The Virtues of War

by Steven Pressfield

  By now, the full length of our mile-and-a-half front will be moving. The regiments of sarissa infantry will be entering the river on the oblique, Nicanor’s Royal Guardsmen first on the right, then Perdiccas’s brigade, Coenus’s next, and the other four in order. If the enemy’s center stands, the Companion Cavalry will tear him up on our right. If he pulls more companies out to aid this wing, the phalanx will mount out of the river behind the spear points of its sarissas. When the foe cracks at one point, every other element will break and run.

  This is how I see it; this is how it unfolds. The fight plays out exactly as I have envisioned, save one magnificent and nearly decisive shock: the spectacular valor of the Persian knights.

  The fight at the ford becomes a series of rushes upon my person. This continues throughout the struggle in the river, up onto the bluffs, and well across the hinter ground.

  When a champion of Persia charges, he cries out his name and his matronymic. This is so that if he achieves glory, his fellows know whom to honor, and if he falls, whom to mourn. We do not learn this till afterward from prisoners. We believe the Persians are simply mad, as each one yells something different as he plows into us. In Macedon, boys are taught to fight not as individuals but as pairs and triples; we are schooled to form against an enemy’s rush into “swallowtails,” inverted wedges with the leader at the base and two wingmen at the fore. The wings feed an attacker into the jaws, then fall upon him from the flanks. The effect of this is terrific against such foes as the horse tribesmen of Thrace, upon whom our cavalry learned and practiced it, who know only to fight as solitary champions. Against the Persians, who compound their vulnerability by dueling not with the lance, as we do to tremendous effect, but with the javelin and the saber, the effect is doubly devastating. Further, our heavy cavalry are protected by a front-and-back bronze corselet, while the enemy employs a breastplate only, with no protection for his back—and many disdaining a helmet as well. This concession to pride costs the foe terribly, for against the penetrating power of our lances, not even the plate of their chest armor is sufficient, whereas our fore-and-afters, and especially our iron helmets, prove of outstanding utility against the slashing saber. In combat of this type, it is no shame to strap plate across your back, as men are trying to hack you to pieces (your own, in the confusion, as well as the foe) from every quarter.

  At the ford of the Granicus not only two armies clash but two opposed concepts of warfare. The Persians duel in the grand and ancient manner; the Macedonians in the modern. The proud hearts of the Crown Kinsmen of Persia cannot endure the prospect of being rolled over by a phalanx of common foot troops. Where the king and champions of Macedon fight, there the knights of the East must duel. So they bolt their stations in the line. Impelled by pride, champion after champion turns his division over to subordinates and spurs in person, with his honor guard of knights, to that wing of the field where a brilliant charge and a noble death await. The most telling observation of the day is this: that, though the Persian champions take station originally at the head of their contingents across the entire two-mile front, by battle’s end their corpses are collected all at one spot, the river ford, where I cross.

  Craterus slays Arbupales. Hephaestion takes down Omares with a single thrust and would have served the same to Arsames, whom his rush has unhorsed, if the Persian’s squire did not spur in (the grooms of the East ride to battle alongside their masters) and catch him up by the arm. My lance slays Mithridates when he rushes before his escort, crying my name, and moments later fells Rhoesaces as his saber nearly shears off my scalp. Cleitus cuts down Spithridates, saving my life. (Arsites escapes to Phrygia, only to hang himself for shame.) Philotas kills Petenes. Socrates Redbeard slays Pharnaces. Mithrobarzanes and Niphates, each rushing alone, are taken down by swallowtails of Companions. The latter two transit more than a mile of front to fall at this site.

  In other words, every prominent noble of the foe has abandoned his division and crossed the field to come after me.

  When the fight is over, both shoulder pieces of my corselet have been sheared away; the facing of my breastplate, with its Gorgon’s head and the Hours bossed in silver, is so battered, one cannot identify a single emblem. My gorget, which I had almost left behind because of its weight, has been torn so by a saber slash that three fingers can be thrust through the perforation. The fabric of my tunic is so saturated with blood and sweat that I cannot peel it off, but have to slice it away with the edge of a sword. Bucephalus’s breastplate is pierced in six places; a chunk the size of a steak has been hacked out of his right hindquarter. His reins have been sheared through and his headpiece torn away. The coat of his chest and forelegs is so stiff with matted blood and sand that neither soap nor oil can clear it but the grooms have to cut it clean with a razor.

  On our left, the regiments of horse and foot under Parmenio have fought their way out of the river, driving the Persian cavalry before them. When the enemy wing breaks at the ford, the whole front gives way. The foe’s horsemen make their escape in a sweep of dust like a squall line crossing a bay.

  The foe’s Greek mercenaries remain. Sixty-seven hundred on the rising ground, who have not even got into the fight, the whole thing is over so quickly. They are foot troops; they can’t ride away like their Persian masters. I order them enveloped. They compact their ranks into a defensive perimeter, projecting the spear points of their eight-footers. Night approaches. I rein, with Parmenio, Black Cleitus, Perdiccas, Coenus, Craterus, Philotas, and Hephaestion, before the enemy’s bristling square.

  Where is Memnon? I will spare the Greeks’ lives if they spit him up. The ranking mercenary is a Spartan named Clearchus, grandson of the famous Clearchus who fought with Xenophon; when he comes forward, citing his lineage and swearing by the sons of Tyndareus that Memnon has fled, our men shower him with profanity.

  The Spartan pleads for his comrades’ lives. His troops are spawned of poverty, he declares; landless, serving only for pay, and bound by no loyalty to the Persian king. Gladly will they serve Alexander now.

  “Serve in hell!” our men bawl.

  They hate these Greeks who have spurned our cause and turned against their countrymen for gold.

  The Spartan implores me. I make my heart stone. “Son of Leonidas, prepare to stand and die.”

  At my signal, the slaughter begins. I do not simply observe. I direct the massacre. Where it flags, I drive it forward. The Greeks are crying for their lives, pledging ransom, service, calling out the names of men I know, my father’s name and my mother’s. They enlist posterity’s judgment of me and call upon heaven, beseeching mercy.

  I give them death instead.

  It is dark now. We need torches to see the men we are butchering. I do not cry cease until beyond a third have been slain and the survivors so riven with horror that their weapons fall from their fists and no command can make them pick them up again. They surrender on their knees. But I will not repatriate them, these bastard sons of Greece who took the barbarian’s gold and armed to murder us if they could. I will burn their fate like a slave’s brand into the brows of all who would follow them.

  Eumenes, my Counsel of War, asks how the prisoners shall be handled. March them to Macedon, I tell him, as slaves, in chains. Passage by sea is too good for them. Make them tramp overland, in fetters at the ankles and the wrists; yoke their necks and stake them to the earth when they sleep. In Macedon they shall work the mines, with no officer or man, howsoever deserving, reprieved or ransomed, save those of Thebes, on whom I take pity.

  “Under what conditions,” Eumenes inquires, “shall they labor?”

  “Work them,” I instruct him, “on straw and nettle soup. So that all Greece may learn the toll paid by such traitors, who took up arms against their own brothers, in service to the barbarian.”

  It is over. Night checks all pursuit. In three hours, on this day in spring, an army of the West has wreaked such devastation as no lord of Asia has ever sustained.

  The
physicians seal my scalp with three copper “dog bites” and a handful of stitches. The wounded and dead are collected by torchlight. I go to them, clad in the same rags of war as they.

  The first man I see is Hector, Parmenio’s youngest son, who commanded a fifty under Socrates Redbeard. His thigh is cut up like a butchered ox; a terrific contusion empurples his breast. “Did you run into a door, my friend?”

  “Indeed, with an iron warhead on it.” He shows me the bronze of his breastplate, which saved his life.

  Tears carve channels in the grime of my face. I weep from love for this lad and all his fellows. How brave they are!

  Down the line of torn and maimed I pass. After battle, a wounded man feels abandoned and alone. He hears his unharmed mates outside the hospital tent, full of vigor, eager to go forward again. Dare he call to them? Often his comrades are loath to seek him out, lest the sight of his injuries cause them grief, or, superstitious as all soldiers are, that his bad luck will rub off on them. Often a wounded man feels he has failed. Will he return home a cripple? Will he read pity in his wife’s eyes? A wounded man feels diminished and bereft, but most of all, he feels mortal. He has smelled hell’s breath and felt the earth yawn beneath him.

  For these reasons and to honor their valor, I leave no man forgotten. I kneel at the side of every one, taking his hand and soliciting his saga. Let’s have your story, mate, and no modesty either! I command each to embroider his tale, and even lie about his heroism and the thrashing he has delivered upon the foe. To be wounded is a thing of terror, but to be honored and remembered fills a man with pride. Not one does not burn to return to the ranks as soon as he is able. When I show them my own wounds, or the places on my armor where the enemy’s shafts have passed harmlessly through, the men weep and raise their arms to heaven. Again and again a fellow presses my hand to the site of his evisceration. So potent is my daimon, my countrymen believe, that not only will it preserve me but it will make them whole as well. I have no prizes to offer, so I strip articles of my kit—dagger and shin guards, even my boots—and give them away. The men beg me not to risk my life so recklessly. “For even luck as powerful as yours cannot be tempted forever.”

  It is midnight by the time we have all got bread and wine into our bellies, but not a soul craves sleep. I call the army together beneath cressets on the slope where the river turns.

  “Brothers, we have only come fifteen miles inland from the sea, yet by today’s action we have torn from Darius’s hand a thousand miles of empire. The whole Aegean seaboard will now fall to us. Nothing stands between us and Syria, us and Phoenicia, us and Egypt. We will be the liberators of every Greek city along the coast. Wealth beyond our dreams will fall to us, and honor for an achievement of arms such as no nation of the West has ever claimed. This you have won, brothers. I salute you! But beyond this, your victory has brought that day closer when Darius of Persia must come forth and face us in person, and when he does, we shall wrest from his grasp such glory as will make today’s triumph seem the exploit of children! You have honored me, friends, and honored my father. Let none forget Philip, who forged this instrument, our army, and who, if he could, would give all he ever owned to stand with us here in this hour. Philip!” I cry, and the army echoes it thrice, each time in lustier throat.

  I should wait for the morrow to offer honors to our fallen. But the mention of our absent lord has sobered the corps; I feel the hour call. I sign to the honor guard. The corpses of our comrades are borne in upon captured battle wagons of the foe. I have them drawn up in two rows, facing the regiments. We have lost sixty-seven Macedonian dead, twenty-six Companion Cavalry, nineteen of Socrates Redbeard’s squadron. Enemy slain, we will count later, are above four thousand.

  All has become subdued; the men shift in place, unsettled by the proximity of death. I come forward onto the rise; those step closer, who will relay my words to the farther ranks. I have prepared no speech. I say what’s in my heart.

  “My friends, we are alive. The gods have granted us victory. We share it out, each to the other, and it is sweet. But these, our fallen comrades, cannot know what we have won. They cannot know what they have won for us by their blood and by their sacrifice. What is sweet for us holds only bitterness for them. We weep for their fate and for our loss. But these, our mates taken from us, have achieved that which none of us, still living, may claim. By their valor this day, they have elevated their station to a sphere far beyond our own.”

  I sign to the corps’s sergeant major, who straightens, facing me.

  “Brothers, present arms to these heroes.”

  I wait as the sergeant major faces about and bawls the command, which is relayed from division to regiment to battalion and carried out, smart and sure. Sabers and sarissas of the Knights and Foot Companions, lances of the Light Horse, javelins and bows of the mobile auxiliary snap to position before each man’s eyes and heart. The army’s tenor has grown simultaneously more somber and more exalted. I stand forward and face the dead.

  “Fallen Companions, receive these honors which we, your brothers, now tender to you. For by these tokens shall each of us learn in what fashion we, too, in our hour, shall be used.”

  The command is given to order arms. I turn back, facing the corps.

  “For these heroes, the nation shall commission monuments of bronze, life-size, one for each man, to be sculpted by Lysippus, whom alone I permit to render my own likeness, and these images shall be raised at home, at Dium, in the Garden of the Muses, where the nation can view them and render honor to them for all time. The family of each fallen champion will learn in detail of the heroism of its son and husband, which feats shall be set in writing beneath my hand and delivered to them as a beloved brother in arms whom we honor and shall never forget. To sons who survive them, the kingdom extends grants of land, shares in the spoils of battle; the state will pay for the education of these heroes’ children, and exempt them from all service. We proffer this remission, friends, though you know as well as I that the kin of these champions will be the last to accept such waivers; rather, spurred by pride and honor, their sons will come out to us as soon as their years permit, sparing no exertion in our cause, that none may say that they were less than their fathers. Corps sergeant major, read the names of our honored fallen.”

  When the roll has been read, the army is commanded to stand easy.

  “I honor, too, the foe. Let us never hate him. For he also has willingly undergone trial of death this day. Today the gods have granted us glory. Tomorrow, their mill may grind us to dust. Thank them for your lives, brothers, as I do for mine. And now go and take your rest. You have earned it.”

  Dascylium surrenders the next day; we enter Sardis and Ephesus within the fortnight. Magnesia and Tralles open their gates; Miletus falls after a struggle. We advance into Caria and commence the siege of Halicarnassus. The first night on-site, after Parmenio has briefed the generals on the excellent scheme he has devised, he turns to me and asks if he may speak.

  What can this be? His resignation? I brace myself for something dire.

  “I have underestimated you, Alexander. I beg your pardon.”

  Standing, my father’s most illustrious commander beseeches my indulgence. It may be perhaps reprievable, he declares, for a general of past sixty years to regard with skepticism the ascent to supreme power of a youth barely out of his teens.

  It takes moments before my officers and I comprehend that our senior speaks sincerely.

  “Forgive me, Alexander, for the cautious and conventional counsel I have proffered. Clearly what applies to other men does not apply to you. I believed your father the greatest general who ever lived, but I acknowledge, observing you these months, that your gifts far surpass his. I have resisted serving you—you know it—and have held against you certain actions taken upon your accession.” He means my ordering him to put to death for conspiracy his son-in-law Attalus, who was also his friend. “Now I put that behind me. I set aside my resentment of you, as I hope
you can put away your suspicion of me, for I know you were not unaware of how I felt. I am your man, Alexander, and will serve you as I served your father, so long as you choose to repose confidence in me.”

  I rise. “You make me weep, Parmenio.”

  In tears I embrace the man. It is not lost on me that he has honored me doubly by tendering this testament publicly, in front of the others. It takes guts. It takes greatness of heart. By this act he invites all generals junior to himself, meaning all of them, to set aside any reservations to my preeminence. The generals applaud. They are as moved as I. Asander is the First Page on duty. “Get my father’s Sigeian sword.”

  I tell Parmenio that Philip loved him. He rated him without peer as a commander. “Once,” I relate, “when Philip entertained ambassadors of Athens, he tugged me aside and remarked with a laugh, ‘The Athenians elect ten generals each year. What a surfeit of talent they must possess, for in all my career I have found only one.’ And he nodded across the room toward you.”

  Now it is Parmenio who weeps. Asander brings Philip’s sword. I set it in my senior general’s hand. “It will be the greatest honor of my life, Parmenio, if you will accept me not just as your king and commander but as your true comrade and friend.”

  Two more anecdotes in the wake of the Granicus. The morning after the battle I arise early, as the king does every day, to offer sacrifice. Customarily, I emerge from my tent in darkness, accompanied by two Pages and a Guard of Honor; I meet Aristander the seer, or whoever will be conducting the rite, and we proceed alone in silence along the track to the altar.

  This morning I stand forth and it seems the whole world has congregated. The square before my tent throngs with soldiers in the thousands, with fresh multitudes pressing in on all quarters. “What has happened?” I inquire of Aristander, fearing I have forgotten the date of some rite or ceremony.