The Virtues of War

by Steven Pressfield

  Report of Hephaestion’s tirade tore through Pella on wings. Everywhere men clapped him on the shoulder in approbation; when he entered the market, saddlers and greengrocers stood to cheer. My father summoned me in private. “This is the boy you have chosen out of all to be your friend? He seems to me a man already.” Philip’s highest praise. After that, it was not considered effeminate to study poetry or to labor to learn proper Greek.

  This was Hephaestion who indicted me, in his way, after the holocaust of Thebes. What could I say to him? As boys we were taught, in our tutor Aristotle’s phrase, that happiness consisted in “the active exercise of one’s faculties in conformity with virtue.” But virtue in war is written in the enemy’s blood.

  Regret, Telamon had taught, has no place in the soldier’s kit of war. I know this is true. But I know, as well, that no act comes without a price. All men must answer for their crimes. I shall for mine.

  The razing of Thebes, however, had accomplished its purpose. It had showed Greece who held the reins. No more cities revolted; no further insurrections flared. Instead, embassies poured into Pella, tendering congratulation and lading me with effusions of praise. The Greeks had been rooting for me all along, it seemed. They couldn’t do enough to help now. “Lead us, Alexander!” their ambassadors declared. “Lead us against Persia!”

  Contingents of volunteers came in from Athens and all the states of the League. The army enrolled seven thousand heavy infantry and six hundred cavalry; five thousand more foot troops signed up for pay. The expeditionary force now numbered nearly forty-two thousand, counting the ten thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse already across the straits, securing the bridgehead in Asia.

  The hour of the Great Embarkation approached. Pella had become an armed camp. The place boiled over with eagerness for action; anticipation had reached such a pitch that even the animals could not sleep. An act was needed. Some gesture on my part, like Brasidas’s when he burned his ships at Methone, so the men would know this step was fatal, no turning back.

  I called the army together at Dium for the Festival of the Muses. The coastline is spectacular there; in the distance Ossa and Olympus ascend, snow-mantled. The nation encamped across the grounds, sixty thousand men-at-arms (including those who would remain at home, under Antipater, as a garrison force), with that number twice over in wives and mistresses, grooms, squires, and the general crowd. I threw a great feast. It broke my purse and emptied the treasury. Parmenio and Antipater sat in stations of honor, with the other generals and officers ringed about.

  I began giving away my lands. In Macedon the king’s holdings are called basileia cynegesia, the Royal Hunt. These comprised at my accession about a third of the kingdom. Further, all provinces captured in war are considered “under the Crown.” The result was that I held mines, farm- , pasture- , and timberlands in tens of thousands of acres. To each of Philip’s generals I gave baronies, with titles and lands in perpetuity. My own estate, Lake Bluff, I presented to Parmenio, who, to his great credit, declined. Brigade commanders received princely holdings. To Hephaestion I gave the Royal Hunt of Eordaea, my father’s own parkland, and estates nearly as brilliant to every officer down to the rank of captain. I gave Antigonus three valleys on the upper Strymon. To Telamon went a village overlooking Torone Bay. The more I gave away, the lighter I felt. I wished to strip my baggage to the buckle, leaving nothing but my horse and my lance. I gave fisheries away, and mines, and river and lake frontages. Down to each sergeant, men got horse properties or sheep pastures. Each man of the phalanx received a farm. I forgave all debts and granted exemptions of taxation to every man under arms. Everything that had been Philip’s, and all that was mine, I conferred upon my friends. Timber tracts across the frontier, I returned to the Illyrian princes from whom I had seized them, with more parcels added, now they were our allies; wheat provinces across the Danube and pasturelands in Thrace I presented to our comrades of Thessaly, Paeonia, and Agriania. With each presentation, fresh ovations ascended. It was Perdiccas, my dear mate, when I had fixed upon him the barony of Thriassa, who asked, before all, “What will you keep for yourself, Alexander?”

  I had not even considered this.

  “My hopes,” I replied, intending no jest. The assembly erupted into citations such as, it seemed, would never end.

  Only three men remained without bounties. My brave commanders Coenus, Love Locks, and Eugenides (Payday from Chaeronea). Their names had not been called. You could see they experienced keen dismay over this. No doubt they feared they had incurred my displeasure for cause unknown, and this plunged them into desolation.

  The second officer, Payday, had grounds to believe this, for he had nearly deserted on the Danube, for love of a maid of the northern tribes, and I had only spared him, he believed, out of respect for his father, who had been a syntrophos, a schoolmate, of Philip. In secret in the interim, however, my agents had tracked down this girl, Payday’s sweetheart; she being a free woman (so we couldn’t take her by force), I had petitioned her by private dispatch to accept the man’s hand. She was here now in her bridal garland, concealed from her lover’s sight, as were the darlings of Coenus and Love Locks, likewise in ignorance of this design.

  When at last I called the trio forward and presented them with their brides, the tumult of celebration seemed to mount to heaven. We married them on the spot.

  Do you know, in all the excitement, only one person thought to give a gift to me. This was Elyse, the bride of Payday. She presented me with a pair of dancing slippers, stitched by her own hand. This was the happiest I had ever been. So much so that, looking toward Mount Olympus, brilliant beneath the moon, I thought that not even the gods must know satisfaction as sweet as this.

  Now the generals rose to speak. “Brothers,” declared Antigonus One-Eye, “when Philip was slain, I confess I questioned in my heart if his son could fill his boots. Clearly Alexander possessed the courage, the genius, and the ambition. But could one so young command the loyalty of veterans and senior commanders? My friends, tonight we have our answer! For I see in our young king’s eyes that his own selfish ends are nothing to him, but glory alone is the prize he labors for. As the Hyrcanian said of Cyrus the Great,

  I swear to you, friends, by all the gods, he seems to me

  happier in doing us kindnesses than in enriching himself.”

  Man after man arose to second such sentiments. Payday addressed me with tears running into the brush of his beard. “You have presented me with a bride, Alexander, my heart’s darling, and more wealth than I ever dreamt of. Yet, by Zeus’s hand, if you will give me leave first to seed an heir with my beloved, I wish not to idle upon these lands or to take pleasure in their bounties, but to arm and follow you wherever you lead!”

  My gallant commander Coenus addressed me next. “Take us to Sardis, to Babylon, to Persepolis herself. I for one, Alexander, shall not rest until I behold you seated upon the throne of Persia itself!”

  Book Four

  SHAME AT FAILURE

  Eleven

  THE BATTLE OF THE GRANICUS

  ARE YOU FOLLOWING OUR NARRATIVE, ITANES? I see you like the “bloody parts” best. Keep pace with the army, then, as it marches east out of Macedon, crosses the straits between Europe and Asia (in the opposite direction from that taken by Xerxes of Persia a hundred and fifty years earlier) and plants its lion standard on soil claimed, in our time, by Darius the Third. Where is he now, the current Lord of the East? He has not deigned to greet us, avengers of ancient wrongs, but has sent his subordinates, governors of the western provinces, with a hundred thousand horse and foot, to drive us back into the sea. His army marshals at Zeleia, in the shadow of holy Troy, blocking the so-called Asian Gates. But let us get straight to the action.

  The closest I have come to being killed, so far (except at Gaza, when I was shot by a bolt from a catapult), was in this battle at the Granicus River. There the Persian knight Rhoesaces landed a blow with his saber to the fore crown of my helmet that lacked
only a thumb’s breadth from taking off the top of my head. Line cavalry of Persia are armed with the javelin and the acinaces dagger, or were at that time, before they learned from us the superiority of the lance, except the One Thousand and the Kinsmen, whose arms are gifts of the Crown and who fight with the Damascene saber, a slashing weapon, identical to the one Cyrus the Great used. The sword is single-edged, extremely strong and heavy, with haft and blade forged of a single piece of Syrian steel.

  Rhoesaces’ blow sheared away the crown of my helmet at the same instant my lance entered his breast just below the right nipple. The impact of his blow took the iron foreplate of my helmet clean off, along with its crest of white kestrel feathers, not to mention opening a gash across my scalp that took, after the fight, twenty-seven stitches to sew back in place. At the time I felt nothing and was discommoded only by the blood sheeting into my eyes. There is a secret that all wounded men know, and the secret is this: When you know your wound won’t kill or permanently disable you, you enjoy it. You take pride in it. At that time in the action we had already lost thirty of the bravest Companions of Socrates Redbeard’s squadron, who had made the initial assault and suffered terribly beneath the fusillade of the foe, manning the bluffs above the crossing. The agony of these heroes cried out to me, whose order had sent them to their end. I wanted to bleed more, and suffer more, for their sake.

  When the king of Macedon charges onto the foe at the head of his Companions, he is flanked by knights of such valor, mounted upon such superlative stock, drilled to such a pitch of prowess, and incented by such a drive for glory, as to make the force effectively irresistible. Nothing in warfare, ancient or modern, is comparable to the shock of this arm. No analogy can portray it. Black Cleitus once said he felt, at the gallop on the wing of the leading wedge, as if he were riding some spectacular warship of iron, driven before the gale. That’s not bad, except it leaves out the fundamental element that gives the charge of the Companions its invincibility. I mean the heat and breath of its living, churning rush. It is not mechanical. It is visceral. At the gallop in the embolon’s point, I can smell the garlic on Telamon’s breath to my left. My boot bangs against the shoulder of Hephaestion’s mount, Swift, on my right; I feel the bronze of its breastplate and smell the turf of the divots torn up by our rush. Bucephalus beneath me is so hot that steam rises from his flesh; the jets of his nostrils scald to the touch. I feel his will, not as an extension of mine, but as a force generated by his own valiant heart. He is alive and aware not as a beast but as a warrior. His joy fires me. I feed upon it, as I feel him feed upon mine. He loves this. It is what he was born for.

  As our leading wedge plunges into the shallows of the Granicus and the javelins of the foe rip past our ears with a sound like the tearing of linen, my horse and I enter a kind of ecstasy, whose essence is surrender to fate. I feel the shock of the sand and gravel bottom as Bucephalus’s hooves receive it and transfer it up his forelegs. I am leaning forward to drive and direct him; I feel the impulsion of his hindquarters as his spine extends and contracts; he is collected beneath me; I ride a bolt of thunder.

  We strike the foe. The smell is of stone and piss and iron. What can be prepared for, has been. What can be thought out, has. Where we are now is the sphere of pure chance. A score of missiles make us their object; a hundred hearts cry heaven’s aid to bring us down. Nothing can protect us. Not our armor, not our will, not our mates at our shoulders (though in moments Black Cleitus’s blade will hack off at the elbow the right arm of the Persian knight Spithridates as he poises a blow to send me to hell). Only the lord of Olympus Himself, to whom I, as all within the jaws of death, pray without ceasing.

  You have asked, Itanes, if I feel fear. I answer, I may not. The soldier in the line is permitted to feel terror; the commander never. Too much depends upon him—the lives of his mates, the fate of the action. He cannot allow himself the luxury of fear. I eat mine, as a lion devours a kid. I consume it by my will to glory and my obligation to the corps.

  The Granicus is a swift and shallow stream, descending from Mount Ida near the source of the Scamander, which waters the plains of Troy. Its course winds through larch and alder woods, dropping fast and cutting deep through the marine conglomerate of the seacoast; it turns round Ida’s shoulder, carving a straight stony channel north toward the Propontis, across the plain of the Greek city of Adrasteia. The field is sandy but firm, good riding turf. A fine site for an army of Asia to meet and throw back an invader.

  As I said, King Darius is not present. I have been sending riders forward all day, seeking sign of his chariot and distinctive armor. He is a thousand miles east, we learn, on pillows at Susa or Persepolis. I am bitterly disappointed.

  The Lord of Asia believes surrogates will suffice to repel me.

  Our army emerges onto the plain of the Granicus late in the day, after marching four hours from Priapus. Two hours of daylight remain. The Persians are drawn up on the far bank. Their front is all cavalry, twenty thousand, give or take (nearly four times our number), a mile and a half end to end. Their knights do not wait beside their horses, but sit them, in armor. To their rear—well behind, nearly a quarter mile—are marshaled the foe’s heavy infantry, Greek mercenaries, mostly Arcadians and Peloponnesians, with some Spartans, six or seven thousand in all, a formidable force, though ours outnumbers it significantly. These foot troops are reinforced by what looks like another sixty thousand in local levy, Phrygians, Mysians, Armenians, Paphlagonians, conscripts doubtless, not even soldiers but farmers and laborers who will bolt at the first scraped knee. We are a few hundred short of forty-three thousand—sarissa infantry in six regiments of fifteen hundred each; three thousand in the Royal Guards brigades, armed as heavy infantry; with supporting divisions of Odrysian, Triballian, Illyrian, Paeonian, allied Greek, and mercenary infantry, both light- and heavy-armed, and the nearly ten-thousand-strong bridgehead force of Macedonian regulars and Thracian mercenaries, totaling another thirty thousand. Our horse are eight squadrons of Companion Cavalry under Philotas, two hundred men in each (though some are overstrength to two-fifty), except the Royal Squadron under Black Cleitus, which is three hundred. This Macedonian element is eighteen hundred total, as is the Thessalian Heavy Horse under Calas, serving beneath Parmenio, who will take the left. The Royal Lancers make another eight hundred, in four squadrons, all Macedonian; the squadron of Paeonian Light Horse adds two hundred; six hundred in allied Greek cavalry; four hundred of Thrace; five hundred Cretan archers and about the same in javelineers of Agriania. The army emerges onto the plain, about a mile from the river. “Now,” I instruct Telamon, who will pass the order to form the battle line. “Smartly.”

  The corps deploys from order of march to line of attack. Cavalry and missile troops take the right; to their left are Nicanor’s Royal Guardsmen; then, in order, filling the center, the heavy brigades of Perdiccas, Coenus, Amyntas Andromenes, Craterus, Meleager, and Philip Amyntas; the left of the line are Thracians, mercenaries, and allied Greeks, this last under Antigonus One-Eye, with the allies, hired cavalry, and Thessalians comprising the wing. I ride at the fore about an eighth of a mile, onto what passes for a hill but feels more like a pimple; we are already calling it “the Pimple.” As couriers I have eleven aides-de-camp, bright, ambitious officers on fast, nimble horses with plenty of bottom. As each unit of a division has a rotation, so do these aides; they wait to my rear; their eyes never leave me. At a sign from Telamon the next courier comes forward to receive his dispatch and to speed away. I do not relay the text in person, but pass it by Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Eumenes, or Red Attalus, who, with eleven other knights, comprise my agema, or combat Bodyguard. The first word is the commander to whom the message is addressed. Next the text. Last, any query. “Philotas, set the line at three hundred yards back from the river, one squadron deep, in Dragon’s Teeth by fifties. Stand easy. Do you need anything?” Off goes the aide at the gallop. By the time the second, third, and fourth couriers have been given their messages and ha
ve sped away, the first is back with Philotas’s response.

  “Rest!” The infantry looses the leather carrying slings that take the weight of their sarissas; they plunge the butt spikes of the weapons into the earth; the upright pikes look like a forest of boughless trees with one leaf of iron. The troops drop to one knee, easing the shields slung across their chests, letting the ground take the weight but keeping the strap buckled across their shoulders. Each file of sixteen has its squire and servant; these lads now scurry from man to man, passing skins of wine. The soldiers take it straight into their cupped hands. It is remarkable how much a man can suck down when fear is on him.

  This past month, as we have crossed from Europe to Asia Minor, I have spent every night in conference with our forward agents and “men in place.” These assemble now on horseback about my colors. I send them forward to scout the Persian front. They will tell me which units are where, commanded by whom, composed of what elements, and in what numbers.

  These fellows—spies, if you like—are indispensable to any army. Some are deserters from the foe. Most are exiles, patriots of nations under the Persian heel. I have scores of them. In Greece, Philip had hundreds.

  The types are interesting. One would expect villains. But you find heroes, visionaries. One must respect these fellows. They risk not career or profit, but their lives and the lives of their families. If our cause fails, they will be treated by their countrymen not as soldiers but as traitors.

  How does one find such men? Easy. They find you. One man knows another, and this man brings a brother or friend. This was how my father did it. Advancing his army to threaten a state, Philip dispatched envoys to put forward his list of grievances. At the same time, he had agents in place within the foe’s walls, so that when citizens of the state in question assembled to debate in public or private, there was never any deficiency of speakers disposed toward Philip, primed with arguments, lubricated with cash, and motivated by the prospect of ascendancy beneath his rule. Carrying on, Philip included in his retinue the sons of the state’s leading families, either as officers, commanding their own troops, or as Royal Pages, part of his tent academy. I have no few myself in this corps. Our so-called allied Greeks, twelve thousand foot and six hundred horse, are all hostages, in fact if not in name. They cannot go home and they know it; and if they fail me, for cause false or fair, they shall receive no appeal.