Soldier, Priest, and God

by F S Naiden

  In response to the execution of the mock king, the Babylonian clergy abandoned the rite and withdrew from Alexander. They would no longer advise or aid him, even if he became sick. This reaction dealt Alexander a third blow in as many years. The companions’ refusal to advance farther into India had cost him his mission of conquest. The death of Hephaestion had cost him his intimate. Now came a religious blow that cost him his mandate. Alexander told one companion that he was at a loss to know what he should do for the rest of his life.56

  Philip or Parmenio might have said that Alexander had too many advisers. Babylonian astronomers told him to obey the stars, Egyptian priests told him to be the son of Amon, and Greek intellectuals told him he was son of Philip. Macedonian comrades expected him to honor the cult of the companions. He was a Greco-Macedonian Egypto-Semite ruling the Persian Empire. Philip and Parmenio, though, were no longer there to advise him, or even drink with him.57

  on the fifteenth of the Babylonian month of Aiaru, Alexander received favorable oracles about Hephaestion. He invited Nearchus to dinner to celebrate the good news. Later that night he let Medius talk him out of bed and take him drinking. The next night, Alexander dined at Medius’s along with twenty others. Among them were Iollas and his brother Cassander, Medius’s chums, and important leaders such as Nearchus and Eumenes, as well as top generals. Rumor said Alexander drank a toast to each guest, or twenty-one in all. That did not keep him from reciting a passage from Euripides’s Andromeda, a now-lost play about a damsel whom Alexander’s flying ancestor Perseus rescued from a Phoenician monster.58

  According to the daybook kept by Eumenes, Alexander mostly slept the next day, and went back to Medius’s for a second night of drinking. The third day, Alexander needed to be carried on a couch to make the morning sacrifice, then rested before summoning his councilors. They discussed the Arabian expedition, which was to set sail four days later, one day after the army broke camp. Perhaps they discussed other plans of the king’s, such as rebuilding more shrines in Greece and also Macedon. Alexander was still vigorous. After the meeting, he left the palace of Nebuchadnezzar and took a boat to a Persian hunting ground on the other side of the river. There he rested and took his second bath of the day.59

  On the nineteenth of Aiaru, or early June, he sacrificed, played dice with Medius, and called a meeting for the next day, but lay feverish all night. He was not seriously ill. During the next two days, he sacrificed and met the council twice, but suffered more. The following day he was able to try the palace swimming pool, and also able to sacrifice, but the day after that, when the fleet should have sailed, all he could do was sacrifice. On the twenty-fourth even sacrificing became difficult, and he lost his voice, and on the twenty-fifth he could not worship. His generals, regimental commanders, and captains came to the palace, but he was too sick to meet with them.60

  By now, rumors of his illness were spreading, and rumors of his death spread in their wake. The next day, soldiers broke into the palace, overwhelming the guard. They demanded to see their king. The companions gave way and soldiers began to file past the bed. As long as he could, Alexander gestured to them. Even when he no longer could gesture, soldiers continued filing past. Thousands came. They wore him out.61

  Perhaps his doctors did, too. The doctor who had cured him after his illness in Cilicia attended him, and probably used common Greek methods for regulating bodily humors—emetics, diuretics, and bloodletting. Perhaps the doctor thought that Alexander suffered from an excess of black bile. That would cause low spirits. Was it curable? Absolute rulers tended to be bilious and melancholic. The doctor wounded Alexander here, and wounded him there, drawing blood into cupping vessels.62

  That failed, and perhaps Babylonian doctors came. Where did the fire inside the patient come from? they wondered. From the sky? The heat of the sun was one source, sending fire in its rays. One of the fourteen gods that guarded the gates of the Underworld, Umma, sent fever to the ill from the opposite quarter.

  In mild cases, the physician might recommend burning fox grape and milk plant. That would tear out the fever. In severe cases, he regarded the fever as a demon to be thwarted. To ward off the demon, he might sprinkle flour around a patient’s bed. He brought substances representing the demon’s body, cursed them, and cast them out, one by one. He and his assistants looked around the palace for drains or crevasses by which demons might have entered, and plugged them. Alexander’s palace had windows—always tempting for demons. Had the Macedonians closed off the porches and checked the roofs for holes? What about the doors? Had anyone performed a ritual to bring the doors to life, so that priests could pray to the doors and ask them to protect Alexander?63

  The doctors did not know that he had compromised his immune system. Nor did they know what threats a weakened immune system exposed him to. To know that, they would have had to check the city’s water supply, the transmission of bodily fluids, and the circulation of moisture and parasites. At most, they knew that grief, depression, and drink can be hazardous to one’s health.64

  The companions sacrificed and accomplished nothing. Desperate, they turned to the Babylonians. Half a dozen of them, including Peucestas, the satrap of Persia, went to a Babylonian temple, but found it closed. They waited by the temple gate all night. At dawn the gatekeeper admitted the temple bakers, butchers, and porters delivering foodstuffs and supplies. The Macedonians asked to be admitted, but the gatekeeper said they had no right to enter. They went away without speaking to any priests.65

  Several days passed. The king lay speechless and motionless. A rumor spread that Alexander left his bed and tried to drown himself in the river. His body would disappear, and his men might believe he had been taken to heaven. Roxana supposedly prevented him. She might have said that Alexander could not propitiate Anahita by drowning.66

  Another false rumor blamed a young soldier named Proteas, who made a sport of drinking. He happened to be the nephew of Clitus. On the night Alexander dined with Medius, he passed a double-size cup to Proteas. Proteas drained it, refilled it, and passed it back. Never one to be outdone, Alexander did the same. Then he collapsed on his couch and never recovered.67 The older companions agreed that drinking had made Alexander ill, but did not blame Proteas. Dionysus had made Alexander drink too much on the night he killed Clitus. Now the wrathful god had made Alexander drink more. The companions thought Dionysus was still angry with Alexander because of the siege of Thebes, twelve years before.

  To judge from the daybook, Eumenes lost track of how long Alexander was sick, but the Babylonians calculated accurately. They counted the days from the middle of the month, when the moon moved in front of the constellation called the Magician. Since then, fifteen days had passed, so the patient died on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth of Aiaru. At age thirty-two, Alexander succumbed to the astronomers’ empire over time.68

  alexander was a good friend to death. In that respect he was a godly man, and a likely posthumous convert to religions that provided for the resurrection of the dead. One of these religions was Judaism. The Hebrews believed Alexander worshipped in Jerusalem, and that he listened to Talmudic sages in Babylon. Some episodes of the Alexander Romance take a Christian perspective toward him, as when angels came to warn him after he flew into the air. The common theme of these Christian and Hebrew responses to Alexander was that his own death was a goal toward which he unwittingly traveled. Beyond his own death lay a possible second goal: participating in some eschatological revelation.69

  According to one episode found in the Alexander Romance, he reached his long-sought destination, the end of the world, and learned of the waters of life. In the following excerpt, Parmenio appears unnamed, in the guise of an old soldier. Callisthenes, whom Alexander falsely condemned for treason, appears as an adviser. Three other characters—Alexander’s sacrificial assistant Andreas and his concubine and daughter—are apocryphal.70

  For three days Alexander journeyed through places where the sun did not shine. This was the land
of the blessed. Then he decided to leave behind his baggage train and his infantry, along with the old men and the women, and investigate this region with a select force of young men. Callisthenes advised him to go with 40 companions, 100 slaves, and a thousand troops. Alexander gave word that no old man should accompany them, and set out.

  One spry old man with two sons who were soldiers said to them,

  “Boys, take me with you. You won’t find me useless. Some time or other you may need to seek out an old man. Don’t be afraid the king will kill you for disobeying orders. Cut my hair and beard.”

  They did, and took him with them.

  The army found itself in a dark country. Because it was hard to traverse, they couldn’t advance, and had to throw away their tents. The next day Alexander took his soldiers to reconnoiter, in case they had reached the end of the world. When they headed to the left, they found the country less dark. They passed through empty, rocky terrain for half a day. The sun didn’t guide them, and instead they used measuring rods. Frightened by this kind of marching, Alexander turned back. Then he decided to try heading to the right. A smooth plain lay there, but murky and dark. He was at a loss, and the young men advised him not to venture into the murk. If their horses panicked on the long, dark trail, the men would never get back. “Comrades,” Alexander said to them, “you all know that in war no good deed can be done without planning and cooperation. We need some old man’s advice about how to make our way through the murk. Someone should go back to the baggage train and find a man like that.” No one was willing. The road was too long, and the sky too dark.

  A leaf bearing an illustration of Alexander beside the waters of life in Firdausi, by Qazvin or Mashhad, 1580.

  Sotheby’s, London, April 22, 1980, lot 27, ms. fol. 341a.

  The old man’s sons said to the king, “If you will listen to us with an open mind, we’ll talk to you.”

  King Alexander said, “If you want to, speak. I swear to do you no wrong.” The sons talked to him about their father and ran and got him. Alexander embraced him and bade him advise them.

  The old man said, “King Alexander, we know this: if the horses do not get us out of here, you will never see the light of day again. Pick out the mares with colts and leave the colts here. We will rely on the mares to get us out.”

  Among his many horses, Alexander found only one hundred mares with colts. He rounded up them, plus grooms to care for them, and then he and the men went in and shooed the colts away from their mothers. The army took the mares and other horses and left the colts behind. The old man also told Alexander to order the troops to pick up anything they found on the ground and put it in their sacks.

  Alexander and 360 of his men ventured on. When they had traveled 15 leagues, they came to a place with a shining fountain, where the water gleamed like lightening. The air was fragrant and very sweet.

  Alexander happened to be hungry and wanted some bread to eat, so he summoned Andreas, the sacrificer who killed victims for him, to find him some meat. Andreas got some fish and went to clean it in the fountain. As soon as the fish got wet, it sprang to life and jumped out of his hands. Andreas drank the water and stored some in a silver vessel, but he told no one what had happened, not even the king. …

  Alexander ordered his men to pick up whatever they could, be it stone, earth, or wood. Some did, but others thought the order senseless. … Once they reached a well-lit country they looked at one another in amazement. Their clothes were golden all over, and the stones they had picked up had turned to gold.

  The mares soon led them to the camp where they had left the colts. From there the horses took the army out of the land of darkness and back to safety.

  Later, Andreas confessed how the fish came to life. Furious, Alexander whipped him. Andreas said, “Why regret the past?” He denied that he drank or kept the water. Alexander had a daughter, Belle, by a camp follower named Ouna, and Andreas seduced her by promising to give her some of the water to drink. Once she drank it, it immortalized her. When he heard of this miracle, Alexander ordered her to come before him, and remove her clothes. She undressed, and he realized she had become a phantasm. He banished her.

  This Byzantine story does not say what became of the banished daughter, but folktales say that she went to live in the sea and became a mermaid.71 Feeling lonely, she has accosted sailors ever since. She asks them the question that is the epigraph to this book: “Does King Alexander live?” If they give the answer, “He lives and reigns,” they escape with their lives.

  12

  Dead Men and a Living King

  after alexander’s death, the body lay in his bedchamber while the council of war tried to decide what to do with it. Alexander left no will and gave no instructions, except, some said, to Craterus, who was on his way to Macedon. So far as the companions knew, Alexander had made only one request, to be buried at the oracular shrine at Siwah. He wished to be the first pharaoh buried at an oasis—the first buried at a frontier. He also wanted to be the first European worshipped alongside Amon. At Siwah both Greek and Egyptian pilgrims might grant him that honor.1

  Aside from this request, Alexander had supposedly made a few stray remarks that were no more credible than the story that he wished to drown himself in the Euphrates. The most plausible remark was that he expected his companions to compete with one another as if they were contestants at funeral games in his honor.2

  To comply with his burial request, the council must give the body to the priests of Amon among the entourage and the priests must consign it to embalmers. After that, the council would have to build a hearse and appoint an escort to deliver the body to Siwah, a journey of several months.

  The council temporized. Embalming the body was indispensable, for otherwise it would deteriorate and become unfit for funeral ceremonies. Sending the body to Egypt, though, would be unpopular. The funeral of Alexander would take place amid Egyptians with at most a small delegation of Greeks and Macedonians. Hardly any of Alexander’s officers and men would receive the graveside blessing they craved. Greek seers told the councilors that Alexander’s ghost would protect the vicinity of his tomb, but in Siwah mostly Egyptians would benefit.

  The council could guess what Alexander’s mother, Olympias, would say: that the army should bring her son’s body home to Aegae, the family burial place. If she and the troops did not see the body, they might doubt whether Alexander died of natural causes. Olympias would accuse Cassander, Medius, and others of poisoning Alexander. She had quarreled with Cassander and Cassander’s father, Antipater, for years.3

  Yet Macedon was unattractive, too. If the funeral took place in Aegae, who would perform the ceremony? Alexander’s half-brother, Arrhidaeus? He was not king, and officiating at the funeral would make him look like a king. That would suit Olympias, but not Antipater, who was still in Macedon, or Craterus, who would soon arrive there. In Macedon there would be too many possible religious contestants, just as there would be too many absent contestants in Egypt.4

  The veteran Perdiccas took charge of the deliberations. With Craterus gone, he was the senior military commander. He had commanded an infantry regiment as early as the siege of Thebes in 335, when Ptolemy and Nearchus were striplings and Polyperchon was low-ranking. At Thebes he had attacked without Alexander’s permission, showing himself to be impulsive and ambitious. He slaughtered the rebels in Samaria in 331. Lately he had been preparing his new command, the companion cavalry, for the risky march into Arabia. He knew the army well.

  He also knew more about embalming than the others. When Hephaestion died, Alexander had ordered Perdiccas to bring the body from Ecbatana to Babylon, and Perdiccas had asked Egyptians in the entourage to embalm it. Perdiccas now ordered these experts to ply their trade on Alexander.5 A week had passed since Alexander’s death.6

  The embalmers took charge of the king’s body and removed the king’s diadem and signet ring, both commandeered by Perdiccas. The most elaborate ritual Alexander ever underwent now began.7 />
  A lector read prayers, and the Master of the Mysteries, who served the jackal-headed god, Anubis, supervised as a surgeon cut open Alexander’s left flank, a place where he had never been wounded, and thrust an arm into his guts up to the elbow. As fluid poured out, the surgeon removed the major organs one by one. The surgeon and his aides were better acquainted with human anatomy than many physicians, but they were working blind, and so they seldom attempted the delicate task of removing the lining of the chest cavity. They never removed the heart. In the next life Alexander, like any other person, would have to present his heart to Anubis, god of the dead as well as of embalmers. The god would weigh the heart, and if it was heavy with guilt, Alexander would be condemned to a second, everlasting death. If the heart was light, the king could proceed into the afterlife. On this journey, his royal status scarcely mattered. Alexander would at last be an ordinary man.8

  Next, the surgeon and his aides drilled into the nose and removed the brains with a hook. After disposing of this useless stuff, they exercised all their dexterity to pack the mouth with linen or resin and pack resin behind the eyes. How should they pack the empty cranium? The Babylonians supplied two materials, salt and cedar sawdust.

  Alexander’s lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines posed bigger questions. Should the embalmers replace the viscera in the body, or wrap them in packages and put them on the dead man’s thighs, or put the viscera in alabaster jars? All these choices had been fashionable at one time or another; in Alexander’s day, all were acceptable.

  It would have been idle for the experts to explain them to the companions, or to explain the next steps—laying the corpse in a bed of soda ash, mummifying it, fashioning a coffin and some cartonnage, and then a catafalque and a tomb complete with female figurines serving as concubines to the dead. They were not preparing a military hero for foreign mourners. They were preparing a pharaoh for eternity.