Macedon had been a Persian ally. It shamed us all, that during the wars of Salamis and Plataea, our forefathers had given earth and water to the Great King. Mind you, Alexander – the old one, from those days – did his bit for the Hellenes, and our boys turned on the retreating Persians and routed them at Hennia Hodoi.
And Sparta had a turn as a Persian ally, too. Mighty Sparta, but when the chips were down and Sparta was losing the Thirty Years’ War on the peninsula, she turned to Persia, took gold and ships in exchange for promises to remain aloof from Persia’s rebuilding of her empire.
Not that the Spartans kept their word. Agisalaos struck – and failed.
My point is that one of the constants of the diplomacy of the day was that Athens did not make deals with Persia. We did – there were almost always Persian envoys at Pella, even though we spoke openly of invading them after we’d subjugated Thessaly. And Philip took a stipend from them for a while, and threatened them at other times. He wanted to own both sides of the Bosporus. And the rest of the world, too.
I’m like a drunken carter roiling farther and farther from the track. My point is that the last thing we ever expected – even in the event of war with Athens – was for Athens to make common cause with Persia. Athenians did not love Persia, and even a rumour of ‘Persian gold’ was usually enough to send a politician into exile.
Philip’s speciality was to divide his opponents – split their alliances – and move on them one by one. He did it as automatically as a good swordsman makes a counter-cut. Wherever he saw a stable alliance, he sought to undermine it. He wasn’t above faked correspondence and he had a widespread intelligence net, assassins, bandits in his pay – we knew all this, because all the pages at one time or another were present for his diplomatic correspondence, which he read aloud when the foreigners were forbidden the court, such was his contempt for all the other nations of the earth.
Except Athens.
It had never occurred to him that he might be outplayed at his own game, but on the morning after Philip returned to Pella wounded and defeated, he discovered that Athens and Persia, his two mightiest opponents, had united; that they had added Thebes to the mix, with the best-trained infantry in Greece; and that his own allies were deserting in droves.
Later, Parmenio said that if the Athenians had put their fleet to sea and started plucking our colonies with Persian troops while the Thebans covered the passes into Greece, we’d have been wrecked by summer’s end.
But all too often – here’s the moral of my tale, lad, and no mistake – men carry the seeds of their own ruin in their own greatness. Demosthenes’ hatred of Macedon was rooted in a conservative, backward-looking idealism. He thought he was a democrat, but the men he idolised were the Athenians of Marathon. And although he was personally a very poor soldier, he – like many men – idolised what he was not – the hoplite. Demosthenes did not want to war Macedon down in an inglorious and efficient campaign of commerce-raiding and colony-snatching. That’s what Phokion or Philip or Parmenion, the great generals, would have done.
Demosthenes wanted us humbled the old way, man to man on the battlefield, our hoplites and theirs spear to spear, and may the better men teach the lesser what democracy really was.
Demosthenes was more than a hundred years out of date. But his foolish idealism saved Macedon.
At any rate, that early summer we knew that Athens had made a deal with Artaxerxes, and we were, in effect, surrounded. We waited – rebuilding forces as quickly as we could – for Athens and Thebes to invade. Sparta sat it out – but Sparta was a nonentity by then, more a fearsome name than a real power.
And around midsummer, after Olympias danced naked for Dionysus, after Philip discovered that his new bride Meda was pregnant, he gathered the main army – including all the royal companions, all the pezhetaeroi, all the mercenaries on whom he could lay hands and cash – and marched away like lightning, bound for the Chersonese.
He left Alexander, just seventeen years old, as regent. Antipater stood by him, with a regiment of cavalry and a regiment of Macedonian foot, a full taxeis – enough force to use on any rival baron or upstart noble who made trouble.
To our immense delight, as soon as the sound of Philip’s hobnailed sandals faded away into the south, the Thracians struck again – this time the Maedi, from up by Paeonia. Antipater concurred that a counter-attack was required, and the pages packed their war cloaks and gathered their horses.
We were going to war, and our prince would have his first command. Summer, in the mountains.
FOUR
The Maedi weren’t the wildest of the Thracians. They wore chitons, some of them, with their fox-skin hats – or badger or squirrel. The Maedi weren’t squeamish about what they killed – or wore.
But they did like Macedonian girls, and they’d come over the mountains in groups of fifty or five hundred – or five. Grab a girl – or pillage a twenty-mile swathe. They were seldom organised, and sometimes we’d find dead men where they had squabbled among themselves. Herodotus said that the Thracians would have conquered the world, if only they’d stopped fighting among themselves. Old Herodotus knew a thing or two.
Ever since the incident with the hetaera, Alexander had kept his distance from me – but promoted me, too, making me the right file leader of the pages.
By this time we had almost two hundred pages – perhaps we had more, but the pages weren’t the huge outfit they became later, under Alexander. A few of us were the scions of the great noble houses, but it’s important to note here that quite a few of my fellow pages were the sons of Philip’s ‘new men’. Philip trusted the new men – after all, they had no power and no place at court except what he gave them, and that meant that, as they would fall if he fell, they could be trusted. The rich men and great magnates of central Macedon were all potential rivals for the king, and their riches and power wouldn’t be changed if the king fell. It’s an old story – Persian kings and Athenian oligarchs often practise the same policy.
But that led to a double standard within the pages, too. We were all supposed to be equals under the prince, and we received stipends and much of our equipment was provided from the armouries so that we would all match and there would be no jealousy. But in truth, Alexander treated the noblemen’s sons very differently from the sons of new men. Alexander believed in breeding. That was the fault of all that Homer, I suspect, and Aristotle didn’t help, the aristocratic old fart.
At any rate, as we packed our war gear and looked to our weapons – for the first time, as a unit that would serve together – Alexander made his preferences plain. I got one troop, and Parmenio’s son Philotas got the other. Better young men, or those who’d already had some commands, like Philip the Red, were passed over.
I took Philip as one of my file leaders and Black Cleitus as the other. They were both older than I, and might have been jealous or sticky, but I had money and a fair amount of goodwill from the hunting camp and I used both. Philip’s father was a senior officer in the foot companions and I bought him a fancy Attic helmet from an Athenian vendor in the agora – first-rate work, it made him look like a hero. In fact, it was a better helmet than his father had.
Cleitus needed everything. One of Alexander’s failings was that the closer you were to him, the less he seemed to think about helping you – as if the very power of his proximity would cure financial woes. New friends, favourites and foreigners often got presents, while Cleitus had to look to me or Philotas (who also liked him) to get a new sword and a pair of riding spears better than the royal armouries provided.
And this was really all boyish nonsense. Our armoury provided excellent equipment. But if you know boys, you know that to carry a spear marked with the starburst of the armoury was an admission of poverty. It might be a superb spear – but boys are boys.
Worth noting, too, that boys also left the pages. It was a hard life – the younger pages did the work that slaves did – up all night in front of the prince’s door or the
king’s – washing pots, feeding horses, carrying water. We were beaten when we failed – I was only beaten three times in my whole service, but it hurt my pride every time. And we never had enough sleep or enough food. Some boys couldn’t take it, and they left.
Some found other ways to leave. The handsomest of all the boys in my age group was Pausanias of Epirus, and he was as pretty as a girl. When he was sixteen, Philip took him as a lover, and when Philip marched away into the Chersonese, he took Pausanias as a royal companion – the youngest. To be fair, Pausanias was an excellent spearman – but it was his fair looks and his flute-playing ways that got him into the royal companions. He was the first to be promoted out of the pages and into Philip’s service, but hardly the last – after all, the purpose of the Basilikoi Paides was to train future soldiers and administrators.
Alexander was going to command the expedition, but Antipater was doing a great deal of the work, and I was lucky enough to be invited to attend him. I remember it as terrifying – he wasn’t the old monster he later became, but a handsome middle-aged man who’d seen a lot of war and who was Parmenio’s chief rival at court. I received orders to report to his quarters in the palace, and I went, newly shaved, scrubbed like a helmet, with more pimples than scars, as the Macedonians say, except that in my case, I actually had a few scars.
‘Well,’ Antipater said, looking down his long nose at me. His son Cassander was no friend of mine, and he had to know it. And had been passed over for command, serving as a mere file-closer. I was worried about this interview, and my hands shook.
I was in armour – I saluted.
Antipater returned the salute. ‘Well,’ he said again.
He looked at me for a long time. ‘Cage your eyes, damn you,’ he said. ‘If I want to be stared at by a child, I’ll tell you.’
I looked at the floor.
‘How much grain does a donkey eat in a day?’ he asked.
‘Eight pounds a day. More in the mountains.’ These were things I knew.
‘How much grain can you count on getting in the Thracian hills?’ he asked.
‘None, lord,’ I answered.
He scratched his beard. ‘How much for a warhorse?’
‘Twice as much, and as much again on a day he fights,’ I said.
He made a motion with his mouth – when I got to know him better, I knew it was disapproval. ‘Kill chargers with overfeeding,’ he said. ‘Don’t they teach you babies better than that?’
I looked at the floor.
‘How much grain does a man eat a day?’ he asked.
I’d run the pages’ mess for two years. I gave him amounts for boys, men, women . . .
‘You’ll do. You have a head on your shoulders and no mistake. What’s the most important thing about a campsite? Look at me, boy.’
I looked at him again. His face was grim.
‘Water,’ I said. ‘Water, high ground that drains in rain, defensibility, access to firewood, access to forage for horses, in that order.’
Antipater nodded. ‘You remember your lessons,’ he said. ‘I’m not coming on this expedition. So I’m sending Laodon with you, but you – you, young Ptolemy – are going to run the supplies. I’ll send you two of my own slaves, who’ve done this sort of thing before. They’re Greeks – they can do mathematics and they understand how to feed an army. Let me offer you this piece of advice, boy – war runs on scouting and food, not heroism and not fancy armour. Philotas is going to run the scouting and you are going to run the food.’
I nodded, but my annoyance crossed my face. Of course it did – I was seventeen.
‘You think you are a better scout and it’s the more dashing occupation?’ Antipater asked.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘Then you’re more of a fool than I took you for, and perhaps fit for neither. Yes, it is dashing, but a well-fed army will win a fight even when surprised, whereas brilliant scouting can’t get an unwilling army to cross a stream. Listen, boy. There’s trouble at court – you know it?’ He leaned towards me, and I leaned back. Antipater was scary.
And I never, never talked about court matters with adults – not even my father. I looked at him with my carefully calculated look of bovine placidity. ‘Huh?’ I said.
‘My son says you are dull.’
I shrugged. Looked at the ground.
‘Very well,’ he dismissed me.
I was still shaking when Philotas and Cleitus found me. They put a cup of wine into me, and thus emboldened, I collected my two new slaves – Antipater actually gave them to me. Myndas was the older and handsomer, and Nichomachus was younger and thin, too tall, with a dreadful wispy beard and pimples worse than mine.
‘Zeus, they look like shit,’ Philotas said. ‘Hey – who are you two and why is Antipater giving you away?’
They both looked at the ground, shrugged and shuffled, like slaves. Nonetheless, it was obvious to me that Myndas had been a free man once. And that Nichomachus never had.
‘I gather both of you can do mathematics?’ I said.
More shuffling.
But Myndas produced an abacus, and proceeded to rattle off some remarkable maths problems, muttering under his breath. Philotas, who liked cruel games, shot problems at him faster and faster – absurd problems, obscene problems.
‘If every soldier fucks his shield-bearer twice a day,’ Philotas said in his nasty, sing-song voice, ‘and if he needs a spoonful of olive oil to get it done each time, and if there’s two thousand footsloggers in the army, how much olive oil does the army need every day?’
Myndas didn’t raise his eyes. ‘How big a spoon, master?’ he asked.
‘Whatever you use yourself,’ Philotas answered, and Cleitus guffawed.
Adolescent humour. With boys, it is the humour of the stronger vented on the weaker, and nothing is weaker than a slave.
But they were my slaves, and I’d never owned a man besides my shield-bearer, so I shook my head.
‘Very funny. Myndas, don’t mind him – he can’t help himself. Some day he’ll get laid and stop talking about it.’ I grinned at Philotas to take out the sting, and got punched – hard – in the shoulder.
But he laid off Myndas. It’s important that your slaves see you as someone who can protect them, and since I was to command a troop, I needed Philotas to see that I had limits and would protect my own.
All fun and games, in the pages.
I needed horses, and so did Cleitus. My pater’s factor was in town with orders to give me anything I wanted – my pater was a distant man, but he did his best to equip me. So I spent his money on two more chargers to support Poseidon, and I gave my two old chargers to Cleitus. I put my two slaves on mules. I went out to Polystratus’s farm and offered him silver to march with me. He was a Thracian himself.
He looked at his wife, his new daughter and his farm – a few acres of weeds and some oats. A hard existence.
‘Double that,’ he said. ‘I need some money.’
‘That’s the pay of a royal companion!’ I said.
Polystratus shrugged. ‘I don’t have to go,’ he said. ‘My wife needs me, and my daughter. I could be starting on a son.’ He looked at her and she smiled, blushed, looked at the ground.
Of course I paid him. I gave him a mina of silver down, and then followed him around while he packed his kit, gave his wife a third of the money and then marched up the hill to the headman. I stood as witness while he used his advance of pay to triple his landownership and to pay the headman’s own sons to till the new land for him while he was absent.
Polystratus was not a typical Thracian.
We rode back together, and I bought him a pair of horses. It was all Pater’s money – what did I care? I got him a good leather spola and a nice helmet with heavy cheekpieces. He had his own spears and sword, and he spent his own money on a donkey. And by evening, he had a pais – a slave boy to carry his gear and do his work.
I had to laugh. But I did so where Polystratus couldn’t see me.
That evening, I found that Myndas was sitting in the courtyard of the barracks, and Nichomachus was writing his sums on wax and saying them back. Since I was the mess-master of the pages, I knew the numbers they were doing like I knew my name, so I stopped and stood with them. They didn’t make mistakes, but in a few moments I surprised them by knowing how to multiply one hundred and ninety-eight pages by six mythemnoi of grain.
This was the first of many generational differences between Philip’s men and Alexander’s men. They hadn’t had Aristotle. They’d learned enough maths to buy a slave to do the work, but I could work Pythagoras’s solutions to geometry in my head. And so could Cassander and so could Philotas and so could Cleitus, on and on.
Myndas kept his eyes down. ‘You . . . can you use this, lord?’ he asked, rattling his abacus.
‘Yes, if I had a mind to,’ I admitted. ‘But I can do most of the numbers in my head – especially any maths to do with the pages and feeding them.’ I slapped him on the back. ‘Has the prince set the army yet? I’ve been gone all day.’
The two slaves shook their heads.
‘You two been fed?’ I asked.
Both shook their heads.
I waggled a finger at Polystratus. ‘Myndas, this is Polystratus. He was once a slave and now he’s free – serving me. He is the head of my household, which you are now in. Polystratus, these two are scribes, so don’t break them cutting firewood. They haven’t eaten since before noon. See to them, will you?’
Polystratus nodded. ‘Scribes?’ he asked. Shrugged. ‘Buy ’em food, or get the cook to shell out?’ he asked me.
‘Buy it in the market today, and get them on the barracks list tomorrow,’ I said. This was the sort of detail you had to remember with an army or with your own slaves – I’d walked off to find Polystratus and left them with no way to get food. So much to learn. Zeus, I was young!
Three days of these preparations, and I spent the last two looking at carts and donkeys and mules, watching wicker baskets filled with grain, shouting myself hoarse at merchants, bellowing with rage when I found I’d been swindled on some donkeys . . .
God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great Page 9