by Oden, Scott
One of the most tantalizing gaps in Memnon’s life is his exile to the court of Philip II of Macedonia. He vanishes from the historical record for a decade, which raises innumerable questions as to his dealings and movements during that period. How well did he come to know Alexander and the young men who would become Macedonia’s generals? Did he fight in Philip’s numerous border campaigns? Did he journey to Egypt and fight at his brother’s side? By his character we can extrapolate he was not idle, but exactly what he did is open to interpretation. As with Memnon’s youth, I have taken spectacular liberties, inventing associations and events for the sake of story. Hopefully, such highly fictitious scenes won’t be too difficult for readers to accept.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Authors’ names in bold indicate an ancient source.
Adkins, Lesley and Roy A. Adkins. Handbook to Life in Ancient Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Arrian. The Campaigns of Alexander. Trans. Aubrey de Sèlincourt, intro. and notes J.R. Hamilton. New York: Penguin Books, 1971.
Athanassakis, Apostolos N. The Homeric Hymns. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Bunson, Margaret. A Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Cartledge, Paul. Alexander the Great. New York: The Overlook Press, 2004.
Casson, Lionel. The Ancient Mariners. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1959.
Cook, J.M. The Persian Empire. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1983.
Davidson, James. Courtesansand Fishcakes. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.
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Durando, Furio. Greece: A Guide to the Archaeological Sites. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2004.
Flacelière, Robert. Life in Ancient Greece at the Time of Pericles. Trans. Peter Green. London: Phoenix Press, 2002.
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Hammond, N.G.L. The Genius of Alexander the Great. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
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Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Samuel Butler. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1995.
_____. The Odyssey. Trans. Samuel Butler. New York: Pocket Books, 1997.
Houtzager, Guus. The Complete Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology. Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books, 2004.
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Plutarch. The Age of Alexander. Trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Penguin Books, 1973.
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Strabo. Geography, vols. 1–8. Trans. Horace Leonard Jones. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library), 1969.
Tarn, WW. Hellenistic Civilization. New York: New American Library, 1975.
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Trans. Rex Warner, intro. and notes M.I. Finley. New York: Penguin Books, 1972.
Warry, John. Warfare in the Classical World. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2000.
Worley, Leslie J. Hippeis: The Cavalry of Ancient Greece. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.
Xenophon. Anabasis. Trans. Rex Warner, intro. and notes George Cawkwell. New York: Penguin Books, 1972.
_____. Hellenica. Trans. Rex Warner, intro. and notes George
Cawkwell. New York: Penguin Books, 1979.
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Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library), 1925.
Zimmerman, J.E. Dictionary of Classical Mythology. New York: Bantam Books, 1971.
APPENDIX I:
A Chronology of Events
All dates are BCE (Before Common Era).
c.375 Memnon is born on the island of Rhodes.
371 Epaminondas and the Thebans defeat the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra, ending Spartan supremacy in Greece.
370 Death of King Amyntas III of Macedonia, father of Philip. His eldest son, Perdiccas III, succeeds him.
369 Young Philip held hostage at Thebes to insure good relations with Macedonia.
367 Birth of Pharnabazus by the Persian wife of Artabazus. In Macedonia, Ptolemy (Alexander’s companion and the future king of Egypt) is born.
364 Barsine is born to the Persian wife of Artabazus. Her mother dies in childbirth.
362 Epaminondas is slain fighting the Spartans at Mantinea.
360 Artabazus marries Deidamia, the daughter of his lifelong friend Timocrates of Rhodes; Timocrates’ eldest son, Mentor, enters the satrap’s service that same year. Death of King Agesilaus of Sparta. In Macedonia, Philotas son of Parmenion is born.
359 In Macedonia, King Perdiccas III is slain in battle; his younger brother, Philip, ascends the throne as King Philip II; late in the year, Kassandros son of Antipatros is born.
358 Death of King Artaxerxes II. His son, Ochus, becomes King Artaxerxes III. He orders his western satraps to disband their private armies; orders Artabazus to present himself before the throne at Susa. Artabazus refuses, goes into open rebellion. In the Aegean, Mausolus of Caria sparks the Social War by convincing Cos, Chios, and Byzantion to leave the Athenian Confederation. The Athenians respond by dispatching a fleet of sixty triremes under Chares and Chabrias.
357 Rhodes joins the rebellion against Athens; Timocrates of Rhodes is slain in factional fighting. His son, Memnon, joins Artabazus’s rebellion at Assos. The Athenian fleet is destroyed off Embata by the combined forces of Cos and Chios. Chabrias is slain and Chares limps away to Imbros. In Asia, Mithridates of Dascylium is ordered to subdue Artabazus. Philip of Macedon marries Olympias, a princess of Epiros.
356 Artabazus rescues Chares and the Athenians from Imbros; he hires them to form the core of his mercenary army. The satrap also secures the services of a band of Boeotian mercenaries led by Pammenes. In Macedonia, Alexander is born to Philip and Olympias. At Assos, Thymondas is born to Mentor’s Rhodian mistress.
355 Battle of Lake Manyas; Mithridates is defeated and Dascylium returns to Artabazus’s control. Carian troops occupy Cos and Rhodes. Tithraustes, Ochus’s right-hand man, is sent west against Artabazus; Ochus also dispatches a letter to Athens demanding Chares’ recall and that peace be established with the rebellious islands.
354 The Social War ends. Late in the year, the eunuch Hermeias leads a coup against his master, Eubulus of Assos. Hermeias then becomes tyrant of much of the Troad. In Macedonia, Philip loses an eye at the siege of Methone, a town on the border of Macedonia and Thessaly.
353 Mentor flees
to Egypt; Artabazus and Memnon, with their families, seek asylum at the court of Philip of Macedon. Philip is twice defeated in Thessaly by Onomarchus.
352 Philip returns to Thessaly, defeats and kills Onomarchus at the Battle of Crocus Field. In Asia, Mausolus of Caria dies; his sister-wife, Queen Artemisia II, succeeds him. She begins construction of the Mausoleum (one of the Seven Wonders of the World).
351 At Athens, Demosthenes advocates an anti-Macedonian stance in his First Philippic.
350 Pharaoh Nectanebo of Egypt sends Mentor with four thousand mercenaries to the aid of King Tennes of Sidon against the Persian satraps Belesys of Syria and Mazaeus of Cilicia. Mentor sends for Memnon to be his lieutenant.
348 Philip seizes Olynthus in the Chalcidice and razes it.
347 Death of the philosopher Plato. Aristotle leaves Athens and settles at Assos and near Mytilene on Lesbos. His friend Hermeias becomes his patron.
346 Ochus marches on Phoenicia. Mentor discovers Tennes’ planned betrayal and turns the tables on him, offering Ochus Sidon, Phoenicia, and Egypt in exchange for his service. Philip and Athens make peace (the Peace of Philocrates). The aging philosopher Isocrates pens his Address to Philip.
345 Memnon is sent back to Macedon. Barsine is betrothed to Mentor, pending the outcome of the Egyptian campaign.
344 Demosthenes delivers his Second Philippic. Alexander tames Boukephalos. Memnon joins Parmenion in Thrace as a mercenary.
343 Aristotle becomes Alexander’s tutor at Mieza. Mentor is successful in Egypt; Ochus makes him Supreme Commander of the West. Artabazus and Memnon are recalled to Persia. Barsine marries Mentor at Sardis.
342 Memnon captures Hermeias and takes control of the Troad through trickery. The eunuch is sent to Susa to be executed.
341 Philip conquers Thrace. At Athens, Demosthenes delivers his Third Philippic.
340 Death of Mentor of Rhodes. Memnon becomes lord of the Troad; he marries Barsine at Adramyttium. Philip besieges Perinthus and Byzantion. Late in the year Athens declares war on Philip.
338 King Artaxerxes III Ochus is assassinated by his vizier, the eunuch Bagoas, who then elevates Ochus’s youngest son, Oarses, to the throne. In Greece, Philip and Alexander crush a combined Greek army at Chaeronea. Egypt goes into rebellion once more.
336 Bagoas kills Oarses, then is himself dispatched by Artashata, the satrap of Armenia, who ascends the throne as Darius III. Philip sends an advance force across the Hellespont into Asia. Later in the year, Philip II of Macedon is assassinated by an exlover while attending the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra to King Alexandros of Epiros (Olympias’s brother). Alexander is proclaimed King of Macedon.
335 Destruction of Thebes. Darius tasks Memnon with stopping the Macedonians; he defeats Parmenion, forcing him back to his bridgehead at Abydus on the Straits. Aristotle returns to Athens and starts a philosophical school, the Lyceum.
334 Alexander crosses into Asia. The Persians marshal at Zeleia; ignoring Memnon’s advice, the Persian satraps meet Alexander at the river Granicus and are defeated. Memnon is then given supreme command over the Persian army and navy. He sends envoys to the Spartans to form an alliance with the intent of invading Macedonia as a way of drawing Alexander away from Asia. Siege of Halicarnassus; Memnon wounded during a sortie. Persians withdraw into the Aegean.
333 Memnon dies suddenly, from a fever brought on by his wound, at the siege of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos. Upon hearing news of his death, Darius musters his forces and meets Alexander at Issus. The Persians are defeated. Barsine, along with numerous members of the royal family, is captured at Damascus.
APPENDIX II:
On Currency
THE USE OF STANDARDIZED METAL COINAGE BEGAN IN THE MID-seventh century BCE in Asia Minor, in the region known as Lydia (modern Turkey). These first coins were flattened pebbles of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold, bearing the stamp of the issuing authority—generally a stylized lion representing the Lydian king—on one side and a punch mark on the other. The Greeks of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor were quick to adopt this new currency and by 575 BCE the use of coins had spread throughout the Greek world.
Later coins were minted of pure gold or silver, stamped on both sides, and often displayed patriotic or religious designs. Each polis (city-state) reserved the right to issue its own currency, thus making trade between poleis a complicated affair due to variations in their standard weights (differing sometimes by as little as a fraction of a gram). Finally, around 449 BCE, Athens issued a decree to its allies and client states barring them from using anything but Athenian coinage, weights, and measures. For simplicity’s sake, Memnon makes use of the Athenian system, formally known as the Euboic-Attic standard.
Because of the scarcity of gold on the Greek mainland most coins were of silver—a commodity Athens had a plentiful supply of thanks to the nearby mines of Laurium. The smallest silver coin was the obol. Six obols equaled one drachma; one hundred drachmas equaled a mina, and sixty minas (or six thousand drachmas) equaled one talent, about fifty-eight pounds of silver. The two larger denominations existed only as units of accounting or for assessing the worth of bulk goods; no mina or talent coins were ever produced. Mints, called argyrokopeion, turned out a variety of coins including the didrachm, or two-drachma piece, also known as the stater, and the tetradrachm, or four-drachma piece. By the fourth century BCE, the Athenians were also producing bronze or copper coins, called chalkoi, to represent the smallest denominations. Twelve chalkoi equaled a single obol. One other coin favored by the Greeks was the Persian daric—a type of gold coin first minted circa 512 BCE by King Darius I. Renowned for its purity, the daric was easily worth twenty Greek drachmas.
Though direct comparisons are impossible, in a modern context the ‘minimum wage’ for an unskilled laborer in Memnon’s era was one-and-a-half drachmas a day (nine obols). A pint-and-a-half of the lowest-quality wine could be had for one obol; the same measure of fine wine, perhaps from Chios, cost as much as fourteen drachmas. A full set of hoplite armor would set a man back two to three hundred drachmas. Horses cost anywhere from five hundred to six thousand drachmas; contrast this price to that of Alexander’s Boukephalos, for which Philip was rumored to have paid the astronomical sum of eighteen thousand drachmas (three talents), a substantial fortune by anyone’s reckoning.
APPENDIX III:
On the Greek Calendar
IT’S ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT TO DEFINE AN EVENT FROM ANTIQUITY BY our modern calendar due to the great discrepancy in the way the ancients recorded time. The Greeks, for example, had no one system for marking the passage of months and years. Each polis kept at least two calendars—its original lunar calendar and a civil calendar in sync with the solar year—and different regions often started their calendar years at different times. In Attica, Athens and its environs, the New Year began in the modern month of July, while Macedonians began their year in October. The Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor had their own system of reckoning time, no doubt influenced by their long association with Persia and the East; I imagine Memnon himself would have been most familiar with the Ionian calendar. Yet, for simplicity, I have opted to use the Athenian system in Memnon, as it is the best known.
The Greek year was comprised of twelve months, each with an alternating number of days, either twenty-nine or thirty. Because of its lunar origins, magistrates and city fathers found it necessary to insert extra days—known as intercalation—in order to reconcile their civic calendars with the solar year. The names of the months, and their approximate modern equivalents, were as follows:
Hekatombaion (June/July)
Metageitnion (July/August)
Boedromion (August/September)
Pyanopsion (September/October)
Maimakterion (October/November)
Poseideon (November/December)
Gamelion (December/January)
Anthesterion (January/February)
Elaphebolion (February/March)
Mounichion (Mar
ch/April)
Thargelion (April/May)
Skirophorion (May/June)
By Memnon’s time, Greek historians were using the quadrennial Olympic Games, held in honor of Zeus at Olympia in the western Peloponnese, as a benchmark for dating events unfolding in the wide Hellenic world. Each four-year cycle between Games was known as an “Olympiad,” and they were numbered from the first—held in 776 BCE.
As the premiere Pan-Hellenic festival, the Games were of incalculable importance to all Greeks, not just athletes. To Olympia came the most influential men in the known world, statesmen and generals, poets and artists. By religious decree all hatreds and animosities were put aside for the duration of the Games, so that even states engaged in an active conflict (such as Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War) could compete side by side and in relative peace. It made sense to historians, then, that they should mark the passage of time from the inaugural Olympic festival, making it Year One of the First Olympiad.
But, by the late fourth century BCE, after the conquests of Alexander the Great brought Egypt and the East under Greek control, the superior systems of the Egyptians and Babylonians were adapted for use with the Macedonian/Greek calendar, and reckoning by Olympiads fell into disuse.
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“Sing, O Goddess, of the ruin of Egypt …”
It is 526 B.C. and the empire of the Pharaohs is dying, crushed by the weight of its own antiquity. Decay riddles its cities, infects its aristocracy, and weakens its armies. While across the expanse of Sinai, like jackals drawn to carrion, the forces of the King of Persia watch … and wait.
Leading the fight to preserve the soul of Egypt is Hasdrabal Barca, Pharaoh’s deadliest killer. Possessed of a rage few men can fathom and fewer can withstand, Barca struggles each day to preserve the last sliver of his humanity. But, when one of Egypt’s most celebrated generals, a Greek mercenary called Phanes, defects to the Persians, it triggers a savage war that will tax Barca’s skills, and his humanity, to the limit. From the political wasteland of Palestine, to the searing deserts east of the Nile, to the streets of ancient Memphis, Barca and Phanes play a desperate game of cat-and-mouse—a game culminating in the bloodiest battle of Egypt’s history.