Aristotle.31 This community sacrificed goats, like the Ephesians, and turned the hides into a favorite item of apparel, goat-hair shirts, which they gave to the Macedonians.

  Some fifty miles farther, the beach disappeared—permanently. That had not happened before, either. Alexander had come far enough along the coast to reach the western end of the Taurus, the massif dividing Anatolia from the rest of Asia. For some one hundred miles, there was no practicable way of traveling farther eastward. With the Taurus in front of him and the sea beside him, Alexander was trapped, as he had been at the banks of the Granicus, and his predicament was now more serious, even though it did not involve the Persian army. If the Macedonians stayed put, they would alienate the towns they were living off. If they went into mountains, they might starve. If they picked the wrong way out, they would be stranded. If they split up, they would be picked off.32

  They struck north, through the mountains beyond Perge, the last of the ports. First they tried a passage via the small and isolated city of Termessus. Termessus refused to let them pass, not because the city sided with the Persians but because they objected to a foreign army. Alexander laid siege to the place, but it took too long, and the army started to run out of food. To get more, they retreated the way they had come.33

  Once resupplied, they went north again, the wind in their faces. Soldiers from Termessus shadowed them. Once the Macedonians reached the next town, Sagalassus, 2,000 feet high, the troops from Termessus joined the local people in defending a ridge in front of the city. Although defeated, this force escaped into the mountains. That always infuriated Alexander, just as surrender always disarmed him. He killed all he could, took Sagalassus, and reached the plateau of Anatolia for the first time.34

  As the army approached their next destination, the Persian provincial capital of Celaenae, the mountains gave way to plains of olive trees and to vineyards that produced a wine potable if mixed with honey
. The mercenaries holding Celaenae proposed to surrender in sixty days if no Persian rescuers arrived. These were the most unfavorable surrender terms offered so far. Alexander’s engineers surveyed the mercenaries’ stronghold, a tower of stone glowering over a palace built by the Persian king Xerxes. They described the difficulties of a siege, and Alexander, wishing to avoid another Halicarnassus, agreed to the mercenaries’ terms. He gave the task of waiting (and drinking wine) to a detachment under one of his best officers, Antigonus. The treasure obtained at Celaenae let Alexander pay his remaining debts, with money to spare for the defense of shipping lanes in the Hellespont.35

  Farther north, the road improved. Here, about halfway between Sardis and Gordium, the army hit the central route across Anatolia. It was broad enough for ten men abreast. Parmenio had already passed this way. He had spent the winter in Gordium and was waiting there when Alexander reached the city in early spring.36

  Gordium proved tiny, with no notable temples and a small citadel built by the Persians. The army was loitering in a country without any large towns—and, of course, without ports. That complicated logistics. The barrenness of the country also affected morale. Before Gordium, the soldiers had named several places after their leader—“Alexander’s palisade,” “Alexander’s inn,” and “Alexander’s well.” Once they reached Gordium, they stopped.37

  Parmenio gave Alexander bad news about Memnon. After the siege of Halicarnassus, Memnon had led his fleet on a counteroffensive to win back the port towns taken by the Macedonians. To convince the Greeks to change sides, he paid bribes, and to acknowledge Greek liberty, he signed treaties. He was now besieging the big port of Mytilene. The expedition might have to turn around and go back to the western coast of Asia Minor to fight Memnon.38