Alexander the Great

by Anthony Everitt

  He intended to raise the fundamental issues that were exercising his mind.

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  ALEXANDER AND HIS MILITARY escort left Lake Mareotis on a day in March 331. He went west along the coast, and near the little port of Paraetonium he turned south into the unknown. Camels were hired to carry supplies (the first time the Macedonians are reported to have used them). After two days progress was slowed by deep sand dunes. A severe windstorm blew up, common in Egypt at this time of year and caused by the differential heating of the Libyan desert and the rest of the Middle East during spring. The wind gusted to gale force, the temperature rose sharply, and the humidity fell. Worst of all, a sandstorm blasted its way across the desert and obliterated landmarks. After four days, the water ran out and the guides lost their way. If something did not turn up, the little expedition’s survival was at stake.

  The Fates were generous. A sudden downpour allayed the men’s thirst, and two crows were seen flying ahead of the party. On the assumption, correct as it proved, that they were making for the oasis, Alexander followed their lead, and Siwah came thankfully into sight. Even today, it is reported, the flight of two crows is regarded by residents of the oasis as a good omen.

  Six miles long by four to five miles wide, Siwah lies below sea level. It has about 200 springs, including a hot water fountain the temperature of which varies. Date palms and olives abound. Rock salt deposits were farmed (they still are) and exported to Egypt. On a rise stood the temple of Zeus-Ammon.

  Ammon was usually represented as a male figure with ram’s horns, but at Siwah the cult image was a navel- or omphalos-shaped stone studded with emeralds and other precious stones. When the oracle was consulted, eighty priests carried it in a gilded boat with silver cups hanging from it. It seemed to move involuntarily where it willed. Women followed behind and chanted hymns. A priest interpreted the boat’s movements in answer to questions put to the oracle.

  After his arrival, Alexander walked up a path to the shrine and entered the first of two halls. He was welcomed by an elderly priest and seer, who said: “Rejoice, my son.” Pharaohs were used to being called the Son of Amun and the priest must simply have been addressing him with formulaic politeness. He said as much, noting that “Ammon [that is, Zeus] is by nature the father of us all.” However, the king took the greeting as a direct message from the god, which confirmed his suspicion that he was indeed the son of Zeus. He was then led through the second hall and into a small sanctuary.

  The priest listened to the king’s questions (or read them if they had been submitted in advance in writing). Presumably he left the sanctuary to watch the divine boat sway about for a while and returned with his interpretations. The matter of paternity now being settled, Alexander asked whether he was fated to rule the world. The flattering priest answered that the god agreed to his request.

  The second question was a thunderbolt. “Have all my father’s murderers been punished?” The priest corrected him: if Ammon was his father, he was a god and obviously could not be murdered or die. However, he confirmed that all Philip’s murderers had paid for their crime.

  It was a most surprising issue to raise: perhaps Alexander worried that there had been a wider conspiracy which remained to be uncovered. But surely this was old business, long since dealt with. It would cast a painful light, though, on his conscience if he had been implicated in some peripheral way in the murder or, indeed, if Olympias had been secretly involved.

  What was said was said in private. Arrian is one of those who kept the king’s confidence and offered no comment. He writes with unexpected brevity: “Once there [in Siwah], Alexander toured the site with keen interest, and put his questions to the god. Having heard all the answers he had hoped for, he set out back to Egypt.” Other ancient sources publish the contents of the conversation. Are we to believe that these accounts were invented? Maybe. The oddity of the king’s question about Philip, though, lends them credibility. The king could have spoken indiscreetly in later years, or the people at Siwah allowed themselves to gossip.

  Whether or not the contents of Alexander’s private conversation with the priest at Siwah were widely known, many senior Macedonians, whose careers were nourished and flourished in Philip’s day, were upset by his son’s apparent rejection of his earthly paternity when he accepted Ammon as his divine father. It is reported that Parmenion’s son Philotas wrote to the king, advising him that it would be more dignified to keep quiet about the matter than to publicize it. One leading Macedonian lamented: “We have lost Alexander, we have lost our king!”

  These first signs of discontent led nowhere at the time, for the thrill of successive victories reinforced loyalty and enthusiasm.

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  ALEXANDER STOOD ON THE long ridge and surveyed the scene. Having marched back without incident from Siwah the way he came, he found himself again at Lake Mareotis. He was surrounded by officials, among them the celebrated town planner Deinocrates and Alexander’s Egyptian treasurer, Cleomenes of Naucratis, who was to be in overall charge of the development. On one side lay the lagoon and on the other, separated by a stretch of sea, the island of Pharos.

  The king’s mind was focused on the design of his new city. He wanted a Hellenic look with a grid pattern of streets. According to Arrian,

  he was seized with a passion for this project, and took personal charge of mapping his city on the ground—where its central square was to be built, how many temples there should be and to which gods (some Greek, but also the Egyptian Isis), where the surrounding wall should run. He made sacrifice in hope of sanction for these plans, and the omens proved favorable.

  He also made provision for a large and splendid palace, from which it may be inferred that Alexandria was to be Egypt’s administrative capital.

  Alexander must have proposed a causeway connecting the ridge to the island of Pharos (it was not constructed till the following century). This would create two harbors, one for commercial shipping and the other for the fleet. When tracing the course of the circuit wall, Alexander followed Macedonian tradition by using ground pearl barley. When flocks of birds flew down to eat it up, Aristander and other seers prophesied (uncontroversially, for Egypt was the breadbasket of the Mediterranean) that the city would prosper “especially from produce of the earth.”

  The area within the walls was very large, for Alexander had in mind a megalopolis; indeed, for a century or two Alexandria became the largest city in the world, until Rome overshot it. People from neighboring towns and villages were drafted in, and incomers, mostly Greeks, were recruited from around the eastern Mediterranean world. A democratic constitution was planned, with an assembly, a council, and a board of elected officials, which would be responsible for local administration.

  The king officially founded his new, as yet only imagined city on April 7, 331 B.C., and then immediately left what turned out to be his most lasting monument. He did not visit Egypt again and never saw his Alexandria complete. Much of the building work was done after his death, including its most famous edifice, the massive lighthouse of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

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  ABOUT A YEAR HAD passed since the fall of Tyre. Despite two bitterly fought sieges, Alexander’s strategy had succeeded. He now controlled the entire coastline of Asia Minor and North Africa from the Hellespont to Libya. As expected, Persian seapower had collapsed. Following a short return visit to Memphis, the king rejoined his army, cheerful after wintering in the Nile Valley. It was now time to march eastward into the Persian homeland and do battle with the new host that Darius had been assembling since Issus.

  But what Alexander appreciated as much as his thrilling victories by sea and land was his encounter with Zeus-Ammon. He could now legitimately claim to be a hero and a demigod on a level with the great warriors of old. In following the course of his life, a cumul
ative impression emerges that his hyperactivity had both an external and internal dimension. To his contemporaries and those who served him, he could hardly have seemed more real, more energetically, more dangerously, even unpleasantly present, whereas he himself appears to have seen the world as no more than a means of reenacting a dreamed past.

  He dipped in and out of his own parallel universe, at will.

  CHAPTER 9

  AT THE HOUSE OF THE CAMEL

  Alexander led his army down the low hills onto the wide plain of Gaugamela in Mesopotamia. He had his first view of the enemy about three and a quarter miles away in the distance and was shaken by what he saw. The Persians vastly outnumbered his own force and would have no trouble at all outflanking him. There was no mountain or sea to protect his wings, just acres and acres of flat, empty land.

  Worse, the Great King had obviously learned a lesson from Issus: that his infantry could not be relied on to put up a good fight. So his front line was nearly all cavalry, as at the Granicus, except for the center where Alexander could see Greek infantry mercenaries and the royal bodyguard.

  He realized that the spectacle was dampening his men’s spirits, but was at a loss for what to do next. So he called a conference of his Companions, generals, and squadron commanders. He asked whether in their opinion he should attack there and then or, surprisingly on past form, follow Parmenion’s cautious but canny advice. This was to stay where they were for the time being and make a thorough search of the terrain. It looked as if Darius had cleared a large area of brush and smoothed irregularities.

  Alexander agreed to a delay and, guarded by a substantial escort, spent much of the rest of the day riding about the ground the Persians had cleared and noting its edges with care. He was less concerned with the possibility that the Persians had laid traps for his troops as they advanced than with understanding the meaning and purpose of the enemy’s battle order. On a humpbacked hill not far away, the village of Gaugamela (which translates as the Camel’s House, and is today’s Tell Gomel) looked down on the level expanse where the decisive encounter of the war was to take place.

  On his return the king reconvened his officers and said that with their record of success they needed no encouragement from him, but he told them to fire up their men. They would be fighting to decide who would rule Asia Minor. It had been an open secret for some time that the king saw their mission no longer as revenge but as conquest. Now it was official.

  As dusk fell on September 30, 331 B.C., Alexander ordered the army to eat its evening meal and then rest. Meanwhile a nervous Darius held a torchlight review and insisted that his men stay under arms in case of a night attack. Perhaps he had some spy among the Macedonians, for the possibility of just such a shock move was exactly what Parmenion and some of his older companions were now discussing.

  According to Plutarch, they looked out across the plain and saw it

  agleam with the watch-fires of the barbarians, while from their camp there arose the confused and indistinguishable murmur of myriads of voices, like the distant roar of a vast ocean. They were filled with amazement at the sight and remarked to one another that it would be an overwhelmingly difficult task to defeat an enemy of such strength by engaging them by day.

  They went to speak to Alexander about the idea and found him in front of his tent. He was in an anxious mood and was deep in discussion with Aristander, his bridge to the gods. The seer was dressed in white, with a sacred bough in his hand and his head veiled. He performed certain mysterious ceremonies and led the king in prayers for the assistance of Zeus, his “father,” and Athena of Victory. Tellingly, the king offered a special sacrifice to the divine personification of Fear.

  Once he had finished these rituals, Parmenion broached the topic of a night attack; the moon was early in its last quarter and he argued that in the lunar light they could catch the enemy unawares and disorganized. The king was not impressed. Darkness left too much to chance. In case anyone thought he might be losing his nerve, he was resolutely optimistic. He replied: “I will not steal my victory.”

  He then retired inside his tent, but seems to have gone on worrying about his tactics for the following day, balancing various options. When he had come at last to a fixed decision, his mind calmed, and in the small hours he went to bed. He fell into a deep untroubled sleep.

  Dawn came and the king failed to wake up. His commanders were awaiting his orders with rising anxiety. No one dared to enter his tent to rouse him. Some even suspected that he was bottling it. Parmenion took it on himself to tell the men to take breakfast. The Persians were moving into battle formation, but still Alexander slept on.

  It was bright day. Was the battle to be lost before it began?

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  TWO MONTHS EARLIER, in late July or August 331, the Macedonian army, returning from Egypt, had reached the ruins of Tyre. Here Alexander staged the grandest so far of his arts festivals. The program included sacrifices to the gods, solemn processions, contests of choral singing and, as in Athens from its heyday in the fifth century, the competitive staging of classic tragedies.

  Drama was the most popular form of entertainment in the fourth century as well as being a religious obligation. In Greece, large open-air marble theaters were built to meet audience demand. However, Phoenicians were not enthusiasts of Greek tragedy, and perhaps the Macedonians’ engineers erected a temporary wooden structure. The actors were all male, including those playing women’s parts. The best of them were international stars who appeared in drama productions across the Hellenic world. Wearing masks, long ornate robes, and high-heeled boots, they were literally larger than life.

  These performers were highly regarded. They knew personally the political leaders of the day and often acted as ambassadors between states. One who took on such a role was Thessalus, who was twice a winner at the prestigious festivals of Dionysus at Athens. He had been envoy for the teenaged Alexander during the Pixodarus affair and very nearly came to grief as a result. He and a fellow star and rival, Athenodorus, headed the bill at Tyre.

  In Athens rich individuals, called choregoi, produced and funded the various drama productions and choral concerts. On this occasion the sponsors were the kings of Cyprus, who had just transferred their loyalty from Darius to Alexander during the recent siege.

  Although he did not reveal his preference, Alexander hoped that his friend Thessalus would be the victor in the competition. But a majority of the judges chose Athenodorus. As he left the theater, the king remarked: “I endorse the jury’s verdict, but I would have given part of my kingdom rather than see Thessalus defeated.”

  The winner had been due to perform in the Athenian festival of the Little Dionysia that winter, and was fined for breaking his contract by appearing at Tyre. He asked the king to intervene on his behalf with the Athenian authorities. Alexander refused, but privately paid the fine himself.

  At first sight it seems more than a little odd, even frivolous, for a major military campaign to be suspended for a cultural celebration. But the king always kept a close eye on his public image. The festival was a powerful assertion of the Hellenic values for which he and his Macedonians were waging war with barbarians.

  Everyone knew that a battle to win the Persian empire was imminent. What better time to advertise the superiority of Greek civilization?

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  THE LEAGUE OF CORINTH sent its warmest congratulations on Alexander’s achievements “for the salvation and freedom of Hellas” and presented him with a golden crown. But as a matter of fact, affairs in Greece had been unsettled for some time. The fiercely independent and militaristic city-state of Sparta, and its homeland of Laconia, refused to participate in the league (as we have seen) and became a hotbed of discontent. Sparta had once been a major power, and dominated its resentful neighbors in the Peloponnese. After a crushing defeat at the hands of Thebes
forty years before, it was now only of local importance. But the Spartans never forgot their claim to lead Hellas and refused to cooperate with Alexander’s father. He once sent them a message: “If I conquer Laconia, I will turn you out.” The Spartans, who had a reputation for brevity, responded with a single word: “If.”

  Their young king, Agis III, schemed to undo Macedonian control of the Hellenic world. But he was patient: Sparta had not fought at Chaeronea nor had it joined the failed rebellion that followed Alexander’s accession. Then in late 333, while the Macedonian army was more than a thousand miles away and unable to interfere, Agis decided to stir the pot again. The Aegean basin had become a Persian lake, and Miletus and Halicarnassus had been recaptured. So, despite Alexander’s success on land, Agis was optimistic about Darius’s chances. He sent an envoy to Susa to open talks about a Greek uprising.

  Not hearing back from Darius, Agis decided to see for himself what was going on. He sailed across the Aegean in a single trireme to meet Pharnabazus, admiral of the Persian fleet, and ask for the Great King’s support.

  Agis wanted the largest possible force of ships and troops to take back with him to the Peloponnese. But unluckily the Battle of Issus supervened and broke his hopes. Pharnabazus’s priority was now to save his Aegean possessions. All the Persians could afford to give Agis was thirty talents and ten triremes. He sent them to his brother at Sparta and instructed him to secure Crete for the Persian cause. The island was a traditional Spartan sphere of interest and would be a useful base for the fleet. He himself stayed for a time in Asia helping the resistance to Alexander. Then in 332 or 331, Agis returned to Sparta and raised the standard of revolt.