Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

by Nicholas Nicastro

  The mood Stateira brought with her, the lure of both her beauty and her forlornness, reduced all the men around her to stupefaction. It was Cleitus who finally broke the silence, asking how any man could abandon such a prize, or even bring her so close to the battle that her loss could be contemplated.

  “I must say I am disappointed,” replied Peithon, “for I expected her to be younger.”

  “In her case it doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, it always matters with women! Here is the secret to escape becoming a slave to a pretty maid, boys: tell yourself that in five or ten years she’ll droop. It’s inevitable. It is the curse of the sex.”

  “And boys don’t grow up? Men don’t droop?”

  “Oh, who’s talking about men?”

  With that, Peithon gave a glance at Alexander, and then to Hephaestion, who was unique in the group for his lack of enthusiasm for inviting Stateira, or for her presence. Cleitus had no such reticence, however:

  “To me there’s no comparison. I’ve had it all, done it all from here to Kerkyra, and for my money it’s women.”

  “Women have their uses,” countered Peithon, “but not for inspiring true desire. That cannot be denied.”

  “I deny it—it is possible to have passion for females.”

  Cleitus and Peithon went back and forth, debating the respective virtues of each sex until Perdiccas looked to the King. “And what does Alexander say of this?”

  The King lowered his cup, smiled. “Diogenes recommended neither women nor boys, but masturbation. It’s like satisfying your hunger just by rubbing your stomach!”

  During this exchange Stateira was there to look at, and as the looking was good, nothing more was demanded of her. But by the cracking of the fifth crater the men weren’t seeing so well, and some more lively form of entertainment seemed in order. Do you sing? they asked her. Dance? Recite the epic poems of your people? To each of these she gave a small toss of the head that we were given to understand meant “no.”

  “Well then, what can you do?”

  Craterus’s asked this question with the downward direction of his glance making clear his true meaning. The company, including Alexander but not Hephaestion, gave a laugh; Philotas, ever the jolly comrade, picked up the theme.

  “But surely you play the flute? Don’t all women play the flute?”

  More chortling, more drinks all around. And as the merriment rolled on, Stateira’s eyes began to moisten in the torchlight, until she hide her face behind her hands. Philotas slammed his cup to the table.

  “Oh spare us this phony propriety, woman! Barbarian marriage isn’t like ours…you’re nothing but a fancy concubine.”

  “You may count yourself lucky not be passed among the guards,” warned Cleitus.

  Darius’s wife began to sob through her hennaed fingers, and with the first teardrop Alexander’s nobler instincts were aroused.

  “Of course she plays the flute! That privilege, however, is for kings only. Now all of you, out!”

  There was a moment of hesitation as everyone wondered if he was serious.

  “OUT, I said!”

  The celebrants rose as best they could, topping off their wine cups on the way. Hephaestion was in the lead until Alexander called him back.

  “Not you my friend.”

  “There is something I must attend. I…”

  “Come here! Remember, you too are Alexander!”

  Hephaestion obeyed, his face glowing red with rage and humiliation, as the rest of the party cheered and slapped him on the shoulder. From that moment it was clear to me just how unpopular Hephaestion was among his own people. His relationship with Alexander was so resented that it was a wonder that in all his battles he never ended up with a Macedonian arrow in his back. The last I saw was Hephaestion from behind, standing at awkward attention just inside the tent, as Stateira stared at him with fear rising in her eyes. The tent flap fell shut.

  I am reminded here that Aristotle once told Alexander to be a leader to the Greeks, but a master to the barbarians. Of this particular incident Stateira, of course, divulged nothing. But when she died nearly two years later, it was not due to the rigors of living on the road, as Callisthenes has said. After all, the Persian court was always on the road! Instead, I have it on good authority that she died in childbirth. Of the fate of her baby I have nothing to report—not even Sisygambus knew, or if she did, she never divulged anything. So was Stateira’s honor respected? You be the judge.

  I was much entertained by Aeschines’s account of the siege of Tyre. The problem, of course, was that the Persian fleet was still sailing unopposed in the Aegean, free to foment resistance and harass Macedonian garrisons. To deal with this fleet Arridaeus suggested a novel strategy: Alexander would not assault it directly, as his navy was small and the enemy employed vessels manned by seasoned Phoenician and Cypriot seamen. Instead, he would wear down the Great King’s navy by depriving it of safe harbor. This would require not only the closure of all the ports in Asia Minor, but also the subjugation of the Phoenician cities on the Levantine coast. Old Parmenion disagreed, urging a fight at sea that would, in any case, be less expensive and time-consuming than conquering every harbor. Alexander heard his advice, weighed it, and ordered his fleet disbanded. He would gamble all on Arridaeus’ land strategy.

  As fast as Alexander’s army marched, news of his victories spread faster. Marathus, Byblos and Sidon opened their gates to him, and emissaries from Tyre, the richest of the ports, made pledges of neutrality. Alexander accepted the Tyrians’ goodwill gifts of provender and a golden crown, asking only that he be allowed into their city to make a sacrifice to Heracles.

  “That, alas, we cannot allow,” said the head emissary, heaving a thespian sigh. “The Great King would no doubt see that as a violation of our neutrality.”

  “Perhaps he would see it that way—but I will not accept a refusal. There is no neutrality possible now.” He left unsaid the obvious concern that any port not in his allegiance after he marched east could be used by the enemy’s navy to support operations against his rear.

  “May we suggest an alternative for your observance, O King? The sanctuary of Heracles Palaeotyros, for instance?”

  “Is it within the town?”

  “Your eminence, it is within our territory, but a short distance outside the city proper.”

  “I think,” said the King, “that the only alternative to a sacrifice within your gates will be an unpleasant one for you.”

  At this the haughty Tyrians, whose city stood on an offshore island ringed with high walls, dropped all pretense of humility. They laughed in Alexander’s face.

  “Unless you Greeks have gills, Tyre can never be taken!”

  At that, Alexander told them to prepare to defend themselves.

  IX.

  The King called a war council to hear the advice of his generals. The city, he was told, stood on an island half-mile off a windswept coast. She was protected by massive fortifications 150 feet high on the landward side, only somewhat lower to seaward. As Alexander had sent away his only ships, taking the city from the water would be impossible. “Then it must be from the land,” he concluded. Constructing a mole across the strait was be likewise impractical, said his admiral Nearchus, as the channel was deep there. “How deep?” Alexander demanded. No one knew.

  At this point Nearchus argued that the Persian fleet was not out of action and might appear at any moment to support the Tyrians (which was true), and that the city might be safely bypassed anyway (which was not). But his objections only confirmed Alexander in his course: he would take the impregnable island city from the land.

  The Macedonians seized the mainland coast across the Tyrian strait. Battalions of Foot Companions and mercenaries were ordered to take off their armor and don workshirts. Whole forests were cut down for pilings, and all moveable boulders in the vicinity roped, dragged, and dropped into the channel to support the construction of the greatest artificial causeway ever conceived.


  While these preparations were underway, the Macedonian camp was shaken by an ominous sign: as the army’s bakers removed their bread from the ovens, they found drops of human blood in the loaves. Panic spread among the Greeks in a way it had not before the battles at the Granicus or Issus. The campaign was saved by Alexander’s personal seer, the Telmissian Aristander. Instead of disaster, Aristander interpreted the bloody bread as a promising sign: since the blood flowed on the inside of the bread, it must mean that the force within the city was doomed, not the attackers. As this seemed reasonable to most of the Macedonians, work resumed in earnest.

  Alexander searched his army for strong swimmers who might survey the underwater course of his mole. As this was dangerous work, he promised each survivor a talent for his trouble. So confident were the Tyrians that the siege would fail, however, that they declined to shoot at these scouts as they appeared under their walls. Instead they laughed, asking them whether their King thought himself Poseidon’s master.

  The causeway was supposed to be wide enough for an eight-man front of Foot Companions to march across, and high enough for the top of it to be above the winter swells. Working in day and night shifts, the Macedonians quickly finished the section over the shallows. As his men worked, the enemy sent out boats with crack archers in them. Thinking perhaps that Alexander was bluffing, at first they resorted only to insults, jeering at the workmen, telling them they were a race of mules, not warriors. When this failed to stop the work, the archers brandished their bows. Finally, they commenced shooting at the workers, forcing them off the mole. Alexander brought up Cretan bowmen equipped with flaming arrows, driving the boats away. To protect his men, he altered the design of the mole, equipping it with a pair of wheeled towers, topped with rock-throwers, that could be rolled forth as the work proceeded.

  Unable to approach the causeway from the water, the Tyrians sent boats filled with cutthroats down the coast to attack the work-crews inland. Alexander detailed his Illyrian auxiliaries to protect the workers. The enemy turned to diplomacy, paying the Arab tribes of Mt. Lebanon to harry the Illyrians. In response, Alexander launched a land campaign, bringing the Arabs to heel in just ten days.

  The work proceeded into greater depths. The magnitude of the task seemed to grow more and more absurd, like burying the ocean, as we watched tons of stones and trees disappear into the water. The head of the mole, meanwhile, was now in range of archers on the city walls, which they used with telling effect. Alexander countered the Tyrian bowmen by erecting sheets of canvas around the head of the mole to conceal his men as they worked their way closer. Poseidon made his allegiance known by sending strong winds through the channel to rip away the canvas, leaving the workers exposed to enemy fire. Alexander replaced the canvas with heavy skins, weighted down at the bottom with shorn logs, which had the additional dividend of breaking the high waves. Poseidon grumbled and bided his time.

  Alexander was often out on the mole himself, exposing himself to danger, always ready with words of encouragement for his men. At last his faith seemed to bear results, as the Macedonians looked down to see the mole’s foundation inch toward the surface. Morale surged; it seemed as if the task was possible after all.

  Understanding that this was a key moment, the Tyrians launched their counterstroke: a sulphur-caked merchant vessel, stripped of everything that would not burn, filled to the gunwales with fuel and choice accelerants. To insure that the fire ship would ground herself on the mole, they shifted its ballast aft, so that its prow was pitched free of the water. The next windy day their best oarsmen towed it into the channel and, with spirited war-cries, propelled it toward the enemy.

  The ship struck home and exploded in an enormous conflagration. With particular ingenuity, the Tyrians suspended cauldrons of boiling pitch between the ship’s masts, so that when these collapsed additional fuel poured onto the blaze. Mounds of unused timber, cordage, canvas and idle catapults went up. The fire spread so quickly that the guards in Alexander’s towers were forced to dive into the sea. Enemy triremes swarmed around the helpless Macedonians, beating them senseless with clubs before taking them all as hostages. The Tyrian archers, meanwhile, drove back anyone coming out to fight the fire. The entire mole burned to the waterline.

  That was when Poseidon seized his chance. Sending forth a storm, he punished the very foundation of the mole until it gave way, collapsing in a heap on the seafloor. So completely was the structure destroyed that when Alexander came out to view the damage from this attack, all signs of his months of work, wet or dry, were erased. I was there during the episode Aeschines described, when the Tyrians gathered on their wall to jeer at Alexander as he stood among the debris.

  These developments provoked fresh carpings from Nearchus, who complained that the city would never be taken if the Tyrians were left in command of the sea. This was no doubt intended to dissuade Alexander, since the enemy had a strong fleet and the Macedonians had none. Alexander nevertheless ordered the mole rebuilt at twice the width and with double the number of towers. His men, weary and discouraged, stripped an even greater area around the country for materials. Alexander, meanwhile, rode north with his personal guard. He was away for seven days.

  The gods alone must know what the Tyrians thought of Alexander’s disappearance. We may suppose, though, that they believed he had given up and that the siege was finished; Poseidon himself must have assumed as much, since the winter storms ceased and the sea settled down. It was on one of these calm days that their lookouts sighted a fleet approaching from the north. They cheered again, for they thought it surely must be the Persians coming to drive the besiegers away for good, or perhaps a relieving force from Tyre’s daughter city of Carthage, riding to the rescue of their ancestral temples.

  These illusions were shattered as the devices painted on the fleet’s sails came into view. The fleet, 200 ships strong, was a mixed force from Sidon and Cyprus; at the prow of the very first ship stood Alexander.

  Now it was the Macedonians’ turn to cheer and their adversaries to groan. With such an overwhelming force against them, the Tyrians recalled their dispersed fleet, and took the additional defensive action of blocking their north and south harbor mouths with merchantmen. Alexander’s Sidonese allies showed their value immediately by launching fire ships against the obstructing vessels; several were burned, but the enemy replaced them. Alexander ordered a blockade on the city.

  With the enemy fleet out of action, work on the second mole proceeded faster than on the first. The Tyrians responded by erecting wooden towers atop their walls to increase the range of their heavy artillery. With these engines they threw heavy boulders into the sea, hoping to impede the movement of Alexander’s ships. This strategy pleased Alexander, since the enemy was providing good material for his work crews. He sent out triremes to haul up the rocks and dump them at the head of the mole.

  Perceiving their mistake, the Tyrians produced up a squadron of ram ships to attack the triremes. The ram ships were great armored vessels, with even their oar-shafts clad in bronze. Though they were slow and would easily have capsized in rougher seas, they caught the Macedonians by surprise, sinking several of their vessels and, in the process, further littering the landward channel with obstructions.

  The Tyrians, having regained control of the waters under their city walls, came up to threaten the mole again. Fighting resumed along the causeway, as Alexander’s men took refuge in their towers. Bolts from the Macedonian artillery clanked harmlessly off the metal skins of the ram ships. Alexander, furious, ordered the immediate construction of his own armored fleet. This was completed within days, and launched with selected crews from among his Sidonese and Cypriot allies. Outnumbered, the enemy withdrew.

  The allied triremes resumed pulling up the stones. To frustrate them, the enemy sent out waves of divers to cut their cables from underwater. The Tyrian swimmers, who seemed able to hold their breaths for superhuman lengths of time, also assaulted the mole from below, using metal hoo
ks to work the cobbles loose from the tree branches the Macedonians had sunk there. These attacks did real damage to Alexander’s plan. Having no divers of like skill, he ordered the anchor ropes of his triremes replaced with iron chains, and boats with archers to patrol the channel and kill the Tyrians before they could submerge. The latter tactic met with scant success, but in any case the divers could do nothing against the chains, and gave up.

  With the noose tightening around the town, the Tyrians tried to break the blockade by sallying out against the enemy ships at the north end of the island. A crack force of the city’s best fighters gathered behind a canvas screen erected at the harbor mouth. Coming out in mid-afternoon, when the Macedonians were rotating their crews, thirteen Tyrian ships rowed out in complete silence and again caught their enemy by surprise. All the blockading ships were taken and either burned or cast adrift in the swift current, to founder on the rocks downstream.

  Learning of this attack, Alexander rushed to the fleet blocking the southern harbor and ordered it to pull for the other side. So quickly was this order obeyed that the Macedonians caught the Tyrians still at their destructive work. Upon seeing the reinforcements, and Alexander conspicuous at their head, the Tyrians made frantic signals for their scattered force to retire. The Macedonians fell on most of these before they could find shelter in the north harbor; only a handful of the enemy escaped, making the overall losses even for both sides. It was a draw Alexander could afford more than the Tyrians, however.

  A strange inactivity then came over the defenders; their artillery fell silent, and the archers just sat on the walls, watching the Macedonians come ever closer. To the workers on the causeway, this stillness was most ominous.

  In fact, the defenders were preparing a new weapon. The slings of their torsion catapults were replaced with bronze shields, the missiles abandoned for something far more noxious. Just as the mole came up under the walls, the Macedonian workers were seen to cry out, tear off their clothing, and cast themselves into the sea. Mystified, Alexander came out to investigate.