Soldier, Priest, and God

by F S Naiden

  Alexander did not become king of Susa thanks to a ceremony of Inshushinak’s. The ceremony in Babylon sufficed. Although the Greeks thought of Susa as a great Persian capital, he did not attempt to make himself king of the Persians. He regarded Susa as a way station.

  The army spent several pleasant weeks there. They celebrated a munificent sacrifice of thanksgiving in the Greek fashion, and they collected the Persian royal silver kept in the city—a haul ten times as great as the booty after Issus and Arbela. Babylon had just as much silver, but the army had not taken it. Instead Alexander had left it to Mazdai and the shatammu.77

  Alexander’s administrative appointments offended the companions. Parmenio got a house, but Alexander retained the Persian satrap, Attalitta, despite his having fought the Macedonians at Arbela. Only command of a garrison went to a Macedonian. Troops too old for more campaigning would man the garrison.78

  Alexander did not reject the companions because Susa was far from Greece. He would soon appoint Macedonians as satraps in more remote places. Rather, he thought them incompetent to run cities centered on great shrines. That was a religious, not military, duty, and it belonged to him. Yet if he was in the field, who would do this duty? Would Alexander appoint a Sidonian in Sidon, a man with a Babylonian family in Babylon, and a Persian in Elam? Then Alexander was putting himself in the position of appearing Phoenician in Phoenicia, Babylonian in Mesopotamia, and Persian in Central Asia. Besides being the son of Amon in Egypt, he was the son of circumstances everywhere else.

  While in Susa, Alexander mismanaged a gift that he gave to his most important Persian royal captive, Sisygambis. He presented her with some purple wool, telling her that his own sister weaved, but she knew that servants did most weaving in Macedon, the same as Persia, and she said she did not wish to work with her hands. Taken aback, Alexander withdrew and gave the wool to a slave of his own. He had had enough of Sisygambis, and decided to leave her and the other captives in the palace at Susa. That would show unflappable magnanimity. Perhaps it would make her less hostile.79

  That mattered to him. Sisygambis was the queen mother, often a powerful position in the Persian court. He called her “mother,” confirming her position. Difficult as she was, he might want to cooperate with her.

  By now, the army had received all of the 15,000 reinforcements who had been arriving since Babylon. Always reliable in regard to reinforcements, Antipater had outdone himself—and depleted Macedon’s manpower. He sent 6,000 Macedonian infantry plus 500 Macedonian cavalry, 3,000 Thracian infantry plus 600 of their cavalry, and 4,000 Greek mercenary infantry with 380 cavalry—far exceeding all previous reinforcements, and including the last Macedonians who would join the expedition.80 In this way as in others, Susa marked the beginning of the end.

  The four-story ziggurat at Choga Zanbil, Khuzestan, Iran.

  Photograph: Toos Foundation.

  according to the Babylonian Talmud, Alexander held a conclave of sages after capturing Babylon.81 The Talmud does not say who these sages were, and other stories about the conclave identify them as Greeks or Indians. The Talmud calls the sages “elders of the South”:

  Alexander of Macedon put ten questions to the elders of the South. He asked, “Were the heavens created first, or the earth?”

  They answered, “The heavens were created first, as it says, ‘In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.’”

  He asked, “Was light created first, or darkness?”

  They replied, “This question cannot be answered,” for if they said “darkness,” since it is written, “The earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” they would also have to explain the verse “And God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light,’” and if they answered “light,” they would have to explain “darkness was upon the face of the deep.” They thought to themselves, “Perhaps he will go on, and ask what the face of the deep was, and what was above the firmament, and what below.” Then they thought they should not have answered either this question or the one before it.

  Anonymous illustration of Alexander and the sages in Firdausi, Isfahan, ca. 1330.

  Photograph: Artokoloro Quint Lox, Alamy Stock Photographs.

  Next, he asked, “Who is wise?”

  They answered, “He who discerns what shall come to pass.”

  “Who,” he asked, “is powerful?”

  They answered, “He who controls his passions.”

  “Who is rich?”

  They answered, “He who rejoices in his portion.”

  “What shall a man do to live?”

  “Mortify himself,” they said, “through the study of God’s works.”

  “And what,” he asked, “shall a man do to kill himself?”

  “Let him,” they said, “stay alive.”

  “What,” he asked next, “shall a man do to make himself acceptable to others?”

  They said, “Let him shun his king.”

  He answered, “I have a better answer. Let him befriend his king and do good for mankind.”

  “Which of you is wisest?” he asked.

  They replied, “One is as wise as another, for we answer in unison.”

  Before asking his last question, he paused, and then he asked, “Why do you refuse to accept my religion, and cherish your own? You are my subjects.”

  They answered, “We are, but every day Satan is victorious, and leads men astray.”

  “Behold,” he concluded, “I will slay you by royal decree.”

  “Power is in the king’s hands,” they answered, “but it does not behoove a king to be false.”

  Pleased by their replies, Alexander gave them purple garments and chains of gold to put round their necks, and said, “Go back to your God and study His works in the sky above and the earth below.”

  To judge from these questions, Alexander and the sages both puzzled over the creation story in the book of Genesis. The sages allude to the Psalms and the commentaries known as the Mishnah, and Alexander to the Mishnah. The king is still something of a Jew, as he supposedly was in Jerusalem, but he is also a very Babylonian ruler, interested in astronomy, and a very Greek one, favoring friendship and philanthropy. To be the king of the world is to be all things to all sources, East and West. The chief difficulty between the king and his subjects is that he wants them to adopt his religion, and they want him to adopt theirs.

  7

  A Vacant Throne

  just as a flood created the Mediterranean Sea, a collision produced the Zagros Mountains. Fifty million years ago, when the land that would become the Indian subcontinent collided with the rest of Asia, the Iranian plateau moved upward and westward, and pressed against the Tigris and Euphrates. This uplift, the Zagros Range, marked the boundary between low country and high, desert and steppe, and, by Alexander’s time, between the Semites of the plains and the Iranians of the mountains and the plateau.

  Darius had withdrawn to the Zagros stronghold of Ecbatana, where he gathered a new army of some 40,000 troops, almost all Iranians and Central Asians. This army was smaller than the army he brought to Issus, and much smaller than the one he brought to Arbela, but more coherent. The most important commander, Bessus, had led a wing at Arbela.1

  Darius knew that the Macedonians would need time to reach him. All roads to Ecbatana were narrow and rough, and the direct road from Susa into the Zagros was worse, for it went through a very narrow pass, the Persian Gates. Near the Persian Gates, at Persepolis, Darius maintained a garrison. Like Ecbatana, Persepolis served as a royal residence in the time of year when the roads were open.

  Alexander and his surveyors knew little about this region. They thought of the Zagros not as a barrier between Mesopotamia and Iran but as part of a range they called the Caucasus, which supposedly ran from Anatolia to the Himalayas. They did grasp that they could not march up into the mountains at this time of year, the late fall, and reach Darius before the snow stopped them. They must try to reach him in two steps. Th
e first step would take them through the mountains to winter quarters at Persepolis, the first place big enough to feed them and their animals. Alexander wished to visit nearby Pasargadae, site of a palace built by his rival Cyrus the Great and of Cyrus’s tomb. Step two would take them from these places to Ecbatana, in the north. They could make this long march once the snow melted.2

  Once Alexander caught Darius, he must consider what to do next. He could not become a priest-king in Persia as he had in Egypt. This position did not exist in Persia. Would he simply become king, as he had in tiny Phaselis in Asia Minor? Would his men be willing to accept him as the king of their enemies? Meanwhile, what of the Persian gods? Alexander had never ignored the gods of any locality, especially before battle. Would he now?

  The Route of the Expedition Through Persia and Central Asia, 330–327 BC.

  Ancient World Mapping Center.

  An anonymous nineteenth-century drawing of the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae.

  William Smith, A Smaller History of Greece (New York: Harper Brothers, 1882), 45.

  Alexander and the army left Susa in December 331, moving expeditiously before the snow season. Alexander and the strike force would take whatever route they could to seize the Persian Gates and reach Persepolis. Parmenio would take the main body on a long route suitable for carts. These movements resembled the campaign in southeastern Anatolia, where Parmenio and Alexander divided forces the same way.

  The campaign began with a surprise. In the mountains north of Susa, on the fringes of Elam, the invaders encountered tribes that had never submitted to the Persians. They had once acknowledged Cyrus, but not later rulers like Darius. They would not acknowledge Alexander, either. When they tried to block the way, Alexander’s force had to march day and night to circumvent them. Finding themselves surrounded, they begged Alexander for mercy, but he refused. Then they sent emissaries back to Sisygambis, in Susa. They asked her to intercede with Alexander. She wrote him, he gave way, and the mountaineers became Alexander’s subjects.3

  As the Macedonians trudged upward, the palms gave way to tamarisk and pistachio trees. Boars and gazelles crisscrossed meadows of wild alfalfa and oat grass. The hunting was excellent, the water clear, but this idyll would not last long: ahead, the peaks were covered with snow. Within a few days they reached ridges through which streams hurtled down toward Susa and Mesopotamia. As they climbed, the streams turned into ribands, thousands of feet below at the bottom of one gorge after another. At one spot, a horse or even a man could leap across the gorge.

  When Alexander’s men reached the Gates, a pass ten yards wide, lichen and snow covered much of the rocky heights. Catching sight of some Persian troops, the Macedonian vanguard rushed forward, and the Persians fled. Then the Persian commander, the satrap Ariyabrzana, gave the signal from an outpost overhead, and a cascade of rocks and arrows struck the attackers. Some officers fell, and their companies scattered. The army tried to turn back, but the rear was still advancing and blocked the way. Once they could turn back, they had to abandon their dead. Ariyabrzana had done what Darius and the satraps of Anatolia could not, and stopped the Macedonians.4

  Then the Persian commander made the mistake of doing nothing in the hope that a superior position would protect him. Alexander asked Aristander to consult the gods, and when that did not help, he called a war council and dispatched Macedonian reconnaissance teams who used Persian prisoners of war to lead them around the Gates. Picked troops followed. In thirty-six hours they marched twelve rugged miles and caught the enemy by surprise. In the melee, the unarmed Persians grabbed the attackers’ weapons or dragged them from their horses. The more numerous companions showed no mercy. Most of the Persians fell to their deaths while fighting or retreating.5

  Like the mountaineers, the Persians gave way, and the army could now march from the Gates to Persepolis. The few men Ariyabrzana had left at Persepolis surrendered. Only twenty-four days had passed since the Macedonians left Susa. Soon Parmenio arrived, and the reunited army occupied this, the third capital they had seized.

  the settlement at Persepolis was a brown monotone, like the fields below. A two-story sandstone platform supported a dozen buildings mostly amounting to outsized storehouses. The biggest building, another Apadana, resembled the one in Susa but lacked the brilliant blue enamel. Alexander found no place worth worshipping in, and he visited only a few of the famous halls of government. The population was surprisingly small: a few men who had not fled, and more women, luxuriously dressed.

  After rounding up the inhabitants, the captors inspected and catalogued tons of royal possessions: food, drink, clothes, crockery, linens, furniture, and mineral samples sent as tokens of obedience (including electrum from Lydia, choice but malodorous Nile water from Egypt, naphtha from Mesopotamia, lapis lazuli from Bactria, and turquoise from Sogdiana). And more and more gold and silver, dwarfing what Susa provided. The inspection teams tallied sums that would be as absurd as billions today. And for what? The Persians minted only a fraction of it. A king like Darius would say that Persepolis showed he was rich in the most important currency, gifts, but the Macedonians thought the most important currency was coin.6

  Alexander killed the male captives. Perhaps he did not know or care that some of them were Persian priests. He sold the women into slavery, then turned to the bigger problem of disposing of all the loot. Shown a jeweled box of cream scented with palm wine, he emptied the box and put his scrolls of the Iliad in it. He ordered Darius’s bullion shipped to Babylon to be minted, and other valuables, like furniture, shipped to Susa. The satrap there could store it, or give some to Darius’s mother and her children, now sequestered in the Apadana. Twenty thousand mules and 5,000 camels carried it all away.7

  The council of war met and debated how to dispose of the rest of the property. They decided to burn the timbers, stores, and incidentals, but not try to destroy or remove walls or foundations. The engineers said that would take months, and besides, Alexander wished to use Persepolis as a provincial center. Alexander gave orders to leave the Persian royal tombs untouched. He would not dishonor the dead.8

  Before departing, he staged a sacrifice to his own gods, and feasted the army. During his stay in Persepolis he had paid no honor to the Persian gods. Persepolis records that survived the fire show that these gods were many.9

  The army’s next stop, Pasargadae, twenty-six miles up the road, gave the Macedonians their first prolonged encounter with the religion of their enemies. To the surprise of the Macedonians, Cyrus’s ceremonial center covered only two and one-third square miles and lacked fortifications and defensive walls. It even lacked a garrison. There was no other capital like it, not even Sparta, which lacked walls but not soldiers. Cyrus supposed no one could or would attack Pasargadae. Extensive gardens stretched from end to end. Two palaces nestled among them, and the tomb of Cyrus stood in a grove in one corner.10

  The Persian governor greeted Alexander and his entourage at the gatehouse, Pasargadae’s tallest building. The thirty-foot-high doors swung open, and a four-winged figure wearing an Egyptian crown peered down from a door jamb. What would Pharaoh Alexander make of it? Was it a god or a winged man? From the gatehouse, they walked through a hall flanked by fluted Ionic columns in a checkerboard pattern of black and white stone. They emerged into a series of gardens fed by canals of mountain water and dotted with carved wooden pavilions. The guide informed Alexander that this was the original Persian garden attached to a palace—the model for the gardens in Sardis, Samaria, and elsewhere, the first paradeisos, or “paradise.”11

  Where, the Macedonians demanded, was the treasury? Although the guide said there was none, Alexander and the soldiers set about finding it. From the water gardens they approached the columned hall of another palace—Cyrus’s model for the Apadana palace at Persepolis and Susa. On one of the doorposts, the Babylonian god of fresh water, rendered as a man wearing the skin of a fish, peered down as if to answer the question of what the other odd figure, the winged Egyptian
, was doing in the gatehouse. Cyrus collected gods.

  The Macedonians found some silver and gold, but trifling sums compared to what they had already seized elsewhere, and so they decided to try the temples. Yet there were none. The Persians did not conceive of their gods as dwelling in houses, and so Pasargadae and other places had open-air altars where priests maintained perpetual fires and occasionally made offerings. Animals were disemboweled and burnt whole, a kind of sacrifice familiar to the Macedonians.

  The invaders found altars of this kind outside the palaces. Nearby stood a low stone tower. As the visitors drew near, the guide confirmed what Alexander’s advisers had already told him: all Persian kings were crowned at this spot. The goddess Anahita presided over the brief and simple ceremonies. The new king must take off his purple cloak and tunic and don nomadic clothes supposedly worn by Cyrus. After eating a meal of nomadic fare, and chewing red terebinth leaves that smacked of turpentine, he must climb the stone tower, appear on the parapet, and take the scepter in his right hand and a lotus blossom in his left. His followers would acclaim him and priests would burn animal offerings at the altars.12

  Alexander and his men visited Cyrus’s tomb nearby. A raised platform kept the burial vault out of profane contact with the earth. The entryway was so small that the taller companions had to bend over, although Alexander did not. They passed a cuneiform inscription they could not read but which Onesicritus claimed said, “Here lies Cyrus, king of kings,” as though Cyrus were a Mesopotamian ruler.13

  Cyrus had commissioned a mostly Babylonian burial chamber, evident in the workmanship of the golden sarcophagus and the thick purple robes atop it. He ordered a display of Babylonian tunics to complement his Iranian jackets and trousers, and a table to hold his scimitars. The Great King wished to make a small museum out of his death, but not a shrine. An adjacent building housed Persian priests who made monthly sacrifices of sheep and horses to the Sun.14