Alexander

by Guy Maclean Rogers

  a reputation for piety among the gods.

  He then ordered them out of his sight.

  And with that, Alexander sprang from the speaker’s platform and hurried into the palace, where he

  remained secluded for two days, unwilling to eat, wash, or permit any visitors to enter his quarters.

  Yet the men did not budge.

  On the third day Alexander sent for the most select Persian officers and divided among them the

  commands of the brigades. Only those designated as his relatives were now allowed to give him the

  customary kiss.

  On the surface, the situation on the third day of the mutiny at Opis resembled the state of affairs at

  the Hyphasis. Alexander had announced his policy, and the men had balked. As before, Alexander had

  retreated to his quarters to sulk and wait. But there were crucial differences in 324. Now the

  Successors were present and fully trained. The Macedonians really could be replaced. Nor was there

  now a Coenus around, an officer respected by all in the army, who could give voice to the demands of

  the rank and file.

  Alexander knew all of this. This time, Alexander was not bluffing. He could conquer Arabia

  without most of the Macedonians. No face-saving sacrifice to the gods was needed. The king had

  decided, and his decision was final.

  When the ranks heard that commands were being given to Persian officers, that foreign troops were

  being drafted into Macedonian units, that a Persian Corps of Guards was being called by a

  Macedonian name, that the Persian infantry was being given the title of foot-companions, and that

  there was to be a brigade of Persian Silver Shields and mounted Companions, and even a (Persian)

  Royal Squadron ( agema), they broke. Running all together at the double to the palace, they threw

  down their arms, offered to give up the leaders of the mutiny, and swore that they would not move by

  day or night until the king took some pity on them.

  Alexander hastened out to meet them and stepped forward to speak, with tears in his eyes. But one

  of the soldiers, Callines, an officer of the Companion cavalry notable for his age and rank, anticipated

  him.

  “O king,” he cried, “this is what hurts the Macedonians, that you have made Persians your kinsmen

  —Persians are called ‘Alexander’s kinsmen’ and they are allowed to kiss you. But no Macedonian

  has tasted this honor.”

  “But all of you,” Alexander interjected, “I regard as my kinsmen, and so from now will I call you.”

  Thereupon, the old veteran Callines came up and kissed Alexander. And so did all the others who

  wished to. The Macedonians then picked up their weapons and went back to the camp, shouting and

  singing the victory paean.

  But, of course, it was Alexander who had won the garland of victory. Kissing your kinsman was, as

  Callines implied, a Persian custom. Moreover, kissing the king after performing prostration was part

  of the Persian court ceremonial that Alexander had been forced to abandon when he was in Bactria

  years before. Now the Macedonians were only too happy to receive a kiss from Alexander. Unlike

  Callisthenes, none would now go away the poorer by a kiss, but some surely would go away, just as

  Alexander intended.

  THE BANQUET AT OPIS

  To mark the restoration of harmony—or his triumph over his men—Alexander offered sacrifice to the

  gods and then gave a public banquet, at which he sat among all the Macedonians. Next to the

  Macedonians the Persians had their places, and next to the Persians, “any of the other tribes who had

  precedence in reputation or any other quality.” No fewer than 9,000 people attended.

  At the banquet Alexander and those around him drank from the same bowl and poured the same

  libations, following the lead of the Greek seers and the Persian Magi. Alexander prayed for other

  good things and also for harmony and fellowship of rule between the Persians and the Macedonians.

  They all poured one libation and followed it by the paean of victory.

  Some have inflated this banquet into a kind of international lovefest, organized by Alexander to

  celebrate the unity of mankind. But it was nothing of the sort. Rather, it was carefully organized first

  of all to reconcile the Macedonians to Alexander. The Macedonians were the ones who sat around

  Alexander, and they dipped their wine from the same bowl and poured libations, following the lead

  of the Greek and Persian priests.

  The guests were seated separately first by ethnicity and then by merit. Ethnic groups were not

  intermingled at the banquet. Alexander also did not pray for the unity or brotherhood of mankind

  generally. Rather he prayed for harmony and fellowship of rule between the Persians and the

  Macedonians alone. In other words, this was a prayer for joint imperial hegemony. Alexander was

  not Woodrow Wilson, and the banquet at Opis was not the foundation of an ancient League of

  Nations.

  Nor does the evidence for what happened at the banquet support the idea that Alexander believed

  in the unity or equality of mankind. Rather, as we have seen, he believed that Zeus was the father of

  all mankind and made the best particularly his own. Like Zeus, Alexander at Opis signified his clear

  preference for the Persians among the rest of humanity, after the Macedonians. They were the best

  among the barbarians, and Alexander was now making them especially his own. As for the rest of

  Zeus’ sons, they were fit to be ruled by the Macedonians and the Persians. That was the kind of unity

  Alexander had in mind.

  At the same time, Alexander’s prayer that the Macedonians and the Persians share imperial rule

  was quite extraordinary. In Alexander’s world, the notion that a conqueror might share rule with the

  conquered on something approaching an equal basis was virtually unprecedented. Ironically, it was

  precisely Alexander’s willingness to adopt the customs of the conquered, and then to share rule over

  his empire with them, that had led to his alienation from many of his Macedonian officers and troops.

  “NINE MONTHS’ LODGING”

  After the banquet of reconciliation, 10,000 Macedonians too old for service or somehow unfit were

  discharged, at their own requests. They were given their pay to date and for the time they would take

  on their way homeward. They also received a gratuity of one talent.

  Alexander also ordered that the children (by Asian wives) of these discharged men should remain

  in Asia, to avoid trouble back home. For while the Persians might have to accept the children of

  Macedonian and Greek men with Persian and Median women, the Macedonian families of his

  soldiers might not make their new family members welcome. Alexander pledged that when these

  children had grown up he would personally lead them back to Macedonia and hand them over to their

  fathers.

  Craterus, Alexander’s most loyal follower, was instructed to take the veterans home. Once there,

  he was ordered to assume charge of Macedonia, Thrace, and Thessaly, and secure the freedom of

  Greece. Antipater was to bring out fresh drafts of Macedonians to replace the men sent home.

  That order was variously interpreted at the time. On the one hand, Alexander clearly was building

  up his forces for his next campaign, and the new troops Antipater was supposed to bring out to Asia

  with him would have been vital to those plans. But because relations between Antipater and

&nbs
p; Olympias in Macedon had deteriorated notably in Alexander’s absence, his order to Antipater also

  gave rise to the rumor that Alexander was falling under the spell of Olympias’ slanders against the

  regent in Macedon.

  Indeed, it appears that Antipater and Olympias had been writing letters to Alexander complaining

  about each other for years. Antipater had written to Alexander criticizing Olympias’ willful nature,

  her sharp temper, and her constant interference. That Alexander was not completely unsympathetic to

  this point of view may be inferred from Alexander’s famous remark at the time that Olympias was

  charging him a high price for his nine months’ lodging in her womb.

  For her part, Olympias complained about Antipater’s arrogance, about his forgetting who had put

  him in his position, and about his expecting to assume every kind of precedence among the other

  Macedonians and Greeks.

  Whatever Alexander made of the war of missives, no deed or word could be attributed to

  Alexander from which one could conclude that Antipater was not held as high as ever in Alexander’s

  estimation. In fact, Arrian suggests that Alexander may have wanted to get Antipater away from this

  corrosive situation before he (Alexander) was unable to do anything about the rift between his mentor

  and his mother.

  It is also true, however, that Antipater did not come out immediately to Alexander, as he had been

  ordered to do. Instead he sent his son Cassander to Babylon. Alexander treated him with such ferocity

  that Cassander was left with a permanent case of the shakes. Years after Alexander’s death, even the

  sight of an image of Alexander nearly gave Cassander a nervous breakdown.

  Whether Antipater’s delay was a sign of disloyalty, or perhaps of fear, is difficult to judge.

  However, the insecurity of his position can be judged by the fact that after Alexander died a story was

  spread that he and his son Iollas, Alexander’s cup-bearer, had been part of a conspiracy to poison the

  king. This tale may have been invented for political reasons years after Alexander’s death by enemies

  of Antipater and his family. But it would not have been an effective piece of political propaganda

  unless it was grounded in some kind of reality, namely, the belief that relations between Alexander

  and Antipater were not as friendly in 324 as they once had been. After Alexander’s prolonged

  absence both men were wary of each other.

  With no sign of Antipater, Alexander and his army therefore prepared to move from the heat of

  Opis to the higher elevations of the Zagros, to spend the autumn at Ecbatana (Hamadan), the summer

  capital of the Persian kings.

  CHAPTER 28

  Future Plans

  THE DEATH OF HEPHAESTION

  In Ecbatana, Alexander sacrificed and held another one of his festivals. As usual, this festival

  included athletic and artistic contests, as well as more drinking bouts with his companions. For the

  artistic contests, 3,000 “Artists of Dionysos” arrived from Greece. These were itinerant Greek actors

  and musicians, organized in guilds, who traveled around Greek cities from the early to mid-fourth

  century, performing ancient Greek dramas for civic and royal sponsors.

  At the time of this festival (perhaps October) Hephaestion came down with a fever. Being a young

  man used to a soldier’s life, he could not bear to remain on the strict diet recommended by his

  physician, Glaucius. As soon as Glaucius went off to the theater, Hephaestion helped himself to a

  meal. He ate a boiled fowl and washed it down with a great cooler of wine. His fever then rose

  quickly. Alexander, who had been attending a race, rushed to his side on the seventh day of his

  illness, but was too late. Hephaestion already was dead.

  Alexander’s grief knew no bounds. One of Alexander’s companions once had remarked that

  Craterus was loved by Alexander no less than Hephaestion, but Alexander was reported to have

  replied that while Craterus was king-loving, Hephaestion was Alexander-loving. Hephaestion was

  Alexander’s closest male friend, probably his lover, another Alexander, in Alexander’s own words.

  Alexander ordered the manes and tails of all horses and mules shorn and the battlements of all

  neighboring cities demolished. According to some reports, he also crucified Glaucius—because he

  either gave Hephaestion the wrong dose of medicine or because he did nothing when Hephaestion

  kept on drinking heavily—and forbade the playing of any music until an oracle from Ammon arrived

  permitting him to honor Hephaestion and to sacrifice to him as a hero. With a view to their own

  futures, many of Alexander’s Companions dedicated themselves and their arms to Hephaestion.

  Eumenes of Cardia, who had quarreled with Hephaestion, prudently initiated at least some of these

  gestures of mourning.

  Alexander planned a funeral pyre for Hephaestion in Babylon at a cost of at least 10,000 talents,

  and he ordained a period of mourning throughout the East. The funeral pyre as planned would have

  been something of an architectural and artistic monstrosity: it was designed as a kind of huge brick

  cube, a stadium square, over 200 feet high. Its base was to be surrounded by the prows of five-oared

  galleys and its upper walls decorated with five successive friezes.

  Perhaps fortunately for our estimation of Alexander’s taste in architecture—not to mention the

  reputation of its architect—this monstrous edifice probably was never begun, let alone completed.

  Indeed, after Alexander’s own death the plans for Hephaestion’s pyre and other projects on a similar

  scale were revealed to the Macedonian troops by Perdiccas, probably with a view to undermining

  anyone’s desire to carry them out.

  ALEXANDER’S “LAST PLANS”

  Some scholars have dismissed Alexander’s “last plans” as forgeries or at best exaggerations of

  Alexander’s future projects. Did he really intend to build a thousand warships larger than triremes for

  his campaign against the Carthaginians, the Libyans, and the coastal region up to Sicily? To build a

  military road along the same coast up to the Pillars of Herakles? To erect six temples, each costing

  1,500 talents, in Delos, Delphi, Dodona, Dium, Amphipolis, and Cyrnus? To establish cities and

  transplant populations from Asia to Europe and Europe to Asia? To build in Ilium (Troy) a temple to

  honor Athena that could never be surpassed by any other? To erect a pyramid in honor of his father,

  Philip, to match the greatest of the pyramids in Egypt?

  But it is naïve to dismiss these projects on the grounds of their size and expense. Alexander never

  had done anything by half measures, and in 324 he had the financial and human resources to do

  whatever he wanted. He was the richest and most powerful man in the history of the world up to that

  point in time. Tens of thousands of men and women in Asia and Europe waited on his every word. He

  was already living on an unprecedented scale. Alexander’s personal “tent” (really an enormous

  pavilion) contained a hundred couches and was supported by fifty golden uprights. The canopies that

  stretched out over the top of the pavilion were elaborately embroidered with gold. Inside, Alexander

  was guarded by 500 Persian “Apple Bearers” dressed in purple and quince yellow. A thousand

  bowmen wearing mantles in flame color, crimson, and dark blue stood next to them, and at the head of

  t
hese stood 500 of the “Silver Shields,” Macedon’s elite infantry warriors. In the center of the tent

  stood a chair of pure gold on which Alexander sat holding court, with his bodyguard stationed close

  on all sides. Modern professional athletes and rock stars can only dream of living the way Alexander

  did during the last few years of his life.

  Before Alexander conquered the Persian empire and marched to the Indus River, no one would

  have believed that a young Macedonian king and his army could overthrow history’s largest empire

  within a few years. Yet they had done it. To dismiss Alexander’s plans outright, however extravagant

  they seem, makes little sense. Nor do we even know that these plans were Alexander’s “last,” except

  in the sense that he died after making them.

  Alexander had done what no one else had ever done, and he intended to continue his conquests

  until his empire extended over all the earth ruled by his father Zeus. He too was aware that “he was a

  man like no other man.” Having survived against all the odds after repeatedly taking terrible risks in

  desperate battles, he could have had no doubt but that he was beloved of some god, or perhaps of all

  of them. His future projects were intended to exemplify his unprecedented and unique

  accomplishments and position in the histories of Europe and Asia. There is no reason to doubt that at

  his age—he was not yet thirty-three years old—and given all he already had accomplished, he had

  these and many other equally fantastic aims in mind.

  EMBASSIES AND THE EXILES’ DECREE

  Whatever were his future plans, in the winter of 324–23, after the death of his dearest friend,

  Alexander returned to what he personally did better than any man in history: conquer. To lighten his

  sorrow, according to one hostile tradition, Alexander subdued the tribe of the Cossaeans, massacring

  the whole male population from the young men upward, as a sacrifice to the spirit of Hephaestion.

  More likely, he did what he did because he was unwilling to put up with the semi-independence of

  these tribes, who controlled the direct route between Ecbatana and Susa, a strategically important

  road within his empire. Whatever his motive, in action the king showed he had not altered his