Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  Just as he was approaching the borders of Bactria, Alexander received news that made him regret his hasty decision to reappoint Satibarzanes as satrap of Aria. As soon as the Persian had put a few days travel between himself and the Macedonians, the governor massacred Anaxippus with his forty cavalry and defected to Bessus. His plan was to join the would-be Great King in his guerrilla war against Alexander from the eastern provinces. Taking a strong contingent of cavalry and archers, Alexander left Craterus in charge of the main force with orders to follow him and turned south across the high desert to Chortacana. Again the king was relying on his remarkable gift for speed to reach an enemy before he had time to organize an effective defense. Alexander raced almost seventy miles in two days and threw the city into panic when he arrived suddenly at the gates. Satibarzanes fled with a few of his local horsemen, while most of the troops deserted their posts in town and hid at a nearby wooded mountain. The king chased after the satrap but was unable to catch him, so he turned back to the mountain, where the majority of the soldiers had taken refuge. Craterus and the army had arrived by this point and were set to besieging Chortacana while Alexander surveyed the nearby mountain site to see how best to force the enemy out of hiding. It was a steep crag with cliffs and numerous precipices, making it exceedingly difficult to take by direct assault. The top was a grassy plateau, but the sides were covered by trees. At first Alexander tried cutting down a few of these to build a road to the top, but then a simpler plan occurred to him. He ordered his men to continue felling trees and place them in a giant circle around the whole forested mountain. Then, with a fire kindled, he set the mass ablaze. Flames shot up the sides of the peak on every side, setting the encircling forest on fire and choking the defenders in thick smoke. Some of the men tried to escape through the flames, but the Macedonians cut them down. A few threw themselves over the cliffs, though most died on the mountain, roasted alive.

  Alexander returned to the city of Chortacana and began to construct siege towers. When the inhabitants saw these and heard of the fate of the men on the mountain, they sent messengers to the king begging him to reserve his anger for Satibarzanes. They quickly surrendered and were pardoned by the king, who was in too much of a hurry to waste time. He left behind a garrison and renamed the city Alexandria-of-the-Arians, the first of many namesake towns he would establish in central Asia. Alexander was also gladdened by the timely arrival of reinforcements fresh from Antipater in Macedonia. There were almost seven thousand new troops, including over two thousand of the famed cavalry of Lydia. With these added forces, he decided on a change in plans. As he had already come so far off his original path, he decided to move against Bessus from the south, through the lands of Drangiana and Arachosia. It was a longer journey, but time spent securing these lands would deprive Bessus of soldiers and support. However, before he could deal with an enemy in the distant mountains, he had to first face a threat in the heart of his own camp.

  Philotas had caught up with Alexander after burying his brother and took up his place again as the leader of the old guard faction among the Macedonian troops. He was respected if not loved by most of the army, who regarded him as a brave and generous commander, but one who thought more of himself than modesty recommended. He enjoyed fine clothes and rich surroundings, prompting even his father, Parmenion, to warn him more than once that he should take care not to provoke the envy and disdain of those around him. Alexander had known Philotas for as long as he could remember but never liked him, though even he had to admit that he was as good a soldier as his father in a tight spot. The family of Parmenion and Philotas came from old Macedonian stock with connections to almost all the leading figures at court. If anything had happened to Alexander on the Persian campaign, it was almost certain that Parmenion would have taken his place. With the army behind him, he would have become the new king of Macedonia and all the lands they had conquered.

  Alexander was aware of the standing and power of Parmenion’s family, which was one reason he had worked so hard ever since the invasion began to reduce the influence of the old general. With Parmenion far away in Ecbatana guarding the treasury he was less of a direct threat, but he still had thousands of troops under his command and all the money necessary to hire new soldiers. If Parmenion decided to stage a coup, there was a decent chance it could succeed, especially with Philotas already in place to take command of the army. Alexander knew the bloody history of his country better than most and could never forget that few of his ancestors had died in peaceful old age. Conspiracy and assassination were second nature to the Macedonian nobility—and the king who ignored the signs of a plot usually ended up dead. But now the rewards for a successful insurrection were not just the kingdom of Macedonia, but an empire that stretched across much of the known world.

  Alexander had heard rumors of plots by Parmenion and Philotas ever since Egypt, but he had dismissed these as the usual camp gossip spread by those who resented the influence of the general’s family. Nevertheless, the king had arranged to keep an eye on Philotas through an unexpected source. When Parmenion had captured the treasury at Damascus three years earlier, one of the prizes he gave his son was a beautiful slave girl from Greece named Antigone. Philotas was prone to self-flattering pillow talk and frequently told Antigone that Alexander was little more than a boy who owed all his success in war to himself and Parmenion. The slave girl repeated these claims to her confidants until word finally reached Alexander through his companion Craterus. The king brought the girl before him for a private briefing, then ordered her to report directly to him in the future anything of interest Philotas said as they lay together in bed. Over the months and years that followed, the general’s son continued to complain about Alexander, but revealed nothing that was truly damning about himself or his father. Still, Alexander watched patiently and waited for signs of trouble.

  While the army was outside Chortacana on the way to Bactria, a Macedonian named Dimnus instigated a plan to assassinate Alexander. His motives are a mystery, but he told his lover Nichomachus of the plot in an intimate moment and mentioned the names of those involved. Nicomachus wanted nothing to do with a conspiracy against the king and so told his own brother Cebalinus about the matter and begged him to get word to Alexander. Cebalinus apparently did not have access to the king and so told Philotas of the plot, expecting him to inform Alexander immediately. Whether because Philotas put little stock in the chain of rumors or because of darker motives, he dismissed Cebalinus with the retort that Alexander was too busy to be bothered by baseless accusations. He then withheld the information from the king during their meetings over the next few days. Cebalinus, however, was not to be put off so easily. Through another associate he did get word to the king, who ordered the arrest of Dimnus. When the soldiers came for him, Dimnus fought back and was killed, confirming his guilt in the eyes of Alexander.

  The companions of the king who had so long disliked Philotas now saw a perfect opportunity to be rid of the man. They came to Alexander and suggested that the role of Philotas in the conspiracy had been much deeper than initially reported. The king needed little encouragement to pursue a course of action close to his own heart. He may have suspected a plot was afoot, since he had recently begun to open mail from his soldiers back to Macedonia. He called Philotas before him and demanded to know why he had not reported the rumors of a conspiracy against him. There was little Philotas could say except that he did not give the reports enough credit to bring them before the king, as they seemed to him to spring from just another tiresome lovers’ quarrel. He apologized and said that it would never happen again. Alexander made sure that it wouldn’t when he had Philotas immediately arrested and taken off for interrogation under torture. The king also posted guards on all the roads out of camp to stop any word of his son’s arrest from reaching Parmenion.

  Alexander listened behind a screen as Philotas was mercilessly flogged and beaten under the direction of Craterus. Torture broke Philotas as it would any man so that soon h
e was ready to confess to anything to stop the pain. He did, however, retain a bit of the old wit when he asked Craterus what exactly it was he wanted him to confess, so he could be sure to get it right.

  With a forced confession but no hard evidence against him, Philotas was summarily brought before the Macedonian army for trial by the assembled soldiers according to ancient tradition. It was a risky move for Alexander as many of the men respected Philotas as a commander even though they thought him a pompous ass in his private life. But Philotas made a grave mistake when he responded to the charges in proper Greek rather than the Macedonian dialect of the rank and file soldiers. They thought this pretentious and turned on him, condemning him to death in spite of flimsy proof. Alexander was pleased and watched as Philotas was stoned to death along with several others who had been implicated in the plot.

  Philotas was dead, and it was certain that Parmenion would soon hear of his son’s execution and quite probably rise up against Alexander in response. It was unthinkable that the father could remain alive once the son was dead. Therefore the king sent his trusted friend Polydamus with a few Arab guides on racing camels back to Ecbatana at breakneck speed. They reached the Median capital after many days of travel and brought a letter in great secrecy to Parmenion’s four lieutenants, including Alexander’s companion Cleander. They read their orders in disbelief, but told the messenger they would carry out the king’s commands. Parmenion knew Polydamus and liked him, so he was surprised but pleased to see the man accompanying his commanders as they approached him while he strolled in a beautiful grove near his residence. It had been weeks since he had received any word from Alexander and he was anxious for news of both the campaign and his only surviving son. Polydamus first gave him a letter from the king reporting on his ambitious war plans in the east, to which Parmenion commented that Alexander ought to slow down after already achieving so many conquests. Then Polydamus handed him a letter supposedly from Philotas that Parmenion began to read with pleasure. It was then that Cleander pulled out his sword and stabbed the old general in the side, then plunged the blade into his throat to silence his cries. The other commanders joined in, leaving Parmenion, one of the greatest soldiers in Macedonian history, a bloody corpse in the gardens of Ecbatana.

  When the general’s soldiers heard what had happened, they rushed to the scene with swords drawn ready to kill Parmenion’s murderers. Cleander had their leaders brought in and read to them a letter direct from Alexander issuing the orders for Parmenion’s death and explaining the reasons. The troops were fond of Parmenion, but when they heard the claims of Alexander that the general and his son had been plotting against him they grudgingly accepted the news. They did demand that they be given the body of Parmenion for a proper burial, allowing Polydamus to take the head back to Alexander for verification of death as was the custom.

  Had Parmenion and Philotas really plotted against the life of Alexander? Ancient historians differ on the matter considerably, with most seeing the charges as little more than a trumped-up excuse to eliminate longtime rivals. As is often the case, final judgment regarding the alleged conspiracy is impossible to reach. Nevertheless, if there were to have been a successful coup against the king, Parmenion and his son would have been the most likely instigators. It may well be that Alexander took advantage of an unrelated plot to stir up feelings against the pair and eliminate once and for all a potential menace. Leaving Parmenion in a position of power as the army headed into the wilds of central Asia for what could be years of fighting would have been dangerous in any case. Whether or not there was any truth to the conspiracy of Philotas, Alexander had removed a very real threat to his throne.

  Alexander and his army had marched almost fifteen hundred miles since they left Persepolis the previous spring. They had traveled from the Persian homeland north to Media, chased Darius east across Parthia and taken a detour into Hyrcania on the Caspian Sea. Assuming they were making a short trip straight to Bactria, Alexander had then instead led his men south into the highlands of Aria and onward to the borders of Drangiana. Any sensible commander would have made a winter camp at this point and given his men several months to rest. But whether because of his determination to catch the rebel king Bessus or because he thought that a prolonged period of inactivity so soon after the Philotas affair might serve to fan the fires of discontent, Alexander decided to press on through the winter snows toward the peaks of the Hindu Kush.

  The Drangians were subdued easily enough, but Alexander received word that there was trouble back in Aria, once again stirred up by Satibarzanes and his band of Persian renegades. The king had suffered enough from the rebel satrap, but he did not want to turn his entire army around yet again to deal with him. Instead, he sent back his old friend and trusted cavalry commander Erigyius of Lesbos along with a force of more than six thousand men, including his Persian companion Artabazus, to confront Satibarzanes. The details are sketchy, but there was a fierce battle in which the satrap and his men fought bravely with the Macedonian soldiers until Erigyius and Satibarzanes finally faced each other in single combat. The Greek commander struck the satrap in the face with a spear and killed him, prompting the rebel soldiers to flee into the mountains.

  The path that Alexander took to Bactria followed the Helmand River through an arid plateau, a reasonable choice as fresh water for a large army was always a serious concern. Just as the river began to curve north into the mountains, the king founded another Alexandria, accompanied by the usual sacrifices to the gods. This city commanding the southern approaches of the Hindu Kush would thrive through the centuries, preserving a trace of its original name in the much modified form of Kandahar. To recruit citizens for his colony, Alexander relied mostly on volunteers, including a large group of camp followers who must have taken one look at the icy peaks ahead and decided the location of this Alexandria seemed promising. The pioneers who settled these cities in distant Asia profited from generous grants of land and the chance to begin a new life. A weary soldier who was a nobody back in Macedonia might build a fine house and sit on the city council in a such a place. A poor wine seller who had trailed after the army for thousands of miles could become a wealthy merchant on this promising frontier, while a struggling prostitute might marry an officer with plenty of gold in his pockets and settle down to become a leading matron of the town. For Alexander, these foundations served as crucial garrisons throughout his empire. They were indeed islands of Greek civilization in the East that would have great influence on local cultures for hundreds of years, but most important to the king, they were military settlements to keep the natives in line.

  The Macedonians had never imagined mountains like the Hindu Kush rising before them north of Kandahar. Stories about these peaks had filtered west to Greece for years, so that educated men like Alexander knew there was a lofty range of mountains on the eastern borders of the Persian Empire higher than anything in the Aegean world. Greek scholars sometimes called them the Caucasus, thinking they were an extension of the mountains between the Black Sea and the Caspian, perhaps even a branch of the same peaks that rose in central Asia Minor. But even soldiers from the rugged Balkans were unprepared for the Hindu Kush, a towering range extending southwest from the Karakorum and Himalayas. These mountains averaged almost fifteen thousand feet in height, with the highest peaks soaring well above twenty thousand feet. They cut off Persia, Aria, and Drangiana from Bactria to the north and the valley of the Indus River to the east. The only way through these peaks was a small number of high passes such as those used by caravans crossing from the south to Bactria or the Khyber Pass linking the region to India. The valleys of the Hindu Kush were inhabited by fiercely independent tribes who barely acknowledged Persian rule. They made their living through pastoralism, brigandage, and export of the few resources they had to offer, including pistachios and lapis lazuli—the Hindu Kush being the only known source for this precious blue stone in the ancient world.

  The journey north from Kandahar to the valley
of Kabul took weeks of struggle over snow-clogged passes and icy peaks. The Macedonians were tough as nails, but even they were susceptible to altitude sickness and snow blindness. Their eyesight became so bad that often they would not realize they had stumbled into a mountain village with its distinctively cone-shaped houses until they were practically on top of it. Then they would force the surrender of the frightened inhabitants and take whatever supplies were available, leaving the villagers to starve until the next harvest. On the march between villages, many of the men would become so fatigued by the altitude that they lay down on the ice and refused to go on. It was only with the greatest effort that their companions were able to rouse them to continue the march. But in spite of the enormous difficulties, town by town, valley by valley, Alexander subdued the tribes of the Hindu Kush through the harsh winter months.

  When the army finally reached the Kabul valley in early spring, Alexander gave his men a brief but much needed rest. Between them and Bactria were still some of the highest peaks in the Hindu Kush. It would have been prudent to wait in Kabul until early summer when the snow in the passes north had begun to melt, but the king wanted to catch Bessus off guard. He did take the time to establish another garrison town nearby, Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus, populating it again with conscript locals, army volunteers, and those too weary or injured to continue. The choice before the king then was which of the several passes to the north to take. The logical choice—if any choice could be called logical under such conditions—was one of the western corridors rising to an altitude of no more than ten thousand feet. But this was precisely what Bessus was expecting him to do, though not so early in the season. The Persian leader had already applied a scorched-earth policy to the lands north of these passes and had his men waiting to strike the Macedonians as they struggled across the mountains. The most unlikely option was the easternmost route, the Khawak Pass, at twelve thousand feet above sea level the highest and most difficult trail north through the Hindu Kush into Bactria. It was a precipitous crossing with little shelter over deep snow that not even the locals would have attempted that time of year. But, of course, this was exactly the path Alexander chose. With tens of thousands of men behind him, the king led his army out of Kabul and up into the highest mountains any of them had ever seen.