CHAPTER 18
Philip put all administrative and political matters in order before leaving with his army for Thrace and the Chalcidice. Before leaving, he sent for his son and asked him to come to the throne room. When the child arrived, Philip reached down and hugged the boy. He told him that it would be several months before he returned. He then spoke to Alexander about an issue he hoped the youth would understand.
"Your mother will soon ask you to teach her to read. I'll have none of this. If you want to be king one day, if you want my continuing favor, you'll refuse. Women must be relegated to limited roles in our society: birthing, raising children, and attending to the whims of the gods. None of these functions requires literacy. Do you understand, Alexander?"
"I do, father.”
"Good. I knew that you would. This issue is even more important than you know, for literacy is power. Men, and men alone, must have power in Macedonia. If women were ever allowed even to share power while we're off fighting, there wouldn't be a government for us to return to. That's true for me now, and will be true for you when you become king. Warriors make up a class that can only be ruled by men. Nations would be put into turmoil if women were ever allowed to reign. Don't forget this, son. Women can be your downfall. Bed them, lie to them, even marry them, if you like, but never give them power. Only men can be trusted. It's only with our kind that your kingship can be realized."
"I'll think about these things while you're gone, father. I wish I could go with you."
"Even Alexander is too young for the dangers of battle now. Your day will come. You must first grow into adolescence and become the best-educated prince in history. The man you met, Aristotle of Stagirus, has been asked to be your tutor when you come of age. If he consents, and I think that I can convince him to, you'll get what I only partially got while a captive in Thebes. Then I'll begin taking you into the field with me. You'll become my greatest commander, Alexander. But first you must become what the Athenians call an educated man. For they respect only those who can debate the exalted ideas of their philosophers. I'll give you the fighting spirit; Aristotle will give you a finely honed, educated mind. You'll be unstoppable. But before that, heed my words: your mother is not to be taught to read!"
Philip picked up Alexander, embraced him with a long hug, and taught him half of the beard pulling game. The contest was one-sided, but the king knew that the day would come when both father and son would continue the men-only family tradition. It was in these small ways that young Alexander would begin to realize the rituals of men and their subtle effects on male personality. If only the boy could survive the domineering influence of his snake-loving mother.
When the king left, Alexander stayed in the throne room. Wistfully, he climbed on the magnificent throne of Macedon and sat sideways, his head draped over one arm, his feet dangling over the other. He had not told his father that his mother had already approached him about learning to read. Her plea had been simple: Zeus-Ammon had appeared to her in a dream and told her that she must become Greek literate if she were to assume supreme leadership of his cult. She had been instructed to find a tutor who would teach her.
Philip had been in the dream too. Afraid to confront Zeus-Ammon, he could only scowl and wave a small Celtic sword at the deity. The god saw the king's reaction and caused his sword to melt inside his chest. In the very spot where the sword had disappeared, the words Get Alexander appeared.
The next morning, Olympias had approached her son and told him of the dream. Interpretation was not necessary. Before the day was out, Prince Alexander had taught Queen Olympias how to read and write four Attic Greek words: Olympias, Alexander, Zeus-Ammon, and Philip.
Alexander remembered his father's warnings, his veiled threats about teaching his mother to read. A debate raged within him about the need for unity among men, the role of power, and how he could fulfill the commandments of his spiritual father. The reading and writing instruction would continue, he decided. Philip had exaggerated what literate women could do. Besides, the gods ruled the destinies of men and nations. Words and the ability to decode them were just not that powerful. It was everyone's right, especially a queen's, to learn how to decipher the orthography that he had already nearly mastered. His tutoring would just have to be a secret between his earthly mother, his spiritual father, and himself.
He rose from the throne, crawled under it, and lay on his back. Looking up, he saw the raw wood of the seat's bottom. The boy remained in the supine position for some time. Looking to his left, he saw the court scribe's writing reed, resting in a small box on the pebble-mosaic floor. The prince took the reed with his left hand, closed his eyes briefly, and then began writing a poem on the bottom of the unfinished wood seat. It described his parental predicament. The early verses came quickly. The middle and latter ones were painful, causing him to remain in his lowly position as he chose his closing words. Finally, although it contained an incorrect Greek spelling and was not in the classical writing style of standard Attic, a poem emerged. Finished, Alexander read it aloud, in a soft voice.
“Men and women, I don't understand.
For men are crude, they ravage the land.
Women are soft, like me deep inside.
Mother is hard, my father she chides.
What will I be, when young I am not?
Father I love, yet Zeus-Ammon steers my lot.
I'll seek, I'll grow, I’ll learn and prevail,
loving boys of my sex, hearty and pale.
I’ll be not a Philip, who threatens my life.
I love, yet fear mother: so cunning at strife.
Alexander will grow, Alexander will lead,
beautiful young boys, soon kings of great deeds.”
He sighed deeply, then crawled from under the throne and left the room, deep in childhood thought. He was content that his secret was safe. It was to be the first of many secrets that he was to keep from his nearly-always absent father.
Philip's decision to attack Olynthus was based on two factors. First, despite countless overtures to the Olynthians to surrender the king's two stepbrothers, they continued to harbor Philip's only two remaining family rivals to his throne. This was intolerable. Additionally, his former allies were now seeking open treaty relationships with Macedon's adversary, Athens. Olynthus and the thirty-two city-state confederation that she dominated were playing one aggressive power against the other. When Athens had threatened her, Olynthus’s leaders had sought support from Macedon. Now that Philip was seen as the more serious threat in Thrace, Olynthus discarded their treaty with Macedon and asked for Athenian assistance against Philip.
Philip would have been content to have allowed the Chalcidian peninsula to have become a client state of the much more powerful Macedon, but matters had gone beyond that. Encouraged secretly by Macedonian sympathizers inside the city itself, Philip made the fateful decision: Chalcidice was to be ravaged. His plan called for his army to pick off one small city at a time, slowly isolating the only real power in the confederation: Olynthus.
As he led his massive army of 30,000 hoplites and cavalry out of Pella, the king observed with pride the nearly completed roads leading out of his capital. Although he had directed the digging of many drainage canals both around Pella and throughout Macedonia, much of the land was still swampy and wet. Accordingly, all roads, especially vital military arteries, were built three and a half cubits above the surrounding countryside. They were over fifteen cubits wide, more than adequate to allow his army to march in their normal files as they entered and left the city. The roads were lined with clay drainage pipes and had cleverly engineered stone sewers to channel water from the spring rains. Philip dismounted frequently as he rode outward from the city and allowed his army to go on without him. He commended the civil engineers that were making Pella and its environs the envy of Greece. Barbarians didn't do such things in their cities, and Philip knew that word of Pella's improvements would spread throughout Hellas.
After a w
eek of marching, during which the Macedonians experienced no armed resistance, the army turned south, bypassing Olynthus. Philip began attacks on small cities in the most western of the trident-shaped peninsular tines, Pallene. The fighting was easy and the king's army experienced few losses. Some cities simply surrendered when riders told their leadership that King Philip of Macedonia was approaching.
In early summer the Macedonian army took Mecyberna, Olynthus's port city. Philip then led his forces southward down to Sithonia, the second tine of the peninsula, and took Torone. The move effectively blocked Olynthus from any sea trade or Athenian rescue. There was little the Olynthians could do to resist. There were some small battles, but the Macedonians prevailed, forcing the Olynthians back to the temporary safety of their walled fortress.
With the Olynthians confined inside their city, unable to do anything about the Macedonian army's actions, they could only send urgent appeals to their new allies in Athens. Then, as Philip knew they would, the northerly Etesian winds began, preventing any effective Athenian counter force from sailing to aid the besieged Chalcidian capital. The assembly could only listen to Demosthenes' harangues about Philip's depraved aggression.
Philip then led his main force to the neck of the third and last peninsular tine, Acte. He inspected the canal of Athos, twelve stadia long, dug by the Persian King Xerxes 135 years earlier when he invaded Greece with a mighty naval force. If a Persian Great King could achieve such an impressive undertaking while attacking Greece, Philip thought he could use the same tactic if he encountered a similar geographic challenge during his invasion of Persia. The Macedonians completed their circumvention of the Chalcidian peninsula as they marched north and took, one-by-one, the cities of eastern Chalcidice.
One of the last to fall was Stagirus, ancestral home of his friend and his son's future teacher, Aristotle. Stagirus was razed and its citizens sold into slavery. It would now take even more persuasion to get Aristotle to come to Pella, the king knew. But Philip had years before that happened. Much could happen in years. Cities could be destroyed; cities could be rebuilt. The destruction of Stagirus was little more than a troublesome thought as the king left a leveled ancient city and turned westward to the primary target of this carnage, proud Olynthus.
Olynthus was besieged in midsummer and everyone inside and outside the city knew that its fall was only a matter of time. Philip's army managed easily to beat back two feeble attempts by Athenian naval forces already in the northern Aegean to rescue Olynthus. The king continued to strengthen his stranglehold around the city, until no food or water was available to its inhabitants. Finally, two of Olynthus’ leading hipparchs led 500 cavalry out of the fortress and surrendered personally to Philip. One week later, as summer was yielding to an early fall, the rest of the city fell. Within days of Macedonian forces entering Olynthus, the northerly Etesian winds subsided. Philip's army priests assured him that he had been given special protection by the gods themselves and that the deities sanctioned Olynthus’s end.
Athenian captives were taken back to Pella. Olynthian citizens who had, at some time, supported King Philip were allowed to live. Some were even given control of their lands. Most of the city's inhabitants were killed, sold into slavery, or sent to the Macedonian mines at Mount Pangaeus. Philip's two stepbrothers were beheaded, their bodies dismembered, and the pieces cast to a pack of wild boars. The rest of the lands and estates that, for centuries, had been some of the most prosperous farming lands in Greece, were given to the king's royal companions. Olynthus was razed, the same fate as other cities that had resisted the Macedonians and their triumphant king.
Philip then left the Chalcidice and traveled to the Macedonian port city of Dium, on the Thermaic Gulf. Rest, recuperation, and celebration at the Macedonian Olympic festival were in his immediate future. While relaxing there, he would begin to formulate his next moves against Athens. She had proved her pitiful weakness and indecisiveness as his army had methodically conquered Chalcidice. Perhaps it was a time to talk with these Athenians, for they loved, above all else, to talk.
Buoyed by his latest military success and the clear blessing of the gods, Philip started to feel that he might even be able to out-talk his democratic adversaries. They were better educated and wore civilization like a cloak, but he was now in command of Greek events. Keep them off balance; let them see him as something more than a conqueror, he thought as he boarded a trireme for the short but dreadful sea voyage across the gulf to Dium.
CHAPTER 19
Dium was in the foothills that formed the base of Mount Olympus. Philip, fresh from his Hellas-altering victory at Olynthus, was presiding over the Macedonian Olympic games there. Athletic events, theatrical productions, poetry readings and musical concerts were scheduled over a three-day period. Dium was filled with visitors from throughout Greece.
Philip attended the opening of each athletic event and supported Macedonian athletes by betting extravagantly on them. The Dium games were primarily for his army’s rest and recuperation. Many of his soldiers and officers entered the athletic events as contestants. But Philip's presence in Dium was or more than athletic and artistic competitions. All Greece now understood that the king of Macedon was close to achieving his lifelong ambition: becoming Greek hegemon. His only obstacle was Athens and her continued, albeit feeble, opposition. Philip's army was still blocked at Thermopylae, prevented from entering central Greece. Every Greek leader knew that events were moving quickly and that the status quo would not continue much longer.
Philip was beset with diplomatic offers and proposals that were, for the most part, self-serving propositions from weak demos. None of the bids were rejected outright. Philip received amiably all petitioners as he kept his options open. It was Athens' actions and inactions that interested him most. Her influence in Thrace was over, but she still had a strong naval presence in the Northern Aegean. She also had a few forts in Thrace and the Chersonese, at the gateway to her vital grain routes through the Propontus. Her newest ally, a loutish local Thracian leader named Cersobleptes, defended her interests there. Philip knew the only way Athens could stop him was by rallying the poleis of central and southern Greece into a formidable allied force. Such a unified Greek army could still defeat him and it was for this reason that he waited at Dium. It was best now to let events come to him. He would consider his options, instead of rushing into a battle at Thermopylae that he would almost certainly lose.
The continuing religious controversy among the contentious city-states of the Amphictionic League over tiny Phocis again gave Philip an opening. Although he had crushed the Phocian general Onomarchus at the Battle of the Crocus Field five years ago, his forces had subsequently withdrawn to Macedonia to avoid battle with the aroused states of lower Greece. During the intervening years, Phocis had rebuilt its mercenary army and was still in control of the holy temple at Delphi. Athens had used Phocis as an expedient pawn to rally Sparta and Achaea as allies. It was their combined forces that currently held Philip and his army in check at the Thermopylae bottleneck.
It was with these events as background that the king called a council meeting with his military commanders. Attending was Parmenio, Antipater, and Eurylochos, Philip's newest general who had distinguished himself at the siege of Olynthus. Conspicuously missing was Attalus, who was on a secret mission to the island of Euboea. It was a mission that Philip had told no one about.
"I'm apprehensive about our next moves," the king began. "Yesterday I received two envoys from Thebes. They called on me to take Phocis, once and for all. The Amphictionic League supports their request, but I'm wary of direct moves against the blasphemers now. First, I want to deal with Athens—peacefully if possible. I continue to receive communications from Isocrates. If he's to be believed, there's moderate support for a negotiated peace between Athens and Macedon. But I fear treachery. These things trouble me. Give me your reactions."
Parmenio spoke first. "Your concern is not unwarranted. Extreme caution is called for. A
t the same time, an army like ours cannot simply sit and wait. The soldiers are rested and bored. Brawls are undermining discipline. The men need a target to vent their energies on. We're not strong enough to take Thermopylae, but there are other opportunities."
"We're able to take the Pass now, Parmenio," Eurylochos retorted impetuously. "You grow old and timid. Too old to lead brave men in hard battles."
Parmenio rose and put his hand on his short dagger. Philip quickly stood up to prevent him from doing anything rash. "Hold your foolish words, Eurylochos. Parmenio's right. A move into Thermopylae now would be our end. He's right too about the army. They need a target, now!"
"A target exists," Antipater said finally. "When I spoke to Attalus, before he left for Euboea, he told me that Halus is fighting with Pharsalus. Pharsalus is a member of the Thessalian League and has been a weak supporter of our efforts. Halus moves closer to Athens each day. I think we should invest Halus immediately and give Athens something to think about. It might help nudge her toward a settlement."
Philip was aware of the fighting between Pharsalus and Halus, but was surprised that Attalus had told Antipater about it. He was more surprised, even angry, that Antipater knew where Attalus was. He would speak to Attalus about this apparent breach of security when he returned. "Halus looks good," the king said. Threatening the city would impress Athens with our presence, without directly approaching Thermopylae Pass. I agree with you, Antipater. It should be our next move.”
“Beyond this, you all should know that I sent envoys to Athens some time ago. They carried messages to the boule and assembly asking for peace negotiations. They answered by asking for a convocation among their allies. It's to be held in Athens; all the states of central and southern Greece have been invited. The tedious democrats' debates will soon be joined. Allied war against us or peace negotiations are the only possible outcomes."
Philip and Olympias: A Novel of Ancient Macedon Page 26