The Macedonian

by Nicholas Guild

  Our king. So they called him, this foreigner, this lowland Macedonian—our king. No soldier was so humble that King Philip did not seem to know his name and the names of his children. Men twice his age seemed to love him with a son’s love for his father. He was their pride, for they felt his pride in them.

  For Deucalion and his little brother, King Philip moved quickly from dreaded enemy and captor to friend to something almost akin to a god. They simply worshiped him, as if one of the great heroes of fable had come back to life to teach them the right way to bind up their sandal straps. Every morning they breakfasted with the king, and afterward he might take them along with him to drill with his invincible army. He had even engaged a tutor from Athens to teach them to read from The Iliad, because he said that a warrior and a ruler of men should know how not to be a savage.

  Philip was like an elder brother to them, even a second father, and they never suspected that his kindness was a matter of deliberate policy, to create in them a sense of loyalty to him personally and to the idea of a united Macedonian state of which Eordia would one day be no more than a province.

  * * *

  In Pella, however, Perdikkas, king of all the Macedonians, had no thought for that greater state his brother was busy inventing in the mind of an adolescent prince. He was thinking about the Athenians.

  Athens was fighting a war with the Chalcidian League and had captured two port cities on the Thermaic Gulf, Pydna and Methone. These had been Greek trading colonies for as long as anyone could remember and had never posed any threat, even though they both were within a day’s march of the old capital of Aigai. Yet the situation was different with an Athenian fleet at anchor in their harbors. Now they wanted an “alliance,” which meant sending cavalry to help then in their operations against Amphipolis. It was blackmail—what would be Macedon’s reward, even if Athens triumphed?—but Perdikkas knew he had very little choice.

  But the Chalcidian League was allied with the Thracians, and sooner or later Thebes would come in on their side, which meant war between Athens and Thebes. Ordinarily Perdikkas favored Thebes, since her ambitions did not bring her so close to home. He was even supplying timber for the fleet that Epaminondas intended to launch in the spring. Now that would have to be forgotten. He did not want Athens developing a strong base in the Upper Gulf, but he simply could not afford to antagonize her as long as she threatened him so directly.

  So Athens would have Macedonian cavalry with which to frighten the Chalcidians, and Epaminondas would have to look elsewhere for his timber. Such was the price of peace.

  “At least, if affairs go against the Athenians, My Lord can always break this alliance with an untroubled conscience. Sooner or later, Athens always betrays her friends.”

  Perdikkas raised his attention from the letter of the Athenian admiral Timotheos, which was spread out on the table before him. When their eyes met, Euphraeos smiled, as he always did, giving the impression that something had upset his stomach. Indeed, the little Athenian was a martyr to his digestion.

  Euphraeos had been a student of Plato and it was as a tutor in philosophy and government that he had originally come into the king’s service. The Lord Ptolemy had thought to keep his stepson thus amused, but Perdikkas had never taken to a life of study. It was only after the regent’s death that the middle-aged sophist began to make an impression on the young king, who discovered in him a wealth of understanding about matters somewhat below the ideal. Since then he had risen in his master’s service until he was virtually a minister of state.

  And he hated Athens. For reasons that he seemed to prefer to leave somewhat vague, he could never return to the city of his birth. Perdikkas made no inquiries—he did not care. If Euphraeos was a rogue, at least he was a clever one and the king’s devoted servant. That was enough.

  “If Timotheos stumbles in Chalcidice and the Theban fleet is ready any time this summer, then everything will have changed,” he went on, suggesting the mutability of events with a shrug of his thin shoulders. “Then you can have your pick of alliances.”

  “Particularly if our cavalry acquits itself well against the Chalcidians.”

  Euphraeos nodded approval.

  “Particularly then, My Lord.”

  Perdikkas’s eyes wandered over the table and came to rest on a scroll covered with his brother’s large, inelegant writing.

  “Philip is coming within the month,” he said as if to himself. “He wishes me to receive his new wife.”

  “There is no harm in that, My Lord.”

  “Perhaps I should give him command of the forces I am loaning Timotheos. Perhaps this time he will get himself killed.”

  “Or win another impressive victory.” Euphraeos shook his head slowly—he understood to a hair’s breadth the king’s ambivalence toward his brother. “It is never wise to raise a subject too high in the general esteem. The effect of too much praise on a young head can be the gravest danger to the state.”

  “The Lord Philip is entirely loyal to me,” Perdikkas answered, with something of reproof in his voice. After all that had happened, it seemed unworthy to entertain even a doubt.

  “Now he is loyal—yes. It is simply well to see that he remains so. Perhaps you could let him nominate a commander.”

  Perdikkas gave his servant a hard look, but in the end he nodded assent. “There is no harm in that,” he said.

  “No, My Lord. No harm.”

  “And perhaps at least part of the force could be found among his own soldiers.”

  “Perhaps a large part, My Lord. The ease with which he overwhelmed the Eordians would suggest that his army will not suffer from having a few company of cavalry trimmed away.”

  * * *

  And thus it was that, even before Philip had brought his bride to Pella, nearly half of his cavalry, under the command of Lachios, had already passed through the city on its way to support the Athenians at the siege of Amphipolis.

  “I won’t insist that you take the command,” Philip told him as the two of them shared a wine jar during a rest from drill. They were sitting with their backs against the wheel of a supply wagon and their horses, some four or five paces away, were being wiped down by a groom. It was the first really hot day since the beginning of spring. “You are my first choice, but Chalcidice is far away and I will understand if you refuse.”

  “Refuse? Why should I refuse? I wouldn’t miss it for a kingdom.” Lachios grinned and then finished off the wine, handing the empty jar back to Philip. “I just wish you were coming. I don’t like the idea of fighting under a foreign general.”

  “I’m a plainsman.”

  “Yes, but I have decided to forgive you for it. And at least you’re not an Athenian. This Timotheos, from what I hear, is not even a real soldier.”

  “He is a politician.”

  “A what?”

  “He wishes to enlarge his influence in Athens, so he wishes to make a fine showing in this campaign. You are right not to trust him. That is why I want you to go.”

  Lachios shook his head and then wiped his eyes, as if he had just been startled awake. “You’ve lost me,” he said.

  “I don’t want him letting our men be butchered to spare his own. I want you to see to it that the Athenians don’t fight to the last Macedonian.”

  “May a subject ask his king a question?”

  “Ask it.”

  “Why is your brother sticking his finger into this particular tar pot?”

  Philip stood up, looked up at the sun, and frowned, and then tossed the empty wine jar to the ground, where it rolled a bit and then stopped. The rest period was over and it was time to go back to work.

  “I don’t think he has any choice.”

  * * *

  Late in summer, Philip took his bride and young Deucalion and an honor guard of some fifty men and turned his eyes east to Pella. He was not in a hurry and Phila seemed to tire easily, so they were six days on the journey, stopping at Aigai for one day in between to rest and
make sacrifice at the burial mounds of Philip’s father and eldest brother. On the fourth day they came within sight of the sea.

  “Tomorrow we will take ship for Pella,” Philip said, grasping his wife by the hand. “Come—we will walk in the surf, and then you will know I have not lied to you.”

  “About the sea being cold and wet?”

  “Yes.”

  For half an hour they strolled over the pebble-strewn beach south of Aloros, as careless as two children. They watched the seagulls dropping mussels onto the rocks to crack open the shells.

  “Tonight we’ll have a turbot for dinner,” he said. “We’ll make them find us one the size of a cart wheel.”

  Phila reached down to wet her hand in the waves. “The water really is salty,” she said, licking her fingers.

  This made Philip laugh, and so he kissed her lest she grow offended.

  The next day they sailed across the gulf and then upriver to Pella. King Perdikkas and a large company were there to greet them at the dock.

  “Great news! Wonderful news!” he shouted, throwing his arms around Philip and kissing him. “The Athenians have been forced to surrender at Amphipolis.”

  30

  Philip heard the story from Lachios, who had just brought his men back all the way from the Strymon River.

  “Anyone with eyes could see how it was going to end,” he said as soon as he was alone with his king. They sat together at the kitchen table in Glaukon’s old house, the one place in Pella they could be sure no one would be listening. Lachios was not a man who frightened easily, but his eyes wore the haunted expression of one who has looked upon an appalling disaster. “The Athenians were not equipped to mount a long siege, and even with their fleet they could not cut off the city’s supply lines. Timotheos must have known from the beginning that he had no chance of success.”

  “He is a creature of the Athenian Assembly, which possesses too many minds to think clearly and too many eyes to see at all. He must do what he can with what he has.”

  “Well, you will observe that he did not tarry long enough to see the outcome, but took himself off and let someone else surrender to the Thracians. Your brother had returned to Pella well before that, leaving me in command. I stayed until Timotheos left and then I withdrew my men.”

  “You did the right thing,” Philip said in the tone of one observing an impersonal truth. “We are not under such obligations to the Athenians that we need feel obliged to sacrifice our soldiers just to save face. What did Perdikkas say about it when you returned?”

  “Nothing.” Lachios shrugged his shoulders, his face registering the most profound bewilderment. “In the fifteen days since my return I have not been admitted into the king’s presence. I have no idea whether he intends to congratulate me for my prudence or have me executed for desertion.”

  “Did he issue a specific command that you should stay?”

  “No.”

  “Then you were simply following your own best judgment, which is what is expected of a field commander. No doubt he has been waiting to see how events worked themselves out. He seems mightily pleased at Athens’s surrender, so you are probably safe enough. At any rate, he will not move against you if I make an issue of it with him, and if it comes to anything, I will.”

  “Thank you, Philip.”

  Philip made a gesture indicating that he was ashamed to be thanked for such a trifle, his eyes searching over the room. Alcmene’s stool was still beside the hearth. As a child he had played on this floor, and at this table Glaukon had taught him how to do his sums. Now Alcmene was dead and Glaukon was in Aiane, keeping the accounts for the royal household. The hearth was covered with dust, and the kitchen smelled of disuse. It depressed him horribly.

  “How long was my brother at Amphipolis?” Philip asked, keeping his face blank.

  “A month, or perhaps a little longer. He was already there when I arrived.”

  “What was your impression of him?”

  Lachios studied his master’s face for a long moment before he answered. Kings, he knew, were unpredictable creatures where their family pride was concerned. With Derdas, one had hardly dared to tell him anything he did not want to hear. But Philip was not Derdas. With Philip, he decided, the greatest danger lay in telling him anything except the truth.

  “No one can call him a coward,” he said at last. “He is brave enough. I will give him that. He would make a good company commander. But he lacks the imagination it takes to make a general. He works out a plan, using the tactics we all learned as boys, and then, if perchance it doesn’t work, he takes offense. He expects the battle to conform to what he has in his head, rather than the other way round. I would not be pleased to trust my life with him again.”

  Simply by looking at him, no one could have guessed how Philip took this assessment. His expression was impenetrable. Finally he reached across the table and put his hand of Lachios’s arm.

  “I thank you,” he said. “You have spoken as a friend. Now let us leave this place and find somewhere with a fire and a little wine. I feel as if I have been sealed up in my burial urn.”

  * * *

  When, after three days, Philip went to the king’s private apartments, early in the morning that he might at last have some chance of seeing his brother alone, Perdikkas was very little disposed to discuss the recent campaign. He had other news.

  “If you stay out the month, you will be here to see me married,” he said, with the smile of a man who is conscious of delivering unwelcome intelligence. But if he expected his heir apparent to betray even a hint of disappointment, he was disappointed himself, for Philip’s response was to embrace him.

  “I congratulate you, brother,” Philip said, almost laughing. “A good woman can make a man very happy. Believe me—I speak from experience. Who is she, then? Do I know her?”

  Perdikkas, when he saw that his brother really was pleased, decided, for reasons he could not have explained, to be pleased himself. The smile transformed itself into something almost approaching a grin.

  “You know the family certainly. She is the daughter of Agapenor, the one who has such large estates up near the border with Lynkos. I think it does no harm to give him a family reason to remember that I am his king and not Uncle Menelaos. Besides, she comes with a large dowry.”

  “But does she please you in herself? Is she pretty?”

  “The betrothal ceremony will be in ten days’ time, and I will find out then.” Perdikkas shrugged as if at the unavoidable decrees of the Fates. “She is judged to be a beauty. I am sure she will do well enough.”

  Now Philip really did laugh. “You will not be so indifferent ten days hence—may she make your bed as hot for you as a roasting pan and may you father ten sons by her before you are thirty!”

  Perdikkas withdrew from his brother’s embrace and sat down at the table, where the remains of his breakfast had yet to be cleaned away by a servant. He looked about him as if his presence in this room, which had once been Alexandros’s study, were the singular achievement of his life, yet he did not seem pleased. He had been afraid of his elder brother, who had taken a certain pleasure in mocking him for lacking his own grace and brilliance, and it always seemed to Perdikkas somehow a mark of disrespect that Philip was not likewise afraid of him. There were moments, such as this one, when he could not entirely convince himself that Philip was not also mocking him.

  “You should not be so quick to take offense,” Philip said quietly, for he had at last penetrated the enigma. “Would you wish me to behave like your subject, even in private?”

  “You are my subject.” Perdikkas tried to appear coldly angry, but he could not sustain it. “You are my subject,” he repeated.

  “I am also your brother, Perdikkas—and murder, treachery, and madness have taken a heavy toll on this family. All that remains are you and me. If I cannot jest with you about your marriage, then you have no one with whom you can be anything except a king. We are all either of us has left.”
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br />   Instead of answering, Perdikkas stared at the wall behind Philip’s head. He seemed absent, giving the impression that he had forgotten he was not alone, or that some stream of memory carried him resistless in its current. It is a way some men have of not facing their own embarrassment.

  “Your cavalry fought well at Amphipolis,” he said at last, as if the conversation had never been about anything else. “I may keep them garrisoned in Pella for a time.”

  Philip’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What is in your mind?”

  “Only that we have perhaps been fighting the wrong enemy.”

  The king of the Macedonians picked up his wine cup and, after glancing inside to satisfy himself that it was empty, set it back down on the table. He did not refill the cup from the jar that rested beside it. He seemed to forget it entirely, as if it had answered its purpose.

  “Athens should be kept out of the north,” he said, once more carefully looking at nothing. “She should satisfy her greed selling pottery to the Asians. The Chalcidians know that I was forced into that alliance, and now they are sending emissaries. Perhaps this is the moment to change sides.”

  “And do what?”

  “And push the Athenians out of Pydna and Methone.”

  He smiled as he said it, as if the thought and the deed were almost the same thing.

  “First of all, the Athenians will not be pushed out of the north,” Philip answered hotly. “At least, not by us. Think of it, brother—we are too weak and threatened from too many different directions to pick a quarrel with Athens over Pydna and Methone.”

  “The garrisons they have left there are small, and they have just suffered a defeat. Their assembly will not be so eager to vote money for reinforcements, not after the way our cavalry fought at Amphipolis. Besides, we would have both Thebes and the Chalcidian League for allies.”

  “Both the Thebans and the Chalcidians will be delighted to see us attack the Athenian garrisons. If Athens responds—and she will, since she will have no choice—neither of them will lift a hand to help us.”