The Strategos

by H A CULLEY

-o0o-

  Orestes had set out in advance of the main army with a hundred and thirty cavalrymen and he had taken Nicias with him. Just as Parmenion was about to leave Europos with his small army Nicias arrived back to report to him. Orestes had found the enemy pillaging two estates in the valley of the River Axiós. This was the same river that ran past Europos and so it did look as if the raiders might be heading towards the city.

  Nicias said that the river was quite wide and lined with trees, making it unsuitable for horsemen. Away from the banks the ground sloped upwards through vineyards and groves of olive trees to the upper slopes, which were stony and filled with scrub; land that was only suitable for goats. Further away from the river the ground became steep sided.

  ‘Which side of the river are the Paionians on, Nicias and how many of them are there?’

  ‘They’re on both sides, strategos, and Orestes thought that there were about a thousand on the east bank and maybe fifteen hundred on the west. However, that included quite a lot of boys and a few women armed with bows.’

  Parmenion smiled. The last statement had reminded him of Calisto and her Scythian female archers; then he remembered Calisto’s disappearance and his mood darkened.

  ‘Well done, Nicias. Now ride back to Orestes and tell him that I will meet him twenty miles north of my estate on the west bank of the river in four days’ time. I’m not happy about you travelling on you own so I’m sending two of my bodyguards with you.’

  Although Orestes had taken most of the escort that they had brought with them, he had left ten men behind as Parmenion’s personal guard. The boy shrugged.

  ‘I don’t mind being on my own. I’m not a fool who would ride into a Paionian patrol.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not but you need to keep a civil tongue in your head. There are wolves and robbers out there as well as Paionians.’

  ‘I’m sorry, strategos. I apologise.’

  ‘No, go and get some food and a sleep before you go back.’

  Orestes had been waiting at the agreed rendezvous and told Parmenion that the raiders were still split either side of the river. They were now about fifteen miles to the north.

  ‘Good, now I want you to go out again tomorrow and keep an eye on them. If they send out any small groups, cut them off and take prisoners if you can. We’ve probably got another day or so before they’ll reach the spot where I intent to ambush them.’

  Orestes circled around so that he could look down on the river from just below the skyline of a large hill to the east of the valley. As he watched the group of a thousand or so on the west bank left the river and started up a side valley that led through olive groves towards a complex of buildings a few miles away. He watched impotently as the buildings were set on fire. He assumed that the inhabitants had been killed or taken as slaves, probably the latter as he could see that there were several hundred captive Macedonians being herded along at the rear of the column on the east bank.

  He waited until the raiders had finished having their fun at the distant farm and, as he had hoped, they continued up the valley in search of fresh prey. Only then did he return to Parmenion’s camp.

  The next day the fifteen hundred Paionians on the east bank broke camp and continued on their way south, spread out between the wooded banks of the river of the river and the scrub covered lower slopes of the hills. As they rounded a bend they found their way blocked by a chiliarchy of hoplites. They looked impressive but, in truth, they were dog tired. They had undertaken a forced march through the night and then they had to prepare the position when they got there.

  What the raiders couldn’t see was the peltasts hidden in the trees and in the scrub above them. The light infantry were also in position above them but in their rear. It was their job to prevent their escape. Orestes had watched as the Paionians rode past him and, as he had calculated, the captives and their guards were level with him and his men when the head of the column encountered the hoplites blocking their way.

  The guards were mainly young boys and inexperienced youths but there were over two hundred of them. With a blast from a keras, the trap was sprung and the raiders found themselves attacked on all sides. Orestes led his cavalry out of the trees and charged the guards around the captives. At the same time the peltasts started to rain arrows, javelins and stones down on the milling horsemen below them.

  The light infantrymen ran down the hill behind the raiders dragging bundles of oil soaked straw with them. As soon as they had built a rough barrier across the valley, they set fire to it and ran back up the hillside.

  Seeing the flames start to build behind them and the scree covered slope above them, the leader of the Paionians gave the order to charge the heavy infantry formed up ahead of them. The hoplites stared at the oncoming horsemen stoically until the latter hit the pits that the former had dug the previous night. They were only shallow but hidden under the thin wicker screens covered lightly with dust and stones were numerous sharp wooden stakes pointing upwards. The horses screamed as the points pierced their hooves and legs and their riders were thrown from their backs. The horses following piled into them and many more went down. Quite a few managed to get over the obstacle by either leaping it or treading on the men and horses trapped in the pits.

  The first wave of those that did ran into the spear points of the hoplites. Cavalry could never break a square of hoplites if the latter held firm. Although inexperienced and with the minimum of training, the Europosian hoplites were buoyed up by their initial success and by faith in their commander – Parmenion. They stood like a rock, thrusting their spears into horse after horse until the bulk of the enemy were either unhorsed or had fled.

  Making their way through the barrage of missiles again, only a few hundred reached the area where the captives had been. There they found themselves confronted by a motley mixture of Macedonian cavalry and former captives armed with weapons taken from their dead guards. Even if they got through them they could see the wall of fire beyond and they lost heart. They started to surrender in droves.

  Orestes’ attack on the guards around the captives had caught them by surprise and the greater experience of the Macedonians had soon swung the fight in the latter’s favour. The problem was to spare the captives whilst killing the Paionians. This was made more difficult as the latter soon learnt to take refuge amongst their hostages. The hostages did nothing initially until Orestes yelled at them repeatedly to pull the Paionians off their horses. After that it was a massacre and Orestes had difficulty in stopping the slaughter after the Paionian youths had surrendered.

  He had just finished freeing the former captives, arming them with weapons lying about, and securing those few Paionians who had survived, when the fleeing main body came into sight. He drew his cavalry up across the valley with the recently freed Macedonians on the left flank when the enemy came to a halt and started to throw down their weapons.

  That evening Parmenion was given the butcher’s bill. He had lost nearly two hundred men, of whom half had been badly wounded but might recover. The Paionians had lost over a thousand. There were no wounded because the former captives, whose families had been raped and slaughtered and their farms burnt, had gone around killing them and no-one was prepared to stop them.

  Four hundred had been captured, including fifty boys and youths. They would all be sold into slavery but first Parmenion wanted to interrogate them. Most knew nothing, or if they did, they were prepared to die under torture before they would say anything; but one of the boys captured was the son of the leader of the raiders, a chieftain of some importance in Paionia. Unfortunately the man had died on the spear wall but he had confided in his son.

  At first the boy, who was about fifteen, refused to say anything except that Parmenion would never get his father’s secrets out of him. The strategos smiled to himself. It meant that the boy, whose name it transpired was Vlassis, knew something worth knowing. It didn’t take long to find out which of the other boys were friendly with the chieftain’s so
n and, after he had brought three of them in front of him and made them kneel as his men prepared to behead them, Vlassis broke down.

  It seemed that Athens had been less than pleased by the loss of their fleet and much of their army at Amphipolis and were setting up a secret coalition of Illyria, Paionia and Thrace to obliterate Macedon. Their reward would be the division of Macedonian lands between them, together with half the output of the mines of Mount Pangaion, once Athens had captured Amphipolis with Thracian help.

  Parmenion was dubious about the ability of the Athenians to unite three such disparate people, who often fought amongst themselves and well as against each other, but the possibility frightened him.

  Chapter Nine – The Death of Perdiccas

  360 to 359 BC

  Word must have reached the other raiding party because Orestes and his men failed to find any trace of them, except for another burnt-out estate on the way north as they fled back to Paionia. The people of Europos gave him a hero’s welcome and he impatiently endured the many feasts and symposia given in his honour by the leading citizens of the city.

  He still had to find out what had happened to Nicias’ parents, but first he had to make arrangements for the management of his estate. Eventually he found a man he liked and trusted. He was only twenty three but he was the second son of a nearby land-owner who was looking for an estate of his own to run now that his father had told him that he had taught him all he could. His name was Hipponax and his father had assured Parmenion that he would keep an eye on his son in case he found himself out of his depth.

  By the time that Parmenion finally obeyed Philip’s increasingly insistent demands that he return to his service, his son Philotas was one year old. Because of the baby and the fact that Myrrine had just found out that she was expecting Orestes’ first child, the journey back to Charakoma was slow and gentle. Parmenion had long since sent a coded message to Philip telling him of his defeat of the Paionians and the conspiracy against Macedon; he assumed that Philip would inform his brother.

  It was early summer and apart from two days of rain, the weather was comfortably warm but still some way from the heat of summer. The pastoral landscape through which they travelled seemed idyllic and war seemed but a distant prospect. It wasn’t, as they found out when they returned to Philip’s capital.

  The city was in festival mood and Parmenion soon found out why. Perdiccas had married two years previously and his wife had just presented him with a son, who they named Amyntas after the king’s father.

  ‘You took your time getting back here,’ Philip berated him as soon as Parmenion and Orestes reported to him. It’s not that I’m not appreciative of your successful campaign against the Paionians but that was really my brother’s problem, not mine. No doubt you felt it was yours because of that wretched estate that Alexander gave you. Perhaps I should get Perdiccas to give it to someone else and give you one near me here in Charakoma?’

  Parmenion panicked at that. Both he and Kharis loved their house and the countryside near Europos and he wasn’t prepared to give it up.

  ‘Or perhaps I should retire from the army and go and run the estate myself, Philip. That would be another solution, especially as I seem to have lost Kionos as my manager.’

  ‘That treacherous rat,’ Philip exploded. ‘Did you know that the bloody Amphipolitans have made him their strategos and that he and his family have fled there?’

  ‘No, I did wonder where he had gone and I suspected that he might have returned to the city of his birth. I regret losing my manager and my taxiarch, but the campaign against Athens was over and he was free to take up their offer. I just think he could have done it in a less underhand way.’

  Philip grunted. ‘Underhand is one word. I’d use something a bit stronger. But, as you say, he is gone. However, I have declared him a traitor and he and his family are to be put to death if they fall into my hands again.’

  Orestes paled at this and Parmenion grabbed his friend’s shoulder to steady him.

  ‘Have you forgotten, Philip, that Orestes is married to a member of that family and that she is expecting their child? Furthermore, his youngest child, Nicias, is my ward and my aide.’

  Philip’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘First you threaten to desert me and return to your damned estate now you are siding with the family of a traitor. You’re a good strategos, Parmenion, but you’re not irreplaceable, nor are you Orestes. You are both treading on very dangerous ground here. If you ceased to be my strategos, it wouldn’t be to return to Europos, it would be to go to the executioner. You’re too good a tactician for me to risk you serving someone else. Now get out of my sight. Come back tomorrow when you had better be in a more amenable mood.’

  Parmenion realised that night as he lay in the arms of Kharis that he had risked losing everything by crossing Philip. It was difficult to think of someone you have seen grow up through boyhood as a man, and a dangerous one at that; but that’s what Philip was now. He was determined and highly ambitious and Parmenion was beginning to wonder how limitless his ambition might be. Obviously he wasn’t prepared to let anything stand in his way and Parmenion needed to decide whether he was prepared to go along for the ride in the long term. If not, he needed to think about an escape plan.

  ‘I could ask you to put Myrrine aside, Orestes,’ Philip began the next morning, ‘and make Nicias a slave, but I realise that you two have served me faithfully up to now. If I pardon your wife and your ward I want you to realise that I’m not being weak but merely binding you both closer to me. If either of them betray me in any way then they both die, you understand?’

  It was what Parmenion had expected. It wasn’t them that Philip was accusing of disloyalty, but Kionos and it was his family, not Orestes’ wife or his aide, that was being pardoned. He sensed that Orestes was shaking beside him, but whether it was from relief or rage he couldn’t tell.

  ‘Now Perdiccas wants us to attack the Thracians whilst he deals with Bardylis and the Illyrians. That’ll leave Paionia isolated and, in any case, they’ll still be licking their wounds after the drubbing you gave their raiding party. By the way, did you know, Parmenion, that the chieftain you killed was, in fact, the brother of Agis, the Paionian king? As Agis is the first man to unite Paionia under one ruler, his throne is far from secure and the loss of his only brother will have been a major blow.’

  ‘You may not be aware, Philip, but Agis’ nephew, Vlassis, is a guest in my household. It might be prudent to let Agis know that his nephew is a hostage against his future good behavior.’

  Philip’s face creased into a crooked smile. ‘Well, that – and the drubbing you gave his raiding party – might keep him off our backs for a while. By the way, I’m fairly certain that it was more than a raid, more like a testing of our defences. That still leaves Illyria and Thrace.’

  He sat down on a nearby couch and invited the other two to sit at the other side of the low table between the two couches. He took a couple of figs and ate them appreciatively, pushing the dish across the table for the others to help themselves.

  ‘My brother thinks that he can defeat Bardylis of Illyria but I’m not certain that he knows what he’s getting into. On the other hand, Thrace isn’t likely to be a problem in the immediate future. Their king, Kotys, might be Iphicrates’ brother-in-law but the latter is out of favour again since the debacle at Amphipolis. Furthermore, he and the Athenians are arguing about who owns the Chersonese peninsula north of the Hellespont so I don’t think that Thrace will jump to do the Athenians’ bidding.’

  Philip looked smug and Parmenion wondered where this briefing about the current political situation was going.

  ‘However, the Chakidikeans, led by the city of Olynthos, are preparing to invade my territory and so I intend to pre-empt them by attacking and seizing Thessaloniki.’

  That was the northernmost city of the Chalkidikean League and their most important port. From there Philip could control the isthmus between Chalkidike and Macedon. At any
other time it would make sense, but Parmenion was perturbed by the proposal and he glanced nervously at Orestes, who obviously shared his unease.

  ‘Do you think that’s wise, Philip? With Macedon about to embark on a war in the north with Illyria, you would be inviting invasion from the south at the same time. Macedon could be crushed if we spread our military resources too thinly.’

  Parmenion expected Philip to react angrily to his opposition to his plans, but he merely smiled smugly.

  ‘With Thessaloniki in our hands, the western coastal route north is denied to them. The Mount Kissos range dominates the centre of the isthmus and so the only practical way into Macedon for an army is to the south and east of Lake Koroneia. The surrounding land is marshy, as is the land around the river that runs from the lake into the sea. Only the road along the foothills is passable and that is quite narrow. If they try coming that way we will annihilate them.’

  Parmenion had to agree that what Philip said made sense; provided that is, that they could take the city of Thessaloniki before the Chakidikeans could come to the city’s rescue.

  -o0o-

  Emyntor had answered the summons from Perdiccas, who had mobilized the citizen levy of central and northern Macedon for his attack on the Illyrians. The Macedonian noble had originally come from Sparta as a boy on one of his father’s trading ships at age ten after bringing shame on his family.

  The military training of Spartan boys began at seven when they were taken from the family home and placed in dormitories with their peers. The regime was rigorous, brutal and relentless. From the start boys were expected to compete with each other and making close friends was forbidden. Emyntor was a gregarious boy and hated the atmosphere of rivalry and bullying that pervaded his dormitory. The system produced hard, callous, almost inhuman, soldiers but it also broke quite a few who were then deprived of their status as Spartan citizens.