The next commander to step forward, Arsamenes, had been one of three satraps who had met with Memnon, a little less than a year earlier, at a small town called Zeleia, just east of the Granikos River, to plan the Persian resistance to Alexandros’s pan-Hellenic invasion. He was also the only one of the four principals at the Zeleia conference who was still alive. (Of the other three participants at that fateful meeting, Spithridates, satrap of Ionia and Lydia, had almost succeeded in killing Alexandros during the ensuing Battle of Granikos, only to die as a result of the timely intervention of Kleitos Melas; Arsites, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, had fled from the battle, only to commit suicide in shame two days later; and Memnon, who had disappeared from the field at Granikos before Parmenion’s phalangists could kill or capture him, went on to become Dareios’s supreme military commander in the fight against Alexandros’s pan-Hellenic army, only to be felled by a tiny, invisible salmonella enterica bacterium.)
At the Zeleia conference, Memnon had advocated a scorched earth strategy. He had been overruled by the three satraps, with disastrous results. In the wake of the defeat at Granikos, Arsamenes had learned his lesson all too well. After the fall of Halikarnassos, when Alexandros set out, with a fraction of his army, for Gordion, located on the central Anatolian Plateau, the route he chose took him through Kilikia, including the formidable Tauros Mountains pass known as the Kilikian Gates. As Xenophon had observed in his Anabasis, the Kilikian Gates could not be traversed if occupied even by a small defensive force. Arsamenes, in defense of his satrapy, stationed a more-than-adequate force in the pass, with instructions to hold it at all costs. With the remainder of his forces, he decided to implement Memnon’s scorched earth policy with a vengeance. Instead of trusting in the ability of his troops to defend the Kilikian Gates, he proceeded to ravage the Kilikian countryside behind them, in order to deprive Alexandros of necessary supplies and spoils, in the event he somehow managed to get through the Gates. Arsamenes did such a thorough job that reports began to reach the defenders stationed in the Gates that there was nothing left for them to defend, because their homeland had already been despoiled by their own satrap. They melted away in the night, rushing back to aid their families and to salvage what they could of their possessions. Alexandros marched through the Gates unopposed.
Arsamenes, continuing to pillage his own people, retreated to his capital of Tarsos, intent on evacuating its inhabitants, removing all the treasure it contained, and then putting the city to the torch, before it could be occupied by Alexandros’s forces. Alexandros, moving with his usual lightning speed, reached the city walls before Arsamenes had a chance to implement his plans. The satrap barely had enough time to run away and save his own skin. Alexandros entered the intact city, much to the relief of its citizens. Arsamenes ran all the way to Damaskos, where he was now recounting his military accomplishments to Dareios. Needless to say, Dareios was less than dazzled by his satrap’s martial prowess.
Charidemos, who had not been blessed with a surfeit of tact, could not help but laugh at Arsamenes’s report. “Your celestial eminence,” he finally managed to spit out after catching his breath, “you must have competent commanders if you are to defeat this worm from the hinterlands of Macedonia. Give me an army and I will do the job. And forget this nonsense about invading Greece.”
“What do you mean, nonsense?” Dareios interrupted. “That was Memnon’s whole strategy.”
“Well, Memnon is dead.” Charidemos shrugged. “And besides, unless he could’ve somehow split himself in two, his strategy was never going to work anyway.” Charidemos didn’t need to spell out why he thought it necessary for Memnon to split himself in two. He was probably going to do it anyway but was stopped by the murderous look on Dareios’s face. He quickly retreated. “I’m just saying, we should concentrate on defeating Alexandros right here and now. He is far from home, his communication lines are long and vulnerable, his army relatively small, and his supplies rapidly dwindling. If we hit him with a sufficiently large force, there’s no way for him to survive. We’ll wipe him out to the last man. It doesn’t make sense to split our forces in two. After we wipe him out, there’ll be plenty of time to turn our attention to Greece.”
It didn’t matter that Charidemos’s advice was sound. Because it came from an obnoxious Greek mercenary, delivered in broken Persian, the satraps in attendance immediately fell into a competition to see who could disagree with him more vehemently. And because they were all shouting over one another simultaneously, it was impossible to tell what exactly they were proposing as an alternative but the negative tenor of their comments was fairly obvious nonetheless.
Finally, Dareios raised his hand to silence them. “I think he’s right.” His voice was quiet, once the hubbub had subsided. “How many troops do you think we’d need to be sure of victory?”
“A hundred thousand should do it, your incandescent brightness.” Charidemos paused. “Provided at least a third of them are Greek mercenaries.”
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about Greek mercenaries,” Arsamenes yelled. “I didn’t see them perform particularly well during the Battle at Granikos.”
“That’s because you ran away before the battle was joined,” Charidemos sneered.
Had their weapons not been confiscated prior to their admittance into the audience hall, the argument could have easily escalated to bloodshed. As it was, Dareios merely nodded his head and the two men were forcibly separated by his guards.
“Field an army of a hundred thousand men shouldn’t be a problem,” Dareios said. “And I have the right commander in mind to lead them.”
“Who?” several voices cried out.
The emperor peered intently at the commanders arrayed below him. “I am personally going to lead my army into battle.” This time, there was stunned silence. “You forget I was a soldier once, before becoming the king of kings.”
“You were the greatest commander Persia has seen since the death of the great King Kyros,” Orontobates hurriedly interjected.
“Still am, son. I’m still alive, you know.”
“You were, still are, and always will be the greatest ever, your highness,” Nabarzanes put in.
Mazaios, relying on his seniority and standing with the emperor, finally brought a touch of pragmatism to the discussion. “We are all in agreement, sire, that you were and continue to be a great military leader. But that’s just the point, sire. You are indispensable to this great empire. Why should you risk your life trying to swat down this little mosquito? We in this room are more than capable of getting the job done, while you continue to supervise the war effort, and the rest of the empire, from your throne right here in Damaskos, or Babylon, or Persepolis, or Susa, or wherever your court may happen to be.”
Charidemos couldn’t hide his smile.
Pharnabazos noticed. “What are you laughing at, you foreign son of a whore?”
“I’m not laughing,” Charidemos said. “I’m just envisioning our great victory.” And then, remembering that Pharnabazos’s mother was from Rhodos, he added in Greek, “You’re half-Greek yourself, so you should know better. And the only son of a whore in this room is the guy sitting on the throne. If he’s in command, we’re all doomed.” Charidemos was evidently unaware that the Persian emperor spoke fluent Greek.
Dareios rose from the throne, walked down the four steps to Charidemos, and physically lifted him off the ground by his girdle. “Kill him,” he said calmly as he handed the hapless old soldier to his guards.
The guards dragged Charidemos out of the audience hall and, just beyond the front door, they ran him through, leaving him to bleed out into the dust. “If you lead this army against Alexandros, both you and your empire will die,” Charidemos yelled on his way out.
*******
Alexandros’s growing fame as a military leader was exceeded only by his reputation for insatiable curiosity. Whenever he entered a new city or town, whether by accident, invitation, or conquest, he was met by horde
s of touts, tour guides, and purveyors of ancient relics, natural wonders, and old wives’ tales. There was no ostensibly historical site he would fail to tour, freak of fauna or flora he would not collect and ship back to Aristoteles, religious ceremony he would not grace with his presence and largess, bogus souvenir he would not buy, or hoary local shaman he would not hear out.
His arrival in Gordion was met by jubilation, due in equal parts to the joy of the Phrygians at the overthrow of their hated Persian overlords and their anticipation of the profits to be made from the influx of well-heeled, gullible visitors. Phrygians were an ancient Indo-European people, whose arrival in Anatolia (allegedly from Macedonia) has been lost in the mists of time. At one time, the Phrygians controlled almost half of Anatolia, from the Propontis (the small inland sea that connects the Aegean to the Black Sea) all the way to the southeastern edge of the central Anatolian Plateau. Then they made the mistake of allying themselves with the Trojans during the war against the Mycenaeans. After that came repeated assaults by Assyrians, Kimmerians, Amazons, Lydians, and finally Persians. The territory of the Phrygians shrank; a portion of Phrygia along the Propontis was split off and became known as Hellespontine Phrygia, with its capital at Daskyleion; and Phrygia proper, with its capital at Gordion, became a landlocked Persian satrapy in the middle of the Anatolian Plateau.
There was an interesting story told in Alexandros’s time about the founding of Phrygia’s capital, Gordion. According to legend, a long, long time ago, centuries before the Trojan War, a poor peasant named Gordias was minding his own business, driving his oxcart to market, when he happened to come across a convocation held in the precinct of a nearby temple in order to choose, with the aid of the gods, a successor to the recently deceased Phrygian king. After much debate, many sacrifices, several unsuccessful ballots, and near anarchy among the voters, none of the candidates was able to garner the mandate of the people. In desperation, the gods were consulted once again, and they advised the assembled Phrygians to elect as king the first man to ride up to the temple. That man happened to be Gordias.
Gordias turned out to be an able ruler. He founded Gordion as the new capital of Phrygia, married a minor Phrygian goddess named Kybele, and had a son named Midas, who expressed an ill-considered wish to have everything he touched turn to gold. But Midas’s legendary, avaricious miscalculation occurred after his father was dead. Gordias, the humble peasant who became king, never forgot the source of his fortune and made arrangements to have the oxcart that had borne him to his kingship preserved for posterity. Needless to say, Alexandros was told the story shortly after his arrival in Gordion and expressed an understandable desire to see the ancient conveyance for himself.
Before Alexandros could climb up to the Gordion akropolis, where the storied cart was housed, however, he had to deal with a number of administrative matters, among which was the arrival in Gordion of my cavalry squadron and mercenary contingent, after our successful mop-up operations at Halikarnassos.
“So where is the head?” Alexandros asked in lieu of a greeting when I showed up, empty-handed, at his headquarters in Gordion. We both knew whose head he was referring to.
“We didn’t find Memnon’s body, sire.” I resisted the temptation to shrug, keeping both my shoulders and my voice level. “We did manage, however, to take the Halikarnassos Akropolis, the Salmakis Fortress, and the King’s Castle in a few short months and with a minimum of casualties. But Memnon apparently got away once again.”
Alexandros glared. “The man must be a ghost.” He seemed genuinely angry.
“I’m sorry, sire. We’ll get him next time.”
“Oh no, you won’t.” Alexandros paused for dramatic effect. “Luckily for you, Metoikos, remorseless Thanatos is a far more persistent hunter than you are. He always gets his man, sooner or later.”
I had no idea what he was talking about and my blank look gave me away.
Alexandros was clearly enjoying my confusion. “And in this case, my friend, Thanatos finally caught up to Memnon.”
“You mean, he’s dead?” I asked uncertainly.
“That’s exactly what I mean.” He burst out laughing. “You did well, Ptolemaios.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “And we don’t need to worry about that bastard any more. I hear some kind of plague killed him.”
Alexandros wanted to hear every detail of our operations at Halikarnassos and of our trip to Gordion. We were still engrossed in our discussion when a messenger walked in with a dispatch from Parmenion. Alexandros read it twice and shook his head. “That’s the second similar message from Parmenion in two weeks.” He handed the scroll to me.
I read the note. “What was the first one?”
Alexandros smiled. “That’s a long story. Let’s have something to eat and I’ll give you all the details.”
It was a small dinner party. Most of the command staff were still in the field, either with Parmenion’s force or with various other detachments, but Hephaistion joined us, as did Kallisthenes, presumably to record any deathless declarations that might be delivered during our usual descent into drunkenness.
“So, that note from Parmenion I was talking about,” Alexandros resumed after we had finished eating. “We had just entered Tarsos, on the heels of Arsamenes’s precipitous withdrawal.”
“The populace was overjoyed,” Hephaistion chimed in.
“Well, that’s subject to debate. Those guys on the riverbank may have been feigning their joy.”
“What Aniketos is referring to,” Hephaistion explained for my benefit, “is a welcoming committee of local dignitaries, who met us on the banks of the Kydnos, which flows through Tarsos. After the usual courtesies and thanksgiving ceremonies, one of the locals mentioned it was lucky we had arrived before the retreating Persians had had a chance to destroy the bridge because no one could have crossed the raging river, swollen by the springtime snowmelt in the surrounding Tauros Mountains.”
“One thing led to another,” Alexandros picked up the story, “and before I knew it, I’d made a wager with the locals that I could swim across the river.”
“Even though he was exhausted and already had a cold,” Hephaistion interjected. “It didn’t go well.”
“No, it didn’t. Man, when they said it was ice cold, they weren’t kidding. As soon as I hit the water, my whole body cramped up. I tell you, there wasn’t a muscle I could move.”
“He would’ve drowned for sure,” Hephaistion agreed, “if one of the locals hadn’t pulled a rope from somewhere and fished him out.”
“It wasn’t fun, I’ll grant you that.”
“By the time we had him on the shore, he was barely breathing, shivering uncontrollably, and white as Poseidon’s hair. When we finally managed to rub a little life back into him and get him dressed again, he started to cough. We got him to a house, put him in bed, and covered him in animal pelts but he kept shivering uncontrollably. His skin became hot to the touch. We tried to feed him; he couldn’t keep anything down. He was sweating profusely, gasping for breath, babbling nonsense.”
Hephaistion shook his head, still unnerved by the recollection. “This kept up for two weeks; can you imagine that? The local doctors refused to treat him, afraid he was going to die, in which case we would’ve killed them for sure.”
“You wouldn’t have done that, would you?” Alexandros teased.
“Sure would’ve,” Hephaistion affirmed mirthlessly. “The trouble was that Philippos of Akarnania was with Parmenion at this point and it took us two weeks to get him back. By the time he arrived, we were beginning to lose hope.”
“Actually, I think I was getting better by then.”
“Easy for you to say now. It didn’t look that way at the time. Anyway, Philippos the Physician arrived, accompanied by a small cavalry troop. He took one look and started to mix some sort of purge. While he was busy doing that, one of the troopers handed a message from Parmenion to Aniketos.”
“See, I was well enough to read it.”
&n
bsp; “Yes, you read it but said nothing. Instead, when Philippos handed his potion to you, you handed Parmenion’s note to him.”
Alexandros smiled at the memory.
“You were draining the cup while Philippos was reading the note. I’ll never forget the looks on your faces.”
“What did the note say?” I interrupted.
“In the note,” Alexandros explained, “Parmenion told me that Philippos had been bribed by Dareios to poison me.”
Hephaistion picked up the story. “As Philippos read the note, all color drained from his face. As Aniketos drank the purge, his face turned greenish white.”
“It was the foulest concoction I’d ever tasted.”
“When Philippos looked up from the note and saw the king drinking the potion, his look of consternation gradually melted into relief and then a tight smile, accompanied by a small nod. When Aniketos finished drinking, he looked up, a disgusted grimace contorting his face.”
“Hey, give me a break. I was doing my best not to throw up.”
“Anyway, I grabbed the note and read it. By the time I looked back, Aniketos was violently ill, retching and moaning and basically unconscious. I was sure the good doctor had killed our king.”
“Fortunately, the purge worked, and I was much better by the next day, thus saving Philippos’s life,” Alexandros finished cheerfully. “That was Parmenion’s first note.”
“What do you mean ‘first note’?” Hephaistion asked. “Has there been a second one?”
Alexandros handed him the scroll that had arrived while I was in the middle of my debriefing. It described in detail a conspiracy between Emperor Dareios and Alexandros of Lynkestis. Lynkestis, who was the last remaining member of that canton’s royal house, was perhaps ten years older than Alexandros Aniketos. The two Alexandroi had had a complicated history. The future King Alexandros first met Alexandros of Lynkestis when they were both commanders in King Philippos’s Companion Cavalry. After King Philippos’s assassination, rumors surfaced that the House of Lynkestis had been involved in the assassination and was plotting to put a rival pretender on the Macedonian throne. These rumors, which bordered on the fantastic, were undoubtedly false. There were also other rumors, according to which the assassination had been incited and condoned by Philippos’s wife Olympias because of her jealousy of Philippos’s new and much younger wife and because of her concern that the newly-born son of the happy, half-young couple might one day displace her own son Alexandros as the heir apparent. These latter rumors were plausible and most likely true. In fact, perspicacious observers of the royal scene believed the rumors about the House of Lynkestis were invented and spread by Olympias herself precisely in order to deflect suspicion about her own involvement in Philippos’s assassination.
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