by Mary Renault
The winter was spent in reducing coastal strongholds, working south and down round Asia Minor’s eastward curve. With the spring he struck inland as far as Gordium, locale of the famous knot. It was a leather thong, intricately wound about the shaft of an ancient vehicle on which their most famous king, the legendary Midas, was supposed to have arrived. Plutarch says, most probably by hindsight, that the man who could undo it was destined to rule the world. Arrian says that by some accounts Alexander cut it with his sword in proverbial manner; by others, he tugged out the shaft it was wound round, and discovered the hidden end. “I shall not try,” writes Arrian conscientiously, “to say exactly how Alexander dealt with this knot.” It is agreed he dealt with it. There were thunderings and lightnings, to clinch the matter.
Further south, he approached the almost impregnable pass of the Cilician Gates, but had not to force it. Its holding force fled as soon as they heard he was there in person. At Tarsus, he nearly killed himself by jumping into the Cydnus (the stream that carried Cleopatra’s barge to Antony) while tired, hot and sweating. It was snow water; he got cramp and a bad chill, and his life was thought in danger. Here he made one of his impassioned testimonies to friendship. His doctor, Philip, was about to dose him, when a letter arrived from Parmenion, assuring him that Darius had bribed the man to poison him. In view of the offer to Alexandros of Lyncestis, this cannot have seemed trivial. It may even have been tried on Philip, though ignored. Alexander handed him the letter and, while he read it, tossed the medicine down. Philip, looking up in horror, saw Alexander smiling and holding the empty cup. The potion was a strong purge. He endured without loss of trust this benighted treatment, though it must have delayed his recovery, which took some weeks.
Darius meantime, stirred at last to action, had marched west from Babylon with an enormous army, and made camp on level ground where he had plenty of room to deploy it, barring the Macedonians’ southward march, somewhere near modern Aleppo. Unaware that Alexander was ill—his convalescence probably prolonged by two years’ incessant labour—Darius thought he was hanging back from fear, and was much encouraged.
The Great King, who stood six and a half feet tall, is said by Diodorus to have won renown during Ochus’ reign by killing in single combat a Cilician champion whom no other warrior would face. He was now about fifty; the duel, if it ever took place, may have been fought a quarter century before. It may have been propaganda to support his accession, which needed support; power and luxury may have changed him; or his courage may have been, as courage can be, specific rather than general. It would seem at any rate that since the news from the Granicus he had been a frightened man. The recent death of Memnon, from illness while on campaign, had further disconcerted him.
Alexander, when on his feet again, conducted methodical mopping-up operations to safeguard his flanks and communications. Darius, much cheered by this further delay, began to think of offensive action. Arrian blames flattering courtiers for this overconfidence; it is also possible that keener soldiers simply wanted to push him into the field.
With a formidable battle now ahead, Alexander set up a field hospital by the inlet bay of Issus, left there his sick and wounded, and marched southward to meet Darius; unaware that Darius, by a different inland route, was marching north. Hidden from each other the armies passed. Darius arrived at Issus in Alexander’s rear. The only Macedonians he found were the patients in the hospital. Whether or not by his orders, they were cut up alive. This atrocity was never repaid in kind by Alexander; a restraint seldom practised in the ancient world or, indeed, in some parts of the modern one.
The news that Darius had left his first-class position in the plain, and marched to Issus where he had no room to manoeuvre, seemed so incredible to Alexander that he sent a scout ship to make sure. The bay was reported swarming with Persians. He assembled his officers for briefing.
Arrian says he told them how Xenophon and his Ten Thousand, a body of isolated, unsupported infantry, had successfully fought their way from Babylon to the sea. He recalled their own ordeals successfully overcome together, “and whatever else at such a time in the face of danger a brave general would say to hearten brave men”—a thing he was very good at. The fact that they were cut off if they lost was unworthy even of mention. At the end they crowded round him, grasping his hands and begging him to lead them on. Latter-day clichés about the stiff upper lip, derived from Roman tradition, tend to obscure the highly emotional bond between Alexander and his men, which was to last his lifetime.
As at the Granicus, the Persians formed up behind a steep-banked river. Their front stretched from the sea to the near hills; a host which could have encircled the Macedonians with ease, had the terrain given them room. As it was, a great mass of reserves stood uselessly in the rear.
Ptolemy’s reckoning of the Persian force at 600,000 is thought by modern historians much exaggerated. To the Macedonians, outnumbered even on conservative estimates at eight or ten to one, it must have looked like it at the time. Darius’ Greek mercenaries alone are still thought to have been 12,000; the 5,000 Macedonian horse were a squadron compared with the heavily mailed Persian cavalry. Its commander was the distinguished general Nabarzanes, for whom the battle would be the prologue to a sombre drama.
Alexander took the intervening passes unhurriedly, keeping his men fresh. When, on the edge of the bay, he formed them in battle order, he made no speeches. He rode about the line, having a word with the officers, singling out men who had done well before and speaking of their exploits. The fact that he must have known several thousand men by name was one of Alexander’s secret weapons. Xenophon speaks highly of this gift in a commander.
To Parmenion, who had rejoined him on the march, he gave the important left-wing posting next the sea. The centre was mainly infantry. He himself with the household cavalry and the Companions led on the right.
Arrian describes the battle in detail. The Persians massed their cavalry against Parmenion’s vulnerable flank on the beach. Alexander sent reinforcements, riding low behind the tall sarissas of the infantry, to attempt surprise; but Nabarzanes fought on undaunted. Towards the right the tough Agriani, legacy of the dead prince Lambarus, dashed out at opposing Persian skirmishers and made them run. In the centre, where the phalanx faced the Greek mercenaries, the contest was stubborn, the Macedonians fighting for their pride, the Greeks to humble it. Pride, discipline, morale and the long sarissa carried the phalanx slowly forward. Alexander, watching his time, hurled himself with the Companion Cavalry across the river, smashing the enemy left, and turned the flank of the Greeks. Leaving the phalanx to finish a now easy task, he made for the target he had all along had his eye on: the royal Persian guard, the “Immortals,” in whose midst stood the Great King, conspicuous in his ornate chariot by his height and royal robe. Mounted upon the ageing but still spirited Bucephalas (who probably owed his long life to the light weight of his rider) Alexander raised the battle paean, and led the yelling cavalry, already exalted by success, in a thundering relentless charge.
As it neared, perhaps when in the dust cloud Alexander could be clearly seen, Darius’ nerve broke. He turned his chariot and fled. In wild confusion the Persian centre followed him. The whole front crumbled. The huge army poured off into the narrow passes. Thousands of men who had never been used in battle were trampled to death or jostled over precipices, by fugitives themselves being ridden down by the Macedonians. Nabarzanes, still resolutely fighting an indecisive action against Parmenion, saw débâcle and heard that the King had fled. He then disengaged his men as best he could, with feelings that time was to reveal.
Had the royal chariot been occupied by Darius’ younger brother, Oxathres, it is unlikely the fight would have been so prompt. He put up a good fight beside the King till it was too late; a fact not lost on Alexander when next they met.
Eager to pursue Darius, he waited to be sure that victory was secure; the prize was great, but he was a professional. Then he changed horses for the chas
e; to find, some miles along, the royal chariot, the royal weapons and robe, of which Darius had disencumbered himself before hastening his flight on horseback. Alexander, returning with these trophies, found them the least of what the Great King had left behind.
His tent stood intact, with the appointments of a palace; toilet and table ware in gold and silver, inlaid furniture, a divan, a sumptuous bath, a throne. Alexander, looking around at a setting which must have made his father’s famous palace seem almost ascetic, is said to have exclaimed, “So this is what it means to be a king.”
Dining that night with his chief officers, in the tent, off the gold and silver, the stains of battle washed off in the royal bath, he heard women wailing not far off, and asked what was going on. He was told it came from the harem. Darius had left behind him his wife, reputed the fairest woman in Asia; their two young daughters; his heir, a boy of five or six; and his mother. Learning that his chariot and robe had been brought back with the spoils, they were lamenting his death, and the fate they foresaw for themselves.
Other eminent Persians had left their women in what then seemed safety at Damascus. Darius, self-indulgent and too confident, had brought his household along. To Alexander this in itself must have seemed highly unprofessional; the sequel of their abandonment—and to troops who owed vengeance for the hospital atrocity—came as a revelation. The ladies had so far been unmolested. They were, of course, the perquisites reserved for him.
He sent an officer at once to reassure them; Darius still lived, they would be protected. The Queen Mother, Sisygambis, would receive the names of noble fallen Persians, with his leave to direct their funeral rites. Next day, having seen the wounded—he had a sword cut on the thigh himself—he visited the family. Arrian admits that the event has accumulated legend. There is, however, no conflict of the evidence. He, Curtius and Plutarch vary only slightly, and all to the same effect.
Alexander brought Hephaestion with him. They walked in together, both simply dressed. Hephaestion’s looks and presence first struck the women, used to associate height with royalty, and the venerable Sisygambis began to prostrate herself before him. He drew back; the harem eunuchs made warning signs; in distress she began again with the King. He stepped forward and raised her up. “Never mind, Mother. You made no mistake, he too is Alexander.” Mystifying as this may have seemed when passed through an interpreter, she thanked him with regal dignity.
The Queen, Stateira, was Darius’ sister. Dynastic incest was common in the East, but this marriage predated his accession. Since, however, an accredited beauty of that day must have been well under thirty, she would be a legitimate half-sister by a younger wife of their father. Her two daughters, barely out of childhood, were old enough for the captive’s usual fate. Alexander promised them all his safeguard. He bent to the youngest child, the little boy, who fearlessly hugged his neck. Turning to Hephaestion—not to the interpreter—he said that Sisygambis’ grandchild shared her nature; a pity it had missed her son.
The family was given the dignity, seclusion and safety of a royal harem. To Sisygambis he had been drawn at once. Her age exempted her from strict purdah, and he called again on her.
She had never been the wife of a king, only the mother, and that late in life. But to the old aristocrat who had bewailed her son’s heroic death, the truth of his survival may have been a greater blow. She and Alexander seem to have found much in common, despite all gulfs of culture and language, and even the gaffe with which his next visit opened. Recalling his mother and sister doing fancy work at the loom, he arrived with a gift of choice coloured wools. Sisygambis had never seen such stuff but in the hands of servants; she felt bitterly what seemed a reminder of her new condition. He read her face, got to the bottom of the trouble, and begged pardon gracefully. Their friendship prospered.
The young Queen he never saw again; from self-mastery, Plutarch says; in any case, resolved that scandal should have no straw to catch at. In flattery or joke, friends urged him to claim his droit du seigneur; he forbade them to name her in his presence. Though the abstinence itself may have cost him little, the thought for the women’s pride and self-respect, the maintenance of their little court and accustomed service, came from natural generosity. A fact needing more explanation is that, with the troublesome train of their furniture, ladies and household eunuchs, he took them along on his march.
It may have been to enjoy the company of Sisygambis—only at his death did the depth of their bond appear—it may have been to be sure they were not molested. Yet he had captured strongholds where he could have established them in safety. There is another possible motive, which would have been very like him.
The most picturesque subplot of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is the story (quite fictional, as far as anyone knows) of Cyrus and the Lady of Susa. After his great victory over the Assyrian confederation, she was reserved for him as the best of the booty, along with her wealthy household. Her beloved husband, away in distant parts, had missed the battle. The Persian officers, who had glimpsed her beauty as she tore her robe in lamentation, reported her “the loveliest woman of mortal birth in Asia.” They had assured her by way of comfort that she was destined for the finest among men; now they urged him to view his prize. No, he answered, by God he would not, especially if her beauty was so great. He might gaze on her too long, and forget his duties; love, when all was said, was a kind of slavery. He confided her protection to a trusted follower; when this man fell in love with her, for her safety he was sent away. Moved by so much chivalry, she offered to send her husband word of it, and beg him to ally with Cyrus. Trustingly he arrived. “They embraced each other with joy, as well they might when they had had no hope of ever meeting again.” She told him of Cyrus’ compassion and self-command, and begged it should be repaid with loyalty. Gratefully he took the King’s right hand; and remained faithful until death.
Alexander had not only a powerful sense of theatre; he had learned from Aristotle how the great-souled man chooses his role and lives it through. He had also a real delight in giving pleasure to others, whose sincerity is attested by many human anecdotes. It is tempting to guess that he had hopes of surpassing Xenophon’s drama. Darius had not shown himself in the light of an implacable foe who would fight while life was in him. The reunion with wife, mother and children, presided over by a gracious victor, would indeed have made one of history’s great set Alexander-pieces, to whose possibilities no one was more alive than Alexander. His determination to make such dreams come true was attended by much success. If he was disappointed of this one, fate rather than impracticability was to blame.
The Lady’s story had another aspect. Her husband become Cyrus’ vassal.
There is no moment in Alexander’s career of which it can be said with certainty that this was when he decided he need not stop short with his father’s aim of freeing the Greek cities; that he could, and would, be Great King of Persia. But the likeliest time is surely after Issus, when he saw what imperial splendours had enshrined a man of straw.
Darius fled through the night on relays of horses, with a handful of his suite. At daybreak he was joined by some 4,000 scattered fugitives. About 8,000 of his Greeks escaped home by sea. The King himself scarcely drew rein till he was across the Euphrates.
Alexander, his road swept clear before him, marched due south towards Judaea and the coastal cities of the Phoenicians. His Greek obligations were all fulfilled; he was now embarked on a war of conquest.
It is as foolish to apply anachronistic moral standards to this as it would be to condemn Hippocrates for not teaching aseptic surgery. In the long evolution of human thought (so generally in advance of human conduct) the notion that war was wrong had not yet entered the world. Socrates himself, who regarded his life work as a search for the good, said proudly at his trial, “It would be strange, Athenians, if I who stood my ground in the battle-line, facing death at my commander’s order, should desert the station where God posted me.” Aristotle warmly supported wars of Hell
enizing conquest so long as “barbarians” were not treated as men. A century later, a handful of Stoics began to question war’s morality, but were little heeded. Rome’s soldier Christians went to martyrdom sooner than worship the Divine Caesar or the Eagles of their legion; not for refusing to fight. In our own generation, what has been tolerated, and even approved, by the same opinion formers who condemn Alexander, shows a discrepancy of standards so bizarre that one might suppose it is his better qualities, rather than his worse, that arouse resentment. The words of that underrated philosopher the Earl of Chesterfield are as true today as in 1748: “The things which happen in our own times, and which we see ourselves, do not surprise us near so much as things which we read of in times past though not in the least more extraordinary.”
From some camp in Mesopotamia Darius wrote to Alexander, requiring terms for the ransom of his family. His note was a general manifesto, accusing Philip as first aggressor, and Alexander for breaking an old alliance—an unwise reminder, to a man in a position of strength, of Macedonian humiliation in Xerxes’ war. He, Darius, had taken up arms against these injuries; but “the battle had gone as some god willed it.”