Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  The frontier posts were once again in his hands, but Alexander’s troubles were far from over. Spitamenes and his fellow chieftains were now besieging Samarkand, so Alexander sent a force of mercenary infantry along with a few hundred cavalry to rescue the town, led by a Lycian diplomat named Pharnuches, who had served the Persians and spoke the local languages. Meanwhile the king stayed on the Jaxartes and supervised the construction of his new city, a project he now viewed as more important than ever as a military center for the region. He even held athletic games for his men to distract them from the fact that they were cut off from retreat to the south by thousands of Sogdian warriors.

  The Scythian tribes north of the river had heard about the rebellion and rushed to the border, hoping for a chance to cross over and do some raiding while the Macedonians were distracted. The king’s forces, however, were stationed in strength along the Jaxartes to discourage the Scythians from attempting the river. But they did remain on the far side and delighted in taunting the Macedonians, daring Alexander to cross the river so they could teach him a lesson about Scythian prowess in war. After almost three weeks of this endless harangue, the king was ready to strangle the Scythians with his bare hands. He sacrificed to the gods in preparation for his own raid across the river, but his prophet Aristander said the omens were bad. The king ordered him to try again in hope of better signs, but the entrails continued to speak of danger to him if he attacked the Scythians. It must have entered Alexander’s mind that Cyrus had died in a similar raid to the one he was now being warned against by the gods, but he was determined to risk death rather than be a laughingstock to barbarians.

  The king ordered hide boats prepared and stationed his artillery on the bank opposite the enemy. While the Scythians, who had never seen such devices, continued to hurl insults at the Macedonians, the catapults launched their missiles across the river and struck the warriors from a great distance. Several were wounded and one of the leaders killed, so the surprised Scythians pulled back from the bank while the battery continued. Alexander then launched his boats, placing his slingers and archers in the first to cross so that they could set up screening fire to protect the rest of the men as they landed. The Scythians were accomplished horsemen and put up a strong defense, striking the Macedonians then pulling away, but soon the Macedonian cavalry was across and the king struck out against the enemy, killing at least a thousand as they fled. It was so hot as Alexander chased them across the steppe that the army, which had apparently forgotten to pack water skins, drank from whatever stagnant puddles they could find. The king himself did likewise and almost immediately was struck with crippling dysentery, forcing him to break off the chase and be carried back to the city in a litter. Aristander had been proven right in his prediction of danger to the king, though in a less glorious form than Alexander might have wished.

  Meanwhile the Macedonians trapped in Samarkand were fighting off constant assaults by Spitamenes. But when the Sogdian leader heard that a relief force was approaching, he wisely broke off the assault and retreated. One of the defenders, the Lycian diplomat Pharnuches, chased him for many miles, but failed to appreciate that he was now on the steppes where the Sogdians were trained from childhood to fight. To make matters worse, the Sogdians had been joined by six hundred Scythian cavalry so that they now outnumbered the Macedonian forces. They led Pharnuches on until his men and horses were exhausted, then wheeled around and attacked, shooting arrows from horseback in deadly nomad fashion. The Macedonians fell apart, with Pharnuches explaining to the officers that he was a diplomat, not a soldier. The soldiers did their best, hiding in groves along a river to avoid arrows, but the Sogdians and Scythians were relentless. In a few hours almost all the Macedonians lay dead on the steppes, with only a few hundred escaping back to Alexander’s camp.

  This debacle was a propaganda disaster for the king, who knew that word would swiftly spread across the plains that the Macedonians were vulnerable. To counter this bad news, Alexander struggled from his sick bed and led a large but swift force of horsemen back to Samarkand, where Spitamenes had returned to continue the siege. The king covered almost two hundred miles in an incredible three days, approaching the city at dawn on the fourth day. The Sogdians fled in panic at his unexpected arrival, with Alexander close behind them. He rode past the site where the Macedonians had recently been massacred and took the time to bury them, but then carried on the chase across the steppes. Spitamenes and his men, however, knew the country too well and had faster horses, so the king was unable to catch them. In frustration and anger Alexander turned back and began to burn every Sogdian village he could find, killing all the natives because he suspected them of sympathizing with Spitamenes. After the last town was nothing but ashes, he posted garrisons throughout the land and brought his main force back across the Oxus to Bactria for the winter. His quick campaign in Sogdiana had now turned into a grueling guerrilla conflict with Spitamenes, the most dangerous opponent he would face in all his years at war.

  It had been months since Alexander had crossed the Hindu Kush into Bactria and Sogdiana. In that time he had lost hundreds of men to guerrilla strikes and ambushes by the elusive Spitamenes, struggled to maintain his hold on the Jaxartes frontier, and fought dozens of skirmishes against enemy cavalry who melted back into the steppes just when he began to gain the advantage. Add to this that he had been shot through the leg with an arrow, knocked senseless by a rock, and developed an ongoing intestinal disorder from contaminated water. Above all, he was no closer to securing Sogdiana for his empire than he had been a year earlier. As he sat in his tent across the river in Bactria with the snow starting to fall outside, he must have felt that the gods had deserted him.

  But there was some good news that long winter. Alexander’s boyhood friend Nearchus, who had been serving as satrap in Lycia, arrived along with other fresh officers and more than twenty thousand seasoned mercenaries. These much-needed troops were drawn from Greece and Syria, having marched for months from the Mediterranean to rendezvous with the army. With these recruits the king was confident that he could make a new start in his war against Spitamenes in the spring. He also received a second embassy from the Scythians who dwelt by the Caspian Sea, informing him their old king had died but that their new ruler wished to confirm their ties of friendship. These distant Scythians had nothing to do with his recent troubles on the Jaxartes, so Alexander was glad to renew his treaty with them. They brought an offer of marriage to their king’s daughter if the Macedonian leader was willing, but Alexander tactfully declined, claiming he was too busy fighting a war. Another embassy arrived from the Chorasmians living south of the Aral Sea, a people both Bessus and Spitamenes had courted to join in the rebellion against the Macedonians. Instead, their king, Pharsamenes, had decided that Alexander was more useful as an ally than an enemy and therefore sought his friendship. Pharsamenes had personally ridden to Alexander’s camp with fifteen hundred of his cavalry. He suggested that if Alexander wished to conquer the lands between the Aral and Caspian seas, he and his people would be glad to help. Of course, any such conquest would benefit Pharsamenes as it would eliminate his enemies and make him the most powerful ruler in the region. Again Alexander politely deferred, saying that first he must take India, but that he would certainly keep the offer in mind for a future campaign. He told Pharsamenes—and we have every reason to believe him—that his plan was to return to Macedonia after the Indian campaign and launch an attack on Scythia from the west. Combined with an assault from the east from his forts along the Jaxartes, he would squeeze the Scythians in a vise and become ruler of all the steppes of central Asia.

  When the long winter was finally over, Alexander renewed his campaign against Spitamenes with a promising strategy adapted to fighting nomad warriors. Instead of chasing the Sogdians across the plains with his entire army, he divided his troops into five fast-moving divisions so that he could strike the enemy in multiple places at the same time. The king put Hephaestion in charge of one divisio
n, Ptolemy another, his companions Perdiccas and Coenus the third and fourth, while he himself led the fifth group. There are few details recorded in the ancient sources describing the campaign that long summer, but we know the different forces split up and headed into Sogdiana to destroy any centers of resistance they could find and chase down the slippery enemy cavalry. The first goal they accomplished admirably, burning and ransacking villages across the land, but they were unable to catch Spitamenes. The wily Sogdian lord had retreated across the Jaxartes into Scythia along with his troops.

  As the months went by, the king may have thought he had pushed the Sogdian leader permanently into hiding, but Spitamenes soon showed he knew the value of patience. While Alexander and his divisions were distracted in Sogdiana, Spitamenes led his men across the Jaxartes all the way to the Oxus and into Bactria. With his Sogdian cavalry and hundreds of Scythian allies, he attacked one of the Bactrian forts and caught the Macedonian defenders completely off guard. He captured the outpost, killed the defenders, and took the commander hostage. Then Spitamenes moved to the key Bactrian town of Zariaspa, where Alexander had established his winter headquarters a few months earlier. He was unable to take the protected city, but he ravaged the surrounding area and carried off plenty of booty. The king had left only a skeleton defense in Zariaspa, mostly men recovering from their wounds along with some mercenaries, royal pages, and a few noncombatants, including Aristonicus, a harpist who had served in the Macedonian court since Philip’s day. These men were so incensed by the raid that they gathered together as many horses as they could find and set off to attack the Sogdians. They managed to surprise an isolated group of the raiders and killed quite a few, collecting the loot they had stolen before heading back toward the city. They were brave men, but lacking effective leadership they were easy prey for Spitamenes once he heard the news. The Sogdian lord ambushed them outside the city and slew almost everyone, including Aristonicus. Alexander later ordered a statue erected in honor of the bard at Delphi portraying him with a harp in one hand and a spear in the other.

  The king was still far away, but Craterus set out after Spitamenes when he heard about the ambush and chased the Sogdians and their Scythian allies out into the steppes. It was a risky move to enter the plains where the enemy felt so at home, but Craterus and his men overtook the raiders and killed more than a thousand of the Scythians, though Spitamenes once again disappeared into the steppes.

  At the end of the summer, Alexander left his lieutenant Coenus in northern Sogdiana with a large cavalry force to protect the province and—hoping against hope—to capture Spitamenes if he continued his raids into the winter months. Then the frustrated king returned to Samarkand to rest and catch up on administrative matters throughout his empire. Once again he was no closer to a solution of the Sogdian situation than he had been the previous autumn. He had spent two full campaigning seasons in the lands between the Oxus and Jaxartes without bringing stability to the region. He was desperate to move on to India, but he could not leave his northeastern frontier unsettled with a clever enemy like Spitamenes ranging through the province at will. He had to find a way to defeat the man, but in spite of his best efforts and gifted generalship, he had at last met a foe he could not beat.

  The Trojan War began when the goddess Strife rolled an apple into a banquet held by the gods. The message on the apple said it was for the most beautiful, leading to a quarrel among three goddesses, the judgment by young Paris, and the kidnapping of Helen from Greece. Now in distant Samarkand, an apple was again the cause of anger, death, and bitter regret. Alexander had set up an extensive postal service throughout his empire to deliver letters and orders, but on occasion the service also brought luxuries from home. On this autumn day, a shipment of fruit arrived all the way from Greece. Among the goods were beautiful apples that so impressed the king he sent for Cleitus to come and share them with him. He had known Cleitus, nicknamed the Black, since he was a boy, when Cleitus’ sister, Lanice, was Alexander’s wet-nurse. Though not as old as Parmenion, Cleitus had been an officer in Philip’s army and had also served Alexander in various senior posts since the expedition began. Alexander had always liked and trusted Cleitus, in spite of his being part of the old guard faction of conservative Macedonians, all the more so since he had saved the king’s life on the battlefield at the Granicus River.

  Cleitus was in the middle of a sacrifice when he received Alexander’s message, but one did not ignore a summons from the king and so he left the altar. The sheep he was about to offer to the gods had already been prepared with libations poured over them, but sheep being sheep, they blithely followed Cleitus as he made his way toward Alexander’s tent. It must have been an amusing sight, but when the king heard of it he was horrified. Such occurrences were omens from heaven, so he called his soothsayers to ask what it meant. They declared that sacrificial sheep following so close behind Cleitus could only bode ill for the Macedonian officer. Alexander was greatly troubled now, as he had had a dream just two nights earlier that Cleitus had been seated in black robes beside Parmenion and his sons, all dead. He therefore ordered sacrifices to be made to the gods for the protection of his old friend.

  After Cleitus washed up and joined Alexander in his quarters, a banquet began with the usual fine food and excessive drinking. The war in Sogdiana had not gone well the previous two yeas and the Macedonian officers, including the king, had been seeking solace in wine even more than usual. That night one of the court bards had composed a song satirizing the Macedonian generals who had failed to capture Spitamenes—carefully omitting the fact that Alexander had been equally unsuccessful in his attempts. The younger offices and the king delighted in the verses, laughing and encouraging the poet to continue. But the older officers were insulted as the song went on and grumbled among themselves that they were being blamed for an impossible situation. Some of Alexander’s sycophantic companions even began to insult his father, Philip, saying his son was an incomparably better soldier.

  Cleitus at last rose to his feet, as drunk as everyone else, and declared that it was shameful, even in jest, to insult loyal Macedonian soldiers in front of barbarians. Persians and the other foreign rabble at the king’s table were laughing at his friends, far better men than any of them. Alexander was amused, still seeing the whole affair as a harmless diversion, and teased Cleitus that he was just offering excuses for himself and his failure to capture Spitamenes, blaming his own lack of success on ill fortune instead of cowardice. Cleitus exploded at this and asked if it was his cowardice that had saved the king’s life at the Granicus or perhaps the king had forgotten all the Macedonian blood spilled so that he cold turn his back on Philip and claim an Egyptian god as his father?

  Now Alexander was truly angry as the mood in the tent turned to ice. He accused Cleitus of trying to stir up factions in the court, Macedonians against foreigners. Cleitus shot back that it was too late for that, since loyal Macedonians were already second-class soldiers who had to beg some Persian chamberlain for an audience with their own king! Alexander then lunged at Cleitus, but both men were restrained by their friends before they could come to blows. The king apologized to some Greeks standing near him for the crude behavior of his Macedonian officers, but Cleitus roared back that he should speak freely to all his guests, not just those toadies who bowed and scraped before him and his fine Persian clothes.

  Alexander lost control at this point and looked around for a weapon. Not seeing his sword—a prudent bodyguard had hidden it when the trouble began—he grabbed one of the imported apples and threw it at Cleitus. Still looking for his sword, the king raged and called out in the Macedonian dialect to sound the alert and summon his guards. The trumpeter was still sober and bravely refused, earning himself a beating from Alexander. But Cleitus would not back down and continued to hurl insults at the king. As he was dragged from the tent by his friends, he shouted at the king a line from the playwright Euripides:

  Oh, how rotten things are in Greece . . .

&
nbsp; Alexander, who knew Euripides well, would have had no trouble filling in the rest of the speech:

  . . . when the army sets up trophies of victory over the enemy,

  but the people don’t give credit to those who did the work.

  Instead the general receives the honor.

  He carries his spear as one among many,

  yet he did no more than a single soldier!

  Cleitus was halfway out of the tent when he broke away from his companions and stumbled back in to continue his tirade against the king. But before he could say anything more, Alexander shook off his own bodyguards and grabbed one of their spears. He then launched himself at Cleitus and ran him through.

  Almost immediately the king was filled with regret. He cried in agony that he had murdered his friend and pulled the spear from the dead body of Cleitus, bracing it against the floor so that he could throw himself on it. It was only the struggles of his friends and bodyguards that prevented the king from killing himself. They then dragged him to his quarters, where he collapsed in despair.