Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  The attempt was hazardous and not generally approved. Athens could call on a possible fleet of more than 300 ships, but she could never finance them, as Harpalus had already been turned from the city with his money and his troops before Leosthenes took up office: he was a lost hope, for news soon came that he had been murdered in Crete by a Spartan on his staff and that his troops were planning to raid North Africa rather than return. So Athens was left with little of the money she had long been needing, the prospect of some 8,000 mercenaries also needing pay, an unmanned fleet in dry dock, and a grievance in Samos which she dearly wished to settle. Leosdienes's plans to hire mercenaries had already been seen to fail the Spartan king Agis; even after Alexander's death they never added more than 5,000 troops to the city's resources. In Alexander's lifetime, the prospects were less enticing, for a huge Levantine fleet was at his disposal and all the while the Silver Shields and other Macedonian veterans were marching west from Opis, in slow stages, dangerously close to the coast and a fast boat home.

  While Lcosthenes was left to scheme in the background, one more embassy set out in autumn to plead for Samos to be exempted from its exiles' return; wisely, Athens's assembly had realized that she must try every outlet before risking a forlorn revolt. As the ambassadors travelled, Alexander was riding south by chariot from Luristan's nomads, down towards Babylon, habitual winter residence of the Persian kings and scene seven years before of the most triumphant welcome of his career. Then, in the first flush of victory, he had ordered its holy temple of E-sagila to be restored, along with the steep-stepped ziggurat of Etemenanki. But the priests of Babylon had preferred their own finances, for as long as the temples were incomplete, they could spend the income from sacred land on more congenial goods than sacrifice and silver-polish, and they had delayed the building plans to suit themselves. If Alexander entered the city, he would angrily hurry them and so they came towards the Tigris to stop him.

  Well versed in astrology, they deterred him with a prophecy. Their god, they said, advised him on no account to enter Babylon from the west; some said Alexander scorned them, but Aristobulus, who was placed to know better, insisted that he made a careful detour of the Euphrates, trying to avoid the western quarters of the city, until he was halted by the local marshes. The priests, no doubt, had known this, and by warning him against the western approaches, had hoped to exclude him from the city altogether. While Alexander respected the warnings of the gods, he would not submit to the trick of their anxious ministers; he marched in defiance through the western gate, and within days earth was being moved for the temple's new foundations. Tithes were to be collected once more from temple properties, a useful addition to the royal treasury.

  Inside Babylon, as winter took hold, Alexander continued in his mood of bold decision. Nearchus and the explorers reported on their discoveries in the Persian Gulf, including the islands of Bahrein and Failaka which Alexander named after the Greek hero Icarus, and told of prospects for the voyage against Arabia. Despite the explorers' failure to round Arabia, a harbour was ordered to be dug at Babylon with boat-houses for a thousand ships, far the largest fleet that had ever been countenanced in Alexander's world and a force which lent plausibility to rumours that after Arabia, it would be Africa or the West. This fleet was not all. While cypresses were felled in the countryside to meet this remarkable demand, recruiting officers went east to Syria and Phoenicia 'to hire or buy men used to the sea, for Alexander intended to colonize the shore of the Persian Gulf, as he thought it would be no less prosperous than Phoenicia itself. Traders and messengers of the future would pass this new Phoenicia on their reopened route from India and put in for stores at these new harbour towns; the settlers too, would be sailors, able to follow the spring winds east to the Indus or strike out south for Arabia's spices and the newly conquered skeikdoms of the Hadramut. It was a far-sighted plan. Alexander's energy had all too plainly not deserted him, nor had the ruthlessness with which he and Philip had always transplanted settlements. But behind the order for the thousand ships lurked the officers' suspicion that Africa would follow Arabia and they would be made to sail round the south of the world.

  When spring broke, he was quickly to work once more. Babylonian life had always depended on its intricate system of canals, and as Alexander sailed down the Euphrates to inspect the sites for his harbour and new settlements, he became aware that the irrigation was needlessly blocked, 'despite three months' work by ten thousand Assyrians to improve it'. Noticing a stretch of stony ground, he devised a simpler diversion for the river's overflow, and replaced the labours of 10,000 workmen by a single observation; then, sailing downstream, he explored the marshes at the mouth of the Euphrates and adorned, characteristically, the neglected tombs of its former kings and controllers. A site by the sea seemed to invite another Alexandria, so he ordered sufficient Greek mercenaries and disabled veterans to be selected as citizenry; but as he rowed back from his new creation, 'steering the boat in person', he suffered a slight misadventure: part of his fleet had lost the way, whereupon a sudden breeze blew off his royal hat, complete with diadem, and caught it in a clump of reeds. An unknown sailor swam away to retrieve it, and imprudently put the hat on his head as soon as he had disentangled it; his reward was a talent, but some said he was beheaded at the advice of the prophets before he could enjoy it, others, more plausibly, that he was scourged. All agreed he had sinned by assuming the diadem, already so powerful a symbol of royalty, and soon his rashness seemed itself to be an omen.

  Back in Babylon, the flow of plans continued unabated and this time they touched on the army's final shape. Disbanded mercenaries from western Asia had arrived for service at the empire's centre, along with 20,ooo native Persians and a group of nomads. The Persians were brought by Peucestas their satrap; all of them were archers and javelin-throwers, light-armed recruits, therefore, from the province with most cause to prove hostile in all Asia, but Alexander enrolled them into his Macedonian brigades, where their files were headed front and rear by highly paid Macedonian veterans. It was the climax of his integration in the army: apart from his Iranian Successors, Companions and cavalry, his Foot Companions were now to be doubled in strength, and Persians outnumbered Macedonians by three to one. For four years already the Foot Companions had fought in more open order without their sarissas; possibly, at the last the Macedonians in front and rear were returned to their famous weapon, while light-armed Persians were to shoot arrows or javelins over their heads. First, a long-range volley from the Iranians' composite bows of horn and leather in the centre; then, an advance with three rows of eighteen-foot spears, backed by a core of light-armed troops for impetus. There was sense, as well as magnanimity, in a mixed Perso-Macedonian phalanx, for it put the middle ranks to more varied use.

  As the troops were drafted, discipline and training were not allowed to slacken: the ships were built, and 'Alexander exercised them constantly, causing the three-banked warships to compete again and again with the four-bankers, for the sake of crowns of victory'. For amusement, he even staged a mock battle on the river, whereby crew pelted crew with apples from the decks of the royal fleet; morale must be high for the Arabs, and he spared no favour in order to sustain it. Meanwhile, the embassies arrived from the Greeks, Athens included, and were heard in revealing order of their business's importance; first religion, then presents; then foreign disputes, internal problems and, last of all, the pleas for returning exiles. Some envoys had come wearing crowns, as if to honour a god, so these religious embassies which took priority even over presents must largely have concerned Alexander's own worship. Among these worshippers the great Greek sanctuaries took precedence; first Olympian Zeus, then Ammon of Siwah, 'according to the importance of their respective sanctuaries': for Alexander, Libyan Amnion remained a subordinate equivalent of the Zeus he knew in Greece. To most of the embassies, a generous answer was given in return for golden crowns, even if they had not come to worship him and thus came low on his list. But it is a rare glimpse
of Alexander's last months that he put worship of himself and the gods above all other Greek business.

  In late spring, this glimpse becomes more public in the final design for Hephaistion's monument. As the architects drew up their plans, Alexander breached a mile and a quarter of Babylon's walls and ordered the baked bricks to be collected. Then he marked out a square, whose sides were 200 yards long, and divided it into thirty sections; in each, the tomb's stories were to be supported by the trunks of palm trees. The outside walls were decorated, first with the golden prows of 240 quinquiremes, each equipped with two kneeling archers, six feet high, and armed warriors, taller still, between whom were stretched drapes of scarlet felt. On the next storey, 22-foot torches were wound with wreaths of gold and topped, amid their flames, with eagles, wings outstretched; serpents coiled around their bases. The third storey showed a hunting-scene, the fourth a battle of gold centaurs, the fifth a row of golden bulls and lions. The sixth showed Macedonian and Persian weaponry, while the top was crowned with hollow sirens, inside which a choir could be concealed to sing a lament for the dead man.

  The whole was said to be some 200 feet high; the word 'pyra' described it, but a 'pyra' could be a monument. It did not have to be burnt.

  These measurements may be nothing more than rumour. No trace of this monument has been found, probably because its patron died before it was far off the ground; the desire to complete it was publicized among Alexander's Last Plans, which his officers probably exaggerated to ensure their rejection. Hence, perhaps, the huge dimensions, though they would not be implausible anyway. For a less powerful man this monument would have been an impossible madness, but the show was in keeping with a hero's concern to be seen to pay the dead the most glorious honours possible and for Hephaistion Alexander would not drop his Homeric ideals. He had the treasure to finance it and the architects to carry it out. Pharaohs had long built pyramids, just as dukes would one day build palaces and bishops still build larger cathedrals, and only a parochial mind can uphold this new Pharoah's extravagance as a definite 'proof of raving lunacy. The design was fantastic and obviously influenced by Babylonian architecture; aesthetically, it may have been hideous, but ugliness alone is not a proof that a man has lost his judgement, and there was always Harpalus's monument to his mistress in Babylon which asked to be excelled. Not every grand scheme was accepted. When Alexander's architect proposed to carve mount Athos's cliff face into his likeness. Alexander refused: megalomania strains for impossible grandeur, but in Babylon, heart of the centralized despotism which had passed to the Persian Kings with the system of royal canals, the vast royal work forces made vast royal buildings a tempting possibility.

  Seeing a chance of favour, natives, generals, envoys and soldiers competed in gifts for the funeral celebrations and with their help the expense eventually totalled more than 10,000 talents. Gold and ivory images of Hephaistion were carved in plenty; the provinces were ordered to quench the Royal Fire, until the ceremony had ended, a remarkable privilege which if Alexander understood its meaning, suggests that Hephaistion had been considered to be his successor and royal deputy, for the Royal Fires were only dowsed when a king died. A fortunate arrival gave profound meaning to the occasion: envoys returned from Siwah with news that Ammon had approved the worship of Hephaistion, if not as a god, at least as a hero. Such honours to the distinguished dead were nothing unusual in Greek tradition, but Alexander added his full enthusiasm to the new yearly cult. Ten thousand sacrificial animals were roasted and sacrificed as a first honour to its hero, and other cities in the empire would doubtless follow suit in the hope of reward. Probably, prominent Macedonians had already been worshipped locally as heroes after their death, just as Harpalus had worshipped his mistress; possibly even Athens now felt obliged, out of tact, to treat Hephaistion as his lover had publicly indicated.

  But very properly, the cult had been delayed until approved by an oracle: Alexander, though divine, had lost none of his respect for the gods, especially when the god was Ammon. Through Hephaistion's funeral, Alexander too was to have his last dealings with Eygpt and his Alexandria: since his departure as Pharaoh, the Greek Cleomenes had risen from the rank of treasurer to satrap and had begun to show that same sense of a financial monopoly which later would be developed by the rule of the Ptolemies. In times of famine, he had dealt astutely in corn; as a result, he had amassed some 8,000 talents in Egypt's treasury and laid the foundations of its state economy. To this sharp financier Alexander now wrote a letter, requesting him to build Hephaistion two shrines in Alexandria and spare no expense in their design: Hephaistion's name, it was said, was now to be entered on all contracts between the city's merchants, an honour which was later paralleled under the Ptolemies. In return, reported Ptolemy himself, who was soon to have Cleomenes murdered, 'Clcomenes's past and future misdeeds would be pardoned*. Too much must not be made of this very suspect offer, especially in a letter rephrased and reported by a biased contemporary; the morality also had its precedent in the ancient East. 'I approve,' Herodotus had written, 'of the following custom: in Persia, the king will not kill a man, nor will the nobles punish a servant, for a single accusation. But instead, they think the matter through, and if they find that the man's misdoings are more or greater than his services, only then do they resort to revenge; otherwise, they let him off.' To Alexander, no service was now greater than a willing respect for the dead Hephaistion.

  Among the challenging decisions of the past three months, this cardinal point could not be overlooked. For Hephaistion's memory, Alexander was stretching power to its limit. Elsewhere his plans were ambitious and plausible, but the loss of Hephaistion would have to be controlled if they were to be fulfilled. For Alexander had not lost his personal hold. The outlines of the Arabian campaign concerned him deeply and he intended to sail with the fleet in person: departure was scheduled for mid-June, the hottest season in the Persian Gulf. This timing did not invite a second Makran. If the fleet was ever to sail round Arabia and enter the Red Sea, as its explorers had tried but failed, it needed to reach the cast tip of its Aden promontory by early October, when the monsoon winds tack round and blow ships north-west to the Suez Canal. The June departure, therefore, was well advised. But a land-army was also asked to follow as the fleet sailed from Failaka island to Bahrein and Aden. This was alarming. After Makran, it is amazing that troops would ever be detailed to a known sand desert in summer again. The order, whose reception is unknown, is a reminder that the daring explorer in Alexander still meant to triumph over natural hardship.

  Such a plan was workable, but it relied on complete trust. The massive festival of the funeral was a dangerous background, and as it came to a head an omen occurred which spoke plainly for the mood behind the scenes. During the ceremonies, Alexander left his throne, some said to drink.

  An unknown man, who some believed to be a prisoner, saw the throne empty and the silver-legged sofas vacated by the Companions: passing through the guard of eunuchs, he walked up to the throne and sat on it and began to put on royal dress. But the eunuchs tore their robes and beat their breasts and refused to drag him away, because of some eastern custom. Alexander ordered the man to be tortured, as he feared a plot, but the man would only say he had done it because it had suddenly come into his head. Whereupon, the seers prophesied that this implied even more disaster in store.

  This curious incident is hard to interpret. The Babylonians had long celebrated an ancient festival, whereby a slave would dress as a king or master and hold sway for a single day, but this festival belonged in early autumn and cannot be relevant to Alexander's actions in late May. The New Year festival at Babylon is better timed, but then the king was not displaced; he merely went down on hands and knees before the statue of the god Bel. On only one occasion would the king make way for a commoner: when the astrological tables boded badly for his future. Then a substitute would take his place for up to a hundred days and assume the burden of the king's misfortune: if the king died in the meantime
, the substitute would become king, even if he was nothing more than the royal gardener. This substitution is last known to have been practised by the Assyrian kingdoms four hundred years earlier, but the Babylonian priesthood may have kept its memory alive and even applied it to Alexander. If the substitute had acted inadvertently, so much the worse, as the seers realized, for he would not have diverted the royal doom which the stars predicted. Perhaps the priests had instructed him, and he had been sent to take the throne because they feared for Alexander's future: so, at least, the eunuchs assumed, bewailing the sight of a royal scapegoat, and perhaps their lament was justified.

  Within weeks, eunuchs and horoscopes were to be proved alarmingly right. An uneasy mood was still stirring in the byways of the court, amid its festivals and new ambitions: there was the omen of the liver without lobes, of the diadem lost on the river and now, of the substitute who had mysteriously taken the throne. Perhaps men feared that Alexander's energy could never last, that it was only a cover for a king who had lost his beloved Hephaistion. On the other hand the recent decisions were hardly those of a broken leader: Arabia, Carthage, Sicily, the Caspian, none was as wild an ambition as the first invasion of Asia with few ships, money or men. Richer than any other man alive, Alexander now united his empire in his person alone: 'In Egypt, a god and an autocrat; in Persia, an autocrat but not a god; among Greeks, a god but not a despot, and in Macedonia, neither god nor despot but a quasi-constitutional king.' The broad categories of history are always bloodless, never discerned by those who occupy them, and uneasiness persisted. Hephaistion's funeral had been huge. The plans for Arabia were hugcr. There was a rumour that Babylon would become the empire's centre, superbly placed for the sea route eastwards of which the troops had the grimmest memories. Above all, there were the rumours about Alexander himself. From Phaselis to Samarkand, on almost every occasion on which he is now seen at leisure by historians, he is flushed with wine of an evening. There are reports that Babylon had brought this drinking to nightly excess, scarcely slept off on the following day. Against the plans for Arabia, these reports became crucial. Alexander had been wounded in nine different places in the past twelve years, he was bereaved of his lover, and now the prophets had predicted a doom which his courtiers could not avert. The interesting question was the one which the stars could not answer: whether, at last, they had acted to put him out of the way.