Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

by Nicholas Nicastro

  “For eight years, you have lead and we have followed. We have been privileged to do so, for it is ever a blessing to serve in the company of greatness. Let none of us here forget who we were but a generation ago, when we fled to the hills at the mere sight of Illyrians and Thracians, and were the butt of jokes from fancy city-dwellers from the south. Now the primitives fear us, and the cities compete to flatter us. You have shown us what men are capable of when their honor is awakened. For that, for your wisdom and leadership, we are ever in your debt.

  “Today we count on that wisdom again. You see us standing before you, and you must know that there are no gods here. Men stand here broken, their every step made agony by wounds that won’t heal in this infernal heat. They stand here naked, or in the garb of barbarians, for they have gone beyond the limits of resupply from home. And they stand here disspirited, for all of them have wives they can barely recall, and children they scarcely know.

  “O King, remember your beloved Bucephalus, who rests now among those hills behind us! Even he, your most faithful companion, was allowed to find his stall at last. All of us witnessed the tenderness with which you handled him in his final months. And yet, do not your men deserve the compassion you displayed to your horse? Like him, there are limits to how far and how hard an army may be ridden. On this, I don’t pretend to tell you what you must already know.

  “Our plea is not made in contempt of your ambitions. Not at all! We advance your plan, because the conquest of India is a job we leave to the next generation. Your next army already awaits you, at home. It tends flocks on the plains of Emathia; it waters its cattle in the swift, sweet Axios. With wooden swords it drills in earnest, fondly imagining the celebration that will attend the return of divine Alexander, so long absent from the land of his countrymen! And that youthful army yearns to give you India, Africa, Europe. We who have shared some modest part of your glory beg you not to deprive our sons of this privilege.

  “Please know that I say nothing of hubris, or pride, or any of the sins whispered by those who take a darker view. Personally, I don’t believe such talk. I know that a mind so keen on the timing of things, when to encamp, march, or attack, can also know when it is time to stop. Wisdom knows when to push away from the table, to retire for the night. In truth, even the gods must take account of Fortune, and the bitter way she may turn on even the most successful. So much more so, then, mere mortals like us. And that is all I have to say.”

  As it was, many were surprised that Alexander perceived his case so devastated by Coenus’ arguments. What really happened, I suspect, was that after the King pretended to have been defeated in the debate, weeping and rending his clothes, he went back to his tent and enjoyed a three-day bender. Then he came out and made the “concession” he intended all along: the army would turn south, to the sea, and after that march for home.

  Coenus was as desperate in his sincerity as Alexander was not. Believing himself to have defied a god, his anguish drove him to illness. Immediately after the King left he could not breathe; within a day he was bedridden, unable to eat or sleep. Some suspected he had been poisoned for opposing Alexander, but as I have said, Alexander only pretended to oppose withdrawal. Coenus was only thirty-six when they put him on the pyre.

  Indeed, Ptolemy, Perdiccas and Craterus had better grounds than Alexander for wishing Coenus had kept his mouth shut. Though they never communicated their preferences to me—not in any overt way—it would have better served their purposes for the King to have found a gallant death in battle. Afterward they could lead the beleaguered Macedonians on an epic retreat, like Chirisophus leading the Ten Thousand, dispose of the ailing Arridaeus, and divide the empire between them. Of course, I can offer no evidence that my story should be preferred over Aeschines’. No evidence at all—except the minor facts that I spent more than a decade observing the characters of these men, and Aeschines was not there at all.

  I will not hide my own preference from you on this question: I supported an Indian campaign. For as I watched the King change over the months and years, I came to believe that if he survived to see his old domains again he would not rule them the same enlightened way. For the sake of his life, I helped convince him of his divinity, but at the cost of making him half-mad with godly demands. He now expected not only his subordinates to grovel before him, but kings and chiefs. How much more a tyrant would he have become if emissaries from all the Greek cities came to him with all manner of gross flatteries? Would the free men of Athens be obliged the prostrate themselves at the feet of the universal conqueror? The thought revolted me. If I indict myself with this admission, so be it. One way or another, Alexander was bound to be assassinated like every other Macedonian king in his line. Better that he find his reward in far India, fighting in the manner that he loved, than have his reign collapse on our heads here.

  XVIII.

  That Aeschines accuses me of plotting against Alexander is not surprising. What is unexpected is that he indicts me for my association with Rohjane, when in fact this was one of the great services I did for the King! There was a desperate need to civilize the girl, and the oafs and thugs who surrounded Alexander were useless for this work. That I was a Greek and an Athenian seemed further to recommend me for the job. The Macedonians, after all, prided themselves on knowing more about horses than women, and what was a “Greekling” to them, anyway, but a particularly useless kind of woman?

  After the breaking of bread with Oxyartes the honeymoon lasted just a few days. Divine Alexander’s side of what happened has gone with him to Olympus, but for Rohjane’s part it was a peculiar induction into the ways of men and women. She came to him, of course, as a maiden. For those unfamiliar with the customs of royalty, her virginity meant she had experience only with her handmaids, and that restricted to what may be indulged away from spying eyes. Her curiosity about men was therefore strong, and she could be excused for expecting that the Lord of All Asia would be unequivocally a man. She found herself instead cast in a much more complex role than simple receptacle for the royal seed. Unprepared, confused, she plied me with questions that gave more information than they got.

  Though some would call her lucky, Rohjane did not have many natural allies in her husband’s retinue. There was a growing number of noblewomen attached to his camp as hostages to their families’ loyalty, but few of these saw her as their equal. She had no friends among his other companions, the rough-hewn Crateruses or Ptolemies or Parmenions, and certainly not the best wishes of Hephaestion or Bagoas. Certainly because she was a barbarian, but possibly because she was beautiful, Callithenes the historian treated her with deliberate contempt.

  Sogdian nobles educate all their children, male and female. Their native language is impossible for outsiders to learn, so full of such arbitrary complexities that it makes every other language seem easy by comparison. Rohjane therefore had knowledge of Persian and Greek, could recite the names of important historical figures, and even knew something of Hellenic and Indian philosophies. Of the skills that are more immediately useful to a Macedonian wife she knew nothing—not how to dress, nor how to display the appropriate courtesies, nor how to be silent. I decided to start at the beginning: to wean her away from her trousers, furs and animal skins, and into appropriate clothes.

  There were garments of all kinds for trade among the merchants and thieves who followed Alexander through Asia. Bearing a simple chiton of Ionic type, made of good linen, I arrived at Rohjane’s tent and asked to be admitted. Inside, I found her with Youtab, the sole handmaid permitted to follow her in her new life. The two women were sitting around a small fire, turning a wild piglet on a spit. Rohjane had a hunting knife on her hip. She had apparently used this to cut an impromptu smoke-hole in the roof.

  “Machon! You are just in time to eat with us--”

  I explained that my purpose had to do with gentler arts than the roasting of meat.

  “That is your loss,” said Youtab as she extracted one of the boar’s eyes with her kni
fe and offered it to the Queen.

  “You have Greek clothes…” Rohjane said to me with her mouth full of eyeball. “…I have those too…”

  She rose and threw open a cedar chest. Inside was a large woolen garment. Inspecting it, I saw it was a peplos of Doric cut, with no armholes or neckhole. The dress was meant to be fastened at the shoulder with fibulae.

  “This won’t do,” I told her.

  “The wool is good. It was bought in Sardis.”

  “Dresses like this have been out of favor in Athens for many years.”

  “I like the hardware,” she said, showing me a pair of long, sharp pins that might have served as daggers.

  As this was a good opportunity to begin her education in Greek history, I told her the myth of why Athenian women were forbidden to wear dresses of Doric style. Once, in the city’s distant past, the army had been humiliated by the Aeginetans in battle. A single soldier returned home to report the disaster. The women of Athens, outraged by the loss of their husbands, pulled the stickpins from their dresses and flayed the messenger on the spot. Needless to say, the elders of the city were disturbed by this incident. From that day Athenian women were forbidden to fasten their dresses with pins. Or so says Herodotus.

  “The Athenian men would have done better to win their battles, than to tell their women what to wear!” Rohjane cried.

  It took much coaxing to get her to try the dress I brought for her. As she went behind a screen to change, I found myself awkwardly confronted by Youtab, who was as delicate as a Bactrian camel and possibly less attractive.

  “Wanna go?” she asked me. Then she held up the two long fingers of her left hand, with knuckles pressed together and slightly flexed. In the moment, I had no idea what this signified. She laughed at me.

  “Oh, don’t play the fool! I’ve heard all about you Greeks and your pleasures...” she said, inclining her head toward her mistress. “But she also tells me you never use your mouths down there on a woman. Is that true?”

  If what she meant by “down there” was what I thought she meant, then I told her that the very thought would revolt any man.

  “Don’t be so sure. The Persians make quite a practice of it.”

  “That explains their performance on the battlefield,” I replied. Yet Youtab’s impertinence made me wonder about something else. Greek soldiers had a name for the Persians—“carpet-munchers”—that I had thought referred to their habit of bowing their heads at the feet of their masters. Perhaps, I thought, it referred to their bedroom perversities instead.

  Rohjane came out with her head and arms in the right places, but with no sense of how to gather the chiton in the right places to make it drape. I helped the Queen as best I could without touching her, leaving it to Youtab to tie and retie the girdle around her hips. The result was very pleasing. It took some effort not to stare at the sheerness of the fabric, which clung in ways that would have given Praxiteles much to ponder.

  “Not bad, but I can improve it. Youtab, my knife!”

  Before I could utter a word, Rohjane cut the dress open to make a rude opening for her breasts to show through. She then covered them with a small square of silk, tied in Sogdian fashion at the neck.

  “Better, no?” she asked me.

  In most respects this was the kind of problem I faced. Asia now had a barbarian queen with a weaker sense of decorum than a young girl. Not only did she feel herself entitled to appear at drinking parties, speak her mind, and show her body as readily as any man, but she assumed that any other arrangement was inconceivable. To correct her was nothing less than a Sisyphisean task. No sooner had I convinced her that the casual display of her breasts was shameful, than she took to walking around with her chiton hiked up to her thighs. When I got her legs covered, down came her hair. Not even the finest of golden fillets would convince her to restrain that wild coif. Faced with whatever other little rebellions she could conceive, I decided to grant her that impropriety.

  Where was Alexander in all this? At best, he was absent; at worst, drunk. As the weeks passed the novelty of his new bride wore off. By the end he spent no more than one night in five in her bed. Bagoas, on the other hand, was either a fixed presence around the King, or always in the vicinity to come running. When Alexander left to do the duty of a husband the eunuch would jeer or groan. In this I believe he was encouraged by Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Craterus, who had little interest in the production of a legitimate heir. If Youtab’s testimony is any guide, they had little grounds for fear in this regard.

  Along with the unconstraint Rohjane displayed about her person went other strange habits. The Sogdians, like many people of Asia, had a particular dread of women at the time of their monthly flow. The Zoroastrian custom was not only complete separation of the “unclean” female from her family, but separation from all aspects of the seven creations. Their handling of food, drink, water, animals and fire were forbidden. Since ordinary clothes were ruined by contact with the woman’s body, she was required to wear special garments reserved for that time. For a menstruating woman even to breathe on another person was an assault that demanded vigorous ablutions. The same applied to her gaze, which was reputed to have the power to stifle the generative power of men. Many of the humble women of Asia therefore spend their days of corruption in small, dark, stifling hovels where their opportunities to pollute the cosmos—and therefore to aid the Hostile Spirit—are restricted.

  Now I am aware that certain Greeks have queer beliefs about these matters. In Ionia, the influence of menstruating women is thought to be noxious enough to kill agricultural pests. Wives and daughters are sent in their vulnerable times to walk the fields, their dresses above their waists, to control beetles and worms. Even in Attica it is thought that the inception of flow at a time of lunar eclipse is bad luck. I have heard doctors debate over the dangers of sharing bathwater with women, menstruating or not. But even these beliefs are a far cry from utter segregation from the course of life, as is the custom in much of Asia.

  A hovel would not do for a queen in her indisposition. Rohjane refused to spend those times in her usual tent either, claiming that it had too many corners.

  “And what is wrong with corners?” I asked.

  “Corners, O ignorant one, are places where the evil influences released by the menses may hide.”

  Rohjane therefore required a special round tent be prepared for her use. She also could not touch the earth with her bare feet, or use utensils to eat. If she happened to touch any metal tools Youtab took them outside and washed them first with cow urine, then sand, then water. It was essential to observe the correct order of ablutions, or else some deity or another would be weakened in the struggle against the daevas…

  “The defendant is warned again to confine his remarks to topics relevant to his defense,” Polycleitus interjected.

  “I beg the magistrate’s indulgence, due to the breadth of the prosecution’s indictment. My intention is to show what difficulties the management of Rohjane presented for the Macedonians, and how my presence was beneficial to Alexander. I also believe it essential to my defense to establish the nature of my relationship with the Queen. If you recall, I was accused of using her in a plot against the King.”

  “It is nothing to me if you squander your time, Machon,” said Polycleitus, waving his hand. “Only that you are aware that you will get no further indulgence from me.”

  It would not be true to say that Rohjane was the most observant of Zoroastrians. How could she be, if she was obliged to spend her life in the company of unbelievers? Still, her customs raised so much curiosity around the camp that Alexander brought out Gobares to render some explanation. The question of cow urine was again raised, albeit in a less obviously dismissive way.

  “What you Greeks don’t grasp is the comprehensiveness of the prophet’s vision,” he told us. “For when he tells us that Ahuramazda created the six Amesha Spentas, and they in turn made the elements of the world, and that Angra Mainyu seeks the ultimat
e corruption of all those elements, the revelation means what it implies. The corruption of fire is smoke; of living beings, death and decay. Water may also be polluted by contact with the things of the Hostile Spirit—dirt, blood, the dead. Therefore, we may not defile water by washing certain things with it, such as that which a menstruating woman has touched, gazed, or breathed upon.

  “The effluent of the cow is holy to us, as it is to the Indians. It has special power to cleanse other substances without corruption adhering to it. So when we wish to purify something, we use the cow first, before exposing it to water.”

  “And so you may refresh yourselves by standing under a pissing cow?” asked Perdiccas.

  “More or less. Those with certain scruples may opt to strain it through muslin into a clean vessel.”

  “Show us,” ordered Alexander.

  We all went out to the stock pens. Since it was dark, we bore torches. The eyes of the animals shone back at us as we waited at the gate for the telltale sound of divinity manifesting itself upon the ground.

  “It is not usual to wait for the pajow to appear, but to take it as a blessing when it does…” said Gobares.

  “I feel the same about wine…” Craterus remarked. “…hand over that jug!”

  At last Gobares heard what he was listening for. As he ran out into the yard with a basin in his outstretched hands, I looked to Alexander. Despite his drunk—or perhaps because of it—he had the look of a man who was hopeless to comprehend what he was seeing. In that moment I felt sympathy for him, for as the new Great King he took upon himself obligations as well as palaces. Everything inherent in his character compelled him to understand the people he would rule. Yet as he watched Gobares at his strange lustrations it was clear that, despite his new Persian diadem and tunic, he feared that he would never succeed. When he went back to his tent that night it was without Bagoas or Rohjane.