declared that
Alexander had a better claim upon them to be considered divine than Dionysos or Herakles. The
reason for this was not merely his brilliant and successful career, but also the fact that neither
Dionysos nor Herakles was connected with Macedon. Dionysos belonged to Thebes and
Herakles to Argos—the latter’s only connection to Macedon was through Alexander himself,
who had his blood in his veins. That being so, there would be greater propriety in the
Macedonians paying divine honors to their own king. In any case there was no doubt that they
would honor him as a god after he had left the world; would it not, therefore, be in every way
better to offer him this tribute now, while he was alive, and not wait until he was dead and could
get no good of it?
Those who were in on the plan then expressed their approval of what Anaxarchus said and were
willing to begin prostrating themselves right away. The Macedonians—or most of them—who were
present strongly dissented but kept quiet.
It is crucial to our understanding of what Alexander actually intended on this occasion to note that
the idea of introducing prostration was brought up in the context of a discussion about divine honors
for Alexander.
Moreover, Callisthenes’ reply to Anaxarchus similarly implies that he too connected the
introduction of prostration with the question of whether Alexander deserved divine honors.
Callisthenes replied to Anaxarchus:
For my part, I hold Alexander fit for any mark of honor that a man may earn; but do not forget that
there is a difference between honoring a man and worshipping a god. The distinction between
the two has been marked in many ways: for instance, by the building of temples, the erection of
statues; the dedication of sacred ground—all these are for gods; again, for gods sacrifice is
offered and libations are poured; hymns are composed for the worship of gods, while panegyrics
are written for the praise of men. Yet, of all these things not one is so important as this very
custom of prostration. Men greet each other with a kiss; but a god, far above us on his mysterious
throne, it is not lawful for us to touch—and that is why we proffer him the homage of bowing to
earth before him.
After berating Anaxarchus for introducing the idea of paying homage to Alexander, Callisthenes
then turned his criticisms to the king himself:
Not even Herakles was accorded divine honors by the Greeks when he was alive—nor when he
was dead either, until the command to do so was given by an oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Well,
here we are in a foreign land; and if for that reason we must think foreign thoughts, yet I beg you
Alexander to remember Greece; it was for her sake alone that you might add Asia to your
empire, that you undertook this campaign. Consider this too: When you are home again, do you
really propose to force the Greeks, who love their freedom more than anybody else in the world,
to prostrate themselves before you? Or will you let the Greeks off and impose this shameful duty
only on the Macedonians? Or will you make a broad and general distinction in the matter, and
ordain that barbarians only should keep their barbarous manners, while Greeks and
Macedonians honor you honorably as a man, according to the traditions of Greece?
It is said that Cyrus, son of Cambyses, was the first man to receive the homage of prostration,
and that this humiliating custom thereafter became an accepted thing in Persia. So be it; none the
less you must remember that the Great Cyrus was cured of his pride by the tribe of Scythians—
poor men but free; that Darius was humbled by Scythians too, as Xerxes was by Athens and
Sparta, and Artaxerxes by the Ten Thousand of Clearchus and Xenophon. And now Alexander
has robbed another Darius of his pride—though no man has yet bowed to earth before him.
Callisthenes’ long speech angered Alexander profoundly, but the Macedonians found it very much
to their liking. Recognizing this, Alexander told the Macedonians not to think about prostration
further.
But that was not the end of the story.
There was an awful, embarrassed silence after Callisthenes’ speech. Then, in turn, the senior
Persian officials rose from their seats and prostrated themselves on the floor before Alexander.
Thinking that one of the Persians had bowed down in an ungraceful way, Leonnatus, one of
Alexander’s officers, mocked his posture. In one late version of the story, it was Polyperchon who
ridiculed the hapless Persian, telling him to beat the ground harder (with his chin). Dragging
Polyperchon off his drinking couch, Alexander threw him face-first on the floor; “You see,” said
Alexander, “you are doing just what you laughed at in another a moment ago.” Then the king ordered
Polyperchon to be arrested and the banquet came to an end.
Thereafter, the custom of prostration was dropped for Greeks and Macedonians; it applied only to
Alexander’s non-Greek or non-Macedonian subjects. In return, up to the mutiny at Opis several years
later, only Persians ever received a kiss from Alexander.
This episode has left historians with more questions than answers. Most important, why did
Alexander do it? He must have been aware that to require prostration from Greeks and Macedonians
would cause grave offense, religious and civic. The fact that prostration was introduced not once but
twice may suggest that Alexander anticipated dissent and perhaps even opposition.
Some have speculated that the reason Alexander decided to go ahead anyway was the need for a
uniform court ceremonial. As the ruler of all Asia, Alexander had to be seen by his Asian subjects as
receiving the same acts of social deference that the Persian kings had received. Otherwise,
Alexander’s Asian subjects might not see Alexander as the true successor of Darius. To require the
Asians, but not the Macedonians and the Greeks, to prostrate themselves would be to suggest that the
Asians were of a lower social status. This was not an option, given Alexander’s policy of adapting
himself and his army to the customs of the East. After careful preparation, Alexander conceivably
introduced the practice, hoping to convince the Macedonians and the Greeks to view prostration the
way the Persians did, as an essentially secular and social custom.
If this was what Alexander had in mind, he had seriously misjudged the strength of the opposition
to the practice. Even if Alexander had persuaded the Macedonians to accept prostration as a social
custom, most Greeks and Macedonians would still have perceived it as an affront to their own sense
of social status. Prostration was incompatible with the Macedonians’ sense of being free men. And
Alexander surely knew that no Greek or Macedonian wanted to bow down in front of him the way that
they believed slaves or barbarians did. So, the hypothesis that Alexander hoped to sell prostration to
the Macedonians as a social custom is not convincing.
Rather, we should recall that both attempts to introduce prostration took place in the context of
discussions about divine honors. The logical explanation for Alexander’s introduction of prostration
is not that Alexander wanted to convince the Macedonians that the Persian custom was only a secular
act, which should not offend their secular sensibilities, but that the Macedonians were quite correct
&n
bsp; about what prostration before Alexander implied. Alexander introduced prostration because he
wanted the Greeks and Macedonians to think of him as a real son of Zeus, just as he had been
claiming since his visit to Siwah.
That he dropped the idea does not prove that Alexander wished to introduce prostration for
“pragmatic” reasons of unifying court ceremony, changed his mind about his own divine son–ship, or
believed that he was not worthy of the honors accorded to divinity. After he returned from India,
Alexander demanded far more than prostration from the Greeks, with all that prostration implied to
Greeks. Only official declarations of his divinity then would do. The introduction of prostration in the
spring of 327 was a logical (mis)step along the road to Alexander’s eventually successful demand for
divine honors.
THE CONSPIRACY OF THE PAGES
Many of the ancient sources connected Alexander’s introduction of prostration in 327 with the so-
called conspiracy of the royal pages, both because the conspiracy evidently took place shortly after
the unsuccessful introduction of prostration and also because Callisthenes played a central role in
both episodes.
The plot had its origins in a hunt during which Alexander was charged by a wild boar. Before the
king could strike, one of the royal grooms, a certain Hermolaus, the son of Sopolis, dispatched it.
Angry because he missed his opportunity, Alexander ordered the groom to be whipped in front of the
other boys and then took his horse away from him.
Outraged by this treatment, Hermolaus told his boyfriend Sostratus that life would no longer be
worth living until he had revenge on Alexander for this assault. He easily persuaded Sostratus to lend
a hand in planning it. Several other pages, including Antipater, Epimenes, Anticles, and Philotas,
consented to help.
It was agreed among them that when Antipater’s turn to guard Alexander at night came around, they
would murder the king in his sleep. Because of the duty rotation of the pages, however, it took thirty-
two days for the planned opportunity to arise.
According to some writers, that night, Alexander sat up drinking until dawn. Aristobulus claimed
that as Alexander was returning to his tent, a Syrian woman—thought by some to be gifted by the gods
with second sight, but by others to be just plain mad—begged him to go back and drink the night out.
Alexander, believing this intervention to be a divine sign, took her advice—and lived.
The next day one of the conspirators, Epimenes, told the whole story to his boyfriend Charicles.
Charicles in turn related the story to Epimenes’ brother Eurylochus, who passed the information on to
Ptolemy. Ptolemy, perhaps mindful of Philotas’ downfall, told Alexander right away.
All the boys were arrested. Questioned under torture, they openly admitted their guilt and
implicated others, too. Aristobulus and Ptolemy both claimed that Callisthenes had urged the pages to
commit the crime. Most authorities had a different version—namely, that Alexander was ready
anyway to believe the worst about Callisthenes because he already hated him and because Hermolaus
was close to the sophist.
At his trial, Hermolaus confessed, but declared it was no longer possible for a free man to bear
Alexander’s hubris. The young page then went on to give a list of Alexander’s crimes: the lawless
killing of Philotas, the arbitrary execution of Parmenio and the other officers put to death at the time,
the murder of Cleitus, the assumption of Persian dress, the introduction of prostration, the heavy
drinking, the drunken sleeps that followed. These were things no longer to be borne and from which
he wished to free himself and the Macedonians.
The outcome of the trial was predictable. Hermolaus and the other prisoners were stoned to death
on the spot by the assembly or were transferred back to their own military units to be tortured to
death.
As for Callisthenes, Plutarch, writing during the Roman empire, claims that even under torture, not
one of Hermolaus’ accomplices denounced him. Curtius, too, explicitly denies that Callisthenes was
part of any plot to kill the king.
Yet Plutarch does relate that Callisthenes may have encouraged Hermolaus to undertake the deed.
When the page asked Callisthenes how he might become a most illustrious man, Callisthenes is said
to have replied, “By killing the most famous.” Supposedly, too, he remarked to Hermolaus that he
should not be overawed by Alexander’s golden couch, but should keep in mind that he was
approaching a man subject to sicknesses and wounds like anybody else.
The issue of how Callisthenes died is no clearer than the question of whether he was part of the
conspiracy of the pages. Ptolemy recalled that Callisthenes was racked and then hanged. If Ptolemy’s
memory was correct, the manner of Callisthenes’ death perhaps is a sign that he was judged to have
been a member of the conspiracy, an indicted co-conspirator. Aristobulus, on the other hand, wrote
that Callisthenes was bound in fetters and carried around with the army until he eventually died from
sickness. This account leaves open the question of whether Callisthenes was thought to have been
guilty of conspiring to murder Alexander; his house arrest can be compared to that of Alexander of
Lyncestis.
Curtius claims that Callisthenes was tortured to death although he was innocent of any plot to kill
the king. Torture was the standard way the Macedonians attempted to extract information from
suspected plotters.
Chares, the court chamberlain, says that Callisthenes was kept in chains for seven months so that he
could be tried by the Council of the League of Corinth in Aristotle’s presence. But he died (when
Alexander was wounded in India) from obesity and the disease of lice.
In assessing Chares’ story, some historians have focused upon Alexander’s apparent desire to
prove Callisthenes’ guilt to Aristotle, Callisthenes’ kinsman and Alexander’s teacher. The more
important point, however, is that, if Chares is right, Callisthenes’ slow demise perhaps can be
attributed to his citizenship. According to customary procedure, Macedonians charged with treason
were tried by the Macedonian army with the king acting as prosecutor, but not as the judge or jury.
But Callisthenes was not a Macedonian and therefore did not have the dubious constitutional
privilege of a trial in front of the Macedonian army. Rather, he was a Greek from Olynthos. The point
of dragging him around in chains until he could be tried by the Council of the League of Corinth was
not to embarrass Aristotle, but to follow Greek constitutional procedure.
Overall, it is difficult to know what to make of these stories about the fate of Callisthenes. It may
finally be impossible to say whether Callisthenes died because of his commitment to freedom of
speech or his commitment to Alexander’s demise. We may not be any more certain about what
motivated the pages themselves.
For we happen to know that Hermolaus’ father, Sopolis, who had commanded the Amphipolitan
squadron of the Companion cavalry since 335, had been sent back with Menidas and Epokillos to
bring new recruits from Macedon in the winter of 328/7. There is no evidence of Sopolis returning to
Alexander.
Moreover, the father of another conspiring page (Antipat
er), a man named Asclepiodorus, had
brought reinforcements to Alexander in Bactra in 329/8, and then had not been returned to his
governorship of Syria.
So the fathers of two of the admitted conspirators against Alexander seem to have been demoted,
effectively. It is significant that the assassination was scheduled for the night when Antipater was to
guard the sleeping Alexander. Antipater would not have been the first or the last son to attempt to
avenge himself upon a man who had demoted his father.
Whatever motivated the pages who plotted to kill Alexander, there was no rallying around them or
their alleged cause. The Macedonian rank and file executed them without hesitation. They were found
guilty as charged.
TO INDIA
Alexander had been contemplating the conquest of India since the summer of 328. It was part of his
overall plan to conquer all of Asia, return to Greece, and from Greece to make an expedition to the
Black Sea region, by way of the Hellespont and the Propontis, with all of his land and sea forces.
Although Alexander may not have needed a great deal of encouragement to extend his empire into an
area only nominally under Persian control before his campaign, he did get such encouragement from
Indian rulers; several came to him inviting him to come to their countries to conquer their neighbors.
In Sogdiana, for example, Mophis (or Omphis), the ruler of Taxila, appeared, promising to join
Alexander in a campaign against his enemies.
What Alexander and the Macedonians knew about the size of India and what the campaign was
likely to entail is another question altogether. It was only when Alexander got to the Hyphasis
(modern Beas) that he got any sort of realistic view of what he had bitten off. Of course, the more
accurate reports he got about the size of India and of the enemy army waiting for him there did not in
any way discourage the king, but they did have a sobering effect upon his less ambitious soldiers.
In the late spring of 327, however, Alexander’s thoughts probably were shaped more by the stories
told about his semi-mythological predecessors in the region. The Semiramis of Greek legend, for
instance, who was the daughter of the Syrian goddess Derceto of Ascalon, reportedly had conquered
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