by Mary Renault
He did not neglect the Greek world, but held ceremonial games, not only for athletes but—probably with more personal enjoyment—for the performing arts. Crowds of competitors flocked from the Greek cities. This was his first taste of real magnificence; he did not reach the palace of Persia as a raw provincial.
From Memphis he returned down river to the coast, where he had business to transact about his conquests in Asia Minor. Cruising across the Delta, he beached near Lake Mareotis. The spot looked to him just the place for a city; good harbourage, good land, good air, good access to the Nile. So keen was he to get the work begun that he walked over the site, trailing after him architects and engineers, pointing out positions for the marketplace, the temples of Greek and Egyptian gods, the sacred way. Being short of marker white, he accepted some meal from someone resourceful. Birds came to feed on it, from which the seers forecast that the city would prosper, and nourish many strangers; a prediction that Alexandria continues to fulfill. At some time in his eager progress, he must have crossed the site of his own tomb.
“After this,” says Arrian, “he was seized with a longing to visit Ammon in Siwah.” Though this oracular shrine was renowned throughout the Greek world, it had neither political nor strategic value. No Pharaoh, we are told, had ever been there before. In Persia, Darius was mobilizing; and, Egypt now secure, the sooner he was met the better. Yet on this pilgrimage Alexander was determined. He may have heard things from the priests at Memphis which made it indispensable to him; it is equally likely that he had heard something at Dodona.
Various reasons are offered on his behalf; that Perseus, a maternal forebear, and Heracles, a paternal one, had both sought before great labours the advice of Zeus-Ammon. He was their common ancestor, and therefore Alexander’s. But Arrian adds that he went “hoping to know more truly about himself, or at any rate to say he did.”
He turned from the coast to the dangerous inland route, where, if a dust storm rose, it could engulf an army, and was said once to have done so. As they toiled through the sand, water ran short, but rain came to save them. Ptolemy (here proprietorial) averred that two serpents guided them, speaking with human voices. Before calling him a charlatan it should be remembered that desert sands can emit uncanny sounds. At all events, they reached the green shady oasis of Siwah. The High Priest, used to Greek pilgrims and probably speaking some Greek, hailed Alexander as “Son of Ammon.” This formal address, which by now must have been familiar to him, was noted by his friends, who were admitted to the forecourt after ritual purifications. The divine Pharaoh, whose person could bring only sanctity, went in as he was, and entered the holy of holies quite alone.
The oracle worked on a peculiar principle: that of planchette on an immensely impressive scale. Originating in the Ammon temple at Thebes, its antiquity was immemorial. The symbol of the god, a round navel-shaped object, was carried in a kind of boat hung with precious vessels; long carrying poles rested on the shoulders of many priests. Under the god’s direction they would turn, halt or bow; from these movements the seer would read the god’s response. (A similar ritual is still carried out in Alexandria by a Muslim sect, though of course without the idol; the devotees say that divine guidance comes as pressure on their shoulders.) This strange procession may have been visible from the courtyard. Its meaning, however, was revealed to Alexander only, within the shrine. If he had indeed intended, as Arrian said, to declare what he had learned about himself, the solemn experience changed his mind. His sole comment was that he had had the answer his soul desired. He never told what the question was.
He is said to have written to Olympias that he would tell her in private when he got back to Macedon. Anything he would tell her, he probably told Hephaestion; if so, he was as silent as the grave to which he took the secret.
If the letter was written, Alexander’s main question must have concerned his origins. From this time, his sense of destiny acquired a daimonic force. Scientific rationalism is here anachronistic. Greeks (including philosophers) saw in all outstanding qualities a touch of the divine. He had excelled all other men again and again in leadership, courage, contrivance, endurance; and what he already felt in himself had been confirmed. He continued to acknowledge Philip as his human father, assuming perhaps a kind of dual fatherhood of seed and soul; a matter he must often have pondered without imparting his thoughts to anyone. But that he did henceforward regard himself as in some sort Ammon’s son is certain, and was commonly known. It was not irreconcilable with the mortality witnessed by his battle scars; god-begotten men died, but were received into the heavens.
No one, of course, in his lifetime supposed he could have been begotten by the pharaoh Nectanebo. This freak of later legend stems solely from his high prestige in Egypt. Folklore, which can be neither enforced nor bought, should never be ignored.
Alexander returned to Memphis by the ordinary and safer pilgrim route. Here he received Greek embassies graciously, sacrificed to Zeus, held a parade, and more contests for athletes and poets, the latter being at little loss for a theme. Getting down to the business of government, he gave as usual the civil posts to native governors, the garrison commands to officers of his own, and restored all rites and customs which the Persians had suppressed.
At some time in Egypt, Philotas was accused to him, by persons unknown, of some unknown disloyalty. This may have been when his fair captive from Damascus, Antigone, began to talk. Philotas, she widely revealed, was forever bragging that he and Parmenion his father had done all the real work of conquest, though its credit went to The Boy. Such careless gossip hardly suggests devotion; and it cannot have amazed her when the loyal Craterus brought her for a private interview with Alexander. He did nothing about it—it must have struck him as just Philotas’ usual style—merely telling her to warn him of anything serious. She returned to Philotas, in whom she did not confide.
His younger brother, Hector, to whom Alexander had been much attached, had lately lost his life when a crowded ferry foundered in which he was trying to catch up the royal barge. Alexander had given him a splendid funeral. Perhaps there had been a love affair, of which Philotas had not much approved; and after his bereavement it would be a time for tact.
From Egypt Alexander marched to Tyre, now refortified for Macedon. The Persian fleet, without a base in the Mediterranean, already mostly captured or dispersed, was no further threat. It was time to turn east. He sacrificed to Melkart-Heracles—he had Herculean labours ahead—and held more games. The theatre was splendidly represented, two of its sponsors being tributary kings. One lavish production starred the now famous Thettalus, Alexander’s devoted envoy to Caria. Keeping his eager partisanship to himself, he was bitterly disappointed when the judges, whom he had scrupulously refrained from nudging, gave someone else the award. Only later in private did he confess he would have given half he had to see Thettalus win the crown.
It was in the same spirit, and at about this time, that he made one of his few bad misjudgments of men. Among his friends exiled by Philip had been one Harpalus, a Macedonian aristocrat; whose attachment can only have been genuine, for Alexander could then offer no material return. Those days were over; Harpalus, recalled at the accession, and prevented by lameness from serving in war, was put straight into a treasury appointment. He had probably never had his hands on money before. During the Issus phase of the campaign he had got into some unspecified scrape, presumably financial, and gone off to Greece with an obscure accomplice. Alexander, loyal and grateful, apparently convinced he had been led astray, sent a “come back, all is forgiven” message. He reappeared; he must have had considerable address, was a cultivated person on whom Alexander relied to send him books, and may really have been touched and penitent. To prove that all was indeed forgiven, Alexander returned this luxury-loving man to the temptations which had lately overset him, and put him in charge of the whole army chest. For a time he accompanied the expedition. Lack of opportunity, and the old easy charm, confirmed Alexander’s misplaced c
onfidence. Disillusion would be long delayed.
Western Asia, Egypt, and all his communications with Macedon were now secure. He turned east to meet Darius; leaving forever the Greek world, except what he took with him.
Persia
FROM THIS TIME ON, Alexander’s chroniclers record outstanding events, between which weeks will have passed, occupied in the mere conveyance of a huge court, administration and army from place to place, or planning and populating a new city, or resting his men after a hard campaign. Over the vast and varied landscapes of Asia, amid the excitements of exploration and war, he evolved a kind of daily life which he pursued when nothing interfered with it. Plutarch has most to say of it, probably drawing on the vanished memoirs of Chares, the court chamberlain.
Alexander’s day began with public prayers. His priesthood, unlike his privilege of divinity, was a function of his human kingship. His personal celebrations were for great events; but regularly as a matter of course he recommended his people to the gods. Almost to the day of his death, when so ill he had to be carried in a litter to the shrine, he made the morning libation.
After this he “took breakfast sitting” (in a chair, not on a dining couch); then spent the day in “hunting, administering justice, managing army business, or reading.” He was a keen hunter, intrigued by changes of country and its game; while the army lumbered along at foot pace he would pass his time at the chase. He lived close to the long ages of man in which wild animals were vital sources of food, and dangerous enemies; as Xenophon recognized when he called the sport “the image of war.”
“Administering justice” was already an enormous task. First there were the affairs of Macedon. Antipater was firm and capable, but Olympias detested him; her complaints, accusations and intrigues followed Alexander everywhere. She was jealous of his friends; furiously jealous of Hephaestion. Alexander, who wrote to her faithfully and sent her a stream of lavish gifts, occasionally came to the end of his patience, and is quoted as once remarking that she charged pretty high rent for the nine months’ lodging she had given him. He even allowed himself to be seen in public sharing one of her letters with Hephaestion; which, considering how it would have enraged her, betrays some exasperation.
There was also mainland Greece with its restless “subject-allies.” Sparta was in revolt till crushed by Antipater in 331. The danger from the south necessitated a standing army in Macedon, and garrisons in all those strongpoints whose magnificent ashlar walls can be seen today. Had Alexander not been able to attract foreign troops, continue paying them, and keep their loyalty, his forces would have stretched to breaking point. Antipater would deal with home emergencies; but all important policy decisions came to the King.
Far outweighing all this was the complex administration of the conquered lands. In the liberated city-states he had restored Greek forms of government; where Persian satrapies were indigenous he had appointed satraps, native ones if possible; to old kingdoms he had given kings. He was Pharaoh of Egypt, and founder of Alexandria, an enormous project employing swarms of experts. During the growing pains of all these communities, a constant traffic of problems and arbitrations followed his march.
“Managing army business” meant, to him, much more than making staff appointments and directing grand strategy. He never thought himself above the concerns of a regimental officer. Without doubt the love of the army was the breath of life to him; but never in his life did he try to get it cheap. It was not just a matter of being first into danger and last to take comforts when conditions were rough. Before a battle he could greet men by name instead of making speeches. To have one’s exploits remembered by him was in itself an award, though his material rewards were generous. He was constantly interested in the common soldier’s predicaments, however remote from his own. When a man with a good record was found malingering to stay near his mistress, Alexander, having gone into the matter, said that being a free courtesan she could not be compelled, but perhaps could be persuaded to follow her man. If he was hard up, Alexander probably furnished the persuasion. Whether in the field or routine fatigues, he watched out for merit. A soldier in the treasure train, who shouldered a heavy pack when the mule in his charge gave out, was told just to get it as far as his own tent, and keep the contents. Like Xenophon’s Cyrus, Alexander aroused an eager wish to please him. He never needed, for troops under his command, the brutal punishments of the Roman army. No regiment of his was ever “decimated”—numbered off in tens and every tenth man killed. Yet his discipline was meticulous. Once when his troops were drawn up in battle formation, he noticed a single soldier fixing belatedly the throwing strap of his javelin and, walking up to him, pushed him out of the phalanx, saying he had no use for slovens. From him, as the survival of the story shows, this must have been as traumatic as a flogging from Julius Caesar.”
He could take the surrender of wealthy cities, and hold back his troops from sacking them. One of his rare impositions of the death sentence was on two of his Macedonians who had raped the wives of two foreign auxiliaries; his men were his men wherever they came from. This close attention to their affairs must often have taken up nearly as much time as the administration of his empire.
Never described in detail, but evident from results, are innumerable personal conversations with the men he regarded, and treated, as his friends: Macedonian generals, actors, musicians; in due course Persian lords and at least one Persian eunuch; an Indian sage; old Sisygambis; all people he individually knew. From time to time he must have looked in on his poor imbecile half-brother Arridaeus, who disappears from history till Alexander’s death, when he is discovered close at hand in the royal palace.
Seeing that routine business was constantly falling into arrears during periods of violent action, it is astonishing that he found time to read; not only history and civics, but classical tragedy and modern poetry. At the supper parties which closed his day and relaxed its tensions, “no prince’s conversation was ever so agreeable”; so says Plutarch, adding that this applied as long as he was sober.
About Alexander’s drinking habits much nonsense has been written which can be corrected by the most elementary medical knowledge combined with the evidence of his life. Aristobulus, cited by Plutarch, says he liked to sit up late over the wine, not drinking heavily but for the sake of the talk. It seems incredible that this should arouse scepticism when any night of the year in London, Paris, New York, Athens or Rome, hundreds of people whose constitution it suits will be found doing precisely this. In Alexander’s case, the mere record of his dynamic energy (he took exercise on the march by jumping off and on a moving chariot) and his astonishing powers of recuperation makes the idea of habitual drunkenness absurd. On the other hand, male Macedonian social life embraced, traditionally, the deliberate heavy drinking bout in honour of this or that; and in these he certainly did not hold back, getting disastrously drunk on two occasions at least. There is no doubt that he and his generals made up a pretty hard-drinking mess; but it is abundantly clear from the overall picture that he usually behaved as Aristobulus says he did, though sometimes he made a night of it.
In vino Veritas, and he was no exception. When he took too much, the insecurities of his boyhood surfaced in an insatiable craving for reassurance. He loved being told of his achievements, and if he did not get enough he asked for more. No doubt hostile propagandists made the most of it; but it would be foolish to reject Plutarch’s statement which, though citing no good source, has so much psychological consistency. Probably he could irritate his dearest friends, even though, we are told, he only claimed what was true. But the kind of affection he inspired throughout his lifetime supports Aristobulus’ words about his more habitual charm.
In July 331, about the time of his twenty-fifth birthday, Alexander marched east to Mesopotamia, where beyond the Tigris Darius was awaiting him.
A great mobilization had been held of the forces from the still unconquered eastern empire. The valuable stiffening of Greek mercenaries had been lo
st, all but about 4,000. But beside the elite troops of Persia, there were the less disciplined but fierce and tough levies of Bactria and Sogdiana under Bessus, the powerful satrap of Bactria and cousin of the King; also auxiliaries of many tributary races from the Caucasus to the Indian frontier. All were now based on Babylon, where the Persian commanders had worked hard on improving weaponry. After the lesson of Issus, javelins had been replaced with spears; and there was a squadron of the fearsome scythed chariots, with their spearheaded yoke poles and multi-bladed wheels. Nothing, unfortunately, could be done about the continuing liability of Darius as commander-in-chief.
The cavalry under Nabarzanes was of high calibre; born horsemen, and far better mounted than the Greeks. Beside the tall Nisaeans, probably as big as modern chargers, Bucephalas must have looked like a thickset pony. For such troops to wear down the Greeks with harrying tactics promised better results than a pitched battle, even without Darius’ known record. But either he was resolved to redeem the honour lost at Issus, or had been made to feel he ought. He marched his huge host towards the ancient town of Arbela, between the Tigris and the hills.
A cavalry detachment was sent west to the Euphrates, to locate and oppose Alexander’s crossing. But his advance engineers ran out their double bridge on piles from their own side till Alexander came up; the Persians, commanded by Mazaeus, satrap of Babylon, made off without opposing him. Babylon, the heart of ancient conquered Assyria, was not the most loyal part of the Persian empire.
The Tigris, whose name means Arrow, was too swift to bridge and had to be forded. Alexander got his infantry across between two columns of cavalry, one to break the current for them, the other to catch any men swept away. He headed the infantry himself, and then stood on the bank pointing out the shallower places. Not a man was lost.
No other commander of unmechanized forces could ever move as fast as Alexander. He also knew when to take his time. Instead of striking across the hot river plain, where the retreating Mazaeus had burned the crops, he skirted it by the northern uplands, cooler and well watered. Too late to catch him as he struggled across the Tigris, Darius improved the time by sending an army of slaves to level the intervening plain of Gaugamela. He had been told that Issus had been lost because he had not had room to deploy his forces; and the chariots would need smooth ground.