It was Alexander’s pothos, as it had been his father’s, to be received as a Greek and not as a barbarian. But even when he wore sheep’s clothing, the commander-in-chief of Hellas was still a wolf.
CHAPTER 5
FIRST BLOOD
As his ships approached the coast of Asia Minor, the new Achilles—as Alexander saw himself—relived the experience of making landfall where legend had it that King Agamemnon and his Greek fleet had arrived many centuries before. Now as then, their destination was holy Ilium or, as we call it today, Troy. Here the Greeks had besieged the city, and after ten long years the city had fallen.
For the young Macedonian this was not just a story, but true history. He found only a mound of ruins, but, for all that the windy plain of Troy, as the ancient poets liked to call it, was holy ground. The war marked the first round in a catalogue of clashes between the west and east. By invading Persia he was following an ancient tradition.
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SOMETIME IN MAY 334, the king left his general Parmenion to ferry the Macedonian army across the Hellespont (today’s Dardanelles). Meanwhile he set out with a flotilla of sixty warships on a brief but deeply felt pilgrimage to the site of Ilium. He was determined to be first to disembark, and before setting sail from the European shore he sacrificed at the grave of Protesilaus. A daring Thessalian, he had been the first to jump onto the beach, but had been cut down by a Trojan “while leaping foremost of the Achaeans upon the soil of Troy.”
Halfway across the narrows, Alexander propitiated the god of the sea, Poseidon, friend of Troy, who had obstructed the Greek invaders. To avoid a repetition, he sacrificed a bull in honor of the god, his wife Amphitrite, sea nymph and queen of the sea, and the Nereids, their fishy female companions. He poured a drink offering into the sea from a golden bowl.
Then, when his ship ran up the beach, Alexander sprang ashore in full armor and hurled his spear into the ground, in this way laying a claim to the ownership of Asia. He cried: “From the gods I accept Asia, won by the spear.” This took some nerve. The young pretender had not won even a single battle.
He then went up to the city four miles or so inland. It was now a somewhat dilapidated tourist destination and little more than a village. Passing through the ancient walls on top of a tumulus, he dedicated a complete set of armor to the goddess Athena, protector of the Greeks, and in return took from her “small and cheap” shrine some of the consecrated arms that were said (implausibly, but he believed it) to date from the Trojan War. He also sacrificed to Troy’s old king Priam; he wanted to turn away Priam’s anger at having been put to the sword by Achilles’ son Neoptolemus, from whom Alexander was descended. Usually he enjoyed boasting about his pedigree.
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ONCE THE FORMALITIES WERE over, the king wandered among the ruins. Someone came up to him and asked if he would like to see a lyre that had once belonged to Paris.
“I don’t care a jot for that lyre,” came the dismissive reply. “Where is the one Achilles played when singing of glorious deeds?”
Alexander and Hephaestion stripped off and oiled their bodies, as if they were athletes, and ran a race with their comrades. Alexander placed a wreath on a column that was supposed to be Achilles’ tomb, remarking that he wished he had as great a poet as Homer to celebrate his deeds, and Hephaestion placed another on the grave of Achilles’ erastes, Patroclus.
To the modern eye these are exotic goings-on, but they made sense to Alexander. He was sincere, but he also had a keen eye for publicity. He was seeking to express in dramatic terms the legitimacy of his expedition in the eyes of the Greeks. Everyone could remember the two Persian invasions and believed in the justice of revenge. But Alexander wanted to go beyond a mere branding exercise, and to create a religious justification. He asserted his supernatural ancestry and saw his place in history as reflecting a divine circularity. He was truly an echo of a heroic past and that was how he meant to be understood.
Finally, it is clear that these rituals at Troy meant something personal to him together with Hephaestion. He had listened to his tutor Aristotle, for whom philia was a great good. Whatever his reservations were about sex, he seemed determined to live his life as one of a loving and inseparable male couple.
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ALEXANDER ENJOYED A PARTY. Back in November or December of 335, at the outset of his campaign and a few months before his arrival at Troy, he held a splendid one, which marked the culmination of months of military preparation.
As a matter of policy, he looked after his soldiers well; he made sure that they regularly enjoyed periods of rest and he mounted festivals for their pleasure. He assembled his expeditionary force at Dium, one of the kingdom’s holiest sanctuaries. Here, beneath Mount Olympus, home of the gods, he conducted the traditional sacrifice to Zeus, tutelary deity of the Macedonians.
Then in the theater at Aegae he presented a nine-day drama competition in honor of the nine Muses, which his Hellenophile ancestor King Archelaus had founded seventy years previously. For his guests he commissioned a vast marquee capable of accommodating a hundred diners, with a couch for each one to recline on. The layout probably entailed a central lobby flanked by eleven-couch dining spaces—in descending order of grandeur to match each guest to his perceived importance. The king arranged for a similar marquee to be the royal headquarters when he was on campaign. He did not forget the common soldiers, to whom he distributed sacrificial animals and “everything else suitable for a festive occasion, and put them into a fine humor.”
This was the first time that Alexander had attended a public event at the scene of his father’s assassination in June of the previous year. Among those he invited to the celebrations were ambassadors from the Greek cities who had also been there as shocked witnesses. The pomp and circumstance were designed to allay the memory and to assert his mastery.
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ALEXANDER HAD UNDER ARMS a large number of men. Many Macedonians among them had served a long time with Philip and, if some were a little long in the tooth, they were tough and experienced. The army consisted of some 32,000 infantry and 5,100 cavalry (mostly Macedonian Companions and Thessalian horsemen). These totals included the 12,000-strong Macedonian phalanx and the same number of Greek allied and mercenary infantry (supplied under the terms of the League of Corinth or simply attracted by the money); in principle the latter were good fighters, but their loyalty might be suspect when they faced the Greek mercenary regiments whom the Great King hired. Also, Alexander recruited nearly eight thousand Thracian foot soldiers and horsemen, one thousand archers and Agrianian javelin-throwers—a small but invaluable elite team.
When added to Parmenion’s advance force of ten thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry, the grant total under Alexander’s command may have been about fifty thousand. (There may have been a further eight thousand infantry, mainly Greeks, who were responsible for guarding land already won.)
Of an armada of 182 triremes, or war galleys, 160 were provided by the Greek allies and mostly by Athens. Triremes were very labor-intensive. Each one required 200 oarsmen, or a total complement of 36,400 men.
This was not all, for many technical and military experts were needed for a variety of different purposes—a siege train, a baggage train, engineers (to build roads and tunnels), surveyors (to collect information on routes, camping grounds, and possible battlefields), secretaries and administrators, surgeons and physicians, grooms and muleteers. In a remarkable innovation, Alexander was the first commander in antiquity (so far as we know) to establish a public relations department.
A former student of Aristotle called Callisthenes was invited to join the expedition as its official historian—or, more accurately, propaganda chief.
The entire invasion force, both by land and sea, amounted to about 90,000 men, of whom more than half were
Greek. This was of the same order of magnitude as the expeditionary force that the Great King Darius had sent across from Asia to punish the city of Athens, whose sailors had burned the great city of Sardis.
Alexander gave his men strict instructions not to plunder the territory they were to pass through. He told them: “You should spare your own property, and not destroy what you are going to own.”
The king left behind a substantial garrison in Europe, including a twelve-thousand-strong phalanx, under the command of the experienced and trustworthy Antipater, whom Alexander appointed regent in his absence. For all his remarkable recent victories, there remained a risk that the Greeks or the Illyrians might stir up trouble if they felt they could get away with it. What was more, the Persian fleet, which greatly outnumbered his own, might intervene in Greece and set up a second front.
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THE PHILOSOPHER AND SCIENTIST Aristotle expected his students to help him assemble and publish all kinds of data, for only through observation and experiment could human knowledge be advanced. Alexander was not just interested in conquest. He was determined to outdo all his old tutor’s other pupils and collect a vast store of information about botany, biology, geography, and zoology.
Alexander appointed a team of experts including architects, geographers, botanists, astronomers, mathematicians, ethnographers, and zoologists. We are told that they sent back to Aristotle regular accounts of their discoveries together with samples of fauna and flora. These probably contributed to his celebrated Enquiries into Animals and the many accurate eyewitness reports it contains.
The king took a special interest in animals, especially those he could watch and make use of (horses, for example, and hunting dogs). Bucephalas was an inseparable companion and he owned a dog called Peritas whom he brought up from a puppy. When he saw peacocks for the first time in his life, he was so impressed that he wanted to prevent by law any attack on them.
According to the Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder,
he gave orders to some thousands of persons throughout the whole Asia and Greece, all those who made their living by hunting, fowling, and fishing and those who were in charge of warrens, herds, apiaries, fishponds and aviaries, to obey his instructions, so that he might not fail to be informed about any creature born in any region.
In the long run, this ambitious and well-funded research program had a profound influence on the development of the sciences and ultimately opened up awareness of the Indian subcontinent to the west. At a personal level, his thoughtfulness toward animals casts an attractive light on Alexander’s nature.
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WHAT WAS IT LIKE to be a soldier marching in Alexander’s army and, more particularly, what was the experience of battle?
Most of a soldier’s time was spent marching, often across rough ground, and he could in an emergency cover more than twenty miles a day. Alexander demonstrated this with his rapid descent on Greece and did so again when he followed Xerxes’ invasion route along the Thracian coast to the Hellespont.
Formations varied according to the terrain, but out in front were scouts, after whom might come the cavalry, then the baggage, and finally the infantry. When advancing through a defile the army would as a rule divide into two columns with the baggage between them. Curiously, nightly camps were not dug in and fortified.
A number of factors slowed the army down, chief of which was the baggage train; this included heavy equipment such as siege catapults; camp followers of all sorts; carts and pack animals carrying every kind of goods including loot accumulated on campaign; and traders selling wares. Both Philip and Alexander did their best to exert control. The former banned the use of wagons and refused to allow wives and prostitutes to accompany the army. He fixed the number of civilian servants to one for every ten men. Soldiers carried their armor and weapons together with utensils and some food.
Another factor holding up a soldier was his need to eat. On a lengthy expedition he could not carry enough staples such as grain or wine for more than a few days. Water was required in huge quantities, for the animals as well as the men. Horses and pack animals required regular rest periods and time to graze.
A large army was a curse to the lands it passed through, for few places had enough surplus to satisfy it. Most days it needed to spend time foraging, either buying or stealing everything edible in fields and farmhouses. Hungry soldiers could strip a countryside bare. An army could not remain stationary for extended periods when distant from sea or river transport, because it would rapidly consume the food and forage surpluses of the surrounding territory. It was obliged to move on and pillage somewhere else if it was to survive.
Cavalry played a crucial part in Alexander’s battle plans, but horse riding was a much trickier business than it became in modern times. Horseshoes were unknown and care had to be taken, if horses were ridden for long distances on rough ground, not to wear down their hooves. They needed periods of respite and could not safely canter or gallop for very long. Moreover, the stirrup had not been invented and only a basic saddle was used (perhaps a folded cloth or pad held in place by a strap around the horse). This reduced not only the rider’s stability but also his leverage when thrusting or throwing his javelin. Horses were small, not much larger than a sturdy pony nowadays, and riders mounted by vaulting. In sum, the main challenge facing a rider was not to fall off—especially in the mêlée of a battle.
Large-scale battles were rare but terrifying. They could take place only on a large, flat or flattish area of ground. They usually took place in the summer. Men would fight in a fog of blinding dust raised by feet and hooves (or less frequently in a storm of rain and mud, which was almost as bad). The noise was earsplitting.
A soldier in a phalanx, eight or sixteen rows deep, was part of a fixed formation and had no freedom of maneuver. He could not easily hear commands by trumpet or see flags raised and lowered once an engagement had started. Even orders from a junior officer nearby were hard to interpret, and in fact once the fighting had begun there was little a Philip or an Alexander could do, except by prearrangement, to react to events in the field. Both commander and other-rankers must have felt very alone and vulnerable.
When the phalanx, bristling with sarissas, charged, it raised a deafening paean, or war song. Only men in the front two or perhaps three rows of infantry were likely to have direct contact with the enemy, and then only at spear’s length. A phalanx’s chief task was not to fight hand-to-hand but to keep in tight formation and shove forward. Only if they broke up were they lost.
Troopers faced many more dangers than foot soldiers. When the battle had reached its crisis, their function was to charge on Alexander’s orders at a weak point in the enemy’s front line. This was the only time as commander that he was able to influence the course of the fighting. It was why he personally led his cavalry into the jaws of death. They could see him and followed wherever he chose to ride.
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THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE was as pain-rich as the fighting itself. Hellenic armies as far back as those in Homer employed physicians to tend the wounded. At Troy the Greeks enjoyed the services of two sons of the god of healing, Asclepius. One of these was called Machaon. When a king was struck down by an iron-tipped arrow, Machaon extracted it
though the pointed barbs broke off as the head was pulled out….When he found the place where the sharp point had pierced the flesh, he sucked out the blood and skillfully applied a soothing ointment with which the friendly centaur Cheiron had equipped his father.
As a word-perfect lover of Homer and a daring fighter in the field, Alexander will have understood the need for an efficient medical service in his own army. He also learned about medicine from Aristotle, son as he was of Philip’s personal physician, whose groundbreaking treatises on human anatomy (sadly lost) helped develop the healing art. We may guess t
hat the Macedonian expeditionary force was well supplied with the most up-to-date medical expertise.
Most injuries were inflicted during a rout and those on the losing side were usually slaughtered by victorious cavalry. Military doctors worked on many kinds of wounds. Through practice they became skillful bone surgeons, and amputations were common. A skeleton dating from about 300 B.C. has been found in Campania with an artificial leg, realistically modeled in bronze sheeting over a wooden core.
The main problem with surgical operations was the lack of anesthetics, which meant that they had to be brief. The agony could only be dulled with alcohol or concentrated liquors from the opium poppy and henbane. A draft of white mandrake (Mandragora officinarum, a highly poisonous hallucinogen and soporific) was recommended before procedures. It could induce unconsciousness and, if patient and surgeon were unlucky, death.
While serious internal injuries were usually fatal, men often recovered from flesh wounds, whether caused by cutting weapons or projectiles. A special forceps was devised to extract arrowheads. In the absence of modern antiseptics, septicemia was common and lethal. The disinfectant properties of honey, salt, and (in Egypt) saltpeter seem to have been well known. Some doctors understood the value of pitch, especially useful for coating amputees’ stumps, and of turpentine. Sulfides of arsenic seem to have been used to clean wounds.
According to one modern estimate, as little as 20 percent of prescribed medication was of any value, so it is remarkable that Philip and his son recovered from the many serious wounds they sustained in battle.
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