Flood Tide

by Alexander Geiger

  In the immediate chaos following the assassination of Philippos, the twenty-year-old Alexandros, who was somewhat insecure in his position and easily influenced by his mother, took the rumors about the House of Lynkestis to heart. The head of the House of Lynkestis, a former general named Aeropos, had been banished by King Philippos and had died in exile. His three sons, however, including the youngest, Alexandros, were still in Macedonia and very much alive. The newly acclaimed King Alexandros had the two older brothers arrested and executed, based on false confessions extracted under torture. On the other hand, he retained the youngest brother, Alexandros, in his position as a commander in the Companion Cavalry and, after the Battle of Granikos, promoted him to commander of the entire allied cavalry. (Two possible explanations for this disparate treatment were advanced by informed court observers. One was the fact that, immediately after the assassination, Alexandros of Lynkestis was the first man to publicly hail Prince Alexandros as the new king. The other was the fact that Alexandros of Lynkestis was the son-in-law of Antipatros, the senior advisor of both Philippos and, subsequently, Alexandros. Of course, these two explanations were not mutually exclusive.)

  After the sack of Halikarnassos, when Alexandros was making his dispositions for the winter, he ordered Parmenion to take the allied cavalry, under Lynkestis’s command, along with the allied infantry and most of the Macedonian Silver Shields, and conduct a campaign to consolidate the army’s gains in Ionia, Lydia, Hellespontine Phrygia, and central Anatolia. Therefore, Lynkestis was technically serving under Parmenion, who was not overly fond of the arrangement. He preferred to place his own relatives and admirers in as many subordinate command positions as possible.

  In his note, which Hephaistion also had to read twice, Parmenion spun quite a tale. One of his foraging parties, Parmenion wrote, had captured a Persian spy named Sisines. Upon interrogation, this spy confessed that he had been sent by Emperor Dareios with a message for Alexandros of Lynkestis. The message, which was not written down because of its sensitive nature, was allegedly Dareios’s response to a prior offer by Lynkestis to assassinate King Alexandros in return for Dareios’s support of Lynkestis as Alexandros’s successor. According to Sisines, he had been instructed to tell Lynkestis that Dareios wholeheartedly supported Lynkestis’s plan, that he would pay Lynkestis a thousand talents of gold upon the successful execution of the assassination attempt, and that the Persian Empire would do everything in its power to support Lynkestis’s claim to the Macedonian throne, provided Lynkestis agreed to remove the pan-Hellenic army from Persian soil immediately after the assassination. Fortunately, Parmenion added, Sisines was never able to deliver the message to Lynkestis. Unfortunately, Sisines also succumbed, shortly after making his confession, to injuries sustained during his capture and was therefore no longer available to corroborate Parmenion’s note.

  “What do you think?” Alexandros asked Hephaistion when he had finished reading.

  “I think you should dispatch a squadron immediately to find Lynkestis and kill the bastard on sight. Metoikos here can be in command.”

  Alexandros leaned his head to the side and shot Hephaistion a skeptical look. “But Parmenion was wrong about Philippos the Physician, wasn’t he? Maybe he’s wrong about Lynkestis.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Hephaistion was firm and unflinching in his response. “You can’t take a chance. If he is guilty, he has to be eliminated, swiftly and covertly. If he is innocent, we’ll manage to conduct the war without him.”

  “I’m not a murderer,” I said quietly. Both Alexandros and Hephaistion ignored me.

  “I’m not going to kill somebody on the say-so of one man,” Alexandros finally decided. “I’ll send a note back to Parmenion to take Lynkestis into custody and to keep an eye on him. We’ll then investigate and, if necessary, have a trial. But we’re not killing anybody based on this note.”

  Hephaistion stood up, ready to walk out. “Don’t bother putting anything about this in your history,” he told Kallisthenes on his way out.

  Alexandros countermanded him. “No, go ahead and write down everything you heard. Just don’t bother showing it to anybody until we find out how it all turns out.”

  And with that the meal was over.

  *******

  Olympias arrived early for the symposion, carrying a covered wicker basket. She was dressed in a bright red peplos and matching red sandals, her décolletage decorated with a large, live water snake draped around her neck. She had just turned forty-four. The serving women preparing the dining room for the evening festivities were used to her eccentric ways and took no notice of her.

  The dining hall was a spacious, rectangular room, with one entryway and no windows, a slate floor, with a black and white geometric mosaic in the center, and whitewashed walls, spruced up by colorful, fairly primitive murals, featuring still lifes of comestibles. Aside from the natural light streaming in through the entryway, a modicum of light was provided by oil lamps placed on small shelves built into the corners. In the evening, additional lighting could be provided by torches placed into sconces on the walls. There were seven couches arranged in a U-shape around the sides of the room, with three couches against each side wall and one larger couch against the narrower wall opposite the entrance. An upright chair had been placed, specifically for Olympias’s use, in the far left corner of the room. A number of small tables were scattered in the middle, as well as a large, empty krater for mixing wine.

  Olympias placed the basket underneath the larger couch at the far end of the room. She then tied a string to the lid that covered the basket and secured the other end of the string under the cushion that had been placed on her chair. “Don’t you dare touch that basket!” she yelled to the staff in the room and walked back out. Given Olympias’s reputation at court, there was very little risk anyone would disobey her order.

  Olympias was born a princess, the daughter of the king of Epiros. She enjoyed a pampered, sheltered childhood, raised by nannies who filled her head with tales of romance, mysticism, and royalty. When she was sixteen, and already arrestingly alluring, she convinced her father to let her travel to Samothrake, a small, ruggedly beautiful island off the coast of Thrake in the northern Aegean. The island was home to one of the oldest, most important religious sanctuaries in the entire Hellenic world, known as the Sanctuary of the Great Gods. Pilgrims from all strata of Greek society, from humble peasants to famous intellectuals to powerful rulers, made the long, perilous journey for the once-in-a-lifetime experience of attending the annual mid-summer festival, participating in various rituals and ceremonies, making offerings, and being initiated into the chthonian mysteries. While on the island, Olympias met a twenty-one-year-old Macedonian prince named Philippos. It was love at first sight. They spent their entire time together, visiting the sites, attending the plays, walking the trails, and undergoing the initiation rituals, which she took seriously and he did not. Philippos also initiated Olympias into the mysteries of carnal intimacy. Upon parting for their journeys back to their respective kingdoms, Olympias had little hope of ever seeing the bright, energetic, handsome young prince again.

  Philippos unexpectedly became the ruler of Macedonia two years later. He had not forgotten Olympias but when it came to royal marriages, kings wed for reasons of military necessity or national advantage, not romantic attachment. As it happened, Philippos was a great believer in cementing diplomatic alliances by means of conjugal concords. Two years after becoming king, Philippos – having already contracted three other marriages – perceived an opening for securing the western border of Macedonia and cementing a useful military alliance by marrying the younger niece of the then king of Epiros. The woman in question happened to be Olympias. (Olympias’s father had died in the meantime and his younger brother had become king.) They were married when Philippos was twenty-five and Olympias twenty. Their first child, Alexandros, was born a year later.

  It may have been that their marriage was a love match but the romance didn’
t survive beyond the honeymoon. Instead, it evolved into a more complex relationship. They were both brilliant, strong-willed, driven, ambitious, and ruthless individuals. Philippos was more gregarious, direct, powerful, tactically astute, and strategically farsighted. Olympias was more devious, conniving, conspiratorial, and deadly. She was also genuinely superstitious and pious, while he simply used religion as another tool to achieve his goals. Philippos was libidinous and indiscriminate in the pursuit of his pleasures. Olympias was willing to overlook his roving eye, as long as his dalliances, liaisons, and even future marriages didn’t affect her power and standing at the court and didn’t threaten the position of her son as Philippos’s presumptive heir. They argued, fought, made love, plotted, inspired, helped, and pushed each other. They made an incredibly effective team.

  Philippos was forty-two when he committed his fatal blunder. After a fight with Olympias, he decided to take, as his seventh (and, as it would turn out, final) wife the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of the leading aristocrats at the Macedonian court. She was a year younger than their son Alexandros and a year older than their daughter Kleopatra. She even shared the name of their daughter. (To distinguish the two girls, the daughter of Philippos and Olympias was called Little Kleopatra while Philippos’s new bride was known as Luscious.)

  Luscious Kleopatra delivered to Philippos a daughter and a son in quick succession. Olympias’s concern at the prospect of the infant boy displacing her son as Philippos’s successor, farfetched as such a concern might have been, unhinged the former queen. When the dust settled, Philippos, Luscious Kleopatra, and their two infant children were all dead; Olympias’s son Alexandros was king; and Olympias was the queen mother.

  Not long after Olympias walked out of the dining hall, having left her basket behind, other guests began arriving for the banquet, walking in by twos and threes. It was going to be a small gathering, limited to Antipatros’s immediate military advisors, invited to hear the report of Koinos and Kleandros on the progress of the Anatolian expedition and to discuss a response to Alexandros’s demand for reinforcements. Olympias was included because it was impossible to keep her out.

  Antipatros arrived, engrossed in an animated discussion with two of his most promising young aides, Krateros and Lysimachos, and took his seat on the larger couch at the far end of the room. He had a welcoming jest or personal inquiry for all the attendees. Olympias was the penultimate guest to arrive. She was greeted with wary courtesy by the men in the room, except for Antipatros, who ignored her altogether, pretending to be engaged in a deep discussion with Koinos. She took her seat on the chair in the corner, making sure the string was still under the seat cushion. (Women generally didn’t participate in banquets, except as servants or entertainers, and they certainly didn’t recline on couches in the presence of men.)

  Kassandros was late, as usual. The libation had been poured and the prayers completed by the time he deigned to make his entrance, carrying a small bundle in his hand. He took his seat on the larger couch, next to his father, smiling broadly, evidently pleased with the world. He also ignored the queen mother, seated on the chair to his right. He placed his small bundle on the couch behind his back.

  Kassandros, at twenty-five, was the youngest man in the room. He was also the youngest of Antipatros’s ten children – and the most spoiled one. By the time he was born, his father, who was forty at that point, had become one of the leading supporters of the newly-elevated King Philippos. He was often away from home on military or diplomatic missions for his king but each time he returned he brought back extraordinary, exotic gifts for his favorite little boy. During his absences, the little boy played with his expensive toys, abused the nannies charged with his upbringing, tortured and killed small animals, and ruled as an absolute despot in the household of his mother.

  It was a great relief to all when the fifteen-year-old Kassandros was invited by King Philippos to join the coterie of young scions of Macedonian nobility who served as the fellow students, training partners, and playmates of a thirteen-year-old Alexandros at the royal finishing school established by Philippos for the benefit of his son at Mieza. By the time I arrived at the school, as exotic specimen and hand-to-hand combat instructor, Kassandros had already been given a nickname by his fellow students: He was known as the Frog Killer. The sobriquet managed to capture, with that remarkable insight, concision, and acerbity of which only children are capable, the two salient characteristics of young Kassandros: He liked to torment little animals and was deathly afraid of hunting the big ones. (He was thirty-five, and the murderer of several people, before he managed to bag his first boar in a hunt.)

  When Alexandros departed for Asia, almost a year earlier, leaving Antipatros behind as regent, he expected the sly old general to rule Macedonia and to dominate the rest of Greece on his behalf. Unfortunately, in the haste of his departure, he neglected to make his dispositions clear to his mother. Or perhaps he had and Olympias was just constitutionally incapable of accepting his arrangements. Either way, she had spent the year interfering with Antipatros’s efforts to govern Macedonia, undermining his authority at court, and fostering dissent among the people. In her free time, she sent countless missives to her son filled with strategic suggestions for the campaign in Anatolia, rumors of conspiracies against him among his commanders, and reports of treasonous malfeasance by Antipatros, his sons, and the other generals left behind in Pella. Antipatros bore her constant meddling with patience, if not good humor, reassured by his knowledge that the troops admired and respected him and despised her. He also realized that the one thing sure to set Alexandros off was any report that Olympias was not being treated with the respect due her by virtue of being his mother. Kassandros, on the other hand, lacked his father’s tact, maturity, self-confidence, and acumen. A fierce struggle quickly developed between the son of the regent and the queen mother, which conflict they waged, face-to-face and through proxies, day after hate-filled day.

  Once Kassandros had finally taken his seat, the banquet proceeded smoothly. The guests washed their hands. The serving girls brought in platter after platter of food and distributed it on the small tables placed in front of the couches, making sure everyone’s wine cups were kept filled.

  As Olympias picked at her food with her right hand, she surreptitiously fingered with her other hand the string running from beneath her chair cushion to the cover of the basket stationed under the sprawling figure of Kassandros. Her patience, never a strong suit, was being severely tested. She could hardly wait to release her venomous viper. She had been assured by her principal snake wrangler that a bite of this species brought on inexorable, albeit lingering and painful, death but she had to wait until Antipatros left the couch. It would have been unfortunate if the snake bit the regent, rather than his hateful son.

  The serving girls cleared the plates, brought in more bread so guests could clean their fingers once again, placed sweet cakes and fruit on the tables, and topped off the wine cups. Koinos gave a detailed report on the status of the war in Anatolia, ending with Alexandros’s request for more troops. Krateros reviewed the available manpower in Macedonia and the possibility of recruiting additional warriors from the adjoining kingdoms of Epiros and Thessaly, from the friendly barbarian tribes to the north and east, and most importantly from the allied cities of the Hellenic League. A lively debate ensued about the merits of each group of fighters.

  When Antipatros finally joined the discussion, he was pragmatic and trenchant. “The so-called allies will soon be our enemies. The Persians are occupying island after island, hopscotching their way toward the Greek mainland. Our allies aren’t oblivious to the developments in the Aegean and they’re getting understandably nervous. At the same time, Dareios’s agents are busy siphoning off their men of military age, promising them money and adventure as mercenaries, while other agents are bribing their leading politicians, fomenting rebellion. And then there is Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies. They’ve never become members of the
Hellenic League and they’re itching to take us on, while most of our troops are in Asia. And trust me, my friends, if our so-called allies in the Hellenic League ever get the idea we’re beatable, they’ll immediately switch sides to Sparta. I hate to tell you this but we’re not universally beloved by our allies, who resent our preeminence in Greece. They’ve all forgotten what life was like when Sparta enjoyed a brief period of ascendancy. So, we have no troops to spare. And the sooner our king manages to wrap up his adventure on the other side of the Hellespont and bring our troops back home, the better off we will be. In the meantime, we need to cut off his lifeline of troops and materiel from here to there.”

  Kleandros tried to explain the benefits Macedonia would realize as a result of the liberation of the Greek cities of Ionia and as the result of being accepted as the leaders of the entire Greek world. “Just think about the profits Athens reaped from their Delian League during Perikles’s time.” Koinos mentioned the fact that King Alexandros had sent a direct, written order requesting more troops. The notion of Macedonian hegemony over the Greek world had some appeal to the commanders in the room but in the final analysis they were practical men and the regent’s warnings about a coming rebellion against Macedonia carried a great deal of weight with them.