‘Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen. Alexander knows full well what he’s up to.’
The city of Susa – immense and almost three thousand years old – had four hills at its four corners and on one of them stood the royal palace which at that very moment was fully illuminated by the rays of the setting sun. The entrance was a majestic temple-style pronaos, consisting of large stone columns with capitals in the form of winged bulls supporting the ceiling. Then came an atrium paved with marble of all colours and partly covered by magnificent carpets. There were also other columns supporting the ceiling, these in cedar wood painted red and yellow. Through a corridor and across another atrium, Alexander was led into the apadana, the great audience chamber, while the dignitaries, the eunuchs and the chamberlains all retreated to the sides of the great hall, lowering their heads until they were almost touching the floor.
The King, followed by his Companions and his generals, came to the throne of the Achaemenid emperors and took his place, but he soon found himself somewhat embarrassed. He was so short that his feet failed to touch the ground and actually dangled in a not very regal manner. Leonnatus, who was endowed with a militaristic sensibility with regard to such things, spotted a piece of furniture made of cedar wood nearby and pushed it over so that Alexander could rest his feet on it, as though it were a stool, and begin speaking to the onlookers.
‘Friends, what seemed to be an impossible dream not so long ago, has now become a reality. Two of the greatest capitals in the world – Babylon and Susa – are now in our hands and soon we will take possession of others as well—’ No sooner had Alexander begun his speech than it was interrupted by the noise of someone quietly crying. The King looked around and complete silence fell in the great hall, making the sobbing of one of the eunuchs, who was standing with his head against the wall, stand out even more. Everyone moved out of the way because they realized that the King wanted to see him, and the poor soul was then left standing tearfully alone under Alexander’s gaze.
‘Why are you crying?’ Alexander asked. The man shielded his face as he dried his tears. ‘Come now, speak freely.’
‘These castrated specimens,’ whispered Leonnatus to Seleucus, ‘they burst into tears for nothing, just like girls, but apparently they’re better than any woman in bed.’
‘There are eunuchs and then there are eunuchs,’ replied Seleucus. ‘This one, for example, doesn’t look up to much.’
‘Come along now, speak,’ insisted Alexander.
The eunuch then moved forward and it was clear to everyone that he was staring intently at the stool under the King’s feet.
‘I am a eunuch,’ he began, ‘and by nature I am loyal to my master, whoever he may be. Before I was loyal to my Lord, King Darius, and now I am loyal to you, my new King. Despite this, I cannot help but cry when I consider how rapid the reverses of fate can be. The piece of furniture you are using as a stool,’ and at this point Alexander began to realize why the eunuch was crying, ‘was Darius’s dining table, the table on which he ate his meals, and therefore for us it was a sacred object, worthy of veneration. Now you are using it as a footrest . . .’
Alexander blushed and was about to get up, having perceived that he had committed an act of unpardonable vulgarity, but Aristander stopped him: ‘Do not move your feet from that table. Does it not strike you that there is a message in this apparently coincidental event? The gods wanted this to happen so that everyone will know that they have laid the power of the Persian empire at your feet.’
So it was that Darius’s table remained where it was, a footstool for the new King.
The audience in the throne room came to an end and everyone dispersed throughout the palace. The chamberlain, another eunuch, led Alexander, alone, into the imperial harem where there were many enchanting young women – all of them beautiful, all of them dressed in their national costumes, and they welcomed him with excited giggling. Some were dark in complexion, while others had fair skin and blue eyes – there was even an Ethiopian girl and to the King, with her proud bearing, she looked like one of Lysippus’s bronze statues.
‘If you want to play with them,’ said the eunuch, ‘they’ll be pleased to do all they can for you, even this very night.’
‘Thank them for me and tell them that I will soon come to enjoy their company.’
Then he moved into another room of the great palace and suddenly noticed his friends all lined up looking at a monument and he too stopped to observe – a statuary group in bronze representing two young men with their daggers raised, as though about to strike someone.
‘Harmodius and Aristogiton,’ explained Ptolemy. ‘It’s the monument to the men who killed Hipparchus, Hip-pias’s brother, friend of the Persians and traitor to the Greek cause. King Xerxes took it in Athens as war booty before torching the city. It has been here for one hundred and fifty years, testimony to that humiliation.’
‘I have heard that these two did not in fact kill Hipparchus to free the city of a tyrant, but rather it was a question of jealousy because both Hipparchus and Aristogiton had fallen in love with Harmodius,’ said Leonnatus.
‘That changes nothing,’ said Callisthenes as he looked on the famous monument in admiration. ‘Whatever happened, these two men brought democracy back to Athens.’
There was a certain embarrassment in the air at these words – everyone recalled Demosthenes’ vehement speeches in favour of democracy in Athens and against the ‘tyrant’ Philip. It seemed that as each day passed Alexander was forgetting the democratic education he had received from Aristotle, and perhaps even the letters of advice that came from the philosopher were having no effect. The King’s spirit was increasingly attracted by the imperial grandeur surrounding him in Persia.
‘Make arrangements for the monument to be sent to Athens as my personal gift for the city,’ said Alexander who had somehow understood what everyone was thinking and no one dared say. ‘I hope they will understand that Macedonian swords have obtained a result that a thousand speeches by their orators could never even describe.’
The Queen Mother, Sisygambis, together with the King’s concubines and their children were once again allowed to settle into the apartments they had left such a long time previously. They were all much moved to be in these familiar surroundings once again; they wept into the pillows on the beds in which they had made love and in which they had given birth, they crossed the thresholds leading into their bed chambers, rendered sacred by the presence of the Great King. In truth, however, things were no longer as they had been – the corridors and the halls of the palace contained the same objects and items, but the palace resounded to the sound of a hostile, incomprehensible language and the future looked dark and worrying. Only the Queen Mother seemed calm, completely immersed in the mysterious serenity of her wisdom. She had asked for and had been granted custody of Phraates, Barsine’s youngest son who, if anything were to happen to his grandfather, Satrap Artabazos, would be the only survivor of the family.
Alexander often visited the royal harem, sometimes alone and sometimes together with Hephaestion, and the young women grew to love the King and his friend together, satisfying their every desire and sleeping with them in the same bed through the fragrant nights of that warm summer, as they listened to the singing and the music of their companions and the great voices of the metropolis, once joyous but now dampened by the fear of the unknown.
Every day he was in the city he visited the Queen Mother’s apartments, talking with her for a long time with the aid of an interpreter. On the eve of their departure he spoke to her once again, just as he had done on the night before the battle at Gaugamela. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘tomorrow I will leave to pursue your son into the farthest reaches of his empire. I believe in my destiny and I believe that my conquests have come about with the help of the gods, and for this reason I will never leave my work incomplete, but I promise you that as far as I am able I will never inflict any harm on Darius and I will try to save his life. I ha
ve also arranged for you to be taught Greek by the best teachers, because I want to hear my language one day on your lips and I want to listen to you without any interpreter coming between our thoughts.’
The Queen Mother looked him in the eyes and murmured something that the interpreter failed to catch, because she had spoken in a secret, mysterious language, the tongue which only her god could understand.
19
THE TRUMPETS SOUNDED the signal for departure one morning early in autumn, while the city was still in shadow and the Elam mountain tops were just being touched by the first rays of the rising sun. The army was split into two: Parmenion led the majority of the forces, the carts with the unassembled war engines and the supplies along the Royal Road, while Alexander was with the light forces, the shock troops and the Agrianians, and they took the mountain path that led across the Elams to Persepolis, the capital founded by Darius the Great.
Led by guides from Susa, he moved along the river as it became ever narrower and then climbed up towards the pass which led through to the highlands that were home to an indomitable people of wild and primitive shepherds – the Ouxians. Although they were nominally under the control of the Great King, in fact they were independent and when Alexander asked them, with the help of an interpreter, to allow him to cross their land, they replied, ‘You may cross if you pay, just as the Great King always did when he wanted to take the shortest road from Susa to Persepolis.’
Alexander replied, ‘The Great King no longer governs his empire and my behaviour will not be his behaviour. Therefore I will cross your land, whether you like it or not.’
The Ouxians were frightful to look at – bristling all over with hair; dressed in goat – and sheepskins, they stank just like their animals. It was clear that they were not easily scared and they were not prepared to concede anything. They had every faith in the difficult, steep nature of their land, its narrow valleys, its steep pathways where only a few people at a time could climb up. They had no idea that the foreign King was accompanied by warriors who were even wilder and more primitive than themselves, and who were used to moving agilely over even more challenging terrain, capable of withstanding cold and hunger, pain and exhaustion: bold and ferocious, bloodthirsty and eager to fight, blindly obedient to the hand that fed them – the Agrianians!
Alexander united the leaders and the guides from Susa so that they could explain the layout of the two main pathways that led to the Ouxians’ highlands. It was decided that Craterus, with the shock troops, would follow the less steep of the two paths which ran directly to the passes that led to Persis, while Alexander, with the Agrianians and two battalions of shieldsmen, took on the more difficult route that led straight to the terrain held by the enemy warriors.
Craterus waited for the King to begin climbing up the steep slope with his troops, attracting the majority of the Ouxian forces, and then he made his move, shielded by the thick vegetation, along the pathway that led towards the passes.
The Ouxians who took on Alexander let fly with arrows, with stones fired from slings, with large rocks rolled by hand down the slope, but the Agrianians were extremely agile and took shelter behind every available outcrop and then moved forward briskly across open terrain and hid once again behind tree trunks and rocks. When they finally came into contact with the first Ouxians, they attacked them with such savage ferocity the defenders had no chance of stopping them. Many fell to the ground with their throats slit open, others collapsed holding their guts as they spilled out of long belly wounds. The Agrianians were relentless – they struck to kill and to kill alone, to wipe out the enemy completely and to terrorize them with wounds that were horrific to look upon.
Immediately behind the Agrianians came the shields-men who took up their regular formation again and set off at a run towards the villages of stone and brick where the Ouxians lived together with their animals in some form of primitive symbiosis. Alexander gave orders for incendiary arrows to be used and soon the straw and hay roofs of the huts were transformed into blazing infernos and the animals fled in terror every which way.
The Ouxians had never even imagined the possibility of such an invasion and they fled towards the passes where they felt they might be able to organize a more effective defence, but these had already been occupied by Craterus and his assault troops. A rain of arrows greeted the highland people and many of them were killed instantly.
Now the Ouxians were caught between Alexander’s and Craterus’s troops and they surrendered, but the King inflicted a terrible punishment on them – they were to be torn completely from their lands and deported to the plain, so that they would never again be able to block the passage between Susa and Persis.
As soon as they heard from the interpreters about the fate that awaited them, they threw themselves at the King’s feet, imploring him and crying, shouting out in despair. The women and children joined in these laments, but Alexander was resolute – he said that they should have accepted his initial proposal and that in this way they would learn that he never issued empty threats and that no force in the world could ever stop him.
One of the guides from Susa, however, suggested to the Ouxians that they should appeal to Queen Mother Sisygambis, the only person who might have some influence over the implacable conqueror; they took this advice and in secret sent two of their leaders through the Macedonian lines. Four days later, when the cavalry had already reached the highlands along the easier of the two paths, the Ouxian leaders returned with a letter from the Queen Mother written in Greek which pleaded with Alexander to allow these poor folk to remain on their lands:
Sisygambis hails Alexander!
Representatives of the Ouxian people have come to ask me to intercede with you on their behalf. I know they have insulted and mocked you, but the punishment you wish to inflict upon them is the most terrible – worse than death itself. Indeed, there is nothing more painful than being torn from the land on which one has lived since childhood, from the waters that have slaked one’s thirst, from the fields that have provided nourishment, from the sight of the sun that rises and sets behind the horizons of our mountains.
Many times you have called me mother, that most sweet of names, that name destined only for Olympias who gave birth to you in the palace at Pella. Now, on the grounds of the name with which you honour me, I ask you to listen to me as you would listen to your mother – spare this people the ordeal of being torn from their homeland.
Remember your own homeland and the love you have left there! These wretches have done nothing more than defend their land and their homes.
Be merciful!
The letter moved Alexander and quenched his rage – the Ouxians were allowed to remain in their highland homes, paying an annual tribute of five hundred horses, two thousand pack mares and common livestock. They accepted willingly, thinking that this angry young man and his savage warriors would never come back to claim their goats and their oxen and that it was in any case a request they could not refuse.
With the highlands dealt with, Alexander set off again towards the highest pass – a narrow throughway known as the ‘Persian Gates’, across which the Satrap Ariobarzanes had built a defensive wall very high up, impregnable by virtue of its position. The army set off on its march before dawn one freezing morning, across the wind-beaten plateau, while from the grey sky above the first flakes of snow were beginning to fall.
20
THE VALLEY LEADING to the Persian Gates grew progressively narrower, to the point where it became a rocky gorge, both sides of which rose steeply. It took considerable effort to move forwards though the deep snow and across the sheets of ice with the horses and the mules slipping and hurting themselves, sometimes even breaking legs. It took almost the whole day for the leading troops to reach the first buttresses of the ramps that led up to the great wall protecting the pass.
Then, as Alexander was assembling the leaders of the Thracians and the Agrianians in order to study some means of climbing over the steep banks
and the wall itself under cover of darkness, a series of loud crashing noises shook them all – from the top of the walls the Persian soldiers had started rolling down enormous rocks which set off great landslides of rubble that came crashing down towards the bottom.
Everyone started shouting, ‘Out of the way! Move clear!’ – but the rocks moved faster than the men and the result was a massacre. Alexander himself, caught in an avalanche of pebbles, was injured in several places, although fortunately no bones were broken. He immediately gave orders for the men to retreat, but in the meantime the enemy soldiers had taken up their bows and, despite the thickening snow and the decreasing visibility, they fired into the crowd below without ever missing the mark.
‘The shields!’ shouted Lysimachus, in command of the assault troops. ‘Put the shields over your heads!’
The men obeyed, but the Persians were running along the sides of the gorge now, firing arrows at the rearguard who had still not understood what was happening. Only darkness brought the massacre to an end and with great effort Alexander managed to gather his army together in a wider space where they could set up camp. They were all deeply discouraged, not only by the great number of fatal casualties, but also by the cries of their wounded – unable to bear the pain of limbs that had been cut and torn open, the pain of crushed bones.
Philip and his surgeons set to work in the lamplight, closing wounds, pulling out arrow – and javelin heads from the living flesh of the warriors, setting fractures, immobilizing limbs with splints and bandages, even making use of arrows and spear shafts when they had no other material available.
One by one the Companions came to the King’s tent for a meeting of the council. There were no fires nor embers with which they could warm themselves, but the lamp hanging from the main pole spread some light and with it a slight sense of warmth. They were all painfully aware of the incredible and dramatic change in fortune their lives had undergone in the space of a few days – from the luxury and the indulgence of the palaces in Babylon and Susa to the ice and the hardships of this desperate undertaking.
Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) Page 12