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Full text of "Alexander Of Macedon The Journey To Worlds End"

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Alexander of Jfacedon

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ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

BOOKS BY

HAROLD LAMB

Early Novels

Marching Sands

House of the Falcon

Biographical Narratives

Genghis-Elan

Tamerlane

Nur Mahal

Omar Khayyam : A Life

Alexander of Macedon : The Journey to World's End

Historical Narratives

The March of the Barbarians

The Crusades : Iron Men and Saints

The Crusades : The Flame of Islam

For Children

Durandal

Kirdy : The Road Out of the World

ALEXANDER

OF MACEDOJV

The Journey to World's End

HAROLD LAMB

Garden City, New York

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, ING.

1946

COPYRIGHT, 1946

BY HAROIJ) 1LAMB

AT.T. BIGHTS

PRIHTED Of THE TT2TITED STATES

AT

THE CO"TF2nY nFE PBJESS, GARDES' CITY, X. Y.

He lifted the civilised world out

of one groove and set it in another ;

he started a new epoch; nothing

could again be as it had been.

W. W. TARN, Cambridge Ancient History (Vol. VI)

CONTENTS

ONE

I The Passage of the Chariot of the Sun 5

II The Riddle of the Earth's Shape 31

III Demosthenes and the Graves of Chaeronea 65

IV The Mountains and Thebes 83

V The Road to Troy 99

TWO

VI Bridgehead 117

VII The First Summer, and the Winter 125

VIII Issus 137

IX The Woman of Damascus 152

X Gates of the Sea 166

XI The Turning to the East 180

XII Lady of the Beasts 193

XIH Persepolis 208

XIV The Wings, the Sun, and the Empire 224

THREE

XV The Blight of Luxury 239

XVI River of the Sea and River of the Sands 259

XVII Roxana 275

[vii]

CONTENTS

XVIII The Elephants and the Last River, 293

XIX Return to the West 314

XX Corrosion of Wealth 331

XXI The End of the Army 343

XXII The Waters of Babylon 350

Afterword 356

*

Note 385

Index 389

THE PASSAGE OF THE CHAHIOT

OF THE SUN

WHEN WE HEAR of him first lie was alone. Not that he

was left to himself, because people always kept near

him. He was alone in what he wanted most to do, and

alone in his thoughts.

The thing he valued most was a copy of the Iliad, or Troy

Tale, which he read at night until he knew much of it by heart.

After reading it 3 he put it under his wooden headrest for the

remainder of the night. So he thought a lot about Achilles, and

one of the tutors nicknamed him Achilles. In the time just be-

fore sleep, when the lamp was taken away, the boy traveled with

the heroes of the book across the sea and landed upon a strange

coast in the east. That parchment book was something that be-

longed to himself, that he did not need to share with Kinsmen,

Companions, tutors, or even the Theban veteran.

The tutors who drilled him in Greek and such things as

rhetoric and logic had been selected by his mother. Rigid

Leonidas, the governor of the tutors, was Kinsman on his

mother's side. They filled the hours of the day for him, calling

him before the first light, to run with the foot slave over a

measured course before he tasted food.

"A run before daybreak," chanted the tutor at the starting

point, "gives you a good breakfast. A light breakfast gives

you a good dinner."

The boy ran a thousand paces, with knees bent in the lope

of the mountain folk, out to the cemetery. At the turning point

he could see the white marble of the shrine upon which had

been carved the words : I am cm immortal god 9 mortal no more.

[5]

AI/EXANDER OP MACEDON

They used the pillar as a marker and started back on the other

side of it, racing uphill to the city. The boy went eagerly, be-

cause the streak of sunrise along the mountain ridge meant

that the chariot of the sun was rising out of its stable in the

distant Ocean and starting on its course across the sky. When

clouds moved over the mountains he thought he could see the

heads of the horses uptossed. At the finish line by the first

trees of the palace he lengthened his stride and drove ahead of

the slave runner. He would not let himself be beaten, nor did

the slave dare to outdistance the boy.

When he went in and anointed his hands by the embers of

the altar fire he felt as if he were still greeting the racing sun.

There in the east it was soaring through the heights of the

gods who knew no darkness and never slept.

He took incense from the casket, scattering it recklessly

over the embers, waiting for the vapor to rise and the glow to

warm his cold face, muttering, "To the God-Father, to his son

born of the horned serpent may they watch over us and pro-

tect us" Spoken in the darkness, these words would have been

empty patter ; now, in the growing light, they were spoken to

those far-off benefactors, those mighty souls, patient and

watchful.

That was how he thought of the shining fellowship of the

gods, of Zeus and fleet-flying Aphrodite, who had whispered

counsel to Achilles.

When he heaped incense too plentifully on the glowing altar

Kinsman Leonidas touched his arm, speaking in a dry voice :

"Powdered myrrh is not sand, to be thrown away by the hand-

ful."

At such times the boy felt choked, with a tightness pressing

around his brain, and he could not speak. Frankincense and

myrrh came a long way, it was true, from Araby; they had

little enough of incense in the house. But they had appointed

him to make sacrifice. How could he take a pinch of the precious

stuff, to make a gesture of offering, in order to make the incense

[6]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

last a proper number of days? It seemed to him that he had to

offer all of it, or nothing. Yet he could not explain his feeling

about that to the Kinsmen.

It was not easy to talk with his mother's Kinsmen. They

told him what he must do, and he did it. The boy understood

why Leonidas would not allow him to run with his father's

race horses on the new track, saying that mountain folk like

the Macedonians had to climb mountains. Leonidas would not

let him eat corn that was finely ground and softened with milk,

explaining that the entrails of bear and the marrow of boar

would give him courage, which he lacked.

Every day after the morning sacrifice Leonidas searched

the cupboards in the boy's room to see if his mother had

smuggled in honey cakes or bowls of milk wine as she often

did. The Kinsmen were doing their duty by him and training

him like a Spartan because, they said ; he would need courage

to perform the duties of a king.

He was not sure that they believed in the gods. They said

the earth was hung like a flat bowl, beneath its covering sky,

within the immensity of Night. There had been no life upon

this earth until Light came. Only old Chronos Time had

been at work before that.

And now Light dwelt in the east, with Zeus the God-Father.

Prom that height in the east where the chariot of the sun gained

light in its course Prometheus had stolen with the first fire.

Prometheus had been chained to those mountains of the barrier

range in the east by way of punishment.

To the west, the boy knew, existed only the shadows of a

twilight over Ocean. There the light of the sun's chariot was

quenched in Ocean. And thither went the souls of men after

death, to become slaves of the shadows, seeing no light.

He heard Leonidas say once to Lysimaehus, the Greek tutor,

that he, Alexander, was a devourer of books, an acolyte of sac-

rifice, who tried to escape reality and would never be a man of

action like his father Philip. Alexander clung to the books

[7]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

because when he was immersed in them no one stood over his

shoulder to tell him what he must do or hear next ; the friends

within the parchment rolls went nimbly at his side, laughing

and joyous, telling him all their secrets they went as if on

wings out of the city, to islands in the far seas.

*'Has my father any friends?" he asked Leonidas once,

abruptly.

The Kinsman seemed surprised. "Your father is King "

he began, and checked himself. He knew well what the boy

meant. Had Philip, King of Macedon, any companions who

were more than wine companions, who shared his thoughts and

loved him in spite of his failings? Leonidas considered and an-

swered honestly but carefully. "He has Parmenio and Antip-

ater. Yes, and Demades the Athenian."

He had named two generals of the army and a politician.

"And who have I?" the boy persisted. "Name three."

This time Leonidas answered without thought. "Ptolemy,

Nearchus, Harpalus although I could name a dozen as

easily."

A dozen, Alexander reflected, was the number of boys about

his own age from twelve to fourteen years selected by his

mother to share his classes with the tutors. Ptolemy, a year

older than he, was quicker to learn and quicker to jest. His

mother had been Arsinoe, a Greek prostitute-companion who

dyed her hair in the eastern fashion. Although she never con-

fessed it, Ptolemy believed that Philip himself had sired him by

Arsinoe. So Ptolemy secretly thought himself equal if not

superior to Alexander, yet placed beneath Alexander because

his mother was not acknowledged.

Nearchus, on the other hand, had been born away from the

mountains, in Crete. He had voyaged on ships from island to

island, although he did not talk about it. Just now he was kept

in the city as a hostage, and Alexander did not know what he

thought about that. In fact Nearchus seldom said anything;

he followed the boys about, his brown face expressionless, and

[8]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

agreed to what they wanted to do. Alexander liked Nearchus,

who never quarreled; but there was a gulf of silence between

them. In the same way he shared nothing with Harpalus, who

was a peasant's son and often too sick to study. His mother had

selected Harpalus because she said Alexander must come to

know all types.

"I asked the names of three friends," Alexander exclaimed

angrily. "Not companions."

The Kinsman looked at him curiously. "A man's friends

must be of his own making," he said after a moment. "You

should know that by now."

Next to the loneliness was the fear. Alexander did not talk

about that. When he thought of it he thought of the Theban

veteran. The soldier from Thebes had a scar running down

from one eye that made his face like a twisted quince. He had

been brought from Thebes by Philip, who had spent his boy-

hood years there as a hostage and had learned the Theban

phalanx drill in that time. Alexander remembered well what

Philip had said when he brought the Theban to the boy. "If

ever you wage war you must first learn how from those who

are supreme in the making of war." And he had winked his

good eye confidentially toward the boy, so it was not clear

whether his words had been meant for the silent Theban or

the equally silent boy.

This Theban was no giant of a man, but his muscles inter-

locked like twisted chains. He could take the twelve-foot mr%$$a

spear in the fingers of one scarred hand and whirl it around

his head. He could throw the heavy weapon thirty paces ahead

of him.

Yet he trained Alexander not with the sarissa but with the

sword. These swords were light, bright-polished iron that sang

when the edge struck against metal. The Theban polished

them after every exercise. If you kept such a sword always in

your hand, he said, like a walking staff or hunting knife, you

[9]

ALEXANDER, OF MACEDON

would grow accustomed to one and could really use it. You

could strike without thinking what you had to do.

Alexander resented the heavy words of the old man. Such

talk of war by a phalanxman was as if a barley farmer dis-

coursed on philosophy. He wondered if the Theban suspected he

was afraid of weapons. Especially when he faced Ptolemy in

a sword duel. When he fitted the clumsy wooden practice shield

on his left arm sweat dampened his palms. He felt a paralysis

of cold settle on his stomach something quite different from

the warm eagerness of headlong hunting or the sport of throw-

ing javelins at a mark.

Ptolemy was slighter in body and cleverer than he. Running

and training and riding had made Alexander hard, Straight he

stood, with his head held on one side a little, his level blue eyes

fixed on his opponent, the tangled red-gold curls bound back

from his eyes. He had his mother's delicate skin that reddened

over his face and body rather than darkened to brown under the

sun. Like her, he had beauty.

But Ptolemy fought viciously, carefully, easily managing to

keep ahead of Alexander in the count of blows scored on the

wooden shield. Clearly he showed that he was superior in skill.

Then, at times, he hurt Alexander on the side away from the

watching Theban flicking the sword blade suddenly against

his thigh or the side of his head, to draw blood and induce the

Theban to stop the fight. Then Ptolemy would smile, as if tired

of playing with such toys.

Once the Theban had not stopped the sword fight between

the boys, and Alexander found himself limping so that he could

barely shift his weight from one foot to the other, and blood

running into his eyes half blinded him. He tried to shake the

blood clear of his eyes ; instead Ptolemy's face shone through a

red haze, and suddenly the coldness went out of Alexander. His

sword felt light, his arm moved free, and his legs drove him for-

ward. Behind the red veil Ptolemy's shield was breaking, and

his sword wavered helplessly.

[10]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

Alexander felt the fierce warmth of a headlong hunt, when

he pressed close upon a weakened deer. Then he heard the

Theban shouting, "Rest!" and the Theban's spear knocked the

swords apart. Ptolemy was sobbing and staggering about,

badly hurt.

The Theban held fast to Alexander's right arm and walked

him away, until he quieted. "If you can't master that temper,"

he growled, "you won't live long."

To Philip the veteran made a different report. "He is in-

credibly fast, and he is much more dangerous than the others.

But he sweats like a racing horse at the touch of chariot har-

ness, and he loses his head, I doubt if he will ever learn to use

weapons as he should."

"If so," Philip said, "he can thank his mother for it."

The same cold fear seized on Alexander when he tried to

swim the river during the spring flood. Nearchus did not mind

the flood. He went into water and worked his way through it

methodically, as if it were a wheat field to be crossed. He drifted

down the swift current but he got across. Alexander fought

the water, and his breath failed him, until he had to turn back.

It seemed to him that the Cretan boy had some skill or power

that he could not have. However, the good-natured Nearchus

did not boast of any such skill. "A water rat can do it much

better." He grinned.

And Ptolemy got in one of his gibes at Alexander. "You are

a marvelous runner. Why don't you enter for the Pythian

games next year if you're too young for the Marathon?"

Alexander thought of the crowds watching the great games,

the athletes straining over the grass course, the chosen runners

of the world. He shook his head.

"You're afraid of not coming in first," Ptolemy jeered. "A

king's son shouldn't lose, should he?"

"I would enter," Alexander burst out, "if the others were

kings' sons."

Ptolemy smiled.

en]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

The servants said that water would always be dangerous to

Alexander. The spirit that resided in deep water was hostile to

him, and no sacrifice could alter that. Nearchus, who had been

brought up on the blue sea, said that here in the mountains

the torrents were dangerous enough, spirits or no spirits.

Why Alexander hated the city, his father's city of Pella, is

not clear. It had no wall, because Philip declared it needed no

wall; it was small and gray, with houses of granite blocks

built like barracks. It had no gardens, and its streets were

winding alleys with stairs leading up and down the hillside.

Perhaps, because he was confined to it, the boy felt that it served

as a prison for him ; perhaps the constant building made the

place as unsettled as if it were recovering from an earthquake.

The new houses had pillared porticoes in the Greek style, yet

Pella was ugly and dwarfed compared to the great Greek cities

in the south.

Philip had insisted on moving down from their old home at

Aegae in the hills to this lake near the seashore. "If we have

no ships," he grumbled, "at least we can move the city nearer

the highway. " And for once his wife made no objection.

The handsomest place in their new capital was the hippo-

drome Philip had designed with care for his race horses, down

by the lake. ("We do have good stables, 55 Alexander's mother

had remarked when she first saw the racecourse laid out.)

His mother, who journeyed constantly to the Mysteries at

Delphi and the markets at Corinth, belittled Pella to him.

The city, she reiterated, was being made according to Philip's

plan; he would leave nothing for his son to build after his

death. And he had no more sense of design than a horse herder.

Perhaps Alexander hated Pella because of the pent-up an-

tagonisms within it. Although Philip was absent most of the

time with the armies, he domineered over Pella, not liking any-

thing to be done in the city except on his advice.

Then Pella in its narrow upland valley was close to the great

[12]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

highway. From the ridge over the cemetery you could see the

dark glint of the Great Sea ; you could trace out the white line

of the distant King's Way along the coast. Philip had nothing

to do with that. It had been built by the Great King Xerxes,

who came out of Asia to subdue Greece a century before, and

it was still the best highway to the east.

Along that highway one day came a procession of men from

the east. The procession wound up the dirt road to Pella in a

haze of dust of its own making, and through the dust shone

bright purple coats and cloth-of-gold tunics. Never had the

boys seen such splendor.

"From Asia," said Nearchus, cupping his hands to shut out

the sun glare. "They would be Magi wearing those tiaras. 3 *

"Showy," muttered Ptolemy enviously.

Alexander watched the horses, fascinated. Some of them

were the largest he had ever seen, moving with a thrust of the

haunches as if spurning the hillside down from them. Others

moved nimbly, their small, delicate heads constantly upturned.

Alexander had not seen such breeds as these before. They were

finer than the best of the Thessalians.

It did not take the boys long to learn that the strangers were

ambassadors from the King of Asia Persians, the Greeks

called them. Alexander hung around the entrance steps,

staring, wanting to examine the equipment of the easterners

but afraid to attract their attention.

"Philip being away as usual," Ptolemy muttered, "with all

the Companions, there is no one above the rank of captain to

do the honors for these folk."

In fact the envoys had dismounted and were standing in the

shade while their baggage came up, looking around with

amusement at the rambling streets of Pella. Then a woman

house slave hurried to Alexander,* saying all in a breath: "The

Lady Olympias, your mother, greets you, bidding you salute

the ambassadors and find quarters for them."

Alexander edged forward, his throat dry, unable to think of

[13]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

words. His mother had this way of forcing him to do things.

She was more imperious than Philip, who contented himself

with watching the boy quizzically as if he were a foal of dubious

breed. The visitors paid no attention to the boy, who wore an

old wool shirt and loose riding trousers. When he had wine

brought out for them, they refused it carelessly. It seemed they

preferred water.

The Magians among them wore white silk ; their dark faces

were thin and intent. They spoke in low, quick voices, as they

inspected trays of gold objects and lengths of silk, pearl-sewn,

that must have been gifts. Alexander heard Ptolemy laughing.

But he was fascinated by a Persian horse that had a square of

padded leather strapped behind its shoulders, with a cord

dangling down on each side. The cord ended in twin loops.

"Footrests," explained one of the visitors who could speak

Greek.

Immediately Alexander swung himself to the back of the

horse, which reared, startled. The boy caught the rein, clung

close to the great, arched neck, pleased. He got his feet into

the loops, and the horse quieted. A servant tried to pull the

presumptuous boy off fhe horse, but an interpreter who had

sighted Alexander above the crowd warned the visitors, low-

voiced : "This is the only son of the king of the Macedonians ;

the others are idiots or bastards."

The ambassadors, sipping their water, studied Alexander

calmly and answered his questions about the horses. His fear

and shivering had left him, once he had to grapple with the

great horse.

On such horses, the visitors explained, they could ride five

hundred stadia sixty thousand paces in a day between sun-

set and sunrise. Because of the heat of their lands, they often

rode in this fashion during tEe hours of darkness. The roads of

Asia were wider than three streets of Pella, and relays of horses

were kept at stations along the routes, so that by changing-

horses they could go without stopping.

[14]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

This fired Alexander's curiosity. His questions tumbled out,

one after the other. How far had they come how had the

crossing of the Great Sea [the Mediterranean] been made?

How was their king called?

"Artaxerxes the Great King, the King of the Lands of the

Earth."

Those lands, what were they, and how far did they stretch

toward the place of the sun's rising? And this the ambassadors

could not tell him. Not one of them had journeyed the breadth

of the Great King's lands. They only knew that twenty-three

nations inhabited those lands. One of them had heard it said

that if a rider were to journey along the post roads without

stopping, from west to east, he might come to the far end of

the empire in a hundred days.

"And how many days have you spent in crossing Macedon?"

"Three."

Alexander had forgotten about welcoming these ambassa-

dors and ushering them to quarters. The Asiatics were sitting

around the steps helplessly and the boy was deep in his ques-

tions, when a silence fell, as abruptly as a cloud passes over

the sun.

His mother Olympias appeared on the terrace above them,

escorted by Kinsman Leonidas and a few guards. And no

priestess coming before the curtain of the Mysteries could have

attracted more attention. Indeed she looked like the priestess-

princess she was, with myrtle twisted into her dark curling hair,

her girdle shaped like a silver snake, her voice chiming melo-

dious as a golden bell. "Greeting to the envoys of the Great

Bang of Asia. Olympias of Macedon bids them enter her home."

The ambassadors neither answered nor moved at once. They

were startled. Olympias, no more than thirty years of age,

was the most striking woman of the northern mountains, and

she knew well how to frame herself against a background. The

gray monotone of granite walls and gnarled oaks brought out

the coloring of her flesh, the challenge of her eyes. In silence

[15]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

the ambassadors began to climb the stairs, picking up the

trays.

"What nice gifts." She smiled. "Shall I accept them for

Philip?"

Alexander thought : She is very angry with my blundering,

Ptolemy thought : How well she places herself in the center of

the stage! Aloud he asked the boy, "You questioned them

about everything except the girls of Asia."

"Women in the east," Alexander defended absently, "are

secluded and veiled ; they live apart from men who do not talk

about them. At least so Herodotus says."

"Well, if you are content to learn about girls from books!

Achilles !" Suddenly Ptolemy laughed. "If that's so, I wonder

what they think about Olympias?"

What the Persians thought about Olympias was not easy

to discover. They hid their thoughts and uttered only compli-

mentary speeches. Yet the Magians among them kept their

eyes turned away from the lovely queen of the Macedonians as

if the sight of her might do them injury. Ptolemy noticed this,

hopefully. His mother, Arsinoe, had the superior education of

a Greek prostitute, and she had warned him that Olympias was

a dominant woman intent on ruling, yet not intelligent enough

to do so wisely. The dark-browed Olympias, Arsinoe confided

to him, was still at heart what she had been before marriage, a

girl devotee of the wild rites of Dionysos. She had never ma-

tured into a wife; she would never escape the slavery of her

own ungovernable temper. Besides, even though a princess by

birth, the Despoina Olympias was stupid. She had been brought

up an orphan in the forests of Epirus and had given herself

with passion to orgiastic worship of the hidden gods.

So the intelligent Arsinoe enlightened her son, warning him

that he must never offend Olympias in a personal matter. That

would be as dangerous as stepping upon one of her tame snakes.

That evening, after Olympias had received with her own

hands all the gifts of the ambassadors from Asia intended for

[16]

PASSAGE OF THE CHABIOT OF THE SUN

Philip, she sent for Alexander, and as he had anticipated

tongue-lashed him with fury. "What a dumb calf you are

what a bookworm, burrowing into dusty rolls of writing!

Arrhidaeus could have greeted the ambassadors more fittingly !"

She had taken the myrtle out of her thick hair and was

combing it savagely, paying no attention to the slave girl who

tried to help her. And her words had barbs upon them, because

Arrhidaeus was Alexander's bastard half brother who went

around stealing food and stuffing his mouth so he always

slavered and stammered when he tried to speak. The Kinsmen

knew and Alexander suspected that because Arrhidaeus had

been born of a Thessalian dancing girl Olympias could not

tolerate the sight of him and had fed him as a child enough

poison to numb his mind without killing him.

Alexander said nothing, knowing that his mother would get

over her rage quickly.

"Feeding your mind with dreams about Achilles," she mut-

tered, wrenching at a coil of hair, "when you have no more

passion than a monk."

Alexander waited.

"Of course the tutors call you Achilles. And do you know

why? To please me. Although" and she relaxed a little "you

do have a splendid body for a stripling. But why did you have

to seize upon a pad on the back of a horse to argue about with

the envoys? Hadn't you seen a thing like that before?"

"No," Alexander began to explain eagerly, "and that thing

they call a saddle makes it much easier to keep your seat when

the horse "

"Yes, the horse. Precisely, the horse ! There speaks the Mace-

donian farmer. There speaks the breathing, living image of

Philip, the son of Amyntas the horse breeder. Do you wonder,

child" Olympias now addressed the little slave "that the

Greeks say the forebears of the Macedonians were centaurs

men above and horses beneath? Even now you can't separate a

Macedonian from his horse."

[17]

OF MACEDON

"Perhaps that's why, 3 ' the boy laughed, "our cavalry can

ride around the Greeks."

This pleased Olympias, who longed to see in her backward

Alexander some instinct of leadership such as the boy Ptolemy

displayed. Unfortunately Alexander was not really interested

in cavalry only in horses. That was a Macedonian trait. They

were all farmers at heart. Even the phalanxmen who were being

drilled in a new way by Philip insisted on returning home for

the spring planting and the fall harvesting.

"That is one of Philip's pet ideas," she answered her own

thought rather than Alexander's word. "A military aristocracy

of the soil a nation that is an army, an army that is a moving

nation, farming and fighting. The Greeks found out long ago

that a soldier can't be a proper citizen, and the other way

around."

Sometimes Olympias probed shrewdly at the truth. An accom-

plished actress, she could recognize pretense in others, and she

had very few illusions. Moreover her ancestors had ruled over

folk who came to the Princess of Epirus [Albania] to have sick-

ness healed or omens explained. The orphan girl Olympias had

been in truth the youthful princess and priestess of a people.

Now upon her son Alexander centered her jealousies, her pas-

sion, and her longing to create a second dominant self. She

fought in Alexander everything that might belong to Philip.

Particularly she impressed upon the boy the inferiority of his

father's people, the Macedonians. They had lived, she pointed

out, too long in their mountains, keeping to the old ways of

clan life. They had no true nobility ; even the Companions who

accompanied and advised Philip were no more than the owners

of the biggest horse herds. Their songs were herders' chants,

their dances bucolic stampings and whirlings when they stacked

up the last of the harvests. They were still afraid of omens, and

of drought and pestilence among the animals. Among these

Macedonians had there ever been one orator, one philosopher

or general or monarch equal in fame to a second-rate Athenian?

[18]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

Alexander knew well the ignoble part his people had played

in great events. Macedonian foresters had hewn the timber that,

floated down to the sea, had built Athenian warships. Mace-

donian horse breeders had supplied the Greek cities with ani-

mals. Their farms had produced the barley, grapes, and meat

requisitioned and paid for by the invading armies of the

Great Kings, Darius and Xerxes. The highly educated Greeks

had a right to call the Macedonians barbarians and peasants.

Until his father's time the only wars fought by Macedonians

had been to beat off inroads of the forest folk from along the

Danube or raids of the equally wild Scythian horsemen. Not

until Philip possessed himself of the gold and silver mines

around Mount Pangaeus had the Macedonian kings had a cur-

rency of their own. Until then they had used the fine silver coin-

age of Athens. Now the Pangaeus mines brought in a thousand

talents a year ; but this did not satisfy Olympias. "So we have

become miners as well! Again we draw wealth out of the holy

soil, and what wealth? It would not have hired General Xeno-

phon's division of ten thousand Greek mercenaries not that

your father will consent to hire mercenaries, even when the

Pharaohs of Egypt pay for a guard of Spartans."

In the eyes of Olympias all that Philip contrived was ignoble

and wrong. She fought against Philip's will and she surrounded

Alexander with the Kinsmen of her house. She made the palace

slaves report to her all that Alexander did. She made the boy

feel that she had no one except him to depend on^ and Alexander

did feel that he and his mother stood alone and disliked by

Philip, who kept away from them on various pretexts*

Philip spoke to the boy of that estrangement only once, a l

won't keep on sharing your mother's bed with the snakes/* he

muttered, closing his bad eye. He made a joke even of this.

The large snakes did have a way of emerging suddenly from

the ivy hung about Olympias's sleeping room and the fans she

used in the sacred dances. But the boy wondered why Philip

should be bothered by ordinary serpents. Certainly it was no

[19]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

secret that Philip had been passionately bound, body and spirit,

to his bride at their marriage. He had craved her from the

moment of their meeting that night during the Dionysian

festival on the sacred island of Samothrace, when he had seen

her in wavering torchlight, running, tearing at her garment,

and crying out, possessed by the spirit of the god. From that

moment, people said, until a year after their marriage bed, he

had not left the side of the splendid orphan girl. Even when she

had been delivered of the boy, Philip had been her devoted lover.

That birthnight old Aristander the Telemessan, the diviner,

had come to Olympias's couch and had told her that at sunset

he had seen a vision of flames rising from the eastern sky. And

in time this omen was verified, because on that birthnight the

temple of Aphrodite at Ephesus had burned on the Asian shore.

"And that night," Philip added, "one of my horses had won

a course at the Olympic games."

Now Philip avoided Olympias, who was more beautiful than

in her madcap girlhood. Philip drank of nights with his soldier

cronies. And Philip drunk was a different man from Philip

sober. When he was hot with wine he might throw his arm

around any handsome womanAe met in the corridors and force

her to his room. Many of the women took care to keep out of

his way, while others did not. Yet it does not seem that Philip

loved any woman after Olympias.

Much as Alexander hated Pella and feared his father, he

found that in some way when Philip came to Pella which he

rarely did now the city changed its aspect. Visitors hurried

in job hunters, agents of the rich Delphic oracle, merchants,

pilots, horse traders, mathematicians from Syracuse, bits of all

the Mediterranean world, bringing information to Philip and

trying to get a word from him. Pack horses moved faster

through the alleys, and the hammers of carpenters rang louder

n timbers, because Philip of Macedon was in Pella.

Through the dust and uproar Philip limped, refusing to ride

[20]

PASSAGE OF THE CHAKIOT OF THE SUN

a war horse to ease his lame leg. His brown, bearded face shone

with sweat, and he kept wiping at the eye that had been blinded

by a shield point. One arm hung stiff and useless. He boasted

that he still had one good limb and organ of every kind, and two

good testicles.

Never, apparently, did Philip read a book. His letters he

dictated to a secretary who followed him around, parchment

and marker in hand. Alexander used to steal off to the race-

course and watch the horse tryouts, keeping on Philip's blind

side as much as he could. At such times he felt relaxed. Near

the limping, cursing Philip he felt more secure than in the

silence of his rooms by the women's quarter, where his books

were piled.

He was down at the hippodrome early in the morning of the

day when Philip sent all the teachers and tutors out of the

palace.

Philip was watching the test of a new machine called a

gastraphete, a catapult that shot a six-foot dart farther than

a bowman could send an arrow. When Deiades, the conceited

engineer-designer from Syracuse, ^released the catch, the twisted

ropes snapped, the wooden machin^* thudded violently, and the

heavy dart flashed away. Philip grunted. "Now take it down,"

he ordered.

To Alexander's surprise, two workmen flung themselves on

the machine and began to wrench out pegs and cast off ropes.

The thing came apart like a wheat stack when the binding cord

is slipped. "Now let's see you load it," Philip added mildly.

With some effort four of the men shouldered the various

parts of the catapult and began to walk around as if on a

march. Alexander had heard some talk of the new portable

artillery Philip and Deiades were designing, to be carried with

the field army. This, apparently, was one of the new type of

engines. Stoop-shouldered Deiades watched the exhibition ex-

ultantly, saying loud enough for Philip to hear that so light

a catapult, with such power, had never been fashioned before.

[21]

DEE OF MACEDON

Philip's good eye fastened on Deiades. "The power is suffi-

cient ; the weight is still too much by half. No four men could

carry all that stuff uphill "

"Two horses could. 55

"Two horses could do it nicely. Only, Deiades, in your mag-

nificent self-adulation, you have forgotten that this catapult

has to shoot something. Twenty of those heavy darts will load

two more men, or another horse. No, you'll have to really scratch

around and find a tougher seasoned wood and lighter hemp

strands for the ropes."

Shaking his fists in the air, the machine designer howled,

enraged. "Find, you say ! Just find a bit of Hermes' staff, or

witchwood! Scratch around, for a rope lighter than this ten-

ply Byzantine hemp !" Thrusting his heavy head at Philip, he

spluttered. "Shall I clip the tresses off your golden-haired girls,

Philip, to make ropes fine enough to suit your fancy 55

"No," Philip shouted. "A woman's head of hair is heaviest

of all I've tested it. As far as I'm concerned your contrivance

is lumber, as long as it takes six men to transport it."

"You think so?" Deiades ground his teeth to show his disdain.

"It could make dogs' meat of any six men you pick."

Philip turned to Antigonus the One-Eyed. "Have this dart

shooter set up again and send for five Cretan archers. Then

clear the mid-field and I'll prove to this ivory-headed designer

how wrong he is. Find out from him how he would like to be

buried."

Deiades glared and called to his workmen to set up the cata-

pult. Antigonus studied Philip uncertainly. Because Philip

prized the engine designer more than the staff generals like

Antigonus, he had a way of quarreling with Deiades's work,

pretending it was faulty in order to drive the engineer to think

of something better. So also did Philip mock at Antigonus, to

make him exceed his efforts. There was no telling what was at

the back of Philip's agile mind. Antigonus knew well enough

that here in the open field Philip and his five archers would

[22]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

make short work of Deiades and his workmen and the catapult.

"These catapults are only fortification pieces," he growled.

"So if you're really minded to test it, let Deiades set it up on

a housetop and let the archers assault it."

Instead of calming down Philip exploded. "Hell's cisterns and

fish-eyes in the soup! How many years have I told all, of you,

in good plain Macedonian that even you can understand, One-

Eyed, that I do not want to hear anything more about siege

engines. And that I have no slightest intention of being pent

like a sheep behind a wall ; nor do I have the slightest desire

ever to assault men who are fortified behind a wall and engines.

The Spartans are the dumbest humans whelped out of women,

but even they have learned to keep away from walls, out in

the open. 35

Antigonus grinned. "Well, if you want a machine that can

march witfi men, why don't you hitch a horse to it? One horse

can pull this dart dingus."

Immediately Philip's shouting ceased. "Yes, if we put wheels

on the shooter. We've done that. This piecemeal takedown Is for

mountain work. But suppose one horse pulls the machine you

need a man to drive the horse. Well, is it worth a single cavalry-

man, in the field?"

The others were accustomed to following Philip's lightning-

quick change of ideas. "Yes," said Antigonus, "no horseman

could ride against the javelin of a catapult."

But Deiades was still smarting under the king's jeers. "Why

didn't you say it could be put on wheels? In that case I can give

you a discharge of six javelins instead of one."

Philip spun around. "Six at once?"

"Certainly, with a bar projector. It won't have the range of

this beauty, and," he added hastily, "you'll have to allow for a

horse-drawn cart in addition, to carry the weapons for such a

multiple machine."

Wiping at his blind eye, Philip pondered, visibly pleased. He

began to pat Deiades's heavy shoulder. "Even if this one-shot

[23]

ALEXANDER OP MACEDON

machine is a bastard, never mind. It will bother a phalanx badly

enough. But put your mind, Deiades my genius, on the six-shaft

apparatus. Ask for anything you need. I'll give you its weight

in g ^ in silver, Deiades, if it passes its test."

Deiades breathed deep and lifted his head with pride. "I can

meet any stinking test," he shouted for all to hear, "if you'll

simply tell Deiades what test you have in mind."

And he waved io his workmen to carry away the pieces of

the new-model catapult.

"If you make him angry," Philip muttered to Antigonus,

"he often produces something really useful." He nodded, twist-

ing his thin head on his stiff neck. "Six javelins at one dis-

charge ! From a hundred machines, six hundred missiles held

until the range is close . . ." His lips moved inaudibly. "But

I'm afraid, I'm afraid. By the time Deiades is finished with this

invention it will be heavy enough to need a team of horses to

pull it over a day's march. That means still another pack horse

to carry fodder for the other two. And that means at least three

men . . ." His good eye roved around until it rested on Alex-

ander, ten paces away. "That's the trouble with engineers.

They always want to make machines bigger and heavier, without

thinking once how we're going to find transport for them. If

Deiades had his way we'd all be hauling moving towers, flying

bridges, mine hoists, and fire projectors. Yes, he'd expect to

turn the cavalry into teamsters and draft horses."

Philip scrutinized Alexander to discover if the boy gave his

words any attention. But Alexander, perched on a course

marker, was wholly intent on a string of colts from Thessaly

that were being put through their paces in mid-field by Philip's

inspectors, who picked out the best of the animals.

One of these yearlings gave constant trouble by trying to

break away from its holders. Its smooth black coat shone in

the morning sun glare ; its nervous head, tossing and pulling

at the halter, was marked by a single white blaze. Alexander

could not take* his eyes off this black colt with the gigantic

[24]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

limbs and massive head. He went over to it, as close as he dared

approach the busy inspectors.

When they turned to examine the black horse it backed away,

making a swirl among the men as it circled and kicked out. Its

handlers, losing patience, tried to throw a cape over its head.

When one jumped to its back the colt reared, and he was thrown

heavily. It seemed to Alexander that this colt with the white

marking of an ox on his great black head was almost human

in feeling such distress and excitement when the men crowded

around, shouting at it. One of the inspectors said it must have

some internal strain to make it so savage. And Alexander felt

a longing for this defiant colt. It was superior to all the other

horses he had seen.

He ran over to the officers around Philip when he heard the

inspectors reject Oxhead Bucephalus as he christened the

black colt. He shoved in beside Antigonus. "It's a shame to lose

that horse," he cried. He was quivering with suspense, knowing

that no one paid attention to him. "Look," he blundered, "you

mustn't that colt "

Antigonus only glanced at the colt, now being led away. And

Alexander felt his body grow hot with rage. "Listen," he

shouted, "or it will be too late."

They stopped their talk then, and Philip stared, blinking, at

his son. Antigonus the One-Eyed explained about the rejected

colt. An inspector added that, besides being unmanageable, the

black yearling was held at a price of thirteen talents by its

owner. Alexander felt the sting of tears in his eyes and choked.

Philip began to talk about a transport train again, without

heeding him.

"It's the finest horse," the boy cried, "and they don't know

how to manage him !"

This time Philip paid attention to him. "Are you trying to

tell me that the inspectors can't handle a colt?"

Alexander saw his mistake but he felt desperate. "I can man-

age this horse. I can bring him under my hand."

[25]

AI/EXANDER OF MACEDON

Philip did not smile, "And ride him around the course, and

hold him to the rein?" he asked.

When. Alexander nodded Antigonus put in, "And if you

can't, what will you pay up for your foolishness?"

"Thirteen talents, which is the price of Bucephalus."

The men laughed, all except Philip, who asked if Alexander

had thirteen talents. The boy said no, but he could get the

money. Philip said, "You have made a wager. Now go through

with it. By the same taken, if you can gentle this this Oxhead,

he is yours."

Alexander started to run out toward the black horse and for

a moment he felt the paralyzing chill that seized him when he

faced Ptolemy with a sword. Remembering that Bucephalus

had struggled against a blinding cloth, the boy loosed the cape

from his own shoulders, letting it fall as he came up to the horse

at a walk. When he took the rein and motioned the handlers

away the cold feeling left him. Talking to Bucephalus, he saw

the muscles quivering under the smooth hide, the restless flicker-

ing of the ears, and he loved the colt. Gently he turned its head

around into the sun, still talking.

Not until the horse thrust its muzzle down toward the grass

did the boy jump to its bare back, without tightening the rein.

Bucephalus tensed, leaped forward, and Alexander bent down

to keep its head into the sun by pressure on a rein. He did not

strike or kick the horse but when it galloped free, coming into

the racecourse, he hauled in on the rein, turning it into the

runway. For a moment the black horse strained forward, then

yielded to the rein, rounding the course at an even canter and

slowing wh^n the boy checked him. Not until then did Alexander

notice that all the staff officers and his father were watching

him* Antigonus called out that it was neatly done ; but Philip

only gave command to pay for the colt out of his private ac-

count. Then he motioned for Alexander to come with him and

limped over to a deserted tier of stone seats,

When they were out of hearing of the others Philip grunted,

[26]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE STJN

"Lovely to look at, but how was it done? Did you bribe the

handlers to make the horse cut up?"

This stung the boy. He almost shouted, 4i What are you trying

to make out?" Thinking about it, he explained curtly that he

had watched the men inspecting the colt, and at that early hour

the long shadows of the horse and restless men had twisted along

the ground in front of Bucephalus and must have frightened

the colt. Alexander had only turned its head into the sunlight

and had treated it quietly. There was nothing the matter with

the splendid colt.

"Umm," Philip grunted, and asked what Greek stuff the boy

was reading now. Philip himself spoke only the harsh Mace-

donian dialect, which made his utterances sound abrupt, but

Alexander suspected that he understood eloquent, polished

Greek well enough.

Excited over Bucephalus, grateful to his limping, swearing

father, the boy poured out in words his newest delight he had

been searching out all the tales of Heracles, the son of Zeus,

the mighty archer, the slayer of beasts who wore the mask of a

lion's hide on his head and journeyed without fear into the

regions of outer darkness, killing the witch Hippolyte and

taking her girdle, then crossing the stream of Ocean itself

The boy had mastered every variation of the Heracles Tale,

and he confided in his father his discovery of the hero.

Restlessly Philip listened and then exploded: "Hell's sweet

sewers! You've been grazing on hero tales. First Achilles and

his white armor now Heracles in a lion's pelt." Philip coughed

and spat irritably, because he could not think of the right words

to use with Alexander. "Ptolemy has -a head for politics, Amyn-

tas, your cousin, knows a deal more mathematics. Yes, Arrhi-

daeus would know better than to chant a hymn to Heracles!

Now let's hear you read."

When anything bothered Philip he worried at it, like a hun-

gry panther getting marrow out of bones. Taking Alexander

off to his littered study, he made the boy read aloud the whole

[27]

ALEXANDER OP MACEDON

of an oration of a young Athenian, Demosthenes. Alexander

felt stirred by the majestic sentences that rang out like choral

tones, invoking the citizens of Athens to take up arms and die

rather than surrender their rights to a tyrant. / hold him to be

our enemy \ for everything that he has done until now has been

a gain to him and a h-arm to us.

It bothered Alexander, although it did not seem to trouble

Philip, when he discovered that the tyrant against whom

Demosthenes stormed was Philip of Macedon, his father.

Indeed, while the boy read with feeling Philip lolled on a

bench chewing at a bunch of grapes, listening not the less in-

tently. At the end, when the boy laid down the scroll, thrilled

by the power of the peroration, Philip nodded it had been well

read and asked if he liked it.

"All but the attack on you, Father," Alexander said honestly,

"It is an attack on me one of Demosthenes* Philippics. He

is a modern Heracles, laboring for an ideal good yes, trying to

cure the weakness of a city-state by a fine ideal." Philip fell

utterly silent, rubbing his injured arm, his thoughts going far

away from them, as often happened with him. "You might call

it the rule of the people, that ideal, that democracy of his. He

is a magnificent speaker-to-the-people demagogue, the Greeks

call it and I'd judge that speech to be worth a brigade. Now

read this here."

Fishing among a pile of letters, the lame man tossed Alex-

ander a thin strip of parchment. "A copy of course." And the

boy read: "Philip to Demosthenes the Athenian: Greeting, and

welcome at any time to speak before me at Pella and return

safe."

This, even if written by a scribe, pleased the boy, because it

was generous to invite an enemy in this manner. It showed that

Philip could be magnanimous as well as cunning and avari-

cious. But when he said that, Philip fell into silence again,

seemingly not pleased. (And not .until years afterward did

Alexander learn how Demosthenes had come, to be received with

[28]

PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN

ostentation and to be made so nervous by Philip's ceremonious

preparations for his speech that the high-strung orator broke

down and made such a labored effort, people thought he could

find nothing to say before Philip. For Demosthenes stammered

at times.)

"By the way," observed Philip suddenly, "this great Athenian

says that you are a bookish, sacerdotal worm. What do you

think, eh?"

Alexander laughed. "Perhaps he is right."

Philip swore softly. "Your tutors agree that you can do any-

thing you have a mind to, in the way of study. Here you are,

stinking of incense, golden-haired, girl-eyed, I don't know

what ! Building stairways to Parnassus in imagination. Faugh !"

Abruptly his voice roared at the boy. "Why can't I put iron in

your milky flesh? How else are you going to meet danger, eh?

Do you think milk calves will live, when the herd starts to run?"

He glared helplessly, angered at himself. "Never mind, you,

never mind. Don't look like a stricken moon calf. We soldiers

ever use words like tools, to shape acts. I'm afraid it irks me

to see you buried alive in books, a suppliant at a shrine, mocked

by a Demosthenes. Eh, you make me think of Astyanax, killed

by conquerors " And Philip cried out in Greek words : "A

poor, dtfar child: uncrowned by mcmhood or by marriage: or by

kingship that makes of man a god: in service of his country

why don't you read Euripides instead of those Homeric legends?

Or if you want to meddle with sick souls learn to be a doctor. 55

Philip stopped abruptly. "A physician. No physician or black-

smith was ever murdered."

Something in this thought pleased Philip. "Go, boy, hunt up

all your preceptors, tutors, and what nots. Tell them Philip has

a word to say to them. Don't forget to stable Oxhead. He's a

fine beast. I'd like him myself for the ten-stadia course, but he's

yours."

And Philip kissed his son over one ear, pressing him hard

with his good arm. "What else did they say about Astyanax? I

[29]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDOET

forget no and thou, if nothing else of his, shalt have

father's shield there with thee! So you shall. This is a day of

good omens, this day of Bucephalus. Tell the gate guard to

fetch me some good red Thessalonican wine, no more of that

thin Chian syrup. Hail!"

Alexander shouted the message to the guard as he ran out

to find the black colt. That night when he curled up on his

pallet by the flickering lamp and opened his manuscript of

Homer he could still hear the echo of his father's complaining,

even when his mind drifted out upon a long galley speeding

with straining sail toward his beloved Troy. When his mother

came in to kiss him her scent was like the smoke of incense and

her low voice chimed, "Philip was drunk again this evening,

dear. He sent all your teachers, even Leonidas, out of Pella. He

swears he is sending you off on some black colt to school away

from Pella in a deserted temple sacred to the nymphs. And

what's more, if you can imagine all that, he condemns you to

study under one man from Stagyra, a physician named Aris-

totle. I think his father used to be your grandfather's physician.

As if you could be exiled, to study medicine !"

But Aristotle the Stagyrite came. The deserted temple was

made over into Aristotle's private academy. It proved to be not

far from Pella, and Philip allowed the other boys Ptolemy and

Nearchus and the rest to go along with Alexander.

Mounted on Bucephalus, Alexander could ride back to Pella

in a few hours. And Olympias pretended to be content, because

in this matter of schooling Philip refused, in his sober intervals,

to change his mind.

[30]

II THE RIDDLE OF THE EARTH'S SHAPE

OLYMPIAS couu) CHANGE her mind as quickly as she moved

her eyes. And since she could not get rid of the Stagy-

rite philosopher and his aeademia for the boys, she de-

termined to profit by him. From her spies she learned that

Aristotle taught more than medicine and had a flair for politics

that his closest friend was Antipater, the most reliable gen-

eral on the staff, and that Philip himself often rode in to consult

the eccentric philosopher.

In fact Philip had been so eager to get Aristotle near to

Pella that he had agreed to pay a great price : to rebuild all the

homes of Stagy ra which had been devastated by a war. Olympias

could appreciate influence.

"You are old enough to have a mind of your own," she told

Alexander. "Don't waste yourself on medicine. This Stagyrite

can reveal the secrets of politics and government to you. You

ought to be given some authority of your own especially when

Philip's away hunting or marching most of the time. You

should be regent when he's away.

Authority given to Alexander would mean more power in the

queen's deft hands.

Before venturing to visit the new school at Mieza, Olympias,

who bothered to read few books, read the tragedies of Euripides

carefully, especially the Medea, It seemed to her that Medea

had stood, like herself, unaided except by sorcery against the

strength of men. And she appeared like a living goddess within

the Temple of the Nymphs. When she dismounted from her

chariot, her supple body draped in sheer silk, whipped about

[81]

ALEXANDER DO? MACEDON

her by the wind, the boys stared. Few married women ventured

out of doors with face and body so exposed, Alexander did not

notice but Ptolemy observed that the queen brought with her

two handsome slave girls who laughed at the gray stone figures

of the nymphs standing along the entrance terrace. To Aris-

totle, who came out perforce to greet her, she deferred prettily,

tsaying that she was old-fashioned as this deserted shrine, being

brought up in the Mysteries, without a notion of science. And

she quoted Andromache's line: ''The only joy of a 'woman's

heart is to have her sorrows ever on her tongue.'"

She left behind her at Mieza the impression that this fascinat-

ing woman trusted Aristotle with the future of her only son.

To Aristander the diviner she confided that this new-world

philosopher named Aristotle lisped and had nothing really to

offer in the way of creative ideas. Probably he owed his reputa-

tion, such as it was, to being one of Plato's favored pupils and

to his habit of denying the powers of the gods.

The boys at Mieza found the temple and the gardens filled

with strange apparata. Piles of variegated rocks, collection

boxes of shellfish, stuffed birds, insects, occupied all the corners,

along with furnaces, basins of living fish, books of butterflies

and pressed leaves as if specimens of all living and growing

things had been gathered in. They began the study of medicine

by examining the blood stream in animals and drawing sand

charts of human anatomy. Moreover the Stagyrite himself had

little to say to them; a staff of assistants worked with them

through the endless experimentation that began with the first

daylight after Alexander had finished his sacrifice to Zeus.

The assistants explained that Aristotle worked like that. He

would not reason not at first, anyway. He would only examine

and experiment to determine natural causes, answering the what

before the why and avoiding wondering about the wherefore. In

this strange method of taking nothing for granted it was nec-

essary to learn the causes erf sickness before being taught the

cures, N&t until the noble young Macedonians had advanced

[32]

beyond the study of natural things could they gain knowledge

of phenomena, of the Mysteries. Aristotle had a way of dodging

talk about the Mysteries by saying that life was enough of

a mystery for one man's mind.

"He's a phenomenon himself," Ptolemy complained. "He

doesn't preach, he doesn't teach, he tells us not to believe what

we read but to ask questions. And when we ask questions he says

he doesn't know the answers."

The assistants said no, Aristotle had plenty of Mysteries

tucked away in his head, of which he had worked out the solu-

tions. He simply didn't believe it to be as important to hit on an

answer as to be able to work it out. "It's like that Gordium knot

in the shrine over in Asia. Aristotle would say you couldn't

untie it without knowing how it was tied. After finding that

out any galley slave could undo it."

And did this mean, Ptolemy retorted, that they were expected

to work like galley slaves? It seemed so. They might be royal

Kinsmen but they were set to sorting out and classifying all the

varied species of things, from coral to the constellations of the

stars. Until they had finished measuring and identifying things

they would not be ready to cope with ideas.

Into this enormous task Alexander threw himself as if it had

been a challenge. It seemed to him that the Greek assistants

expected him to fail and that Aristotle himself was secretly

amused by his pupil's clumsy efforts. Alexander resented the

silence of the philosopher who would never reveal the Mysteries

he had ascertained for himself.

Only at the end of the day, in the sunset hour, would the

Stagyrite emerge from Ms study to walk through the gardens

with the boys, glancing at the work they were finishing up, his

lined head outthrust, his thoughts seemingly off somewhere in

the cloudy horizon. And the first direct question he asked them

set off Alexander's quick temper. He wanted to know what they

would do if they were caught in a small sailing craft offshore

with a storm coming up.

[33]

ALEXANDER OP MACEDON

Harpalus, the canny peasant's son, said lie would knot the

sail ropes fast and sail before the wind, holding to the steering

oar ; Ptolemy would make a quick sacrifice of anything valuable

he had, to the Powers of the sea, to secure his life; while

Nearchus thought he would unship the mast, wrap the sail

around it, secured by the ropes, and let the boat ride behind this

sea anchor until the sudden storm blew itself out. Aristotle

turned last to Alexander.

"How can I tell you?" the boy burst out. "How can I know

until the thing happens?"

The Stagyrite eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, as if

taking notice of him for the first time. "That is well said. It's

honest, at least." And he was walking on, dismissing the matter,

when Alexander stepped in front of him, angered.

**We]l, who is right Ptolemy or Nearchus?"

"Who?" Aristotle shook his head. "Why, it would depend

on the storm, and only a ship's master could tell you about

that." His eyes narrowed, focusing on something. "I can only

tell you it would be wrong for this this Cretan to pray, and

for Ptolemy, son of Lagus, to try his luck with a sea anchor."

"That's begging the question. You're being paid to teach us,

not to quibble with words. What is the truth? Does the god

Poseidon control the force of the waves or does the wind blow

of its own accord? Either one or the other must be the truth.

You can't divide truth, like a number, into smaller parts !"

Without anger Aristotle continued to inspect the sunset.

divided again and again, and down and down until you reach

what is indivisible."

When you arrived at the indivisible, Aristotle maintained, you

knew that you had come face to face with reality. Until then

you could not be sure.

Stubbornly Alexander stood his ground, certain that truth

couldn't be divided up like a silver drachma. Instead of arguing,

the philosopher reached into the nearest specimen case and took

[34]

REDDLE OF THE EARTH ? S SHAPE

out something that proved to be a dried-up crawfish with a tag

on it. "What is this?" he asked.

"A small crawfish. 5 '

"Yes." Aristotle glanced at the tag. "But it happens to be

one of the small varieties from the Cyclades Islands. Yet it may

be small only because it is half grown, and it may also be found

as far away as the Euxine Sea. It's a crustacean, and also proto-

type of land shell animals, a vestige of the earliest life that

existed in the waters before land had formed. Then again, it is

food for a castaway, a rare seasoned dish for a gourmet, related

to a lobster, and in miniature forms the kind of sea life that

gave rise to legends of sea serpents and monsters of the deep

seas. Still, as you say, it is indeed a smallish crawfish." He tossed

it back and continued his walk along the path in the glow of

sunset.

When he was out of hearing Ptolemy laughed. "And for this

we work like galley slaves!" He considered his friend specu-

latively. "What are you, lad? Come now, let's divide the truth.

You're Alexander certainly, and I think nearly full grown.

You're the only child of Olympias' womb. Also the only sane

and legitimate offspring of Philip. You're human, judging by

the blood that runs out of you it isn't ichor by any means

yet you seem to have a divine spark, bequeathed to you by

Heracles or Achilles. Or at least that's what you think. Tell me,

do you breathe ordinary air or heavenly ether? Let's see what

else. You're a barbarian youth trying to master the wisdom of

the Greeks " He broke off quickly, aware that Alexander

stood rigid and silent, holding in his anger. Since the day when

he had nearly died in the sword fight Ptolemy had been careful

not to irritate the single-minded Alexander too far. "Look, if

you want to find out what this Stagyrite believes, pin him down

to something. Experiment on him: show him a verse about

Medea safeguarding her lover Jason by magic*" For a second

Ptolemy contemplated Olympias in the role of Medea and added

hastily, "You're quite right about one thing either the gods

exist or they don't."

[35]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

That night Alexander ventured alone into the laboratory,

where the students were not allowed after lamp-lighting. Under

Ids arm he carried the roll of a manuscript, worn with much

use. And he found Aristotle busied with the assistants over a

furnace into which a copper caldron had been set, filled with

watpr. They were observing the hot vapor that rushed from

the narrow outlet pipe of the caldron when the water was heated

to a high temperature. This vapor jet generated force enough

to turn a heavy wooden wheel; yet the philosophers did not

concern themselves with the force within the vapor they

watched it fly up against a cold metal plate hung from the roof.

On this plate the vapor distilled into drops of water that dripped

down like rain. In fact they were making within the laboratory

a miniature rainfall.

To the action of this vapor Aristotle paid close attention. He

believed, as the boys knew, that beside the four familiar elements

earth, air, fire, and water there existed a fifth elementary

force in vapor.

Aristotle believed that the sun's heat drew vapor from the

bodies of water upon the earth's surface and that this vapor en-

countered a cold stratum of upper air and condensed into rain

or snow which fell in turn upon mountain summits, feeding the

streams that ran into rivers discharging into the smaller, earth-

bound seas. From these seas water flowed out through gates like

the Pillars of Heracles in the west to the vast enveloping body

of water embracing the land mass and known as Ocean. So, as

the flow of blood within the arteries sustained life in man, this

incessant circulation of water sustained all life throughout the

firmament. If this fifth element, vapor, should cease to aid the

water flow, rivers and lakes would dry up and life in its mani-

fold forms insect, plant, animal would cease, in time.

If rain came in this manner from the circulation of moisture

it could not come from the flight of the sons of the North Wind

across the sky vault, aided by the Cyclopean giants who struck

thunder from the clouds,

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RIDDLE OF THE EARTH'S SHAPE

For some time the boy watched the drip of artificial ram

before Aristotle noticed him. Flushed and holding himself tense

against a rebuke, Alexander handed over his manuscript. "Will

you note for me/' he asked abruptly, "what is wrong in this?"

Opening it, the philosopher found it to be a much-worn copy

of Homer's Tale of Troy. Without comment the Stagyrite said,

"Ask for it again in three days but not in the night study

hour."

To Alexander's surprise, when he examined Aristotle's an-

notations upon his prized copy of Homer, he found no question-

ing of the powers of the gods who aided mortals. Only correction

of some wording and explanation of many puzzling points, so

that the lines were easier to read than before. When the boy

demanded why he had merely revised the reading instead of

getting at the truth of the Iliad, the Stagyrite explained that

it was rhetoric, and not a history such as the books of Herod-

otus. "It is fine work, as a poem. And that is far from being a

history of natural things."

"If it were that!"

For once a smile crossed the lined face of the philosopher,

"That book has not been written yet."

So at Mieza the boy worked alone, fearful of failing, feeling-

that the older men had condemned him as stupid. They had no

sympathy for his imagining, as he plowed his way through

rhetoric, logic, and endless experimentation in their new natural

science. He drove himself at this work, determined to find out

for himself the truth of the Mysteries in which he believed and

concerning which Aristotle would not speak. Apparently Aris-

totle paid no attention to him and, because he himself worked

sixteen hours in the day and night, did not realize that hia

pupil was overtaxing both eyes and mind.

Carefully Olympias egged him on, saying that Heracles, his

ancestor, had achieved greatness by supernatural labors. When

she returned from one of her visits to the Delphic shrine she was

[37]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

full of gossip that she had heard at the hostel. "Fancy the

people were saying how fortunate are the Macedonians to have

a Philip for their general and Alexander for their king. How

strange that they should mention my darling as king although

you are sixteen and past the age when many boys serve as

regent. Aristotle must know that. In truth he is doing more

for you in teaching you to live wisely than Philip, who has

done nothing for you except to claim you as his son, and I doubt

if that is a blessing."

Imperceptibly she changed toward her son. When he rode

the black horse Bucephalus into the grounds at Pella, where

Olympias had put the finishing touches to the palace buildings,

her servants greeted him with ceremony. She made a point of

asking his opinion and showing her dependence on him. Then

when he stayed the night she took pains to have young, Greek-

trained prostitutes display themselves where he could not help

but notice them in the halls. Alexander, she thought, was old

enough to need such girls, and Olympias much preferred that

he should avail himself of the handmaids she could keep under

observation. But the girls reported to her that he noticed them

no more than other household servants, as if they were merely

slaves to do Olympias's hair or anoint her after a bath.

It troubled Olympias that she could not bind her son closer

to her by one of these girls. She scolded them, telling them to use

other oils and scents than hers. And then she heard of the

fantastic happening with the naiad in the garden.

A gardener's wife related it, frightened, as she had heard it

from her man, who had been at the wheat. It had been unbeliev-

able, as if it were a sending from the Powers.

At the end of the day Alexander had been seen riding head-

long as usual from the residence across the gardens toward

Mieza. He had leaped the black horse over a stone wall and had

almost run down a strange girl who was carrying grapes in a

woven basket on her head. She had her skirt wrapped around

her waist, leaving her legs bare, and she was singing. With the

[88]

KIDDLE OF THE BARTERS SHAPE

grapes flying and crushing, the young lord had bent down to

pick the falling girl in his arm and had swung her up. Her hair

spread over him like spun gold threads, waving in the wind.

So had he held fast to her, and she had not cried out.

Out in the mown wheat the young lord had stopped the horse

and set this yellow-haired naiad down. But he had got down

himself with his arm around her and had stayed there with her,

pulling his cloak over them, in the wheat field until the sunset

had dimmed, so that the gardener could see no more.

When Alexander had gone off this unknown girl had wan-

dered back to look for her basket. And when the gardener spoke

to her to ask her name she had not been able to answer in either

Macedonian dialect or Greek. So the gardener believed she had

been a naiad of the forest, appearing in that hour of the night's

beginning and then returning to her forest haunt.

But Olympias, who did not believe in forest spirits who picked

a basket of grapes in the out-gardens, had inquiries made at

first among the servants and then in the slaves' quarters for

a barbarian girl with ruddy hair. And a Scythian was brought

to her, who had been bought recently in the Delian market and

set to picking wine grapes. When Olympias discovered that

the girl had a shapely body and nice eyes and hair even seen by

daylight, she ordered the slave to be taken from Pella at once

and sold in Thebes. She had no intention of sharing Alexander

with a mistress who was not one of her own slaves. She was

careful to have the Scythian searched before being hurried off.

And as she half expected a token was found on the barbarian -

a silver belt clasp ornamented with a lion's head that Olympias

herself had given to Alexander. When she threw the clasp into

the fire the girl wept.

After the Scythian had been sent off in a closed cart Olympias

summoned the gardener and the various slaves who had seen

the girl and ordered them to say no word about the presence

of the barbarian. If it became known that such a girl had been

in Pella even for a night they would all be tied to stones and

[39]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

thrown into the lake. On the other hand, Olympias declared,

they need make no secret of the fact that an elfin girl had been

seen emerging from the forest the previous evening.

At the end of that day, as she had anticipated, Alexander re-

appeared with Bucephalus and roamed the outer gardens, going

restlessly from wheat field to forest edge. Until full starlight

he kept his rendezvous and then sought out the gardeners and

slaves, to question them awkwardly about the young Scythian.

They all agreed that they had seen only a naiad stealing from

the wood to pick grapes.

Alexander asked no more questions. For a while he lingered

in the wheat field alone, then instead of entering the palace he

rode back toward Mieza. It bothered Olympias that he did not

come to her then nor speak to her afterward about the vanished

girl.

When he stayed to supper next Olympias was careful to

order fruits and whipped milk served, with other delicacies. She

dressed with some pains in the loose garment of the ihreskeijuein

devotees of the forest gods, twisting some ivy into the dark mass-

of her .hair. Lying so clad across the table from him, seen be-

tween gleaming lamps, Olympias appeared lovelier than any

priestess. The Greek prostitutes she had sent away. But she

arranged for the music of flute and pipes to be heard at the

table, although the musicians remained invisible. Upon this

stage so set she hoped to draw confidences from the youth who

had always confided in her before.

This evening Alexander would not taste the luxurious dishes,

saying that Leonidas had long ago accustomed him to a Spartan

meal. Nor did he look full into Olympias's dark eyes. When she

questioned him about his studies he said he was working at the

shape of the habitable world. At last the queen herself had to

mention the servants' talk about seeing a forest girl in the

grounds. A naiad, the servants declared. Olympias was skeptical,

quite skeptical, about such appearances of the divine so close

to human habitations.

[40]

RIDDLE OF THE EARTH'S SHAPE

It appeared that Alexander also was skeptical. "Naiads don't

usually have names," he said curtly.

This startled his mother, who refrained with difficulty from

demanding what the girl's name had been. She wondered how

the boy, who spoke no Scythian, had learned it. If he knew the

slave's name he had a tangible clue to her identity. Briefly

Olympias pondered the possibility that she might have a child

by him.

Carefully she suggested that this half-human sprite of the

woods might have an ordinary name. Such as

"She called herself," Alexander broke in impatiently, "the

daughter of the Sun."

Again Olympias felt a shock of surprise. The children of the

Sun were indeed immortals, easily to be recognized by the

brightness of their eyes evidence of their descent from the God

of the Sun who drove his chariot of fire across the vault of the

sky. She felt relieved that accident had aided her own deceit.

For she had satisfied herself that the Scythian was entirely

mortal.

That night Alexander went quickly away from Pella, riding

headlong down the road, being careful to avoid the gardens.

What hurt he felt at the disappearance of the strange girl he

had known for the beginning of a night he concealed. He with-

drew into one of his moody silences, working through much of

the night at a plan of the star constellations, because he found

it hard to sleep.

Then Olympias demonstrated that she was shrewd but not

wise. Thinking only of herself, she had a way of acting upon

instinct. Now something like fear disturbed her. Deeply super-

stitious, she wondered if the strange appearance of the bar-

barian girl had not been, in reality, an omen intended for her.

If so, what did the sending portend? Olympias worried about

that and also about Alexander. She felt that he was no longer

obedient to her will ; something had changed him, setting him

apart from her.

[41]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

At that time Olympias had no hatred for Philip ; she could

not endure him because he seemed to be indifferent to her, only

speaking to her when they met after absence, when he saluted

her in his clownlike fashion as queen mother, not as his proper

wife.

Olympias hardly knew the meaning of fear. Now, undecided

and having no one to confide in, she sent for Aristander of

Telemess, the diviner who could not be bribed like the Greeks.

Olympias understood very well that it would take more than

money to enlist Aristander in her service. To him she poured

out her troubles.

The soothsayer took his time about answering her. "The stars

in their courses," he muttered absently, "arbitrate human fate.

What were the omens at the birth of your son?"

Olympias moved impatiently. Aristander remembered as well

as she how the temple at Ephesus in Asia had burned that same

night. Still wrapped in thought, Aristander murmured that

since then two things had been made clear: certainly she had

had no other child, and plainly Alexander was peculiar. "The

omen," he continued, "was one of fire. It descended from the

heavens. And does not Philip now call you queen mother?"

Drawing the dark hair like a veil across her mouth, Olympias

studied him. Pride stabbed at her like a goad. "And if fire did

descend from the sky that night, and if Philip were not the

boy's father?"

"That," declared Aristander, "is something you would know-

best."

When it came to a question of exalting herself Olympias never

hesitated. Moreover Aristander had no more than hinted at

what was already in her thoughts. Before the diviner left her

the priestess of Samothrace had made up her mind.

Only gradually and by the older servants was it spoken about

at the palace, and only then during Philip's absence. It was no

more than rumor arising out of the omens at first, whispered

in the women's quarters that Alexander might not be Philip's

[42]

REDDLE OF THE EARTH*S SHAPE

son. That an unknown had impregnated the priestess that night,

when a snake had been seen coming from the marriage bed.

Some of the servants pointed out that Philip had seen the snake

and had become blind in one eye soon thereafter.

Arsinoe, who had belonged to Philip before his marriage,

heard the gossip with dread. Now happily installed as mistress

of Lagus's house, she understood the wayward Philip and the

explosive Olympias better than they knew each other. In her

fright Arsinoe sent word to Mieza, to Ptolemy. Her son's future

was bound up with Philip's whims. And the astute Ptolemy

found food for thought in the message.

"Instead of trying to find out what the morning stars are

singing," he warned Alexander, "you'd better lend an ear to

what is said in the market place of Pella."

"What?" Alexander demanded, surprised.

"Nobody can tell you what. You have to hear things with

your own ears and see them with your eyes, personally, before

you believe anything. Eh, if the vault of the sky were cracking

open you'd go on poring over map projections until it all came

down on your head."

The last thing Alexander cared to do, at that time, was to

visit the market where peasants' wives cackled over their onions

and lentils. If he had not kept himself buried in his cell with his

drawings and notes he might have been aware of the talk in

Macedon, and he might have avoided both humiliation and exile.

But it seems certain that in those years he never freed his

mind from study. He had labored through the elementary work,

and now he was mastering both politics and cosmography. Now

he kept notebooks of his own and raced through all the manu-

scripts Aristotle would lend him. From this labor in his cell he

broke off only to sacrifice and to walk through the hills in the

night hours. Although still at odds with Aristotle, he had ceased

to rebel at the teaching and was even on the track of a discovery

of his own.

[43]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

Alexander had discovered, to his own satisfaction, the blank

space, the unknown terrain, of the east. There had been in his

imagination the place of the sun's rising ; now he was learning

that there might actually exist unvisited lands at the far end

of the terrestrial globe, bordering upon Ocean.

The Stagyrite and his assistant philosophers no longer

wasted thought on the early Milesian concept of the cosmos:

that of primeval night extending through a void except where

the points of light of the sun and moon illumined the earth and

the planets revolved around it upon their orbits, harmoniously,

creating the music of the spheres.

By now the philosophers had arrived at another concept. The

earth they thought to be a sphere hung immovably in the center

of the universe. (Aristotle believed this to be proved by the

fact that during an eclipse the earth cast a round shadow

against either sun or moon. And explorers had testified that in

the far north the southernmost constellations of stars were no

longer visible.)

- About this terrestrial globe revolved the sun and moon, alter-

nating light and darkness on the halves of the globe.

Upon this globe land had risen from the waters throughout

the millenniums and this land mass was still extending, still ris-

ing, in spite of the corrosive action of the moving waters. But

only a portion of this land remained habitable to man. This

habitable portion, called the OiJcoumene, stretched perceptibly

farther along the course of the sun from east to west in its

longitude than in breadth from north to south in its latitude.

Above the Oikoumene lay the region of hyperborean cold, of

perpetual snow and drifting ice. Aristotle had talked with Cim-

merians [inhabitants of what is now Russia] who had ascended

frozen rivers to the edge of this polar region, They were hunters,

and they reported that there at the borderland of the habitable

zone many animals had white pelts evidence of existence in

snow countries.

Below the Oikoumene extended of course the belt of tropical

RIDDLE OP THE EARTH'S SHAPE

heat where human beings could not survive, and the land tended

to become sand, burfied by the sun's concentrated heat. Due

south of Pella lay the fertile Libyan coast, whereas travelers

who had penetrated inland reported that they had been sur-

rounded by illimitable deserts, hostile to man. In those deserts

only thornbush grew in the earth and poisonous vipers crawled

upon it, while water dug from the ground had been salty and

undrinkable. Evidently at this southern frontier of the Oikou-

mene existed forces that destroyed human life in the same

manner as the bleak cold, the frost-bitten earth, the devastating

winds, and the great white monsters of the hyperborean north

sapped the life from men.

Certainly it seemed apparent that the north-south limits of

the Oikoumene lay at no great distance apart and had already

been reached by adventurous men such as the Argonauts the

crew of the ship Argos.

Aristotle, however, raised a question about these limits of

latitude. He asked who had been known to visit the sources of

the greatest rivers. Such rivers, if the theory of the global

circulation of the waters was correct, must take their rise in

distant mountains, where a myriad streams formed the water-

courses. Where then lay the source of the mighty Nile that

appeared in full girth within the otherwise dry valley land of

Egypt? And where were the headwaters of the Danube, almost

as huge as the Nile, that flowed through the forests north of

Macedon, down to the far Euxine Sea [the modern Black Sea] ?

Animal and plant life must exist, Aristotle argued, along

such water sources. And if so, men could survive there. Yet no

Greeks had penetrated to the sources of the Nile or Danube.

Alexander had his mind fixed on the far eastern limit of the

Oikoumene. The western limit, whither the sun vanished, offered

no attraction. In the Mieza laboratory he could study notes

of the voyages of those rival traders, Phoenicians and merchants

of Carthage who had seen and even passed through the western

water gate of the Interior [Mediterranean] Sea. Between

[45]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

rocky heights called the Pillars of Heracles, or the Mount of

the giant Atlas, water flowed out from the Mediterranean

to the encircling Ocean. In that strait of water herds of strange

dolphins had been encountered that played around the galleys,

beyond the thresh of the oars. Farther out stretched the dark

surface of the Ocean itself, subjected to the buffeting of the

winged sons of the North Wind, and the screaming furies who

were emissaries of the God-Father, Zeus.

Thus in the west the limit of human advance was fixed not

only by the impassable Ocean but by the hostile leviathans

of the deep salt waters, which could crush sailing galleys as

easily as a man could break apart a wasp's nest. So said the

venturesome mariners.

Even Aristotle had slight interest in the far western lati-

tudes. He did not believe, as. Plato had, that out upon this

Atlantic portion of outer Ocean extended islands known in

legends as the Blessed Isles, or sometimes as the lost island of

Atlantis. He did not believe it for the simple reason that he

had come across no evidence of it. Nor would he wa^te thought

upon a lost Atlantic civilization pointing out that civilization

seemed to have advanced from east to west, not the other way

around. At least the sciences had been known in Asia before

they were known in Crete ; apparently the Greeks had learned

from Asia also, especially from Egypt.

This only set Alexander more firmly on the path of his

discovery.

By now he felt certain and Aristotle did not deny it that

the eastern limits of the Oikoumene were not known at all.

True, the Iliad mentioned the threshold of Asia, the water

gate of the Dardanelles where Troy stood. Troy had been there

without a doubt. Yet the Argonauts had passed beyond, along

the chain of waterways, through the Dardanelles, into the far

Euxine. Somewhere around the Euxine factual knowledge

ended and myth began. Suppose those voyagers, the Argonauts,

had actually been searching for gold washed down from the

[46]

RIDDLE OF THE EARTH*S SHAPE

mountains instead of the legendary golden fleece? Still, they

had ventured into the mythical mountains at the end of the

farthest sea, those mounts of Caucasus where the Titan Prome-

theus had been bound, his giant shape rearing within reach of

the predatory birds of the upper air. Present-day voyagers

to the Greek colonies in the Euxine reported seeing the loom

of vast mountains rising into the cloud level where their sum-

mits were covered by everlasting snow. Through this mountain

barrier of the Caucasus the mariners said a gate gave access

to the unknown farther east. Yonder, some Asiatics believed,

lay the inland sea called the Caspian, frequented by giant bird

life, by Amazons, and by unknown celestial powers.

This Caspian, if it truly existed, might flow northward to the

outer Ocean.

By ancient reckoning, or surmise, Greece, and therefore

Macedon, lay almost in the center of the Oikoumene. From

Athens, for example, it seemed to be about as far to the water

gate of Heracles in the west as to the land gate through the

Caucasus in the east. But Alexander wanted rather to believe

the venturesome thinkers who placed the center of the habitable

world much farther to the east.

In this unknown area of the east Alexander believed that the

true gods might still exist.

Patiently he gathered together all the threads of evidence

he could find, reading through legends and stories of eastern

voyagers in the study hours of the night while Aristotle buried

himself in the laboratory experiments. He no longer pored over

Homer before blowing out the lamps. Still he did not confide

much either in his companions or in the scientists.

By following the track of his idea, as if tracing a way

through a Cretan labyrinth, he made certain of some points.

In the histories of Herodotus facts began to give way to

fables about as far east as the Caucasus. The farthest great

city to be fully described by this Herodotus was Babylon, whose

lofty terraced gardens and sky-scraping towers were a wonder

[47]

ALEXANDER OP MACEDON

of the habitable world* Yet one Phoenician related that the

name Babylon meant actually Bdb-il, the Gate of God. Alex-

ander knew nothing about the Phoenician language, but he

caught at the mention of a gateway. For Babylon lay, it seemed.,

at about the same longitude as the Caucasus mountain barrier

which also had a gateway opening to the east. What lay beyond?

Then, following out Aristotle's method of tracing land

shapes by the course and size of rivers, Alexander satisfied

himself that two such rivers flowed by Babylon, the twin Tigris

and Euphrates. In what area, then, did they have their source?

In the heights of the Caucasus or in unknown heights farther

east? These twin rivers emptied, without doubt, to the south,

into the stream of outer Ocean. But where did they take their

rise?

What if the greatest mass of mountains lay beyond the

known limits, rising far above the earth's atmosphere into the

heavenly ether? What if the twin Tigris and Euphrates flowed

out of this immense height beyond which the sun rose out of

Ocean itself? What if this elevation far above earth's surface

were the abode of the Powers, whether men called it Parnassus

or Olympus,, or Paradise, as the Asiatics did?

Most legends, he discovered, originated in the far-distant

east. There, men said, the very Waters of Life flowed out of

the ground the waters that preserved life forever in those

who drank of them. There, too, was situated, by all accounts, the

Tree of Life, the fruit of which imparted celestial knowledge

to humans.

Surely the traces of the gods all led toward this unknown

side of the earth. The older shrines stood toward the point of

the sun's rising. In every case this was true. Delphi, down in

Greece, was younger than Eleusis on Asia's shore; Apollo's

temple in Athens had been built long after the sanctuary of

Apollo Ammon in Egypt, and that in turn had not existed

so Alexander conceived when the Chaldeans and Magians of

Babylon first worshiped their sun god.

[48]

REDDLE OF THE EARTH*S SHAPE

Very soon Alexander discovered that Mieza possessed a

drawing of the image of the world by Hecataeus that actually

set in place the lands and rivers and seas as if the Oikoumene

were visible in its entirety, seen from a vast height.

This he copied painstakingly, adding to it his notes upon

the shrines, the routes of the legendary voyagers, and the gates

opening into the goal of his Imagination, the unknown east.

Unfortunately he could not resist tracing along the eastern

border a vast height that dwarfed all other mountain ranges.

Upon this he wrote a name Parapanisades the Greatest Wall

as being the only proper name for the homeland of the gods.

Inevitably other eyes saw his world picture, and whispers

about the Parapanisades began to be heard in the halls of

Mieza. Harpalus, who followed the prevailing fashions, posed

on the roof looking through the tubular height finder zealously,

explaining that he had dreamed that the summit of the Mighti-

est Wall that pent in gods and demons had appeared to his

sight above the clouds.

Some of the assistants argued with Alexander about the

folly of sketching distances on a chart until the distances were

paced off by surveyors on foot, in stadia, or steps. Only the

seacoasts, they said, could be sketched in, since these were fairly

well determined by the transits of ships which, driven by the

winds, sailed at a uniform speed.

The Parapanisades talk must have reached Aristotle's ears.

Instead of arguing directly with his rebellious pupil he con-

tented himself with pointing out one evening in the garden that

the frontier of knowledge was being pushed back steadily, so

that more of the habitable world was known with the passing

of each century. And in his dry lisping voice he added that, in

the time before Homer, Mount Olympus, which they could all

see from southern Macedon, had been thought to be the home

of the gods. Until, after sufficient explorers had climbed it,

this mount was seen to be quite ordinary bare rocks. Then the

mythical Mount Olympus was placed, in men's imagination,

[49]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

east of Troy, where some high summits pierced the cloud level.

This in turn became known. Now it seemed that men imagined

Olympus to lie within the far-off Caucasus. And exploration

there, in turn, might reveal only another natural even if lofty

mountain chain. He did not mention the word "Parapanisades. 55

He simply pointed at the garden in which they sat. "Here also

are the gods. The impulse of life is here, as it is elsewhere. 55

But when they were alone he did say something more. The

unknown, he explained, always seemed mysterious, and on that

account both fearful and wonderful. Then he added thought-

fully: "And when men are most alone they hold most closely

to myth. 55

As soon as he could get back to his cell Alexander took a

knife and cut his drawing of the world image into ribbons, rip-

ping them apart in a paroxysm of anger at himself. His

labored reasoning, his reaching out toward the unknown, had

been no more than a child 5 s citadel of sand built in front of

the incoming seas. Aristotle had dismissed his Parapanisades

as myth, and the others in Mieza were laughing at his stupidity,

as so often happened. The fury of his self -accusation left him

silent and shaken.

After that no one spoke again of the ill-fated Parapanisades.

And the assistants explained that Aristotle wished his eccentric

pupil to concentrate upon politics rather than on cosmography.

Alexander did that without protest.

There was no meeting ground between the mind of the middle-

aged scientist, intent on his tabulation of natural causes, and

the young daydreamer, stubbornly determined to track down

Mysteries. Yet pupil and master had mutual respect for the

other's capacity to work. Neither one cared to waste time in

argument.

Four centuries later matter-of-fact Roman historians men-

tioned the violence of Alexander's passion for learning. Yet

even under Aristotle's guidance he showed no ability to master

[50]

RIDDLE OF THE EARTH'S SHAPE

a single science. He merely gave to his books the same devotion

he had given to the shrine at Pella. Left to himself, he might

have become a hermit of the academy, following out a labyrinth

of thought. If so, he would have lived longer.

Or he might have become a physician, as Philip had intended.

It is clear that Philip tried at first to safeguard his visionary

son through Aristotle's guidance and the protection of the

great commanders of the s army. But Philip by then had heard

the gossip of Pella, and Philip also had a temper not to be

trifled with.

Perhaps because of his loneliness and introspection, perhaps

because of his stubbornness at that time, Alexander never for-

got and never gave up what affected him closely. Trifles that

others passed over stuck in his memory. He kept the annotated

copy of Homer close by him; he fed and groomed the black

horse Bucephalus, now full grown ; he practiced the medicine he

had learned. And along with the poems he had memorized, he

kept the riddle of the mountains that fed the river Nile, and

his mythical Parapanisades.

He was sixteen years old when he plunged into the examina-

tion of politics, or city rule his last work under Aristotle's

tutoring.

The philosophers from Anaxagoras to Plato had concen-

trated upon the problem of designing a perfect state in theory.

And that in turn meant to them an ideal city government.

Plato had gone so far in his Republic as to develop a perfect

model, wherein aristocratic thinkers could exist with slave

laborers to their mutual benefit.

At Mieza the experimenters pointed out that Plato's city

plan was the finest of the Greek attempts to meet the problems

of reality by an ideal solution.

Aristotle on the contrary refused to speculate upon what

might be the best form of government. He limited his effort to

an attempt to determine what had worked out best, and when

[51]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

and how and why. So his assistants were at work examining the

constitutions and histories of all governments of record and

they had singled out more than one hundred and fifty. These

included the various Greek cities, from the Athenian democ-

racy, or rule by the people, to the Spartan military communistic

state, or rule by a select warrior group. Among the examples

also appeared the tyranny of Crete, or rule by one head, and

such oddities as the priesthood rule 6f the celebrated Delphic

oracle which supported itself by payments from visitors.

Going far afield from the Greek cities, Aristotle was also

examining the tribal communities across the great river Dan-

ube. He compared such rule by the leading family in the tribes

to the reign of the Pharaohs in Egypt. The first, he believed,

was a primitive form of the second. The barbarian tribes

maintained themselves by an economy of war, raid, and some

trade. So they were still devoted to the leadership of individual

warriors, while the Egyptians sustained themselves by long-

established agriculture and handwork, reaching a much higher

intellectual level.

Midway between these Danubian tribesmen, with their herds

and huts, and the great metropolitan centers of Egypt, Aris-

totle placed his own people, the Macedonians.

The Macedonians were still young, still barbaric. Only yes-

terday, in historic time, had they migrated down with their

herds out of the northern forest and river lands to these hills

at the edge of the sea. They still retained the rude independence

of a hunting people. By constant struggle against the invading

Scythian tribes and the highly equipped armies of the Greek

cities, they had kept freedom, in the sense that they had not

been made slaves. Yet they were still subservient mentally to

the educated Greeks, and actually inferior to the more sophis-

ticated Cretans, Egyptians, and Phoenicians.

The Macedonians still retained traces of tribal life; the

Kinsmen were no more than blood kin of the royal Amyntas

family; the Companions or individual nobles consisted of the

. [52]

RIDDLE OF THE EARTH*S SHAPE

great landowning and cattle-breeding families. Any important

question had to be decided by the meeting of the commanders

of the army, just as generations ago the leading warriors had

assembled in council to decide what was best to do for the tribe.

And Aristotle's examination had raised some startling

questions. It seemed as if different peoples had been shaped not

so much by their governments as by their physical surround-

ings. Going back to the history of natural things, the assistants

at Mieza pointed out, as a shore was eaten away or built up,

fertilized or made barren by the action of water upon it, so

animals evolved according to the sources of food or conditions

of safety or peril around them. Certainly forest animals differed

from those of the grass plains; while they in turn developed

differently from the beasts of desert regions.

So in the case of men. Herdsmen on half -barren hills did not

develop as the dwellers within a fertile river valley. Apparently

a human group domiciled upon a natural stronghold evolved

different ways of protecting, feeding, and sheltering themselves

from those of a similar group settled upon an open shore. Had

not the different Greeks all sprung from a common stock, in

tribal times? Had they not, thereupon, built many small cities

separately, because the peninsula of Hellas offered them only

small and isolated valleys?

For protection's sake these Greeks had each built their

separate stronghold or polls city. They had done so out of

necessity, and not because in that pioneering stage they had

believed the single city-state to be the ideal state. Moreover,

developing in different ways, the cities facing upon the coast

tended to rely on sea-borne trade and to hold most firmly to

democracy because the building and handling of ships required

the co-operation of the community on shipboard were not all

men equal, like the ancient Argonauts, except that they chose

someone for leader? while the land-bound cities tended toward

aristocracy or leadership by the elite few who commanded or

planned ior the armies.

[53]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

These questions seemed small and irritating beside the

grandeur of Plato's ideal city. Moreover, they hinted that the

fortunes of a people did not depend upon fate alone.

As to the Macedonians, it was apparent that they had devel-

oped no such elaborate city-state, since Aegae and Pella were

no more than poorly sited towns without trade, dignity, or the

great academies of the more advanced Greek centers. The

Macedonians had been confined to peasant life and animal

breeding because they had been cut off from the trade routes

and even from the coast itself. There seemed, according to

Aristotle's reasoning, no possibility of making Pella into such a

city as Athens.

In fact he laid down no rules by which a people could progress

or a city be well governed. While he pointed out that the

environing country influenced a city's growth, and the energy

of its inhabitants its welfare, he left unanswered the question,

toward what should it progress. Nor would he admit that its

future was predetermined by fate or the will of the gods.

Yet Alexander sensed the answer toward which the Stagyrite

was working with infinite patience. If human beings could be

shaped by their environment they could change themselves in

equal measure by their own efforts. If so, they would not be

dependent on fate.

Aristotle was working with reality, divided down to its

smallest atom. And he Alexander had evoked a dream world,

real only to his imagination, and then only because it lay out

of human sight.

Among the hundred and fifty cases Aristotle made a notation

upon Thebes : that the city had been raised above others in the

last generation by the supreme ability of one man Epaminon-

das who had created a victorious army and had known how to

gather in the fruits of victory For the organization of a peace

after war is more difficult them the winmng of a tear.

And in discussing city rule (politics) he made a further note :

// there exists m a state a person so far above others in virtue

[54]

RIDDLE OF THE EABTH*S SHAPE

that neither the virtue nor the political ability of any other

citizen is comparable with his . . . he will be teronged if

treated as their eqiial. Such a man should be held to be as a god

among men.

In reading this, it seemed to Alexander that the Stagyrite

believed the spark of divinity lay still within human beings.

He was deep in a study of the influence of sea power upon

the overseas expansion of the Athenian state when a rider from

the Companions appeared at Mieza and entered his cell. The

horseman said that Alexander would join the main army on its

march along the Nearer Sea. Engrossed as he was in making

notes, Alexander replied that he would be ready to leave at the

end of the month.

"You are leaving with me today," the rider informed him.

"This is an order."

Instead of making preparations to depart Alexander, exas-

perated, threw away his notes, caught up his sleeping robe, his

copy of Homer, and his knife, and started out to get the black

horse, saying in that case he was ready now.

He never returned to Mieza as a student.

If Philip had brought his son from Pella to remove Alex-

ander from Olympias's influence, he did not say so. The one-

eyed leader of the Macedonians never spoke about his wife nor

did he mention Cleopatra to his son. This gulf of silence between

them Philip might have bridged, but Alexander could Bot,

Nor did Philip himself try to instruct the student from Mieza

how to behave when he joined the Macedonian field army. The

Macedonians marched. They marched in drifting dust along

the coastal King's Way and over goat paths ; twenty miles and

sometimes twenty-three they covered between the dawn trumpet

and the sunset meal. With full equipment and five days' rations

they marched faster than any Greek phalanx, outdistancing

the news of their coming. And no distance covered seemed to

satisfy the impatient Philip. When his Macedonians were on

[55]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

the march Philip circulated through the columns, as he had

limped around his building projects in Pella, having appar-

ently neither tent nor headquarters of his own. At night he

could be found guzzling by a teamsters' fire or gossiping with

the advanced cavalry patrol.

If Alexander had fancied that he would be given a white

mantle and the gold-adorned chest armor of an Achilles to

wear, riding Bucephalus with the elite Companion cavalry, he

was rudely enlightened. He marched with the transport wagons,

clear of their dust, carrying his pack and shouldering the

responsibility of men and animals and loads. Sweating and

swearing, he fought against time to gain distance, struggling

with the strange circumstance that a company could not 01

would not move as fast as one man, and that a line of carts

could be held up by one broken wheel. He discovered that

.horses did not haul their weight unless fed and cared for in

legs, hoofs, and guts. Luckily he was a hardened walker, and

stubborn.

These Macedonians marched, but not in any apparent direc-

tion, or for any discernible purpose ; at times they loitered on

the open coast, swimming and doctoring the horses; at other

times they kept on without stopping for a day and a night.

They encircled a seaport and made all preparations for a

siege, only to march away when a fleet appeared at the anchor-

age. By night they moved into a city, only to give it up and

start off elsewhere. Seldom did the teamsters of the transport

get up close enough to see what the head of the column might

be doing.

On the day that Cleopatra visited the column they halted

and held races, horse and foot, and wrestling bouts with wine

served after. The teamsters swore that Cleopatra was a for-

tunate girl. Alexander saw her at the games, wearing a half

veil over the loose knot of her curled brown hair, close-wrapped

in a single peplos without a cloak, swaying as she walked a girl

of fourteen at the heels of her uncle Attalus, who pushed arro-

[56]

RIDDLE OF THE EARTH*S SHAPE

gantly ahead of other men. Still, Cleopatra kept her eyes half

closed, demurely. In passing Alexander she glanced up, as if

measuring his strength, then gave a skip, hurrying after

Attalus. Small and weak she might be, yet Cleopatra, the niece

of Attalus, had the look of Olympias about her.

That night she poured wine for Philip, and the soldiers

wagered whether she would go into bed with him. They offered

tetradrachmas against drachmas she would not, estimating

that she was an ambitious virgin, holding herself for a great

price. Then they offered Alexander fruit, which he took, and

wine, which he disliked, because they were vaguely aware that

Philip's son should have been invited to the feast instead of

being left to mess with them.

These soldiers, as Alexander discovered, knew much about

the whims, habits, and abilities of the commanders, discussing

them without mercy, calling Philip the one-eyed Fox and the

lame Goat. At all times, whether foraging or fighting or bath-

ing, they grumbled. Mostly they complained of short rations,

scant pay, prohibition against looting the coast towns, and

the state of the roads w r hich they had to repair as they advanced

eastward toward the Dardanelles. Of Philip they complained

that he kept them in the field during harvest and planting time,

and expected them to carry the loads of mules.

Yet they seemed to find sense in the twisting s,nd turning of

the marching. Philip^ they argued, was trying to get hold of

the coast ports for Macedon, which had been cut off from the

sea by these Greek trading settlements. When the Spartan

fleet put in, and the army inarched away, they had an explana-

tion. The Fox didn't want to waste men in a hot siege now

that the city was reinforced. No, he would take another city

someplace else and trade it with the Spartans for that one. The

Fox always had a new trick to play, and he would waste gold

bullion rather than loss of life which the army thought a most

important matter and he would use up his new machines

before he would send men into battle. They explained this,

[57]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

taking care that Alexander understood, since he might com-

mand a regiment before long.

They were resting on the path above the gray water of the

Dardanelles, trying to make out the round hills of Troy in Asia

across the way, when an officer of the Agema the favored com-

panies that served as guard for the king-commander laid odds

against Alexander's chances of commanding the army itself.

The gambler, Hephaestion by name, was young and reckless

with the fine manner of an Athenian he said trade had been

the ruin of his family, so he had sold his sword into service.

He had a way of mocking at sacred things. Even money he

offered that Alexander would never be king, not realizing that

he spoke of a man who stood beside him. "For it all depends 01*

Philip's whim, and the Fox is not pleased with his girlish, book-

ish offspring and may get him another one. What do you say?"

The men said nothing, waiting to hear how Alexander might

break out at Hephaestion. They knew that the carefree captain

-of the Agema was blood kin to the king's son.

"Moreover," Hephaestion pointed out, "our Kinsmen, except

that tutor-milk-sucker Leonidas, have a feeling against the

son of the woman they think to be a witch, and counting Philip

out, this army isn't minded to obey anyone except the generals.

Those are my points. Who of you teamsters has hard money

to lay against me?"

Alexander was looking through the haze over the gray water,

seeing red creep into the haze as blood pounded through his

veins, when a runner came down the column and stopped before

him, saying that the king-commander had been hurt. Philip

had sent for his son. Hephaestion looked once carefully at

Alexander, hesitated, and drew his short sword, balancing it

on the palm of his hand. "It was one chance in ten thousand

I should pick you to wager with. But I lose, and here it is."

He smiled, his dark eyes mocking. "Don't make me wait while

you make formal complaint of my insubordination. I don't want

a hearing eh, Alexander?"

[58]

REDDLE OF THE EARTH'S SHAPE

He could not have thought out a better way to save his life.

Alexander sensed the recklessness of the captain and felt that

Hephaestion had appealed to him. He touched the sword hilt

awkwardly. "I don't want a burial here," he said, "because of

a few words. 55

Philip's hip had been broken in a skirmish up the road and

he lay on a stretcher where water flowed from a shrine's font,

with his leg stretched out, tied to a javelin; nor would he let

Alexander feel around the broken bones.

"More delay, 5 ' he grumbled, wiping the sweat from his eyes.

"We won't see Pella before snow comes. I'm not going back

like this." His glance leveled on his son's face. "What's this

new rumor that you're wishful to rule in Pella while I manage

the army? Would that be to your liking?"

Parmenio, chief of the staff, and the silent Antipater were

listening. If Philip had called them in, it meant that he was

having his son judged upon some doubtful point.

Head tilted, his blue eyes troubled, Alexander explained that

he would like best to go back to the studies from which he had

been taken. As to the talk in Pella, he knew nothing of it.

"It's all through the camp down to the ranks. Doing as

much harm as a plague." As always, Philip's staccato speech

followed the swift current of his thoughts. "The pezetairi the

phalanxmen like you, and they are hard as devils to please.

Did you know that?"

"No sir,"

A side glance toward the two silent commanders assured Philip

that Parmenio did not believe Alexander, while the matter-of-

fact Antipater did. "I've been away too long from Pella," he

muttered, easing his leg. "Can't be helped. But it can be helped.

That gossip has sense in it, after all. Yes, you can go back

instead of me." Abruptly the wounded Macedonian chuckled.

"I'm serious, boy. Don't bury yourself in a doctor's den" lie

still thought of his son as a medical student "but go back

[59]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

and do the honors for me at Pella. In my name, of course."

As if pleased with his new thought, Philip explained to the

commanders that from this moment the seventeen-year-old

Alexander was appointed regent, during his absence from the

city.

Alexander started to object and thought better of it. "Just

what authority are you giving me? And what do you expect

me to do ?"

Impatiently, because the broken bones in his hip tormented

him, Philip handed his son the small royal seal with the lion's

image on it. "Full authority. Make payments, sign letters. But

be careful about making promises. Don't ask me what to do

find out for yourself what you can do. Didn't I lay out a cart-

load of gold so that Aristotle might teach you? Consult with

him about politics. Take along a military adviser too take

Antipater here. You'll need an escort, now, so pick a company

of the foot Agema. Neither Aristotle nor Antipater will sell

you out, boy, and the army will see you don't get in a scrape

over a girl." And he added thoughtfully, "You'll have to strike

some more coins from the mine bullion, for cash."

With his orders given, Philip hesitated, not knowing how to

show personal feeling to his son. At that moment Alexander

would have chosen to stay with the wounded man and the troops.

"Bass me, and farewell," Philip muttered. His dry lips

touched his son's cheek, and Antipater motioned the boy to

leave.

Tucking the seal absently into his girdle, Alexander won-

dered if he had been dismissed because he had failed at soldier-

ing or whether Philip actually wanted him at Pella. He felt

a surge of gratitude, realizing his father had defied gossip by

honoring him openly. But he had no illusions about his ability

to manage affairs at Pella. (Later Olympias declared that

Philip, who was infatuated with the girl Cleopatra, had wanted

to be rid of his son, especially when he found that Alexander

was becoming a favorite with the troops.)

[60]

RIDDLE OF THE EARTH ? S SHAPE

When he started the journey home with Antipater the follow-

ing sunrise he remembered Hephaestion and named that reck-

less individual to be his guard officer.

Hephaestion towered above Alexander, who was tall enough.

This young aristocrat had the strength of a Heracles and the

easy laughter of a Dionysos, whether drunk or sober. In most

respects he was the very opposite of the single-minded student

relishing fights more than sports, and the wine cup best of

all. Where Alexander worried himself into black depression over

difficulties Hephaestion took no thought of them, preferring

to play the flute instead. Philosophy he dismissed with a grin,

quoting Euripides: "We are slaves of the gods, whatever they

be" In proof he cited his own elevation from culprit to com-

mander of the prince's guard within half an hour. "If that isn't

a miracle, show me a better one."

His easy good nature delighted Alexander, who kpt He-

phaestion close to him, having found at last a friend. Ptolemy

said spitefully of the pair that Hephaestion was the man of the

two.

As Antipater looked after the policing of Macedon, and

Olympias immediately assumed the direction of the palace,

Alexander was free to spend most of his time in the olive groves

of Mieza's gardens, where the Stagyrite worked at his problems.

Still the philosopher would lay down no axioms to his pupil.

Greek philosophy, he thought, had stagnated because it had

become too abstract in its search after values. Socrates had

turned it aside from its quest after pure reason, by his rough

questioning. Until Socrates, too many Greeks had limited

their efforts to the past to the how of creation, and the nature

of the divine powers. Almost for the first time this stubborn

Athenian questioner had refused to wonder how human life had

come to be, and had asked instead what it might make of

itself. His objective had been to find the purpose for which

the world existed, not the source from which it came. And

[61]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

in his lone quest of this objective he had been forced to commit

suicide.

Aristotle, with his hard peasant's head and his work-stained

fingers, was following out this quest. In his reasoning the

mystery of the world soul might be impenetrable ; but human

evolution could be measured and directed, like that of aimals

of which he was compiling his history. Men, whole peoples, had

developed from something and were changing continually into

something else. That process of change could be measured and

directed. It seemed as if this process were for the sake of the

thing evolved for the end result, not for the automatic process

itself. And if this were true men might be freed forever from

the fear of a predetermined fate. Men might be free to shape

their own evolution. If they could understand the process . . .

So the Stagyrite discussed with his pupil the first of the

Mysteries that he had kept secret until then in his mind. And

Alexander, understanding little as yet, was fired by the purpose

that lay behind the endless experimentation.

It was Olympias who insisted that he should lead an expedi-

tion against the tribes beyond the frontier, who had become

troublesome in the absence of the field army. "The people like

to see you as a leader, not to hear that you are reading books."

Antipater made the preparations, and Alexander went with-

out enthusiasm. But his mother made the departure a parade,

closing the shops for that day and riding at his side in her

light chariot having sent Antipater ahead with the foot sol-

diers. Bareheaded, on the great horse Bucephalus, Alexander

drew enthusiastic shouts from the watchers.

When they were alone, beyond the streets, Olympias drew

him close beside her, whispering as she kissed him that she

knew he was not as other men. It had been her secret, she con-

fided, but now he had the right to share it.

She had always been devoted to the shrine at Samothrace,

where the gods appeared to mortals. And on the night before

her marriage she had dreamed that the night wind of the island

[62]

rushed by her room; the light of the stars had been dimmed

and sudden thunder had shaken the house until light flashed

down upon her and spread, kindling flames along the room,

until she waked. Upon that night she had been impregnated,

and not in Philip's bed.

"Certain it is, Aristander the diviner tells me, that you are

a child of the gods,"

So Olympias left him, crying to him to bear himself as became

his birth. Sighting Hephaestion behind them, she paused fleet-

ingly at the Companion's side, whispering, "That boy ! Protect

him, but tell him he must stop slandering me to Zeus's wife !**

And off she went, waving back, fair to behold as Nausicaa in

her chariot.

And so Alexander rode on his first expedition, silent and

afraid. He dreaded ridicule, and he felt coldness settle on him

like a garment when they began to climb the hills. But he found

that he had to do nothing more than ride in the center of his

small force, for Hephaestion, who looked on this as no greater

matter than a chase after deer, was ready with a word or a jest

to help him out of any hesitation, and the veteran Macedonian

commander gave all orders.

The highlanders the Maeti tribe withdrew to the heights,

only annoying the Macedonians with arrows, while they tried

to save their herds. On Antipater*s advice Alexander did not

destroy the deserted town of the Maeti but brought in settlers

from the nearest farmlands and built defense towers for them.

Hephaestion suggested naming the place Alexandria Alex-

ander's City as Philip had recently christened a captured

city Philippi. It was a quiet spot in the mountains, where wood

smoke drifted through the trees. Alexander reflected that by

the Stagyrite's reasoning he and his Macedonians had been

like these cattle-breeding Maeti, a few centuries before.

As soon as he returned to Pella he searched for the diviner

Aristander and questioned him about Olympiads dream. The

[63]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

man from Telemess did not seem surprised, pointing out that

other omens confirmed his mother's belief and that even Philip

had a portent in a dream that he had sealed up Olympias's

body when he slept with her, and the seal had borne the impress

of a lion's head on it. This portent Aristander had interpreted to

Philip as meaning not that he must look closely after his

erotic wife but that he must know his son would have more

than mortal courage. "These are portents," declared the sooth-

sayer, "that, taken together, may not be questioned. Philip is

not your father."

In some fashion word of the diviner's announcement spread

through the market place and hostels of Pella. People ques-

tioned the priest of the Delphic oracle who was also waiting

in Pella at that time. This agent of the Greek oracle would

neither confirm nor deny the statement of Olympias and Aris-

tander. Now when Alexander made the dawn sacrifice at the

altar facing the east he had to push through a crowd of servi-

tors and slaves who waited in reverent silence for a sight of the

golden-haired prince &s he made sacrifice to his father, Zeus.

Before one moon had waxed and waned Antipater brought

Alexander a message, delivering it himself because it came

from Philip.

"Philip, King-Commander of the Macedonians," he said

without emotion, "divorces Olympias, Princess of Epirus,

daughter of Neoptolemus. He has taken to wife Cleopatra,

niece of Attalus."

[64]

Ill DEMOSTHENES AND THE GRAVES

OF CHAERONEA

PHUJP very soon called his son back to the army, allowing

him to serve this time with Hephaestion in the elite cav-

alry.

During that year, the year 438 from the first Olympiad

[or 338 B.C.] the conflict between the Macedonian army and

the Greek city-states came to a head. It was really the conflict

between Philip's ambition and Demosthenes's determination

the issue being the rule of the Greek cities.

Because Greece as a whole did not exist. The Hellenes, sepa-

rated among their dozen cities, had been united only by the

shock of the world war, when the armies of the Asiatics invaded

the waters and homeland (from the first meeting at Marathon

to the sea and land victories of Salamis and Plataea). When

the threat of conquest ended, the Hellenic cities fell apart like

the spokes of a broken wheel and involved themselves in the

long civil war which became a merciless struggle for mastery

between, in one aspect, the land and sea powers, the north

against the south, and in its final phase the test of mastery

between Athenians and Spartans. Strangely, throughout the

raids and sieges, the plague and the final mobilization of man-

power at the height of this conflict, Athens had been touched

by the splendor of the age of Pericles.

Then had followed the political prostration of the postwar

generation, with its weight of taxation, its expanding trade, and

its weak efforts to form peace leagues. After a century and a

half of wars the famous city-states, dependent now on slave

labor, had tried to protect themselves by professional soldiery,

[65]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

which could be maintained by money. Leadership had descended

to individual tyrants or dictators, or to a religious council.

Toward the end of this decline Philip of Macedon displayed

his astute leadership lacking since the death of Pericles

while the Athenian orator Demosthenes used his great per-

suasive power in an effort to rouse the city-states to their dan-

ger.

The conflict for control now centered in these two individuals

^ Philip, opportunist and realist, seizing every hold upon the

disorganized cities of Hellas, posing as protector of the religi-

ous council, champion of the Delphic shrine, and benefactor

of demos, the common man; and Demosthenes, lashing at the

inertia of now wealthy Athenians, whipping up the ghosts of

Marathon, calling upon a true citizen army to defend the last

of the democracies. In this death duel between two personalities

the actual antagonists seemed to be two irreconcilable ideas

the fading concept of the free city-state and the nascent concept

of monarchy. For Demosthenes in his Philippics argued not

so much against the human Philip as against the incarnation of

power in Philip : If Philip were to vanish tomorrow, you would

find yourselves another Philip. I want an army of the Republic.

Did the Athenians fear Philip? Demosthenes lashed their

fear with scorn. Was Philip a strategist? So was a wolf, slinking

out of sight, feeding on dead bodies. Was he handsome and

hard-drinking? So was a woman, and a sponge. Would the

immortal gods, watching from the skies, bestow favor upon such

a lecher, a schemer, a bloodsucker?

Already, Demosthenes explained, the gods had vouchsafed

an omen to the Greek patriots. The seeress of the Pythian

shrine had given them a verse :

The eagles shall see, watching from the skies,

The conquered weep y while a conqueror dies.

Unmistakably this prophecy meant that the Macedonian

invaders would mourn Philip, who would be killed in the com-

ing war.

[66]

DEMOSTHENES AND THE GRAVES OF CHAERONEA

By the driving force of his emotion Demosthenes got his

army of patriots. He got it into the field by persuading the

Athenians that their advantage lay in making war as far as

possible from their city, and by shaming the Thebans into

becoming allies of the Athenians, (And in these Thebans lay

the strength of the allies. The Theban phalanx, formed sixteen

ranks deep under guidance of Epaminondas, had overthrown

even the celebrated Spartans the Theban Sacred Band of

hoplites, devoted to a life of war, was believed to be supreme

on the battlefield.)

So, reassuring, promising, inspiriting, the great orator

marched toward Macedon that year with his citizen soldiers,

who seemed to him to be the resurrection of democratic power.

He marched with the hoplites, his bronze shield on his arm,

his only insignia of rank the gold letters on his shield, spelling:

'With Fortune."

And from that moment Demosthenes ceased to exert any

more influence upon the event than the hoplites trudging

beside him. Philip, the trickster, the play actor and consum-

mate commander of men, made his presence felt. The Mace-

donian army disappeared. At least it could not be found by

the Greeks, who advanced in high spirits when they intercepted

a message that Philip had departed for the Balkans. The Greek

citizen soldiers were bewildered when they discovered that

Philip was actually behind them with his Macedonians. Hie

message had been a simple trick.

Anxious and tired, the Greeks hurried down out of the

mountains into the long valley near Chaeronea and found the

Macedonians there. Even then these Macedonians did not

seem like an army ranged for battle. They moved at ease along

the valley, not crowded together, and they seemed to have no

servants or baggage. They stopped and sat down as if waiting

for the foot-weary Greeks to hurry into formation against

them.

Far out on the Macedonian flank files of horses moved through

a grove, led by men sheathed in bronze down to the hips.

[67]

AI/EXA2STDER OF MACEDON

They did not look at all dangerous.

The Greeks hurried on. The Sacred Band of Thebes went

into its phalanx. Past a small temple dedicated to Heracles,

past the village of Chaeronea they went, toward the winding

stream that divided them from the horsemen waiting at this

rendezvous.

By midafternoon the sun was in the eyes of the horsemen.

They had mounted, but they still waited on the rise among the

scattered oaks.

These Companions, all Macedonians and noble-born, had

been put all three regiments of them under the command of

Pannenio, chief of staff. From past experience they knew that

Pannenio would wait for Philip's order to advance. But no

such order had come from the lame leader, who was off some-

where in the battle opposite the Theban phalanx. From the

sounds on their left the Companions judged that the Mace-

donians there had given way and were moving back up the

slope. That meant the Thebans had not been checked.

The strain of waiting told on the armored horsemen, even

though they were accustomed to it. Through the trees and

the drifting dust they could see only that the small regiment

of Hypaspists, or Aids, was engaged on their left. At times

clouds of kilted Cretan bowmen moved across the slope in front

of them, screening them. The level sun, striking into the dust,

made it difficult to see more than that.

Restlessly the riders adjusted the shield straps on their

cramped arms, shifting their weight, not speaking because they

were listening intently. Nonetheless they would have waited in

ranks until a command reached them, if one rider had not

broken ranks. And if this rider had not been Alexander, the

son of Philip.

Alexander had waited on the black horse until his nerves

jumped and tore at him. He had been assigned to the Compan-

ions with Hephaestion, with the rank of regimental commander,

[68]

DEMOSTHENES AND THE GRAVES OF CHAEEONEA

although Philotas, the experienced son of Parmenio, actually

commanded the regiment. Beside Alexander a big warrior sat

his horse patiently one Cleitus, called the Black because most

of his body was burned to the hue of charred wood by the sun.

Cleitus had been told off to guard Alexander's body, so he

stationed himself knee to knee with him, pushing Bucephalus

over when the black horse moved restlessly. Cleitus the Black

had no more nerves than an oak tree.

But Alexander strained to keep his bare knees from quiver-

ing ; he wiped the drip of sweat from his right hand, tortured

by anticipation of plunging into the maelstrom beyond the

drifting dust, where sounds rose and fell like the pounding of

surf. He breathed quickly, his throat dry. This grip of fear

upon him was like a chain tightening with each moment, and

with the glare of the sunlight against his eyes. Behind him he

felt the other riders were watching him, noticing how he was

being overmastered by fear.

Cold gripped his stomach, nauseating him until he had to

swallow and cough to keep from retching. Lazily Black Cleitus

picked at a scab covering a scar on one brown arm, and the

noise beyond the trees changed to the screaming of gulls. But

there could be no sea gulls screaming here, . . .

Alexander had to move, to hold down the rising sickness.

Jerking at the rein of the black horse, he tightened his knees,

and Bucephalus plunged ahead. Cleitus called out something,

and a tree branch whipped across his face. He flung up his

shield, bending down, as he passed a group of archers who

looked over their shoulders, startled.

Other horses followed after him, but he could not see them.

Metal grated against his shield, and Bucephalus swerved, so

he had to grip hard with his knees. Suddenly he felt the horse

rise in a jump. A knot of men rolled and crouched against the

ground beneath him. He realized how fast he was going and

tried to steady the frantic horse.

Through the dust a group of men took shape, standing as if

[69]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

pressed together, turning a line of spear points toward Mm.

Crouching behind his shield, he felt the black horse stumble and

lurch and then race on, fighting for his head. Two wounded

men, sitting back to back, held out open hands to him, making

a sign. . . .

When at last Alexander was able to rein in the black horse

he found himself deep in brush at the edge of a stream. Listen-

ing, he heard no voices over the humming in his ears. But he

felt desperately thirst^ and dismounted to limp to the water,

wrapping the rein around his wrist. Lying down, he drank,

and then shoved his head into the water. When he wiped his

eyes clear he saw Bucephalus drinking beside him. So he

waited for the horse to finish. He was breathing easily now, and

the sickness had left him. But he did not want to move. Some-

where beyond the encircling brush voices echoed and carts

creaked.

Then he noticed that the sky had changed. The glare had

gone, and the clouds over the hill were darkening. He stretched

his arms and got on the horse, turning back through the break

in the brush. When he reached a path he followed it, through

an orchard, past a white stone temple where men lay as if flung

into piles, motionless.

Alexander could make out only objects moving against the

afterglow of the sunset. He tried to account for the missing

hours but could not.

Over this cluttered land, he realized, the battle must have

passed. It had disappeared now, except for the watch fires that

winked into light ahead of him,

A man moved jerkily over the ground, bending down when

he heard a voice from the wounded. Alexander noticed him

because a squad of armored shield-bearers moved methodically

behind the erratic searcher, and then he saw that it was Philip.

His father peered at him and yelped, "Praise to the almighty

gods!"

He gripped Alexander, felt him over for injuries, and

[70]

DEMOSTHENES A3STD THE GRAVES OF CHAERONEA

hugged him. "Philotas swore you vanished into the village as

if snatched up by a demon. They couldn't find your body.

Now I'll give gold to thieving Delphi!" Philip was royally

drunk. Suddenly he swore. "Boy, what made you start the

Companion regiments off without an order? Parmenio had

no order. It wasn't time. They said they followed Philotas, and

Philotas says he followed you. What devil possessed you, eh?"

"I don't know. I was frightened."

Philip turned his scarred head, to peer at his son, his breath

reeking of wine. "Frightened? Don't say that. It wasn't easy,

on Chaeronea ridge. Parmenio looked like a ghost I was

scared through my guts. You can't escape that before an action.

Only keep your head clear, until your work's done. ..."

Relief flooded through Alexander, who had dreaded his

father's anger. It seemed that Philip felt what he had experi-

enced in the oak grove. Suddenly Philip began to curse, peering

into the darkness. Too many men had died in those hours. No

such battle as this should have been fought. It was the fault

of the charge of the Companions, before the turn in the battle.

Holding to Alexander, and stumbling across the bodies lying

in the darkness, Philip went on cursing, tongue-lashing himself

and the mistakes that had been made. He had planned to let

the Theban phalanx come through he had placed only a screen

opposite that phalanx. When the Athenian hoplites followed,

he had meant to wait until they lost formation, believing them-

selves victorious. Then he would have launched the Companions,

with the Hypaspists and Thessalian cavalry supporting. . . *

Alexander never forgot that moment when Philip, dead-

drunk but clear in his head, led him over to the slope where

men searched for weapons among the dead. "The Thebans

stood here. At your age I used to watch them drill. They

didn't break, like the Athenians. We had to kill them they had

iron in them, the dumb bastards."

Staggering through the darkness, Philip began to mutter.

Then abruptly his words came clear, in Greek, repeating words

[71]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

of Demosthenes which he seemed to know by heart: "By the

springs of our land, by the rivers that water it, by the hills

that have made our hoTne . . ."

They found on the field the shield of the orator with its

legend, "With Fortune. 55 Men related how Demosthenes, throw-

ing away his weapons, ran with the others, helplessly, from

the valley of Chaeronea.

Afterward, in Athens, when he was urged to speak to the

people, he refused, saying, "It was Chaeronea that spoke, not

I. 55

Stunned by the disaster at Chaeronea, hearing with dread

that the Macedonians had taken over and garrisoned Thebes,

the citizens of Athens would have yielded up their orator and

the other instigators of the war to pacify Philip. When Demos-

thenes appeared in the streets he was hissed 'and called the

Snake. Political orators reminded assemblymen that his speeches

"stank of the study lamp." To one of these Demosthenes made

answer, "My lamp does not give out the same smell as yours. 5 *

But Philip, surprisingly, made no demands upon the great

commonwealth. For this city of the Acropolis he felt unspoken

admiration. His was the awe of the highlander for the metrop-

olis.

Among the emissaries of this good will, Alexander and

Hephaestion were sent to Athens, and the eager Macedonian

feasted himself with sight-seeing thrown as he was for the

first time among masses of educated people, visiting the old

Tower of the Winds, sitting in the cool of nights in the front

row of the marble seats with armrests in the Dionysos theater,

discussing politics in the lamplit gardens of the more exquisite

prostitutes, who had at their tongue's tip the gossip of the

sea trade, the fashionable ideas of the Sophists, and tales of

wonder from ancient Egypt where the Sphinx had been heard

to utter prophecies.

[72]

DEMOSTHENES AND THE GRAVES OF CHAEKOXEA

The Macedonian youths walked with the pupils of Plato in

the Lyceum named after the hero Lykos, the Wolf. And

Hephaestion as usual found amusement in this, "Behold/ 5 said

he, "here is your evolution of man, entire. From wolf to hero

to philosopher. What next?"

Nor was Hephaestion impressed when they sat with the poli-

ticians in the city council on the hill under the Parthenon.

"These citizens draw a dole to feed themselves, and they sit

here all day to argue about what to do with themselves I"

And Alexander must have remembered the complaint of the

dour Stagyrite, that these Athenians had become too abstract

in their ideas and in their search for an ideal.

They met with gray-bearded men who had joked with ugly

Sophocles, and had attended the first nights of Euripides's

plays which, like the Troiades, dramatized the story of females

as well as the dominant males an effort speedily lampooned

by the uninhibited Aristophanes in Lysistrata. In fact the

companion-ladies of the metropolis were more modern in their

thought than the men, expressing themselves in deft quota-

tions : "When I behold how filthy rich the gods have made me,

why should I question them?"

These educated ladies made agreeable companions, superior

companions, in fact. They concealed their amusement at the

uncouth Macedonian mountaineers, because it was quite appar-

ent to them that these same mountaineers were becoming the

most influential men in Greece, if not yet the richest. The

hetaerae had great interest in such a change in the political

wind.

Alexander missed seeing children around their apartments.

For this lack Hephaestion had a ready explanation. "They

don't want children running around and begging for bread,

and calling all the visitors Toppa.' Anyway, they don't have

many because they practice that new thing called abortion. It

may be good or it may be bad, but it certainly keeps the popu-

[78]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

lation down. It's different with our women: they have litters.

Did you see that girl called Thais? Imagine her having a child.

She's a child herself."

Hephaestion saw no harm in the influence of these public

women. "I've sold my body for what only hard knocks given

and taken; they sell their bodies and also provide an education."

Athens differed from provincial Pella in other ways. Wealth

flowing in from taxation, payments of tributary islands, and

the growing overseas trade had ringed the city with new boule-

vards and vast public works.

The chink of silver coins was heard constantly along the

shop fronts, where prices seemed fantastically high compared

to Pella. Down at the harbor round merchant craft disgorged

grain from the Euxine, lumber and metals, and groups of black

and white slaves from the outlying islands. The sharp odor

of wine hung over the hot waterfront. Alexander, taught by

the insistent Aristotle to examine into causes, satisfied himself

that this money prosperity came from the constantly rising

prices. Goods increased in value, while labor remained cheap,

owing to the great numbers of unemployed soldiers and the

continued influx of slaves. More than that, Athens was drawing

the materials for its new industries out of the east, from the

islands. and the coasts of Asia. This wealth had created a new

aristocracy in Athens, three generations after the civil war.

From every crowded street he could see the gigantic statue of

the goddess Pallas Athena, shining with gold and the pale splen-

dor of ivory against the sheer blue of the sky. And he thought

of the small altar of the God-Father under the window in Pella.

Many people spoke to him of the centenarian Isocrates, who

had been buried that year. Isocrates, the philosopher, had de-

voted his life, like Demosthenes, to the ideal of democracy. But

unlike Demosthenes, he had believed the Hellenic city-states to

be in decline.

How could that be possible, the citizens argued, when statis-

[74]

DEMOSTHENES AND THE GRAVES OF CHAERONEA

tics showed that the foreign trade of Athens had never been

so great, nor the colonies except for those ports taken over

by the Macedonian so flourishing? The figures for popula-

tion, the silver reserve, the numbers of schools and civic works,

all showed that Isocrates lied. Isocrates, they explained, merely

remembered, owing to his great age, the earlier, primitive city-

state, at a time when most men were farmers, before the advance

of modern industry in the new commonwealth. Isocrates com-

plained that in Hellas the city-states now could not maintain

peace within themselves or between themselves. All of them

Sparta, Athens, Argos, Delphi, Corinth, and Thebes had

struggled first for supremacy and then for trade, and now

were divided internally between the moneyed class and the

laboring class. So said the doting Isocrates, and it was rumored

that he had committed suicide by starving himself to death

after Chaeronea.

Certainly this aged philosopher had accused the modern

city-states of surrendering to Persian power, more than a

century after Salamis. For Persian statesmanship and gold, he

argued, had won the victory that the Asiatic fleets and armies

could not obtain at Salamis and Plataea. The all-powerful

Persians had induced the Spartans to sign a mutual assistance

pact ; the Hellenic colonies in Asia had yielded to this empire's

control, while imperial fleets dominated the seas and imperial

gold decided the elections, even in the Athenian Assembly.

Under such conditions, Isocrates maintained, the Hellenic

city-states could only survive if they united in an effort to free

themselves from this golden yoke of the Asiatic empire. By

making open war upon Persia and advancing their forces across

the sea to liberate the colonies the Greeks could preserve their

democracies and regain their ancient heritage.

To unite in this fashion for the Asiatic war, Isocrates ad-

mitted, it might even be necessary to accept the mastery of

Philip of Macedon, who was very close to being a Greek and

who alone could direct the course of such a war. This last advice

[75]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

the Athenians remembered, after the funeral of the aged

Isocrates.

In their hysterical relief at being spared the fate of Thebes

after Chaeronea, the Athenians voted Philip a citizen of their

city. They managed to forget all of Isocrates's warnings

except his last counsel, to accept Philip. When Alexander and

his companions appeared in the city, instead of the dreaded

Macedonian army, the Athenians made much of Philip's strik-

ing son. Only the friends of Demosthenes remarked that a wolf

cub was not the less a wolf.

And Philip, using his son as emissary of good will, achieved

a miracle of statesmanship in the year after Chaeronea. In-

formed by his spies, acting so swiftly that the rival cities had

little time to weigh his actions, he called their representatives

into a congress at Corinth.

Apparently Philip merely listened to the problems of the

Greeks as they argued before him. For each problem he had

a solution.

They were disunited: he formed a league of all the cities

except Sparta, to be known as the Hellenic League, to have its

own council, with which he would not interfere except in time

of war. The constitutions, the private properties, the privileges

of each city were guaranteed. Nor were the cities called upon

to pay tribute. Any major dispute need not be referred to

Philip; it would be decided by the supreme judgment of the

religious council.

Moreover, Philip agreed to Isocrates's plan. Having united

all Greece, he would lead all Greece in a war against Persian

dominion, to free the seas, liberate the colonies, and restore

Hellas to its true grandeur. He would lead as captain-general

of Hellas, not as king of the Macedonians. Upon each city he

would call for a detachment of volunteer infantry. Sparta alone

was excepted, as being the ally of the Asiatics. And the Spar-

tans refused to join the new Hellenic League, assuring Philip,

"we are accustomed to lead, not to be led."

[76]

DEMOSTHENES AND THE GRAVES OF CHAERONEA

With nothing to pay to the conqueror, and nothing to lose,

and with prestige and power to gain, the representatives of the

Greek cities accepted Philip's plan for a greater Hellas with

enthusiasm.

Alexander, sitting through the sessions in the theater at

Corinth, saw his father acclaimed a liberator and the statesman

of the hour. Hearing the decision of the congress at Corinth,

Demosthenes went into voluntary exile, declaring that he could

not endure being a spectator of the end of Greek democracy.

Philip arranged for the levies from the Greek cities to join

him the next year upon the King's Way, en route to the Dar-

danelles. Meanwhile he sent Parmenio, his chief of staff, with

task forces ahead, to secure a bridgehead across the strait, on

the Asiatic side. Alexander he kept at his side, to observe these

manipulations, while he arranged for his weak-minded son

Arrhidaeus to be married to the daughter of a minor noble on

the Asiatic shore.

Then at last Philip was satisfied that he had compensated

by negotiation at Corinth for the wastage of lives at Chaeronea.

This greater victory over the assembled Greeks had insured

the kingdom for the Macedonians.

With so much accomplished by inspired forethought, Philip

allowed himself to relax, and his Macedonians to feast when he

came home to Pella.

Then, at the full tide of success, he was assassinated, And

men recalled the prophecy of the Pythian seeress, that at

Chaeronea the conquered should weep and the conqueror die.

After receiving notification that she was no longer the king's

wife, Olympias had retired with her personal servants to a

separate house near the cemetery, to be out of the way of Philip

and his girl bride. In this seclusion Olympias put on dark man-

tles, abandoning her bright silks. She took to spinning thread

from wool, sitting at the wheel for hours in implacable silence.

When she did go out she made use of a covered litter, so that

[77]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDOK

no one in the streets of Pella saw her face although her litter

attracted attention enough in its passage. People began to say

that the Princess of Epirus, who had never secluded herself as

a wife, now screened herself properly as a rejected wife. Others

observed how she walked abroad only at night, like a second

Medea in the graveyard during the hours when the power of

Hecate waxed great.

From her window Olympias watched the new influx of people

thronging into Pella merchants from Tyre or Carthage with

war gear to sell, ambassadors from the barbarian tribes, Greek

prostitutes and agents. Within a year Philip's court had be-

come the axis of Hellas. Often had Olympias imagined for her-

self such a triumph as this.

To Alexander, when he at last arrived home, she made no

complaint of her misfortune, saying quietly that fate struck

down those who had been raised too high by success. Her hope

now lay in Alexander, and she only feared that she could not

shield him from Philip's drunken violence.

"Long since," she murmured over the threaded wool, "when

I carried you under my heart, I vowed to the Father-God that

never would I cease to protect you in life."

Especially she warned him against the overbearing manner

of Cleopatra's Kinsmen. Now that the girl was with child they

acted as if their family had become the arbiter of Pella. To

Alexander this mildness in his passionate mother seemed

strange.

"I fear for your life," she admitted, her fingers tearing at the

ball of loose wool.

Alexander noticed that Philip, who had a habit of sitting

alone on the lion-crested bench at the feasts, now kept Attalus,

uncle of Cleopatra, beside him, even though Attalus grew foul

in talk when he drank. As for Philip, no one could be certain

when he was actually drunk, When Attalus goaded Alexander

with a barbed word Philip fell silent, as if observing the two of

[78]

DEMOSTHENES AND THE GRAVES OF CHAERONEA

them. Cleopatra did not pour the wine now, when they sat

together, being far along in pregnancy.

Attalus disliked Alexander's way of leaving his wine goblet

untouched.

"You pour out enough on the sly, in sacrifice to your Father-

Zeus," Cleopatra's uncle remarked repeatedly. And one night

he stood up, lifting his wine bowl and shouting out, "May Cleo-

patra give Philip a son who'll be a legitimate heir !"

Suddenly Alexander's temper flared, and he saw only the

bearded mocking face of Attalus, challenging him. At that head

he flung his own wine-filled goblet, and reached back of him for

a weapon, shouting, "Do you say I am a bastard "

Empty-handed, he stepped on the table, to leap at Attains-

Instantly Philip jerked his sword from the bearer behind him

and threw himself at his son. Muddle-headed with drink, he

slipped, sprawling on the stones.

Shaking with anger, Alexander stared down at his father,

then leaped across him, to the door. He shouted, "That's the

man who'd take you across into Asia he can't move himself

from one bench to the other,"

Looking down at the staring, gaping faces, at his father get-

ting up from the stones, Alexander turned and raced out of

the hall. He ran through the guards, beyond the torchlight, into

the street of Olympias's house.

He found her awake, at her wheel, and without explanation

he hurried her with one maid out to the stables. Within an hour

he was out on the black horse beside her chariot on the dark

path to the forests of Epirus.

But he left her at her old family home and rode on alone into

the northern mountains. Freed from Olympias's importuning,

he could more easily forget that night at Pella. While he pic-

tured Attalus ridiculing his flight, he pressed on deeper into the

forests, afraid to face Macedonians. Until messengers from

Pella tracked him down, giving him a letter from his father.

[79]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

Philip wrote that the Greek counselors were asking him how he

expected to keep order in the new Hellenic League when he

could not hold his own house together and he wanted his son

Alexander back to resume duty with the army.

Somewhat to Alexander's surprise, his mother made no objec-

tion. Although she distrusted Philip's letter, saying that the

man who was called Fox by his own soldiers was never so danger-

ous as when he appeared most friendly. But her son should face

his enemies, knowing that he was under protection of the

Powers that had shielded the hero Achilles through all dangers.

Alexander should trust in these Powers, which were not per-

ceptible to other men.

At Pella, Philip greeted the exile as if nothing had happened

at the wine cups that night. Immediately he began discussing

a new kind of wheeled transport for the demountable cata-

pults that Deiades had designed for the Asiatic expedition.

Olympias distrusted this warlike activity. Usually, she pointed

out, Philip did the opposite of what he discussed openly. Why

should he depart just now, leaving Greece half pacified? More

likely he intended to remove Alexander, with this transport,

sending him across the sea to join Parmenio at least until it

was known whether Cleopatra's child would be a boy or a girl.

Ptolemy also felt worried, hinting to Alexander that his

idiot half brother was being married into the family of an

eastern governor while another bastard, a half sister, was

betrothed to a prince, yet Philip had mentioned no forthcoming

marriage for Alexander. He was being kept in the public eye,

Ptolemy thought, because the rank and file of the army fancied,

after Chaeronea, that he brought them good luck.

Worried by this advice on a matter he little understood and

fearful of some outbreak from his mother, Alexander tried to

intrigue for himself, sending a companion an actor of the

new theater to offer to marry the eastern girl himself, in place

of Arrhidaeus. Yet he felt instinctively that Philip would

neither send him away nor forgive him this attempt at amateur

[80]

DEMOSTHENES AND THE GRAVES OF CHAERONEA

statesmanship. It gave relief to his jaded nerves to yield to his

advisers.

It seemed as if Philip discovered his secret before his actor-

envoy could return. Limping into Alexander's room with Philo-

tas behind him, he sat down moodily, rubbing his untidy head.

Philotas, the leader of a Companion regiment, stood at the door

as if on duty, although by then he was intimate with Alexander.

Philip, perfectly sober, looked tired as he surveyed the books,

the night lamps, and the half -finished drawings that littered the

study. "When will you cease to be a moon calf," he muttered,

"filling your mind with other men's> writings, and gossip? You

neigh like a filly when a man stamps his foot or takes a sip of

wine." His good eye blinked and his voice gentled. "By all the

dog-headed tykes of hell, I wish you'd never had tutors. Can't

be helped now. Listen. Arrhidaeus was a problem. I wanted to

marry him off somewhere. You'll command the army, someday,

with Parmenio. I wanted you to be able to grasp problems and

master men. You can't do that by making sweet music like

Orpheus or reasoning about mathematics. Or by waiting for a

god to come out of the stage machine to help you, like in a

tragedy. I wish "

Under Alexander's silence he seemed to feel that he was lec-

turing a stubborn schoolboy. He seemed to try to reach across

to the boy. He only said awkwardly, "No use worrying Fm

cracked here and there in the body. Have to get used to it."

Alexander remembered how he limped out after their talk,

pushing his head clumsily clear of the door curtain. In that

moment he believed Philip had no thought of putting him aside.

But a few hours later Philip issued an order for Ptolemy,

Harpalus, and Nearchus to leave Pella and stay in exile, de-

priving Alexander of his close friends.

And then, on the day of his half sister's marriage, Alexander

never forgot how the Kinsmen, and the silent Antipater, and

the great families of Macedon had gathered in the half -ruined

hall of the elder kings at Aegae, with their retinues waiting

[81]

ALEXANDER, OF MACEDON

outside and the flutes playing. He had waited alone with some

officers near the hall, until the trumpets sounded. They had

not seen Philip limping out of the gate of rough stones, the

trumpets calling, and people pressing back to make room for

the king.

And Philip had fallen to his knees, with a bareheaded,

screaming man stabbing a knife into his back, killing him.

[82]

IV THE MOUNTAINS AND THEBES

THE MOMENT life left Philip's scarred body Macedon

ceased to be. It was not as if a ship had lost its captain ;

rather as if a ship, half timbered on the shore, had lost

its builder. For Philip, son of Amyntas, had been the brain,

the driving force, the general, and the supreme court of the

Macedonian clans. No assembly survived him, no experienced

ministers existed, to carry on the semblance of a government,

nor had Philip named an heir to succeed him. Even his plans

for the future remained uncertain, because in his caution he

had been at more pains to deceive his enemies than to enlighten

his lieutenants.

The next day, from Aegae and Pella agents of the Phoenician

merchant houses, the Greek city governments, couriers of visit-

ing ambassadors, and spies of the Illyrian and Thracian bar-

barians slipped away along the roads, carrying the news of the

end of the Macedonian regime.

At Pella the elder Kinsmen and heads of the great clans met

with the general officers of the army. For the old tribal custom

required that the gathering of the clan heads should decide the

question of blood guilt. Over this gathering Antipater and the

one-eyed Antigonus presided.

Investigation revealed the murderer to be a young Mace-

donian, Pausanias. He had been killed immediately by the spec-

tators in the courtyard at Aegae. This Pausanias, it developed,

had been injured by followers of Attalus and Cleopatra, who

had stripped him and outraged him in public after a drinking

bout. It was proved that Pausanias had gone from person to

[88]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

person, to claim retaliation from the older Attains ; refused by

Philip, he had been seen to visit both Olympias and Alexander.

And Alexander testified that he had dismissed Pausanias

without discussion ; this quarrel had nothing to do with him. He

denied giving to Pausanias the Celtic knife with which the mur-

der had been committed.

Yet clearly someone had instigated the half-crazed youth

to attack Philip. Pausanias had belonged to Alexander's circle

of companions some of whom had just been exiled by Philip ;

Alexander had quarreled openly and violently with his father ;

he was known to have an ungovernable temper ; he had been near

the scene of the murder. Moreover Cleopatra had given birth

to a son who might in time have displaced the erratic Alexander.

The investigators did not presume to question Olympias, who

was both priestess and Princess of Epirus, widow of Philip, and

mother of the man under suspicion, Alexander. Servants testi-

fied that Olympias, on being told of the murder, had murmured

something like "Upon husband, upon father, and upon bride,"

which proved to be a line written by Euripides but was hardly

understandable or in any respect evidence.

At that point the investigation ended. By clan law the killing

of a member of the royal family by another of the same blood

was an act that could not be judged or atoned by Kinsmen or

generals.

Those same Kinsmen and generals remembered only too well

how blood guilt had lain upon Philip's family before now.

Philip's mother Eurydice, an adulteress, had arranged the

death of his elder brother, Perdiccas.

While a group of Macedonians headed by Attalus believed

Alexander guilty, the majority felt then and believed there-

after that Olympias had egged Pausanias on to attack Philip.

The knife of Pausanias had been diverted in some way from

Attalus against Philip. Of the assassination itself Alexander

would say nothing.

Passing over, in this way, the question of the blood guilt,

[84]

THE MOUNTAINS AND THJEBES

the council of the clans had to name a new ruler of the Mace-

donians. From the moment of Philip's death someone must reign

in his place, if the great clans were not to revert to their isola-

tion in the highlands. The army officers would take over Philip's

task of organization, but the army especially the men in the

ranks had to have a titular head of the blood of Philip. Most

conveniently the idiotic Arrhidaeus would serve as figurehead,

the older Amyntas would carry on the royal name. Or Antip-

ater and Antigonus could serve as regents for Cleopatra's

newborn sen.

Against choice of Alexander there were several counts: the

rumor that Philip had not fathered him; his anti-social ab-

sorption in study and inexperience in command ; the open blood

feud that had started with Philip's murder. For such a death

among the clans would lead to others.

The veteran generals insisted that a decision had to be made

instantly, and held to. And they made the decision, in spite of

all argument. Afterward Antipater and Antigonus went to

AJexander's study. When he looked up from his books and of-

fered them benches they remained standing. They explained to

him the verdict of the army. Philip had named no successor,

but Philip had assigned his twenty-year-old son Alexander to

duty with the army, and after Chaeronea Alexander had per-

formed such duty. Now he was king of the Macedonians,

When the versatile and all-competent chief of staff, Par-

menio, hurried back from the eastern frontier he approved the

choice of the others at Pella. Probably the three great com-

manders felt that the Macedonian army believed the youthful

Alexander to be favored of the gods, if not born of a god. And

this army of farmers and mountaineers would follow no leader

of whom it did not approve. The three generals thought that the

daydreaming student would hardly interfere with their plans.

Of this triumvirate the diplomatic Parmenio made an in-

dispensable link between the arrogant and ambitious Antigonus

[85]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

and the loyal Antipater, whose thoughts did npt rise above

carrying out orders.

The three commanders knew what Alexander soon discovered,

that after Philip's death Macedonian power had shrunk from

an expanding Hellenic federation to a small kingdom. On three

sides of this kingdom the highland tribes reverted promptly to

their natural independence. Beyond lay the threat of the bar-

barian Celts along the Danube, pressing toward the sea, and

the roving Scythian steppe clans. The Greek cities deserted the

Hellenic League promptly. Athens held public celebration of

the death of the man she had made a citizen only a year before.

Consigned to leading Athenians, a weighty shipment of gold

coin arrived mysteriously from Asia. Demosthenes was again

acclaimed as the leader of Greek democracy.

On the other hand the staff "knew only too well what their

resources were. Philip had piled risk upon risk. His tour de

-force in wresting leadership from the Greek cities under the

guise of captain-general now yielded nothing tangible. There

was no longer a captain-general, and no longer a Hellas. True,

the Greeks did not know the weakness of the Macedonian army.

By his rapid maneuvering the astute Philip had allowed foreign

spies no opportunity of observing its numbers. Yet the staff

realized that the Macedonian core of the army the pezetcwri

[phalanxmen] , the Companions, the Hypaspists numbered

no more than seventeen to eighteen thousand. Other detach-

ments, such as the Thessalian cavalry and Agrianians, with

the lighter allied contingents, had been linked to the army by

Philip's leadership alone.

The condition of the treasury was more alarming than that

of the armed forces. It had some seventy talents' weight of

bullion and coins, while it owed thirteen hundred talents. Philip

had gambled on getting new revenues from the rich Asiatic

coast. Pella did not have money enough to meet expenses for

more than two months.

[86]

THE MOUNTAINS AND THEBES

Philip had gambled on creating a greater state and had left

the original Macedon in danger.

In this crisis Aristotle agreed with the generals on the first

thing to do reassert mastery over the restless tribes. So Alex-

ander left Pella almost at once on this mission with the field

army, leaving Antipater to hold Pella.

He rode off with the generals, irresolute, uncertain how to

meet the responsibilities Philip had borne so carelessly. His

familiar world of study had been lost, not to be found again.

Demosthenes said at this time that the student had come to his

graduation.

Shy, introspective, the Macedonian had been accustomed to

trust people at sight, to take the advice of friends. His world

had been one of imagination, with cities that lay beyond the

horizon, and mountain ranges that were Parapanisades, peo-

pled by kindly gods. In questing toward this dream region he

had followed Aristotle upon the still untrodden track of study

of the evolution of human beings. As with Demosthenes, his

knowledge smelled of the study lamp, yet of no ordinary lamp.

In other respects he was normal as Hephaestion or Ptolemy

both of the blood royal being, however, more stubborn,

feeling responsibility more deeply, and having greater physical

beauty.

So at twenty years of age he started on his journey.

In little more than a year he had changed into a man of de-

cision, distrustful of advice, going headlong at danger and de-

termined to lead his army into Asia, away from his homeland.

And in the following years he developed a capacity far in-

spired leadership, an ability to shape events on strange lands

and seas, and the determination to achieve what had not been

attempted hitherto.

What influenced him and what forced his thoughts into new

channels during this brief year is little known. Certainly he

received very quickly the news of the deaths in Pella. His

[87]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

cousin Amyntas had been poisoned, and Cleopatra's infant son

had been found strangled. With those two out of the way, he

had no male blood kin except half-witted Arrhidaeus.

Olympias alone would have wished for the deaths of those

two. He remembered the words she had spoken, of retribution

upon father and husband and bride. After that he never went

back willingly to Pella. The palace and the new city must have

been, in his imagination, antagonistic and terror-filled.

Pushing rapidly through the high valleys near the summit of

Mount Haemus, the Macedonian army threaded through the

barbarian peoples, who watched from hiding, judging its

strength suspiciously, eager to close in upon the disciplined

force that restrained them from looting the lowlands. Alexander

had to ride with his officers through thick forests, where they

might be shot down from cover. He learned that he could not

expect warning. The Macedonians were among folk as merciless

and unpredictable as animals, who could be controlled only by

discipline and by force. Some of them, the highland Agrianians,

volunteered to serve in the army.

There were conflicts as sharp as the attack of wolf packs.

Nearing one pass, the scouts in advance brought back informa-

tion that the tribes in strength had barricaded themselves be-

hind a wall of wagons, which stood at the summit of the slope,

in readiness to be rolled down on the advancing column. There

was no other approach to the pass. If the advance regiment

scattered it could not force the wagon wall ; if it massed to at-

tack with spears the wagons might be launched down the slope

upon it. Since Philip's son was with them, the regimental com-

mander waited to receive an order instead of giving one.

Alexander felt five hundred men stolidly watching him and

knew that he could not hesitate. To halt and wait for a more

experienced commander would be to admit his incompetence. So

he caught at the first solution that occurred to him. "Go for-

ward as you are. If the wagons come down, divide and take

[88]

THE MOUNTAINS AND THEBES

shelter and let them go through where you can. Those men who

can't move out of the way should lie down and lock their shields

over their backs. Let the wagons go over the shields."

It amazed him, as always then, that the infantry should go

forward at a word. Long experience in battle had accustomed

them to facing risks, providing their officers had weighed the

situation and decided on their action. And Alexander's quick

imagination had taken count of all possibilities. So the men

went up steadily, and the wagons crashed down from the sum-

mit, breaking the ranks and thudding over the prostrate men

who lay under shields and spears. They got to their feet, shaken

and badly hurt, and went on those who could walk. Alexander

never again ordered them to lie down under wagons. But he

noticed that the horde on the hill, terrified at seeing the deci-

mated men moving up again, fled into the forest.

By experience and by watching Parmenio and the veterans,

Alexander learned how quickly decisions must be made. His

commanders attacked at night, they attacked across rivers:

they marched for two days to arrive without warning before a

mountain city like lofty Pelion. But they kept always in motion,

so that no observers knew where they might be next. They

pushed on where the tribes had not looked for them, to the

Danube ; on this barrier river they seized the only ships within

sight some Byzantine galleys to ferry a force across, in

darkness. Going with them, Alexander made his way through

fields of standing corn that hid the men, picking his way by the

stars, shivering with the damp and chill and the weariness of

anxiety, until they came to the wooden wall of a sleeping city at

sunrise. And the inhabitants thought it a miracle that men in

armor should be posted around them at the first light.

Bearded Celtic chieftains, in leather riding breeches, with

hair plaited over their shoulders, came out with gold bowls and

the jewelry of their wives as gifts to the soldiers, saying that

they brought tribute to the king of the Macedonians, because

they were afraid.

[89]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

"Of what?" Alexander laughed*

"Of only one thing."

"What is that?" He felt proud that they should fear him,

being young.

"That the sky might fall on us."

To Hephaestion he said, "They seem to be brave, yet they

are great boasters."

"Most men are boasters," Hephaestion assured him, "and few

enough have any courage for business like this."

Alexander remembered how his father had said the same

thing in the reaction after Chaeronea. Pear itself could not be

driven from the mind, and Philip had been fearful, besides, for

the lives of his men. Philip had guarded his pezetairi jealously,

scheming to get every possible advantage for them before risk-

ing them in action. Philip had shunned fortification and the

uncertain sea, plotting, deceiving, breaking his promises, to

win an objective without an engagement at close quarters. How

he accomplished this was a mystery to every commander except

Parmenio. And the chief of staff, while understanding Philip's

methods, could not get the same result from them. This mystery

of supreme command was as baffling in its way as the science of

the evolution of life that Aristotle had solved.

In two respects, their grasp of higher knowledge and their

reliance upon reality in its minutest forms, Aristotle and Philip

had reasoned alike. Otherwise they differed sharply, for Philip

acted upon intuition that was close to genius, while the Stagy-

rite would reach a conclusion only when evidence had pointed

it out.

Alexander brooded over this problem of leadership with his

immense persistence. By watching the veteran Pannenio he

learned only expedients and tricks. This master of the staff

could move his brigades from place to place with inimitable

ease, to gain some specific advantage. Beyond that he trusted

[90]

THE MOUNTAINS AND THEBES

to the discipline and experience of the Macedonian soldiery

to profit from the advantage.

The one-eyed Antigonus, caustic and conceited, had Philip's

gift of deception. By terrifying an enemy, by bribing a political

figure, or by coaxing his antagonists upon a stage set for peace-

ful negotiation, Antigonus prepared the way for a sudden

massacre of any force that opposed him. "Don't march up to

? em," he growled. "Don't be fool enough to parade your

strength and intentions beforehand. Get hold of a few of ? em,

slice the guts out of those, and the other thousands will stam-

pede like a herd of cattle. When you have them running you can

execute all you need. That's the thing. Strike a spark of terror

and the fire will do your work. The turn of a battle comes when

more of the enemy are, afraid of your men than yours are of

them. Wait for that turn. 55

Yet Alexander discovered that few Macedonians really

trusted Antigonus. If he made a mistake in his scheming he

sometimes sacrificed a Macedonian regiment to extricate him-

self.

Although Alexander could not ride into a danger zone with-

out feeling weak and cold he was able now to keep his nerves

tinder control. So many men watched him, their own nerves

taut, taking alarm or courage from his least motion, that h

had to act as if he were certain of himself. So he formed the

habit of leaving off his helmet. For some reason when he did

this the men around him, helmeted, felt more at ease. IB the

same way, to cover his own anxiety, he had a way of laughing

much and talking to them. For the rest, he trusted to guessing

aright as the situation around him changed and new difficulties

cropped up. Distrusting his own ability, he seldom thought out

beforehand what he should do, although his mind was constantly

preoccupied with what might happen. By degrees the ranks

learned to watch the golden-headed youth on black Bucephalus

for a sign of what might be doing next. Alexander now mounted

Bucephalus when there was prospect of any action.

[91]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

At this time he developed a tendency to push forward reck-

lessly. He learned that it was safer to move quickly than to

delay in the mountains. The Macedonian infantry, mountain-

bred, was at home in such marching. And it happened that in

the Dalmatian heights he pushed his column forward blindly

into a boxlike valley, to find that the heights around him were

held by formidable Illyrian barbarians who promptly cut off

the column's road of escape. The Illyrians remained out of

reach, while other tribes hurried up to strengthen the moun-

tain trap. Parmenio, outside the valley with cavalry, forced his

way in to Alexander and managed to open an escape route

back along the valley to a river where the infantry was out of

danger.

"In spite of what men say," Hephaestion assured Alexander,

"you have a mistress and she is that slut Tyche."

Tyche was the goddess of fortune, much importuned by the

soldiery. The careless Hephaestion never seemed to be disturbed

in action. He said that every Macedonian had a hundred-to-one

chance of coming out alive, although he might be hurt, in such

affairs. At such odds, why should anyone worry ?

Alexander laughed in sheer relief. After fording the river on

the black horse with the rear guard and watching the masses

of barbarians halt at the bank behind him, he was soaked with

perspiration. "I have never seen Fortune's face."

"Well, they say Tyche follows you everywhere. 3 *

"If I have been lucky I would like to know when."

For once Hephaestion fell serious. "If you don't know well,

you are protected in some way. Either you number the gods

among your ancestors or the gods set the seal of Philip's

good fortune upon you at his death. Fate. You can't argue

about it. The phalanxmen have it all figured out. If you don't

grab the best-looking girls or lap up wine from the jug, or

knock a chap down who steps on your toes, it's a sign you're

something more than a plain mortal, like Hephaestion, who does

all those things. So does Perdiccas and he is a grand soldier.

[92]

THE MOUNTAINS AND THEBES

They don't know why you are different, but they know you

are different. Why else don't they call you High-Born or Com-

mander or Straw Thatch? Eh? Nothing of the kind. You are

Alexander, and that's the sum of it."

So Alexander found himself compelled by circumstances to

do what he least liked to do : lead men in conflict. Tormented by

his own inability and reckless now of physical hurt, he dreaded

the time when he would make some inexcusable mistake, and

his companions, like Hephaestion and Perdiccas, would see the

feet of clay in the statue they had erected themselves. Already it

seemed to him that he had failed and Macedon was breaking up.

These men in the ranks saw in him only the reflection of their

own ideal of a fearless and invincible leader, favored of the

gods. When they discovered his weakness they would jeer at

the yellow-headed fool who acted the part of a soldier. They

would tear the mask from him and laugh and bid him go back

to the waiting murderess, Olympias.

With all his stubborn determination, he set himself to post-

pone that unmasking. For he knew now that, except in Aris-

totle's academy, he would meet with no mercy in Macedon.

Perhaps the destruction at Thebes was inevitable. But it

shook Alexander, and the memory of it never left him.

It developed while they were still on the Dalmatian coast;

Couriers came up from the south, to report that a new defense

league was forming around Athens. Orators had taken the

stand in Thebes, calling on the citizens to mobilize to defend

their liberty and freedom of speech. At a rumor that Alexander

had been killed in the Illyrian forests the Thebans assassinated

two Macedonian officers of the garrison left by Philip in the

Cadmea, or citadel, of the city. Now the Macedonian garrison

was holding out in the Cadmea and the Thebans were calling

on Sparta for alliance against the invaders. The Hellenic

League was mobilizing against its masters.

At PeBa the councilors felt the need of conciliating the Greek

C9S]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

cities. Aristotle warned that the Hellenic cities must be won

over by diplomacy.

But the garrison in the Cadmea could not be -sacrificed to

gain delay for negotiation. The Macedonian generals started

for Thebes at headlong speed, keeping to the highland roads,

out of observation, and covering nearly three hundred miles in

thirteen days, taking Alexander along.

They went into camp upon sacred ground at the cemetery

outside Thebes, hoping to relieve the battalions inside the

city and to put an end to the resistance movement there before

other armies could take the field against the wearied Mace-

donians.

By selecting the cemetery for a camp site Parmenio made

clear that he was not seeking battle. Wanting time to rest his

men, he sent envoys over to the city to offer the Thebans a

truce if they would surrender the fortifications and release the

garrison. The envoys came back looking grim.

"The Thebans," they reported, "will give up nothing. They

offer us a truce if we will surrender Parmenio and Philotas,"

When he rode around the city to inspect its wooden wall,

raised on an earth rampart, Alexander could think of no way

out of the dilemma except a siege. Above the city rampart he

could see the square of the stone citadel where his garrison

waited to be released. "How would you get in there?" he asked

Perdiccas absently. This brigade commander had served with

the army all the years that Alexander had been at Mieza.

"Any way that suits best," Perdiccas answered, occupied

with his own considerations. For to the combat officer it seemed

necessary only to break into the wall at one point. To Alexan-

der the great city with its monuments of the past and its tens

of thousands of human beings presented a more complex

problem.

For a little after that he was occupied with the skirmishing

of outposts. Then he was startled to hear a report that Perdic-

cas had got over the wooden wall by a sudden rush close to the

[94]

THE MOUNTAINS AND THEBES

Attica gate, near the Cadinea, and was tearing dovrn a stretch

of the wall. Alexander sent the Cretan archers and Agrianians,

the least weary of his units, to support Perdiccas's brigade. By

the time he arrived opposite the point of entrance the Mace-

donians had thrust deep into the streets, heading for the tem-

ple square. The supports had followed.

It was soon clear that the forces inside had been locked in

close fighting in the narrow streets. And Alexander, waiting

irresolutely with the armored infantry outside, hung back,

against Parmenio's advice, unwilling to order the phalanx

into the narrow entrance, uncertain about making an attempt

to carry the wall elsewhere. Perdiccas was carried out badly

wounded. A runner reported that the Cretan officer was dead

vrith some eighty men and that the Macedonians were retreat-

ing.

They boiled out of the break in the wall, pressed by close-

packed Theban shield infantry and severely cut up. When the

Thebans continued to pour through the break Alexander or-

dered in the phalanx. When the mass of long spears came down

and the phalanx front moved forward the experienced Cretans

gave way to the flanks, and the Theban wave, following on,

broke against the solid wall of the phalanx. At once Alexander

and his officers, within the ranks of the spearmen, ordered an

advance. The massed infantry plowed forward through the dis-

organized enemy. Once in motion, the phalanx pressed on like

an inexorable machine harrowing the earth, treading underfoot

what stood in its way, changing front to push through the

break in the wall, into the crowded streets, to be caught there in

the delirium of house-to-house fighting. Breaking up into

squads and scattering through the alleys and over the flat

roofs, the Macedonian infantry fought its own battle, being

now out of hand and beyond recall.

At this point the Macedonian garrison broke out of the be-

leaguered Cadmea and joined the attack. The Theban soldiery,

entangled in a mob of women and children, retreated desperately

[95]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

toward their temple. The city wall being now deserted, other

Macedonian contingents streamed in, with volunteers from

Phocis and Plataea who had a feud of their own to settle with

the Thebans. In another hour the streets had become runways

for human herds that struggled, died, fled and followed, suffered

and ravaged. That night Thebes burned.

Nest day when the ruins could be policed and graves dug,

four thousand bodies of all kinds were counted. In a garden out

of the drifting smoke Alexander sat with the regimental com-

manders to hear reports. Most of the soldiers were still search-

ing for coins or gems and herding in the prisoners. The city of

two days before had changed into a devastated area, policed

by the Macedonians and without other life of its own. Some of

the officers complimented Alexander on the timeliness of his

counterattack with the infantry, the judgment he had shown

in waiting until the right moment. As if he had planned, in

cold calculation, to wait for what Antigonus called the turn of

the battle.

Alexander had made no such plan, nor could he make one

now.

This city could be left as it was, to heal its wounds ; or it could

be demolished. Antigonus and most of the commanders argued

for the destruction of the stronghold that had twice stood in the

way of the Macedonians. To make an example of one enemy,

they pointed out, would have an effect on all other Greek cities,

Alexander agreed.

Among the prisoners in the garden awaiting judgment, he

noticed that the least excited was a well-dressed woman, un-

usually lovely, with two children holding to her. She was ac-

cused of murdering an officer. The Theban woman had admit-

ted the murder, explaining that the officer had been a Thracian

barbarian who broke into her house and used violence on her.

Then, instead of leaving, the Thracian had tried to find out if

she had hidden any jewelry away. She had told him yes, in the

garden well, and when he had taken her there to examine the

[96]

THE MOUNTAINS AND THEBES

well she had pushed him in and had thrown stones from the

coping at him, killing him before the soldiers could come up.

"Who are you?" Alexander demanded.

"I am the sister of Theagenes, who held command against

you at Chaeronea and died there for the liberty of Greece.' 5

She waited, unmoved, to be sentenced to death.

"Release her," the Macedonian ordered. "Escort her with the

children out of our lines."

As swiftly as he had dealt with the Theban woman he ordered

entire destruction of the great city, its buildings demolished

except for the temple, the house of Pindar, and the homes of

those who had befriended Philip or himself and the mass of

the survivors sold as slaves. He would not hear any more indi-

vidual cases.

This annihilation of one of the member states of the Hellenic

League, almost before the others were aware that the Mace-

donian army had returned, stunned the volatile Athenians. The

revolt died out before it gained headway. Athens sent envoys

north who were known friends of Alexander, to urge that in

this crisis the Greek cities looked to him for leadership. Alex-

ander needed only to ride to Corinth, they explained, to be

greeted as captain-general by the councilors of the Hellenic

League, as Philip had been acclaimed before him.

On that ride Antigonus treated him with grudging respect.

After the storming of Thebes that day Alexander required that

orders to the army be given by him alone. If mistakes were to

be made he would make them himself.

In Athens the friends of Demosthenes reproached the peace

party, saying, "Even sheep would not surrender their watch-

dogs to the wolves."

Yet the delegates and philosophers who gathered hastily at

Corinth, above the blue waters of the gulf, made a great cere-

mony of Alexander's arrival, devoting their efforts to persuad-

ing him to lead the united forces of the cities in the revcmche,

the attack upon Asia. (Uncertain of the young captain-

[97]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

general's disposition, they felt the safest course was to urge

him toward the glory of military conquest elsewhere.)

The philosophers reiterated that this had been the hope of

Isocrates and of Philip himself. Once, when they were climbing

the height above the theater, they passed a man lying in a worn

chlamys on a stone in a corner out of the wind. Those around

Alexander mentioned to him that this was Diogenes, who liked

to be alone. Going over to the hermitlike figure, Alexander

stared at the sunburned cynic who was one of the most talked-of

philosophers. When Diogenes stirred restlessly he asked, "Is

there anything you want?"

Diogenes looked up without emotion. "Yes," he said, "stand

out of the sun."

The others laughed and Alexander went on without speak-

ing, Yet he remembered how Diogenes, at the council of Cor-

inth, had wanted only sunlight.

It was pleasant, resting by the waters of Corinth, sitting

in the theater on the hill in the warm evenings and hearing

Greek orators and statesmen urge him to play again the part of

Achilles and cross the sea to Troy, to lift the torch where Philip

had laid it down, to become the champion of Hellas. By now,

so quickly did his moods change, he was troubled by the terror

at Thebes, the blotting out of life around that temple on the

hill. He felt that at Thebes he had broken into the shrine of a

god. And when an exile from that city made any request of

him now he granted it. At Thebes he had struck against some-

thing more than a human enemy, and he felt the need to make

good the harm he had done. His eyes searched the crowds for

the woman of Thebes, without finding her.

Some of the philosophers understood clearly enough that

Alexander, who had established himself so unexpectedly and

rapidly in Philip's post of leadership of the new Hellenic

League, had accomplished it only by brutal action, where Philip

relied on paasterly persuasion. Among these was Aristotle.

[98]

V THE ROAD TO TROY

THERE WERE MANY who in after years pointed to signs and

portents that appeared throughout the Greek lands dur-

ing the months from the sinking of the Pleiades to the

rising of the star Arcturus that spring, when it was not certain

whether Alexander of Macedon would lead his army to Asia.

In the market place of Pella fishermen related how the seeress

of Delphi had refused to prophesy whether the Asiatic venture

would succeed or not. When Alexander had insisted that she

speak she had only said cryptically, "Eheu, Alexander, you

will always have your way !"

The fishermen wondered if this were a true prophecy or not,

and whether Alexander were truly their king, the son of Philip,

or the son of the God-Father, born out of the witch woman

Olympias. Had he not in three days reduced mighty Thebes

to fly-infested blood and charcoal and broken marble a fate

more catastrophic than the hero Achilles had administered,

aided by the gods, to Troy itself?

In their highlands the hardheaded Macedonian farmers like-

wise began to wonder about the soft-spoken man with the

beauty and strength of a Heracles, who held his head on one

side and listened to them, his blue eyes eager and friendly when

he told them how to doctor the ills of their horses and how to

brew fruit juice and balsam for their own fevers. With the build

of an athlete, able to break a sarissa's wooden shaft between his

hands, he avoided the physical struggle of pugilists or wres-

tlers; shrinking back from a battle's engagement, he had

plunged three times into the heat of a battle, at Chaeronea, at

[99]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

Pelion and Thebes, like a drunkard rushing to a feast. These

peasants and horse-breeding nobles of Macedon had understood

Philip; they did not understand his studious, absent-minded

son who wrestled with dilemmas in his tent by lamplight, por-

ing over manuscripts as if performing the ritual of a strange

shrine before plunging into monstrous action.

While the common people wondered, the generals of the

army told Alexander he must lead the Macedonians into Asia,

and they told him why.

His father had decided on the venture, the staff had worked

out the logistics of the campaign that would take one half the

manpower of Macedon about twenty-five thousand men

across the Dardanelles. Parmenio himself had gone ahead to

prepare the bridgehead to be thrown across that strait at Troy.

(Antipater would remain at Pella to safeguard the homeland

with overage soldiers, while he trained recruits and kept

Olympias quiet.) To sap the resistance strength of unstable

Greece they would take along with them contingents of the

more venturesome Athenian hoplites and cavalry from Thes-

saly. It had all been worked out; it would succeed; it could

not be abandoned now.

"Why not?' 5 Alexander asked. "General Xenophon could

not stay on in Asia with his ten thousand. His book is not called

the Journey In it's the Anabasis , the Journey Out.' 9

Parmenio knew that Alexander had read the book. But

Parmenio was getting on in years, and his three sons were ris-

ing to high command in the army. He wanted to retire after

this last victorious campaign and leave the direction of the

armed forces to his sons. If the army were disbanded, what

would happen to them ?

"The risks have been calculated," he explained patiently.

c *We can assume that our field army will defeat any force sent

against it,"

"Even if that is so we have no hold on the sea. The Persian

fleets are in all the waters,"

[100]

THE ROAD TO TROT

But, Parmenio pointed out, their route would be along the

land, except at the narrow Dardanelles, and he had provided

against failure there. By running a slight risk they could win

immense gains, they could liberate the rich Ionian coast op-

posite Greece, with its historic seaports of Miletus and Ephesus

where the Seven Sleepers slept, Halicarnassus where Mausolus

lay in his tomb, Sardis, where affluent Croesus had reigned . . .

they could control the grain route into the Euxine.

"Philip said all that in two words," Olvmpias remarked*

"Gold and glory."

Olympias distrusted the generals, because she could not in-

fluence them. She warned her son against them, saying that he

must profit by them and not allow them to become as powerful

as kings. And the final event was to justify her suspicion.

The elder Kinsmen came to sit with Alexander, to drink his

wine and to urge him to take action with the army. Had not

Philip educated him and trained him to do just that? The

Macedonian nation was young and must fight for its existence

against the antagonistic forces surrounding it. Among those

forces, the old men said, the most dangerous was the profes-

sional soldiery. They had seen that danger grow.

Before the world war the professional soldier had not ex-

isted in Greece. The hoplite of that remote day had been in

truth a citizen soldier, keeping his weapons in his home and

going forth at need for a month or more to serve in the armed

force of his native city without pay then to return to his farm

or shop. This exercise of arms had been to him little more than

the training for the arduous Olympic games. (The first Mara-

thon race followed the course of the runner who had sped from

the battlefield of Marathon to carry the news to Athens.)

During the exhausting civil wars that followed, however, the

hoplite had been kept longer in the field; his family, thus de-

prived of his all-important services, had been given at first a

dole of food or supplies to enable it to survive, then a regular

[101]

ALEXAKDER OF MACEDON

dole in money during the absence of the hoplite. By degrees the

citizen soldiery had begun to draw pay.

Moreover, as campaigns lengthened and armies were ex-

panded, more recruits were drawn into the ranks of the

phalanx, until finally even in Sparta the helots, or slave

laborers, were enlisted in the ranks and eventually paid.

This change-over to total mobilization also took place with the

crews, the rowers and fighters, of the warships. This change

could not be undone. At the end of the Greek internecine con-

flicts the citizen volunteer, who was also a homeowner, had be-

come no better than the physically powerful helot, or freed

slave, in the ranks. Or the barbarian from forest or sea who

enlisted for pay.

Moreover the citizen who did return after demobilization

often found his farm destroyed or his shop burned ; he usually

found a foreigner or slave doing his work as harvester, shoe-

maker, or druggist, for a smaller wage than the citizen could

live upon. He found prices of clothing and luxuries much

higher than before.

More often than not unemployed soldiers demanded sub-

sidies from the state or hired out in other armies. These pro-

fessional forces tended to form within all cities, where conflict

broke out as where the proprietor class of a city defended it-

self against the newly landless. The hoplite volunteer of Mara-

thon, who owned his spear, shield, sword, and bronze helmet,

had become as legendary as the warrior Achilles by the year

400 B.C. The wealthier cities now hired military forces, paying

the highest rates to the best-trained troops. The newly rich

citizens, the merchants and landed proprietors, no longer served

in the phalanx ; they hired professionals instead to take their

places.

As with the men in the ranks, so with the officers. The elected

leaders of the early citizen levies had been replaced by profes-

sional officers who made a career of warfare as doctors devoted

to medicine. About 400 B.C., Xenophon's ten thou-

[102]

THE ROAD TO TROY

sand, with their officers, had ventured as far as Babylon, in the

service of the Asiatic king. And a king of Sparta, Aegesilaus,

had hired out with a thousand veterans to the Egyptian

Pharaoh.

This diaspora extended to all skilled classes of the turbulent

Greek cities ; technicians streamed away from the mother cities

toward the colonies and vast capitals of Asia teachers, pros-

titutes, architects, and philosophers emigrated toward the mar-

ket for their skill. The artists of the Parthenon, men like

Phidias who had ennobled the temples of their home, gave way

to statue makers, carvers of jasper and agate gems, designers

of bathtubs and fountainheads and pottery figurines of the

gods. These artisans of the new postwar world were no longer

devoted artists ; they gave their loyalty to a profession. They

followed the sea lanes and caravan routes to foreign employ-

ers, as the notorious Thais voyaged to Egypt, after the Spar-

tan soldiers.

These mercenaries of the Nile served an officer instead of a

city ; the officer served the man who paid him. Moreover, being

professionals in the business of war, these hired hoplites had

skill and rigid discipline.

As with the men, so with the machines. During the long civil

war period expert engineers from Tyre and Syracuse had per-

fected machines to cast javelins, burning oil, massive balk of

stone apparata to tear down walls, and other machines to de-

fend walls. Projectiles such as these, discharged from a dis-

tance, began to be more devastating than the shock of an ad-

vancing human battle line. These new engines of destruction

could be built by money power.

Philip had understood this danger from money power and

the professional soldiery, the wise old men reminded Alexander.

To train the Macedonians he had hired professionals like that

Theban veteran ; he had bought Deiades's brain to devise more

efficient mobile machines. In consequence his Macedonian high-

landers had a fine spirit, a very fine national spirit; yet they

[103]-

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

were still at heart farmers, thinking of their homes. All around

them extended the danger of the professional regiments, fleets,

and machines. At any time the money power of the great Per-

sian king of Asia might assemble these scattered forces and

crush little Macedon. At any time, now that Philip was dead-

Did not Alexander understand the danger?

And then the managers of the royal silver and gold mines

at Mount Pangaeus came up to talk with Alexander. They

talked to him about money, telling him that a new force had

come into the world with coined money that had not been

written down in the textbooks of the academies like Mieza.

Coined money had become in a peculiar way not merely the

symbol of power but power itself. In the shadowy elder world

of Troy, when the Macedonian herders had been emerging

from the northern steppes, coins had not existed. Human beings

had been accustomed to exchange one kind of thing for another,

or food for service, and had very gradually begun to use such

well-known valuables as sheaves of precious iron rods as a

standard of value, to exchange again for something else. Then

certain weights of rare metal like copper or electrum had been

used as standards, stamped with the mark of the owner or

maker. Only two centuries before, much smaller weights of gold

and silver had been stamped as true coins of fixed value and

used for exchange in cities like Sardis, Rhodes, or Argos. These

coins bore on them the images of gods or the totem of a city, like

the Athenian owl.

Now traders were spreading coined money through the

Mediterranean world chiefly the fine Athenian "owls" yet

the supply of new silver was limited to the yield of a few mines.

Values began to be reckoned in terms of the silver Greek drach-

mas. But a strong feeling persisted among ordinary folk that

it was unnatural to make a profit out of money itself. Such un-

natural profit contraverted fate and would bring retribution

upon the offender. Had not Midas, lord of a small city, come

"[104]

THE ROAD TO TROY

to a bad end through his craving to hoard gold? Even Sparta,

which had long maintained itself without use of money by

communal sharing and a common kitchen was now on a money

basis. And Sparta, sustained artificially by Persian gold, had

become the servant of the will of the Asiatic king. Demosthenes,

the orator of democracy, had confiscated the silver coins of a

shrine to outfit an Athenian army, and Chaeronea had been

the result.

Had not the wars deprived the common folk of food, fuel,

and clothing, and loosed epidemics among them? Now the cities

like Athens built large public works, to employ discharged sol-

diers paying them in coin. All this had driven up the price of

necessities like wheat, sheep, and cloth. A barrel of wheat now

cost five drachmas instead of two, and a sheep sold for five

times as much as before the wars.

This foreboding about coined money on the part of common

folk was not shared by the intelligentsia, who realized the im-

mense leverage to be gained from possession of even a few of the

bright minted coins. (All coins, to be accepted at this time, had

to be full weighty of pure silver or gold ; counterfeit, token, or

fiat money still lay in the distant commercialized future, 1 along

x lt needs an effort of the imagination to realize that in this age before the

financial machinery of the Roman Empire the Mediterranean world was still

on a primitive money basis. Banking as such did not exist, and only in a few

markets could coins be exchanged for thmgs. Taxation was something- new

under the sun. City-states had small budgets, which were met by contributions

from the citizens, more or less forced. If an army was to be equipped or a fleet

outfitted or a play staged in the theater, the citizens were called on to raise a

fund to pay for it. While landowning classes had existed for some time, property

owners still 'remained rare, and money owners were only just beginning to

appear.

Such valuable things as horses, weapons, grain, or cloth or slaves remained

the commonest property; while precious metals, by weight, served as tiie

commonest means of exchange. Iron, the most useful, was still rare enough to

be worked into setting for jewelry ; solid gold, silver or copper bracelets, chains,

cups, and caskets had great value because of the weight of metal in them.

While the Greek drachma equaled an English shilling of later times in

nominal value, its actual value before Alexander started the expedition into

Asia was more than thirty times the English prewar shilling. Thus it is esti-

mated that an Athenian family of four needed some two hundred and fifty

[105]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDOST

with paper currency, price fixing, manipulation of the cur-

rency. Usurers and moneylenders had not yet taken their

places, with their scales, in the doorways of the temples.)

A handful of Athenian owl coins could buy for the possessor

a stone house or a half-dozen labor slaves from the Eusine or

Thrace. A single talent could build a trireme (a "destroyer 53

or bronze-beaked narrow warship, powered by great oars with

three rowers seated on three tiers to drive it into action).

Such a talent of coined money could acquire the grain crop of

an island, or a ship's load of girl and boy slaves who could be

trained to cultivate land, weave cloth, and who would in time

increase their number by bearing children.

A store of coins accumulated by a tyrant or the keepers of

a shrine in a treasury or locked chest could be seized entire, to

be spent by the new possessor for an infinity of valuable things.

While Greece itself, except for the always wealthy Delphic

shrine, had little enough of such treasuries, Asia seemed to

possess an unlimited store of gold as well as silver, drawn from

the mines in the Taurus Mountains, in farther Arabia, and in

that most distant unknown east that voyagers named Ind.

The Macedonians, poor in coined money, were also weak in

trade.

Out of Asia, with the ever-increasing flow of coins, precious

metals, ivory, alabaster, onyx, and rarer stones, came traders

and slave dealers, in fleets of ships westward bound. Out of the

drachmas for its minimum yearly subsistence. A talent, nominally about eleven

hundred dollars, had a purchasing power of closer to forty thousand dollars.

But almost no price standards existed in the west.

The flood of Asiatic gold dcvric* bad already driven down the silver exchange

ratio from about 13 to 1 to 10 to 1, in the west. In entering Asia, Alexander

encountered the problem of the infinitely greater wealth structure of the east.

Oiie specific problem he solved in lightning fashion. Since the gold in the east

was beating down the value of the silver in the west, the two currencies con-

flicted. In Greece one gold stater was worth twenty-four silver drachmas, in

Asia one gold daiic equaled twenty silver ngloL Alexander struck an equilib-

rium between the currencies by simply demonetizing gold, making silver

standard, at tbe rate of one gold daric to twenty Greek drachmas.

[106]

THE ROAD TO TKOT

Greek peninsula passed a constant stream of emigrants, gold-

smiths, vase painters, settlers, vagabonds, doctors, and mu-

sicians, eastward bound toward the wealth in Asia. Trade had

mounted with each postwar generation, and the peninsula of

Asia Minor now became the junction of the new trade routes

from Tyre and Sardis, to Syracuse and Carthage in the west.

Industrialized and commercialized, the Greek cities now im-

ported their grain and timber and metal, serving as great clear-

inghouses of trade, dealing increasingly with money.

But the great trade routes did not enter the Macedonian

mountains. The Macedonian treasury had no store of bullion.

Although Philip had gained for his people a strip of the coast,

with seaports, they had no fleet, nor could Philip make these

agriculturists into traders. The growing prosperity of the

Mediterranean world had not touched the Macedonian high-

lands. It would be necessary for the Macedonians to go and

possess themselves of the wealth of the Asiatic coast.

So urged Harpalus, the sickly peasant's son, who had be-

come fascinated by the possibilities of coined money. And

Alexander understood those possibilities. He could solve prob-

lems of economy more quickly than most men could think about

them.

Many fears held him back from the venture. Distrusting

his own ability profoundly, he shrank from putting himself at

the head of thirty thousand men. When he paced the groves of

Pella, out to the shrine that had served once to measure a ran

for him, he watched the hard line of the distant sea, hostile

and unknowable ; when his glance touched the wording on the

shrine, / am an immortal god, mortal no more, his imagination

conjured up the distant, antagonistic gods of Asia. He had BO

one to advise him rather he had too many advising him. And

always behind him in the halls of Pella's residence he felt the

ghosts of Cleopatra's murdered child and his cousin Amyntas,

Until the morning when Pannenio and Philotas walked with

Mm out to the shrine, urging again that he must give his con-

[107]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

sent before the expedition could start. Alexander listened, say-

ing nothing, holding his head aslant.

44 With the rising of the star Arcturus," he said at last, "we

will march to Asia. You have the plans. Carry them out."

When they left him to hurry back to the palace with the

news he stayed to look long at the line of the sea. Hostile it

might indeed be, but beyond it far to the east he might find

the Parapanisades.

Aristotle opposed this. And during the last of that winter

Alexander sat much with the Stagyrite, who was then at work

upon his Politics.

The philosopher who was to become the criterion of human

thought for many centuries advised the young captain-general

of Hellas to limit his activity to Macedon. Here Alexander

could control events. Here Alexander's privileged class of

noblemen could exist in security, maintained by the peasant

class, while it educated itself and Aristotle had reason to know

the ignorance of the mass of the Macedonians. Even Plato, in

The Republic, had assumed that only a protected few could

reach the heights in human endeavor. The ideal state must be

like a garden, sheltered to allow the growth of the finest plants.

This was the qualitative argument, and Aristotle pressed it

because his own standards were so high. If only a few could be

enlightened by exact knowledge of their purpose in life, still

that few could govern the mass of the ignorant.

Perhaps there existed no World Soul toward which Plato's

speculation had tended; yet surely there existed within space

the Immovable Mover the directing source of energy. Toward

that forever stable source human thought should be turned.

Sitting on the bench under the stone nymphs, Aristotle prod-

ded the damp earth with his staff. "We must find the good for

which life exists on this earth of ours," he lisped, blinking his

eyes, overstrained with work. He relaxed, a smile moving the

wrinkles of his set face. **We can grow good fruit trees in this

[108]

THE ROAD TO TROY

soil, within this garden. Even if the Tree of Life does not grow

here."

Worried, his mind encompassed by the ever-growing multi-

tude of notes that he kept upon a half-dozen sciences, his words

confused when he tried to explain the greater mysteries toward

which he labored his notes on metaphysics being poorly writ-

ten compared to his treatise on physics the Stagyrite gave

voice to his fears. This garden in which they sat, the mountains

of Macedon, the narrow seas around this land, could be no

more than one small corner of the greater Oikoumene. The

limits of habitable land might stretch for vastly greater dis-

tances than philosophers had supposed around the globe of the

earth. Those distances might be peopled with barbarian hordes

unseen as yet by Greek eyes. If Alexander led half the man-

power of Macedon eastward the voyagers might be swallowed up

in these multitudes or lost in the vast distances still unmapped.

Perhaps in speaking against the departure overseas Aristotle

may have been influenced by his knowledge of Alexander's

heredity. For Olympias showed evidence of incipient mania,

being never at ease unless she dominated those around her.

And Philip, a drunkard, had sired one idiot. Alexander, at

twenty years of age, still showed restlessness in meeting or-

dinary people and a tendency to escape into a dream world of

his own.

Stubbornly the captain-general of Hellas refused to change

his decision about the expedition. Aristotle himself had ad-

mitted that men, like animals, could alter with their physical

surroundings. Why, then, could not Macedonians develop in

this way, in a kindlier land? The Greeks had extended to the

east by sending out colonies. Why could not new cities be built

on more fertile hillsides than the bleak slopes of Pefla? *

"By Macedonians?"

"Yes."

Aristotle shook his head curtly. "There is no Macedonian

people as yet. Your father has created the idea of Macedon.

[109]

AXEXAKBER OF MACEDON

Around that idea, out of tribes, he has formed an army. With-

out the army, there is no Macedon. He made conquests, yes;

but he failed to administer them properly. The nation he

imagined has not yet evolved."

The laws of such evolution, Aristotle held, were inexorable

and not man-made. Men could not hunt happiness as if it were

a winged bird.

"Yet mariners seeking land, and men crossing a desert,

guide themselves by the flight of birds," Alexander laughed.

With the first warmth of the sun at the rising of Arcturus he

felt an overmastering desire to start this journey that had been

made by Argonauts and Achaeans before him, toward the ris-

ing sun, seeking something better than their old homes, whether

gold or glory, or a new land. Of nights he read himself to sleep

with the Troy Tale and the shining loveliness of Helen. Small

blame to the Trojans that for such a woman they long time

suffered hardships, for she was marvelous like to an immortal

goddess to look upon.

"Perhaps," said Ptolemy, who was skeptical about the expe-

dition, "but men go questing for immortal beauty in women,

and they are snared by bright-eyed girls. in a garden "

He checked himself, remembering a Scythian girl in a garden.

"At least Euripides knew that much. What did he say of

Helen? Something about JO3 T . . . died beside th streams of

Troy for ilw phantom of a face and the shadow of a name"

He could not change Alexander's mind, and it worried him.

Because- it seemed as if Alexander was thinking of the beauty

that had set Helen apart from other women, and not of finding

a second Helen. It was a dangerous thing to have preying on

your mind. You could not resurrect a ghost. "At least,"

Ptolemy comforted himself, "we're not launching a thousand

ships. We haven't got them."

Having agreed to go, Alexander surprised the staff officers

by examining and testing all equipment. His imagination, it

[110]

THE ROAD TO TROY

seemed, probed into everything that might happen to the army;

he studied the journal of Herodotus and the world plan of

Hecataeus, questioned insatiably the spies who had been over

the roads in Asia, trying to picture the actual lands that lay

ahead. He pondered details endlessly.

Looking over Deiades's new machines, he tried the weight

of the long ladders that the engineer had mounted on two sets

of wheels and all the heavy ropes and light cords, neatly coiled

for packing. Such ladders, Alexander thought, could not be

moved over streams easily ; Deiades would have to do without

them and make new ones when necessary.

The temperamental engineer dashed the sweat from his chin

and roared. "So, I am to conjure up a forest of such fine sea-

soned wood, when you call, 'Deiades, bring ladders!' I am to

sow acorns and grow oaks, all in a breath, when the trum-

pet "

"You can knot the ropes together," Alexander, who had been

studying the cordage, said mildly. "Yes, Deiades can make

ladders of cords. And they can be carried easily."

The engineer hated to lose his ladders. "And I suppose," he

breathed ominously, "you can make ropes climb a wall, like

a snake."

"No," Alexander chuckled, "but you can."

Nevertheless he instructed Aristander, the seer, to be ready

to go with the expedition. Ptolemy was to command a brigade.

And Alexander added strange figures to the army two sur-

veyors, who were to plot each day's march, a mineralogist, a

weather expert, and scientists who were to keep a record of all

animal and plant life. Alexander planned to keep his own jour-

nal of the trip and asked Ptolemy if he would not like to do the

same. "As if," the son of Arsinoe complained, "he were taking

the academy along. Not one woman to go, mind you, but a

plenty of bigwigs, musicians, and bug hunters, not to mention

the doctors."

It seemed to veteran Macedonians as if this was to be more

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

an exploring venture than an invasion. Who had ever heard

of a general keeping a daily journal?

Moreover, their captain-general insisted on preparing for a

year's absence or more. He checked over the personal means

of the higher officers and Companions and offered crown lands

he had no money to those who needed help. Among them

was Perdiccas, now recovered from his wound.

"But what are you keeping for yourself?" asked that ex-

perienced trooper.

"My chances."

Perdiccas thought that over and said he would take his

chances with Alexander. He had noticed, with the others, that

the erratic and inexperienced Alexander, having announced

that he would give all orders, had also assumed responsibility

for all details.

At the same time he freed himself from one dominating in-

fluence. ^When Olympias, who was to be left in Pella under the

unimaginative care of Antipater, stormed at him for his reck-

lessness in giving away the family lands to powerful officers

"You are making them the equal of kings!" he would not

listen to her. When she wept, then, working herself into a spasm

of self-pity, he spoke suddenly, harshly.

"I think I have paid rent enough for the time in your womb."

Astonished, Olympias fell silent, drying her tears. "My let-

ters will follow you," she assured him, "wherever you go."

At the rising of the star Arcturus in that year 442 of the

Olympiad, the Macedonian army set out on the King's Way

toward the Dardanelles. Alexander walked in the column in the

dust, with the black horse Bucephalus led behind him.

He never came back.

[112]

TWO

Zl*

&ICJ7-I PLATFAU

VI BRIDGEHEAD

THE CROSSING had been a jolly one. The weather had been

perfect, with the breath of the north wind caressing the

troubled waters of the strait, and a clear sun warming

the reddish earth of the Asia side, and the hill of Ilium [Troy]

visible against the higher ridges of the land's backbone. Only

friendly gulls skimmed the water, without a sign of enemy ships.

Even the most superstitious of the Greek allies conceded that

the omens were good. The gods most certainly favored the ex-

pedition in its crossing, and that was an indication of success

to come. A whole flotilla of fishing smacks and merchant craft

ferried back and forth across the gut of the Dardanelles, and

men shouted, "HailP as they waded ashore and turned to

glance back at the familiar northern shore.

Someone had thrown a garland of ivy over Alexander as he

jumped ashore in his armor, with the white plumes on his shin-

ing helmet. And already they had set up marble blocks as altars

to Zeus, the God-Father, protector of wayfarers, and also to

Athena, to honor the Athenians with the expedition. At these

altars they had poured libations out of gold cups, and they

had hurried in a festive mood to the fallen towers of Ilittm, to

look for the historic Skaian gates and hunt for souvenirs,

amazed to discover how small was the hilltop upon which

heroes had performed immortal deeds.

Here the merchants and fisherfolk who still inhabited the

hill showed them relics. They stared at the dark shield and

broken harp which the temple attendants swore had been

Achilles's, and they took it to be a favorable omen when Alex-

[in]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

ander, after inspecting the shield, kept it to be carried with the

army and left his own in its place. The festival, in fact, became

general that evening when the leaders drank wine at the tombs

of Achilles and Patroclus the two mighty friends until, feel-

ing joyful, they twisted garlands in their hair and stripped off

their clothes to dance in honor of these illustrious dead. Alex-

ander when he tired of the dancing and flutes sat in the torch-

light arguing with Hephaestion about whether Achilles had

really been supreme among warriors or whether he had been

shaped by Homer's verses into a legend. Suppose that Homer

had never written the Iliad what then would they know of

Achilles?

Nothing, Hephaestion said. If a man did not have a mighty

poet to make a song of his deeds he would be forgotten after

the last grandfather of the last grandson died. They weren't

dancing and drinking here to the memory of Greeks and Tro-

jans, but to the memory of what Homer had sung.

Ptolemy objected hotly that rhetoric could not make fame.

Take a gorgeous woman like Helen why, he could feel the

ghost of the long-haired Helen moving through the grove,

passing with the night wind. Hephaestion snorted and said in

that case he had better put on some clothes.

The Macedonian pczctairi said little over their wine. They

felt the damp, dark earth with their fingers and looked at the

numerous lambs in the great flocks of sheep and agreed that this

was good, fertile soil, better than their own stony hillsides.

Although the Macedonians were disappointed by the small

size and poverty of the ruins, they felt happy to be camped

among the graves of the old heroes, especially Alexander, who

ordered the inhabitants to repair the walls and promised them

freedom in perpetuity from tribute payment. When he marched

from Troy it was to battle.

Parmenio's spies had brought word that strong forces of

Asiatics were moving in from the east. This did not disturb the

chief of staff, who had tricked the enemy by making a surprise

[118]

BRIDGEHEAD

crossing. Leisurely now he moved on with the Macedonians,

keeping to the lowland near the shining sea, with the white

summits of Mount Ida and Olympus-in-Asia standing like

beacons ahead of him. When scouts reported the enemy in sight

the Macedonians deployed into twin columns and arrived in

their own good time at a rain-swollen river called the Granicus.

And there they had their first sight of the horsemen of Asia.

While the columns advanced on the river Parmenio and his

young commander studied the forces on the far bank curiously

the fine, rangy horses massed in regiments, the riders strange

in loose trousers and colored capes, with small shields and

sheaves of javelins slung at their hips. For these horsemen were

down at the river's edge, laughing at the silent Macedonians

and shouting insults.

"Yunnani! Tunnani! Who pays 3 r ou to come here? Are you

women to wear kilts?"

Undisturbed by the clamor, Parmenio observed more cavalry

with bows farther back, along the crest of a ridge. He saw also

a phalanx of close-packed spearmen Greek mercenaries. The

whole strength he estimated to be less than his own, and the

order of battle to be childish with the best-armed horsemen,

Persian chivalry, down in the valley at the edge of the turbu-

lent stream shouting challenges.

Coldly he summed up the situation to the restive Alexander,

who was tense with anxiety. "Don't listen to them/ 5 Paraemo

warned, "and don't try to move out across that water it ? s

treacherous and deep in places, and they could maneuver

against us where they like. We would lose alignment and have

to climb out of the water what did you say ?**

Alexander was muttering: "You didn't turn a hair at the

Hellespont, and now you're afraid of this bastard of a stream.**

"All you have to do," Parmenio went on, making no sense

out of the mutter, "is to do nothing. Hold the formations here

go into camp. They've only one good brigade of infantry,

and they won't dare stay near us after dark. They're cavalry.

[119]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

They'll be gone in the morning and you can cross as you will

without hurting a man."

"And what then? They'll be laughing at us still."

This burst of temper seemed to the chief of staff as childish

as the behavior of the Asiatics challenging veteran Mace-

donians to a cavalry skirmish in a river, as if it were a new game.

But Alexander would not let the challenge pass. He ordered the

skirmish line ahead of the columns, down into the Granicus,

and rode off to the Companions on the right. He was not riding

the black horse that day.

Tense with excitement, he pushed through to Philotas and

started the armored horsemen down into the river.

"Come on," he called, leading his regiment down.

Everything disastrous that Parmenio had predicted hap-

pened in the next hour. Alexander, plunging into flood water

up to his knees, turned instinctively down-current, toward the

center of the massed Persian horse. Losing all formation among

the rocks, the Companions stumbled and plowed downstream,

hard hit by flights of javelins, half blinded by spray. Slipping

in the mud, caught against rocks, they wheeled up the far bank

and were met by the rush of horses handled with swift skill.

Their long light spears with cornel-wood shafts snapped like

glass in this press of shields, rocks, and brush. Horses fell and

men crashed down. The surviving Companions pressing close to

Alexander's white plumes and cloak yanked out their short

swords. The Persian leaders headed for the Macedonian chief.

A javelin caught in a joint of Alexander's bronze chest plate,

and his plumes were hacked off. He reached back to his weapon

carrier for a fresh spear, and the man waved the shaft he held,

to show it was broken.

A sword bit deep into Alexander's helmet, stunning him and

driving the sight from his eyes. Crouching, he bent his head and

never saw Black Cleitus, his bodyguard, covering him. A Per-

sian chief, in gleaming gold-washed armor, struck at his bent

[120]

BRIDGEHEAD

head, but Cleitus hacked the descending- arm off at the joint

and held his shield over Alexander.

The Macedonian army kept their leader from going down in

this mad press of bleeding horsemen. Cretan archers put up a

covering discharge of arrows over the disordered Companions,

and Parmenio started the infantry phalanx across the stream

in the confusion. These spearmen worked their way up to firm

footing, out of the mud.

In a little the Persian horse pulled away, and the action

ceased at the river as abruptly as it had begun. Black Cleitus

wiped the sweat from his palms on his kilt and looked Alexander

over. "Well, you are still here," he said.

Alexander could see clearly again, and move all his limbs.

He said nothing, watching under his helmet brim while the

Companions gathered. Then he led them headlong up the slope

at the solid square of the Greek mercenaries, who had not tried

to retreat in the face of cavalry. The sunburned mercenaries

stood their ground like figures of stone behind the hedge of

spear points. And Alexander's horse went down, killed by a

spear point, and he was thrown heavily, bruised, rolling help-

lessly on the ground. By the time he could mount again and: hold

a weapon the surviving Greeks two thousand of them had

laid down their weapons and given themselves up.

By then the swift Persian cavalry had passed out of sight

into the hills and the Macedonians had started searching the

ground for weapons and valuables. The turbulent Granicms

brawled through the valley where men moved busily, making

camp, carrying in the wounded and stacking the weapons.

Alexander had to recall with an effort that his horse had died

and he was riding a strange mount. Black Cleitus had gone,

and Philotas, unmarked, was speaking in cold, clipped words.

"Nearly a hundred of the Companions will have their graves

here."

Going down to the stream, Alexander threw off his helmet

and dipped his head in the icy water. He felt shaken and sud-

[121]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

denly hungry. With some officers Parmenio came up as he was

drying himself. -The chief of staff, impassive, chose his words

carefully. "You took too great a risk, but you did well to angle

into the river. It helped the men behind you." And then, cu-

riously : "Didn't you know the Greek mercenaries had asked for

terms when they were left alone?"

Alexander shook his head, muttering. "They were Greeks,

hired against Greece."

"If you are surprised that Greeks will meet Greeks, then you

will have much amazement in store for you."

Many of the mercenaries, Parmenio explained, were Athe-

nians. Only those who had hidden among the bodies of the dead

had managed to escape. Their commander had been killed, with

most of the noble-born Persians, for the searchers of the field

had identified a son-in-law of the Great King, with an uncle

and other relatives, a viceroy and governor of provinces, and

many general officers. The commander of the Persian cavalry

had committed suicide when the retreat began.

It seemed strange to Alexander that all this had happened and

that so many hours had passed in what he had thought to be

no more than the rush of a few moments. Already dusk was hid-

ing the river and the sunset glow fading along the peaks.

That day had been a bloody business, Parmenio pointed out,

holding in his anger. Too many Companion horsemen had died

in this river. Alexander himself had escaped twice once by

Cleitus's quickness and again by sheer luck. He had endangered

the Companion cavalry and risked defeat, which would have

been a stunning blow to morale at the start of the expedition.

But the men of the phalanx spoke otherwise, among them-

selves. They had suffered less than the cavalry, and it seemed

to them here as at Chaeronea that Alexander had led them in

person to triumph, as if indeed he had in him the spirit of

Enyalios, the god of battles. After that, where Alexander went

no man would refuse to go.

With nightfall reaction gripped Alexander. He went from

[122]

BRIDGEHEAD

fire to fire, watching the physicians at work over the wounded

men, asking the men how they had been hurt and letting them

brag of what they had done that day. He gave order that the

Companions should be buried fully armed and that their

families at home should be freed from harvest tithes and future

service. In this emotional strain he ordered the sculptor Lysip-

pus to make memorial statues of some of the illustrious dead, to

be cast in bronze and placed about the altar pillar erected on the

battlefield. The semblance of these men and the memory must

survive.

Afterward, recovering from the black moodiness, he arranged

for a shipment of spoil to be sent Olympias and Antipater. And

three hundred suits of Asiatic armor to be presented to the

Parthenon at Athens with the inscription: Alexander, son of

Philip, and the Greeks all except the Spartans present this

offering taken from the foreigners of Asia.

So at the same time he sent money home and paid tribute

to Greek patriotism. And he never repeated the mistake of that

headlong rush into the river Granicus. For Alexander learned

the lessons of command quickly.

Much later a hardheaded Roman historian, Arrian, pointed

this out. He was quick to recognize what had to be done, while

others were still held back by iwcertawty. From observation of

facts, Tie was most successful in conjecturing what was likely

to liappen. In danger, he relieved the fear of his men by his

own freedom from fear. Thereafter Tie did quickly and boldly

what had to be done 9 even when he was uncertain of the result.

What had to be done after the action at the Granicus was to

move quickly. Leaving a military commander at the bridgehead

of the strait, the Macedonian army started south down the

coast of Asia, covering twenty miles a day.

Its chief of staff was troubled by more than Alexander's

recklessness. His intelligence had informed him that Memnon

of Rhodes, a veteran commander of mercenaries, had escaped

[123]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

from the field at the Granicus. This same Memnon, alone at the

council before the engagement, had argued that the Persian

command should withdraw slowly before the Macedonians,

avoiding battle and trampling down the crops, burning stocks

of grain and emptying the villages of inhabitants, so the in-

vaders would find no fodder, food, or assistance, on their way.

They might then be led into the interior, to be met there by a

greater mobilization of Persian power and cut off from their

base at the strait. And this was the line of action Parmenio

most feared.

Far inland and out of reach lay the main strength of the

Asiatics. On the other hand, hostile fleets patrolled the coast

and might either cut the Macedonian communications at the

Dardanelles or make a raid upon Greece,, with or without Spar-

tan assistance. And Parmenio heard that Memnon of Rhodes

had gone out to these fleets.

The Macedonians, barred from the sea and the interior, were

marching down the winding coast against time.

[124]

VII THE FIRST SUMMER, AND

THE WINTER

KPEDLY as the Macedonians marched, down the good roads

of a smiling coast, just as quickly realization grew upon

Alexander that they were failing to accomplish their first

and simplest objective. As captain-general of the new Hellenic

League, he was invading Asia to liberate the Greek colonies from

the yoke of the Asiatic king. Well, it seemed that the Greek

colonies did not want to be liberated.

There were ghosts along that fertile Ionic coast, besprinkled

with orchards and pasture lands, with forests, mines, and ware-

houses. Concerning these ghosts his own excellent intelligence

service had not advised him- And he found them both intangible

and difficult to exorcise.

At Mieza they had known a little about the ghosts. How, in

the twilight age after the golden age of the Titans who im-

planted within ancient men a spark of the divine, the Hellenic

tribes had migrated down from the northern forests and steppes

of the mainland, into the coasts and peninsulas of the Mediter-

ranean. Finding little fertile soil on the western shores, many

tribes had adapted themselves to the sea and had voyaged out

to the islands, becoming Peoples of the Sea, like the Sardana

who finally settled in the island of Sardinia.

However, those peoples who had tended east had found better

soil and everlasting forests on this eastern coast, as far down as

the cedars of Liban, watered by winter snow. The Dardana

had stayed put at the mouth of the strait [the Dardanelles].

Other peoples than the Hellenes 1 had migrated thereafter to

traditional dates of this Hellenic expansion are: Arrival along the coasts

and extension to the islands (with the Peoples of the Sea) about 1400-1100,

[125]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

this nearer Asia the warlike Cimmerians coming from as far

away as the steppes north of the Crimea [the Cimmeria] .

So these eastern migrants had found a better land than the

westerners.

Pent up in their narrow valleys, cutting down the scanty

forests, so the slopes soon became bare of trees, and soon exhaust-

ing the rocky soil of the Greek peninsula, the inhabitants of the

Greek polis had begun to migrate over the seas, to found colonies

around the perimeter of the Mediterranean and especially upon

this sunny Ionic coast. Here, as the Macedonians soon discov-

ered, a great variety of crops could be grown more than the

meager olives and wine grapes of Greece proper. Here was fine

clay, ready for the potters' hands, and hardwood timber grow-

ing beside the shipyards. These colonists lived better than the

populace of the mother cities. They no longer cared to be citizens

of Corinth, Thebes, Sparta, or Athens. They held themselves to

be citizens of the new Ionian cities in Asia Minor.

Alexander had brought with him pilots' sketches of the inter-

vening sea, the Aegean. But here on the eastern shore he was

surprised to discover how close he was in time to the mother

cities. A fast-sailing galley could pass with a good wind from an

Asiatic promontory to Athens in thirty hours, whereas the

fastest-marching Macedonian regiment could not reach Athens

by the land roads in a month. Again the sea here was so be-

sprinkled with island chains that at one point sailing craft

could hop-skip to Athens, keeping always within sight of land

there being no more than twenty-five miles in the widest gap

between the islands of the Cyclades chain. Some of these islands

of the Aegean like Rhodes and Lesbos had developed mighty

cities that were now wonders of the world.

with the siege of Troy (western Achaeans vs. eastern Hellenes) toward the end

of that period. Homeric poems 800 (?). Historical extension of western Greeks

by colonization, 750-580. World Wars I and II ("Persian Wars") 499-79. Civil

Wars ("Peloponnesian") 460-04. Philip's campaigns to control Balkans, free

the Macedonian coast, and gain supremacy among Greek cities 357-36. Alex-

ander's crossing into Asia, 334 B.C.

[126]

THE FIRST SUMMER, AND THE WINTER

All in all, these colonies had grown up and become fecund,

hostile to the barren mother cities. Having possessed themselves

of all the good harbors along the coast finer ports than the

narrow anchorages of Greece proper they had become termi-

nals for the trade originating within the vast hinterland behind

them. Caravans from Armenia and Mesopotamia disgorged

their precious goods at these seaports. The shipping here, roped

in masses with prows against the quays, belonged to the seafar-

ing Asiatic Greeks. Goldsmiths who had emigrated from Corinth

found a greater supply of the rare metal here. The actors at

a port like Miletus played to bigger audiences than at Corinth's

theater.

The ghosts of those half -forgotten migrations haunted this

Ionian coast.

Here, too, was a f ulfillment of one of Aristotle's requirements

for an ideal city: a prosperous aristocracy, with leisure time

to study. Slaves from the interior did all the rougher work;

mercenaries supplied the garrisons. The lonians had developed

a leisure class, highly educated, dwelling in marble villas in

cedar-lined gardens set into the cool hillsides. Women of this

class, like the legendary Semiramis, often ruled the cities. They

entertained the Macedonian officers at luxuriant feasts, served

by deft slaves to the music of harp and flute. They liked to quote

Aristophanes's satirical verses, they kept their inner thoughts

hidden, they had traditions of great wealth-producing kings

Midas, Croesus, Gordius they could gamble a dozen talents

upon the throw of dice. Their women shone with garlands of

matched pearls and jasper chains Lesbian and Chian women,

sweet with the dry scent of nard and myrrh. They were drifting

upon a tide of wealth, proud of their family ties, secretive, con-

scious of vast opportunities unknown to the barbaric Mace-

donians.

While the aristocrats of the seaports still spoke classic

Greek, some of the inland folk had forgotten it, and along the

water fronts a new trade-talk vernacular, the koine, had de-

[127]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

veloped. These easterners had only faint, hostile memories of

the glories of Marathon and Salamis. They agreed courteously

that a united Greece, a revived and powerful Hellas, was desir-

able, to join together all the Aegean world. Free democracies

were a splendid thing, no doubt. Yet they were vitally con-

cerned with their trade, and this came from the hinterland

ruled by the Great King, who imposed no greater hardship upon

them than the presence of his tyrants Greek officials who

served him the payment of a light tithe, and possibly the serv-

ice of their warships at intervals.

Very soon the sensitive Alexander realized that these lonians

were aliens, willing to sacrifice nothing for the liberty and glory

of Greece, only agreeing to his plans because he had for the

moment the greater military power on the scene, and because

they were not sure exactly what the next turn of fate would

bring.

"They are worse liars than the Corinthians," the blunt

Nearchus summed up, "but they have grand ships."

Faced by this open acquiescence and secret opposition, Alex-

ander moved very cautiously, deeply disappointed, becoming

aware that here was a moral, not a physical, state of war.

At first his progress had been something like a triumph, and

it had seemed certain the Macedonians were winning their race

with time. Sardis, the terminus of the eastern post road and

headquarters of the Persian administration, had sent out its

councilors to welcome the Macedonian with flowers and songs

the garrison having fled with the Persian tyrant. He had been

escorted within its triple walls, to the summit of the citadel.

Wishing to set up something of his own here, he had arranged

for the building of a new memorial temple, and he had left

Sardis the richer for the contents of the Persian treasury. At

Ephesus the hostile garrison had taken ship, the Greeks impro-

vised a democracy happily on the spur of the moment, and

Alexander surprised them by turning over the revenues to the

new Temple of Artemis for which he had a friendly feeling,

[128]

THE FIRST SUMMER, AND THE WINTER

the old one having burned upon his birthnight. Aristander the

seer, who was now approaching his old home, assured Alexander

that the omens were excellent. Cities were setting up triumphal

pillars, inscribed with their new accord with the captain-general

of Hellas. He was careful to levy no impost on these cities. They

were free, he said, and meant it.

But as he pushed south he began to meet with delay. It

seemed as if these lonians were more concerned about bargain-

ing for privileges than in planning for their new liberty. Cer-

tainly no volunteers of any account joined the Macedonian

army. Miletus, the oldest colony, closed its gates to bargain the

better and to observe the movements of a strong fleet that

appeared along the coast.

"Memnon of Rhodes," Parmenio told his king, "is in com-

mand of that fleet."

, The Macedonians had a few craft converted into warships,

and these were used to close the narrow entrance of the harbor

while negotiations went on with the city. The Milesians would

only offer the- Macedonians the same rights as the Persian

forces enjoyed.

The men, in high spirits, wanted to storm the wall. Deiades

set up new machines. Even the ever-careful Parmenio urged

Alexander to man the ships in the harbor with a few regiments

and go out to engage Memnon's battle fleet. He argued that

the Macedonians could win against odds of two to one, afloat

as on shore, that a victory over the main Persian fleet would

impress all the coast, while a defeat could cost only limited casu-

alties. He offered to command the extemporized fleet himself.

Probably Parmenio was right in his argument. But Alex-

ander, distrusting the situation, had become the soul of cau-

tion. He refused consent.

Parmenio insisted, pointing out that he had an, omen in his

favor. The men had seen an eagle come down from the sky and

alight among them on a rock under the very stern of a war

galley. So the eagle had presaged victory, indicating a ship.

[129]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

"If the eagle stayed on shore," Alexander told him, "we will

stay put on good firm land/ 5

The consequences were not happy. Weeks went by in skir-

mishing, while the Macedonians took over all the nearby sources

of drinking water along the coast and Memnon's fleet, weary

of trying to keep up a blockade without water, drew off to

occupy the great island of Lesbos. This, his first encounter with

a battle fleet, gave Alexander much to think about.

After Miletus resistance increased on the part of the lonians.

Memnon, moving over the open thoroughfare of the waters,

appeared in the monumental city of Halicarnassus with a gar-

rison of Persians and mercenaries. Alexander was forced to

yield to his officers and set up siegeworks on the heights around

that city, where the Macedonians beheld the towered tomb of

Mausolus, the Mausoleum. Yet he made his Macedonians put

on an act rather than a siege by making a great show of setting

up their elevation towers, breaking down sections of the wall

with stone engines, and generally impressing the inhabitants

with the certainty that they were about to launch a terrific

assault.

One incident almost led to a second Thebes. Two warriors

of the phalanx, messmates of Perdiccas's brigade, bored with

demonstrations, engaged in a drinking bout in which each tried

to outboast the other. When really drunk, this highland twain

conceived the idea of proving which was the best man. Putting

on full equipment, they paraded out toward the city wall, fol-

lowed by an interested gallery. Under the wall the two heroes

bellowed a challenge to all Halicarnassians, and they got re-

sults. Soldiers streamed out to annihilate the profane mess-

mates. The two took up a strong position among some rocks,

launched a protective flight of javelins, and held off the attack-

ers. The gallery plunged in to aid the duellists, and other

pezetairi charged up to extricate the gallery. Before the sol-

diers could be pulled away, bringing with them what was left

of the two champions, a miniature battle had been fought out-

side the gates of Halicarnassus.

[ 130 ]

THE FIRST SUMMER, AND THE WINTER

In the end Alexander had to break in, when Memnon started

to burn the city's engines and stores, and to evacuate the walls.

Memnon escaped out to the omnipresent fleet, while the garrison

fortified itself anew in two rocky promontories that could not

be surrounded by the Macedonians. Alexander's officers were

ordered to put out the fires and not to enter the houses of the

city.

He had managed to preserve Halicarnassus, but only at cost

of time and lives. And he had to leave some regiments to block

off the strongholds of the garrison. The city itself, with its

monuments intact, he turned over to a woman to rule for him

to a sister of Mausolus, Ada by name. He paraded the Mace-

donians through the avenues in her honor, and when the grateful

Ada insisted on adopting him as her son he agreed cheerfully.

After Halicarnassus offers of tribute and even a symbolic

gold crown were brought in by envoys from neighboring towns.

The Lady Ada sent a woman's gift, of preserved fruits and rare

seasoned dishes, along with cooks to prepare and serve such

palatial food. This Alexander shared among his officers, inform-

ing his adopted mother that years before his tutor Leonidas

had not allowed him such food from his real mother.

By courier he sent word up the coast that now the Ionian

cities were free to manage their own affairs.

But in his own mind he discarded forever his designation as

captain-general of the Hellenic League. He had lost all hope

of uniting the Greek cities against the Great King. Perhaps he

realized that if these highly separatist cities were welded into a

nation they would forfeit the vestiges of their individual democ-

racy. To these vestiges they still held stubbornly, content often

to be administered by tyrants, so long as the tyrants were of

their own polis. He was neither the first nor the last organizer

to be' baffled by the complexity of the Greek spirit.

Unwilling to plunder the wealthy Ionian cities, yet needing

funds if he was to go on assuming responsibility for their pro-

tection, and needing the services of their seaports he had con-

[131]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

vinced himself that he would get no aid from them. Stubbornly

he held to the splendid coast, determined to work out some solu-

tion for it. Meanwhile he had to work his way down this poten-

tially hostile shore.

His first move was to dismantle his miniature fleet that had

been hugging the harbors and to land the crews explaining

that he had no money to pay them. He would not risk his Mace-

donians on the sea, even after learning of the death of the enemy

commander, Memnon of Rhodes, at Mytilene.

Yet the sea itself came inland to menace the army in so

strange a fashion that the Macedonians took it to be an omen

for certain. The coast road down which they were marching

wound around an arm of the sea. At the end of the arm the

road disappeared.

Here the land rose sheer from the shore, and the way led

across a slimy rock shelf. Surf, beating in through jagged

rocks, swept over the narrow passage, except for brief intervals.

The natives called this gantlet the Ladders of the Sea. They

said that here the deep waters climbed' up the rock upon the

land, to destroy men unless Fate protected them. To risk the

column of the army upon the Ladders of the Sea seemed to be

a most dangerous thing to do, but Alexander did it.

Taking advantage of an offshore wind, he rushed the column,

wagons and all, across the arm of the sea. The deep waters licked

at the legs of the men but did not destroy them. "Alexander's

luck," said some, and others pointed out that now the sea ap-

peared to be friendly and no longer antagonistic.

Nearchus knew that as long as the favorable north wind blew

they had been reasonably safe. "If the wind had changed,"

Ptolemy observed, "you would be singing a different tune. The

dice fell for us, that's all."

Beyond the Ladders of the Sea they became aware of the

activity of human enemies.

Persian gold appeared along the water fronts, and mer-

[132]

THE FIRST SUMMER, AND THE WINTER

cenaries slipped past from the sea toward some destination in-

land. No visible enemies emerged from that vast hinterland,

where a destructive power was making its presence felt. One

of the Companions was caught with gold darics on him, and

proof that he was sending information to the enemy. This officer

was placed under arrest Alexander would inflict no greater

punishment because the Companion had been the first to come

to him, with arms, after Philip's death. There had been no case

of, treachery before; now Parmenio warned Alexander that

enemy gold had been paid for his assassination.

When the Pleiades sank in the southern sky and autumn cold

set in the Macedonians prepared to hold their gains along the

coast of Asia Minor. The newly married men were given leave

to march home a highly popular measure under command of

a certain Coenus, himself separated from a bride. They had

orders to gather what recruits they could in Macedon and

Greece and bring back the new levies with them in the spring.

Alexander started inland with the toughest of the infantry

for a winter's march over the snowy plateau.

This was not so reckless an exploit as it seemed to the

lonians. The tribal folk of the plateau's ranges, Phrygians and

Pisidians, descendants of stocky Hittites and Cimmerians, were

startled at the appearance of disciplined army columns climb-

ing the heights in winter. The Macedonians, being highlanders

themselves, could find their way over mountains, and Alexander

had discovered that mountain people were more accessible in

winter when snow prevented them from retreating to the sum-

mits. As on the coast, he blarneyed and paraded his way among

the barbaric folk and the gigantic monasteries of strange cults,

avoiding serious conflict.

Moreover his highlanders felt at home among pine for-

ests and sheep, and got on with the Phrygians, who were kin-

dred of the Macedonians. The people of one city evacuated

it, upward to a cliff stronghold that looked hard to take.

The experienced Macedonians encircled it and sent word to its

[188]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

defenders not to be fools but to come down and make a treaty.

They answered that they were not fools because they expected

to be reinforced within two days. Alexander then inquired: if

they were not relieved within the two days would they come

down? They said yes. And when the two days were up down

they came and talked over the situation. From such folk as

this Alexander got more volunteers than from the aristocratic

lonians. They were even more superstitious than his Mace-

donians, and he heard how a wagon was preserved in the palace

of Gordium, the largest of the mountain cities, because its

founder was supposed to have arrived on the spot driving a

wagon. Age had sanctified that wagon, until the priests of the

palace at Gordium maintained that it would rest there until a

man should come who could untie the knot that bound the yoke

to the wagon shaft, and if any man could do that he would

become a Great King of Asia.

The mountain folk were curious to see if this impetuous Mace-

donian would dare attempt to loose the knot, because that coun-

try had bred many fine seers and omen-takers like Aristander.

There was a deed of talk about this wagon among the neigh-

bors, Arrian the Roman relates. When Alexander arrived at

Gordiwffi he was very Jceen to go wup into the citadel and see its

wagon, and the cord and yoke of the wagon. Because the saying

had gone aroumd that whosoever loosed the cord from the yoke

would ride Asia. This cord of cornel bark was so tied that its

ends were tucked inside and could not be seen. Alexander could

find no way to loosen the cord., cmd he was afraid now if he failed

it would have a bad effect on the watchers. Some say that he

drew his sword then 9 cmd cut it through. But one who was there

with him says that he pulled out the pin of the wagon-pole. As

this was a wooden peg driven through the yoke and pole, when

he Brew it out the yoke was free cmd the cord came loose. How-

ever that may be, he and his men went out, as if lie had fulfilled

the oracle. And that night the folk heard thwnder in the sky.

During those winter months the rumor spread over the snow-

[134]

THE FIRST SUMMER, AND THE WINTER

bound plateaus of this Asia Minor that the golden-haired

Macedonian youth had in him divine power and that he was

destined to become the monarch of these lands. So thought the

peasant folk, and the Macedonian pezetairi agreed. This popu-

lar rumor had one unexpected result. Thereafter Alexander's

appearance in person upon a scene had something of a shock

effect.

Meanwhile bad news was coming in to the Macedonians rest-

ing at Gordium. The enemy fleets, unhampered by the mild win-

ter winds, had been systematically taking over most of the island

chain in the Aegean and had finally established a base at Tene-

When Coenus came back, at the melting of the snows, with

the new levies some three thousand infantry and three hun-

dred Macedonian horse, with several companies of Thessalians

Alexander learned that these enemy fleets had also appeared

close to his homeland. Antipater had outfitted a few galleys to

patrol the Macedonian coast but was fearful that the Persian

fleet would join with the Spartans to take over Greece. The

Macedonians at home also worried because Alexander's army

seemed now to be cut off.

Whoever made the decision, Alexander announced it. The

Macedonian army would not retreat ; it would advance and try

to eliminate the dangerous fleet by capturing its remaining sea-

ports along this coast of Asia. Such ships as these could not

well keep the sea for more than three days at a time, because

they had to put to shore for water or to cook a meal and let the

men sleep.

Alexander understood that he could not match the Persian

fleet upon the sea, Arrian relates. He "believed that Tie could

break up the Persian fleet by capturing the maritime cities,

because that would deprive it of ports in which to recruit crews

That meant, however, running the risk of meeting the main

Asiatic army, which he knew to be mobilizing somewhere on the

[135]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

plains south of them. If the Macedonians lost a battle on this

far coast it would be hard to find an escape route back to the

Dardanelles.

All this was explained to the general council of the army,

the officers and Companions. They voted to go ahead.

[136]

VIII ISSUS

THEIR FIRST SIGHT of the southland was a bit ominous.

Through the knife slit of a gorge barely wide enough for

a wagon to pass they looked down upon an immense plain

where the earth was the color of blood, sinking down and away

to far mists and a green scum of tropical growth. They stood

at gaze in the semidarkness between gray granite cliffs, whipped

by an icy wind even in midsummer, and contemplated this nether

region of unfamiliar aspect.

The gorge itself they knew to be named the Cilician Gates.

Alexander had occupied it by one of the lucky turns that were

to be so common later. Holding back the main column with the

supply train, he had tried to surprise the force occupying the

gut of the gorge by leading up a few companies of Agrianian

highlanders late at night. The trick had not worked. The Mace-

donians were sighted. But when Alexander was discovered ad-

vancing, his white cape showing through the darkness, the

defense force had evacuated at once.

Now it seemed to the Macedonians as if this red plain might

be an approach to Hades, a descent toward the inner earth.

Down there, the seers of Gordium had told them, strange gods

held power : Dagon and Baal, before whom children were burned

&s an offering. Of nights, at the edge of the sea, seraphim passed,

borne upon three pairs of wings, and the great god Kronos had

two pairs of eyes, so that he slept while he watched, and watched

while he slept. Out on the breast of the sea a city, Tyre, had been

built upon columns of rock by a Semitic people, the Phoenicians,

who burned their dead and worshiped metallic stones that had

[137]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

fallen in flames from the sky and now lay like, blackened iron

upon the face of the earth.

One of these meteorites lay within the city called Jerusalem,

covering an opening that led down into the middle of the earth.

The walls of Jerusalem had been built by a man named Nehe-

miah, above a salt inland sea where plants were poisonous and

the earth was salted, and the very stones were tortured and

blackened.

Moreover, as the Macedonians descended from the gate into

the red plain, the heat of the sun increased markedly, bathing

them in sweat. They sighted a yellow rock upon which an in-

scription had been carved in wedge-shaped marks instead of

writing. The officers were not willing to pass until the strange

writing had been read to them by a scholar of the countryside,

who said it was Assyrian.

Sardanapalus . . . built Tarsus city in a day. But do thou,

stranger, eat, drink and lie with women, for that is best in human

life. So said the inscription. On top of it stood the figure of a

man in strange, kingly robes, with his hands pressed together

as if praying.

The Macedonians, who relished both a jest and a philosophy,

laughed and debated whether it was best to do as Sardanapalus

had said or as he had done.

When the army passed through the Cilician Gates and en-

tered the zone of unseen enemies, a change of mood took place.

Alexander seemed to be anxious, while Parmenio suffered from

nerves. They moved warily, weighing all the information that

came in. During the last winter they had arranged a very useful

intelligence service. The records here mention spies as well as

scouts. How this secret intelligence was formed is not clear. Per-

haps traders, pilgrims, and seamen went in advance, ieaving

information at the villages along the roads for the army to pick

up after them.

Then again the Macedonians kept up continuous observation

as they advanced: observations of the familiar constellations of

[138]

ISSUS

the stars at night, surveys of the distances marched, investiga-

tions by the physicians of new diseases. Both Alexander and

Ptolemy tried to keep up day-by-day journals of such findings.

Regularly they sent home collections for Aristotle's laboratories

new plants, shellfish, animal skins, insect life, and birds. By

interrogating the inhabitants as they advanced they gained

some idea of what lay ahead of the roads, food stocks, and

peoples. By sending a flying column ahead the Macedonians

reached Tarsus, on the river Cydnus, before the enemy could

either defend or demolish it.

There Alexander was laid up for weeks by fever brought on

by his own carelessness. They had raced through the hot, ma-

larial valley and Alexander had stripped and plunged, sweating,

into the river fed by the melting- snows of the mountains. He

was seized with cramps and racked by a stubborn fever, and

the officers feared he had been poisoned.

Then he indulged in one of the dramatic byplays that set all

the camps talking. When the physicians with him failed to check

his fever he called in a certain Philip of Arcarnia, who pre-

scribed a strong purge. At the same time a courier brought in

a secret dispatch from Parmenio warning Alexander not to

trust this same Philip, who was supposed to be an assassin in

the pay of the Great King. Alexander so the story is told

read the dispatch and said nothing. When Philip brought in

the medicine prepared in a goblet Alexander took Parmenio's

message from under his pillow, handing it to the physician as

he took the goblet.

While Philip read the warning the Macedonian drank the

medicine. Those in the tent reported that neither man seemed

disturbed as they looked at each other.

"If you follow my directions," the physician said, handing

back the letter, "you will get well. Otherwise I can't answer for

the result."

The purge prostrated the weakened Alexander, but he kept

Philip in attendance. At that time he placed full trust in those

[139]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

around him. Harpalus, for instance being too sickly for field

service had been put in charge of the small bullion reserve at

Sardis.

The illness of the twenty-one-year-old king-commander

seemed to have changed the luck of the army. Carrying Alex-

ander in a litter, it could move only slowly across the fever-

ridden plain stretching from Tarsus around the Gulf of Issus.

The sick list grew. The Syrian inhabitants of the coast began

to jeer at the columns feeling their way through the heat haze

of marshes. Secret agents of the invisible enemy stirred up

rioting in the towns.

All the signs pointed to misfortune to come, and the spirit

of the camp sank accordingly.

The anxious Parmenio took the strongest units up into the

hills bordering the sea, without finding a trace of the field army

of the Asiatics, which he knew to be within two days' march of

him. Alexander tried to shake the army out of its moodiness.

Seizing on the excuse of favorable news from the north

Ptolemy had come in to report the surrender of the enemy gar-

risons at Halicarnassus he declared a field day, paraded all

forces to music, allowing them to hold games followed by a

torch relay race and a feast at night. After that the sick were

left in quarters at the town of Issus, and the army pushed on

along the coast road with the sea washing its right hand, the

hills pressing close on the left.

And, as if in evidence of the power of hostile gods, rain

deluged the marching men for a day and night.

When the skies cleared, incredible news came in. The evasive

army of Asia had materialized at last, behind the Macedonians.

It had circled them and reached the coast, cut their road back,

and massacred their sick at Issus. The Macedonian officers could

not believe the news.

They sent back some Companions in a fast thirty-oared gal-

ley to observe what might actually be in the valley of Issus.

[140]

ISSUS

And the galley came back with white foam flying and definite

report that the enemy was massing around Issus, filling the

coast between hills and sea. They were cut off.

Certain of that, Alexander held a quick conference of com-

manders, and went out to the regimental officers to announce

the news. His own nerves on edge, he talked volubly, he talked

too much. But he convinced them if he did not convince him-

self that this near disaster was their great opportunity.

"You have never been beaten. You will not be beaten now."

He argued, laughed, and praised. The strength of his pur-

pose went out from him into them with almost physical force.

"Instead of a cavalry division and the Asiatic governors who

were at the Granicus, you will meet here the full array of the

Persians and the Medes, and the Great King. You will have

luck, because they cannot make use of their numbers on this

narrow front, while you can make* full use of your striking

force. You don't have to worry about the flanks the sea and

the mountains will take care of them."

He reminded the barbaric Thracians and Agrianians of their

individual exploits, pointed out that the Macedonian Greeks

were free men, going against the mercenaries Greeks also of

an emperor. And in his anxiety he made a promise. "Go through

with this conflict, and you will find your long labor at an end.

After this your only task will be to occupy the lands of Asia."

Then he had supper served to the men. As soon as it was dark

he about-faced the column and started back, without trying to

re-form on that narrow roadway. About midnight they reached

the narrow pass that opened out into the great bay of Issus.

And here he halted the column and let the men sleep a few hours.

With the first light they advanced again, opening out as the

Mils began to fall away from the shore. They were going into

their fixed battle formation against as they soon discovered

three or four times their own strength.

To understand what happened then, so unexpectedly, at

Issus, it is necessary to understand that these Macedonians were

[141]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

following out a fixed plan of action. The Macedonian army

could do that because it had been seasoned by a generation of"

campaigning. Moreover each unit had been recruited from one

segment of the people. The Agrianian highlanders made up the

best skirmishing regiment, and so forth. So each unit knew its

place, its task to perform, and had gone through with it several

times before. The whole made up something strangely modern,

an experienced fighting team.

Ancient battles before then had consisted usually of two

masses of fighting men which pushed at each other until some-

thing gave way or, as Antigonus had said, until one side be-

came more afraid than the other and ran away. Such a dis-

ciplined mass had been shaped into the hedgehog-like phalanx

to give it power ; in it the Spartans had prevailed over others

because they excelled as individual fighters and because they

could not be stopped unless* they were killed.

But a phalanx became useless when it was broken into. And

Epaminondas the Theban had devised a way to break up the

enemy formation by making the extreme right of his own line

heavier and more powerful than his adversary's. For a time

this Theban thrust-by-the-right had prevailed on fields of battle,

Philip of Macedon had studied the Thebans and improved

upon them. The best infantry phalanx could only attack at a

walk and push with its massed spears. Philip had devised a way

to 'use horsemen for the break-through. He had horsemen and

he armed them heavily. And either he or his commanders worked

out a way to conceal this flying wedge of horsemen until it broke

loose behind the enemy lines and broke up all resistance.

This was the secret maneuver of the Macedonian army which

had given it victory until now. Alexander had done no more than

lead this spearhead of attack through an opening prepared for

him. And Parmenio was justified in saying that the Macedonians

need fear no other army in an orthodox battle.

The maneuver was worked in this way.

As seen by an enemy's eye, only weak units were visible on the

[142]

ISSUS

extreme left of the Macedonians only some archers and skir-

mishers. These served as a screen for the brilliant and fast Thes-

salian horse. (Under Philip's tactics this Macedonian left wing

might put on any kind of an act but was only supposed to hold

its ground, to protect that side of the phalanx.)

The phalanx was the core and center of the Macedonian

formation, with the Greek hoplites nearest the Thessalian cav-

alry, their countrymen. Tough Macedonian peasantry formed

the bulk of the pezetairi, the spearmen. When it closed up, this

MACEDONIANS

ENEMY

t-MACEDONlAN PHMANX

2-MTPASWSTS

3-COMPAN1ON CAVAllY

4-THRAOAN HOe

MACEDONIANS

6- CRETAN ARCHEfiS

7-THESSAUAN MOSS!

a -AttlD UGHT TBOOPS

A, L C 0, E-ENEMY UNITS

PLAN OP MACEDONIAN BREAK-THROUGH

(Note similarity to modern 'football formation)

[143]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

phalanx usually stood eight men deep, with the rearmost carry-

ing the longest sarissa, or pike, of some sixteen feet. The front

rank had the shortest weapon so that all eight weapon points

projected beyond the front line. (Internally the phalanx was

formed in taxis^ or regiments, of 1536 men, also made up of

units down to the stichos, or squad, of eight men a double file,

in the close order.)

In numbers the phalanx was about fourteen thousand strong

at this time, and it was nearly invulnerable to attack. Beside

chest plate and metal helmet and narrow shield, each !man was

equipped with a short but heavy sword for close fighting, if any

occurred. (Each man carried his own kit on the march.)

This particular phalanx, however, did something unusual

and barely noticed by the enemy. It edged forward on the right

advancing, as soldiers say, by echelon on the right.

As it did so a most unusual unit appeared on that side of it

the Hypaspists, or Aiders. They were on foot and heavily

armed, but could fling themselves forward, some three thousand

strong, almost as rapidly as horsemen.

When these Hypaspists advanced Thracian horsemen farther

out also moved ahead. Beyond the Thracians, screening them

and supporting their movement, were the twin regiments of the

Agrianian highlanders and the fine Cretan bowmen. Later these

became Alexander's favorites.

So the Macedonians carried out their plan of battle, with

each unit supporting the other, while they drove something like

a wedge out from their right, deep into the enemy lines.

Then down the center of that opening wedge came the heavy

Companion cavalry at full gallop, picking the opening between

the Hypaspists and the Thracians, smashing through to the rear

of the enemy. The Companions were the best armed and mounted

of all the troops, and they numbered at this time 4bout two

thousand. Usually, after the break-through, they Lwung in-

ward toward the enemy center. But wherever they went the

Hypaspists and the experienced Thracian horse raced after

ISSUS

them. At this point the whole phalanx was apt to advance and

the battle would change to a pursuit.

Such was the maneuver that had been started too soon at

Chaeronea and had been checked in the river Granicus, yet had

brought decisive victory to the Macedonian arms.

Of all the contigents, only the Cretan bowmen served for hire

although the Greek allied units had not come along too will-

ingly. There were auxiliary units : the talented engineers, who

also operated Deiades's siege train, the physicians, and scien-

tists. On the march some barbarian horsemen like the Thracians

served as teamsters, while the light-armed skirmishers doubled

as body servants of the elite Companions. This compact army

of about S7,500, had almost no supernumeraries. Alexander's

Agema, or personal guard, was made up of selected companies

of Companions, Hypaspists, or phalanxmen, in rotation. The

staff then consisted of seven brigade commanders like Perdiccas,

who stayed close to Alexander until an engagement began,

when they went to their commands.

This morning, as usual, Alexander went with the attack forces

toward the hills on the right, while Parmenio took the left flank,

which he was to anchor against the sea.

Alexander, who had probably not slept at all in the night,

showed evidence of being very nervous, as he had reason to be.

His first sight of the half -moon bay showed him such masses

of enemies awaiting him as he had visualized only in dreams

before. This was an army of nations Greek mercenaries, Kurd-

ish infantry ranged on the far side of a large stream, with other

forces spreading over the slope of the hills on his right, and a

cloud of cavalry poised there, as if waiting for the Macedonians

to advance. Behind this battle line other masses of the Asiatics

stretched back to the distant town of Issus.

The shore of the bay was itself like an amphitheater, and not

too large a one, with a narrow entrance gate through which he

had come, and a corresponding gate another narrow pass

[145]

ALEXANDER O# MACEDON

at the far end of the bay behind Issus. He must have seen how

he was outnumbered in horsemen. His infantry could not retreat

now.

Within this natural arena there could be fought no delaying

or holding action. Inevitably one army would be driven back

against a narrow exit, much too small for its passage. Appar-

ently the Asiatics had been following him down the coast road,

and his rapid march back under cover of darkness had caught

them on the shelving bay shore. Only along the shore itself, on

his left,, was, the ground level enough for a massed cavalry

charge.

For an hour or so in the morning he and Parmenio watched

what was happening at the far end of the half -moon, keeping

the Macedonians back, out of good observation by the Persians.

They observed the withdrawal of the cloud of cavalry from the

hillside back over the stream changing its ground to the lower

shore. At the same time the Persian center began to fortify the

steep bank of the stream with wooden barriers.

To counter the move of the Persian cavalry down to the shore

Alexander added the Thracian horse from his own to Parmenio's

command, cautioning them to keep out of sight as they moved.

Then he added the Cretan bowmen, because at all cost Parmenio

had to hold the anchor of the Macedonian line there, on the

level beaches. If the Thracians and Thessalians fought up to

their belts in salt water they had to hold the left flank !

Then he advanced his battle line, to attack. As much as pos-

sible, in the rolling ground, the horsemen were kept out of ob-

servation, behind the infantry. When his men approached the

stream, coming into full view of the masses on the other side,

Alexander rode among them, at high tension, on Bucephalus,

reining in for a quick word with company commanders. The men

cheered. They wanted to go on.

But Alexander kept the four thousand Greek hoplites back

of the phalanx as a reserve. On this narrow front he did not want

his Greeks to meet other Greeks. And always he watched the

[146]

isstrs

mountain flank. They were moving past the Asiatics posted

under the crests, and Alexander must have studied the slopes,

the rocky gullies, and the hollow of the stream ahead of him.

For he sent the Agrianian mountaineers, with bowmen in sup-

port, to clear the slopes above him. They did it by driving the

light forces of the Persians up into the crests.

With these slopes cleared temporarily, Alexander had com-

pleted his observation of them. It was after midday, and he

halted his advance to let the men eat the rations they were carry-

ing.

While the dense Persian ranks were kept under arms, food-

less, he waited. But during this interval he was withdrawing the

Agrianians from the upper slopes, adding them to the Hypas-

pists at the right of the phalanx. He thought that two or three

troops of horse would hold the Persians up on the crests, and

by now he was satisfied that cavalry could move over the shoul-

ders of the hills above him.

Then he started the phalanx forward, in echelon to the right.

These first regiments had to cross the stream at the foot of

the hills where the banks were steep. They got across and forged

up the other bank. When they checked, the companies of Hy-

paspists ran in, drifting to the right. Behind them at a foot

pace Alexander started the Companions moving. His spearhead

of attack was now crossing the* stream, tending uphill.

The center regiments of the phalanx had been stopped at the

barriers behind which the Greek mercenaries massed. But al-

ways, as ordered, they edged to the right, away from the shield-

side.

What Alexander had feared then happened. Down on the

shore the strong Persian cavalry attacked, crossing the stream

and driving into the much weaker Thessalian and Thracian

horse. Still the Companions were held back, while the infantry

gained ground, yard by yard, in front of them. The horsemen

began to come under a heavy discharge of arrows and darts that

set the horses surging.

[147]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

It was too dangerous to hold back longer, and the Companions

were sent forward along the lane that had been cleared on the

hillside. They broke through resistance there and swung sharply

left, racing downhill. At full charge they struck the rear of the

Persian phalanx, with the Hypaspists following after them. The

close-packed Greeks and Persians, trying to re-form, were

driven back.

At this point one man gave up the battle before it was lost.

Darius, the Great King, in his chariot behind the center of the

Persian line, saw the Companions breaking through. He ordered

his chariot back and when it was checked by confusion along

the road he abandoned it and fled on a horse with his personal

guards past Issus.

It was luck that Darius should be a coward. But the deadly

attack that frightened him had been anything but luck. What

might have happened if he had kept his place, in front of his

strong reserves, will never be known. What did happen, as he

raced away, was that those reserves, backed up as far as the

town, were thrown into a tangle of cross movements. Other

units started back. The center phalanx, half enveloped now,

began to give toward the shore.

There the Asiatic cavalry had been having things all its own

way. But it became aware of the panic behind it and swung

around.

It swept past the center, now in full retreat, and plunged

through the infantry drawn up along the road.

Alexander had checked the Companions' advance and waited

until he was satisfied that Parmenio's forces were safe, even if

battered. Then the Companions took up the pursuit along the

foothills, while all the Macedonian units pressed along the road.

The fleeing Asiatics piled up in the narrow pass at the end of

the bay. Ptolemy wrote in his journal afterward that in the

terrible congestion there horsemen suffered as much as men

fleeing on foot, and when the Macedonian cavalry reached the

pass they had to ride over the piled-up bodies of the dead.

The pursuit continued until it was too dark to see what was

[148]

ISSUS

underfoot. And the soldiers brought Alexander the shield,

mantle, and bow of the Great King, which they had found in

the abandoned chariot.

At Issus Alexander had extracted the Macedonian army from

an almost desperate situation. This had been accomplished by

no inspired gamble but by painstaking, relentless efforts. It had

taken him until early afternoon to work the column of Com-

panion cavalry up to the vantage ground of the hillside where,

incidentally, the Persian cavalry had held free tenancy early in

the morning. It was an extraordinary feat to launch a charge

of mounted men down this mountain slope, like a landslide. But

this was the only path possible for the maneuver of the heavy

horse upon which the Macedonians relied, and Alexander cleared

it in time, but only just in time. 1

He had shown here none of the nervous excitement of the

Granicus. Midway through the engagement he had been able

military historians have followed a pattern of comment, in pointing out

that Darius made a fatal mistake by penning up his much more numerous

forces on a narrow front, in rough terrain where cavalry could not easily

operate, and where his superiority in missile fire was largely nullified.

This is all true, but Darius could hardly have anticipated that a full-scale

battle would take place precisely there, on the shore at Issus. We have some

record of the factors influencing his generals. Some three days before Issus a

decision was made not to assume the defensive by waiting on the open Syrian

plain but to go in to attack. The Persian commanders accomplished the diffi-

cult feat of maneuvering a much larger army across the communications of the

Macedonians. They were closing rapidly on the Macedonians when Alexander

turned back sharply to meet them. He caught them still extended in march

column and turned what had been up to then a strategic defeat into a decisive

tactical victory.

As to the argument that the Persian commanders forfeited their best ad-

vantage by leaving the open plain, the Macedonians showed later on at Gauga-

mela what would happen on ground not only open but artificially leveled for

cavalry action.

While the Macedonians had superiority in discipline, they had overwhelming

superiority in command, not only in Alexander's leadership but in the quality

of the brigade commanders. Alexander could not have made the difficult move

over the shoulders of the hills if Parmenio had not held the left flank together

against great pressure; Parmenio could hardly have managed this If the Thes-

salian horse had not accomplished a minor miracle by fighting a successful

defensive action along the open beach.

[149]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

to check the advance of his striking arm, the Companions,

backed in this instance by the Hypaspists and Agrianians, until

he had made certain that the other flank had not been driven

from the edge of the sea.

But it was the relentless and rapid pursuit by the Macedonian

forces that had broken up the Asiatic army of Issus. Nothing so

terrifying had been encountered by armies of the east before,

since they had met with nothing more speedy or destructive than

small masses of Greek hoplites such as Xenophon's ten thousand.

This army of Issus lost all its equipment and was scattered

so widely that it never reassembled. Darius who had lost his

side arms, tents, family, and servants gathered together no

more than four thousand disciplined men in his rapid retreat

east the next day. That retreat continued without a pause until

he had put the Euphrates River between him and the dreaded

Macedonians.

After Issus the young Macedonian leader gave no evidence

of the hysterical reaction that followed the fighting at the

Granicus, He seemed both tired and thoughtful, and was both-

ered besides by a painful sword wound in the hip, so that he had

to be helped around and did not mount Bucephalus for a few

days.

The nest day at the burial of the dead and the selection of

new officers he paraded the forces to music. He included the

townspeople of Issus in this solemn thanksgiving by remitting

the tribute due from them and not yet paid. A large part of

the Persian treasure found in the abandoned carnp some three

thousand talents he ordered distributed among officers who

had distinguished themselves. Discovering that the main Persian

baggage train, corps of servants, and treasure had been left at

the base at Damascus beyond the coast range, he asked Par-

menio to go after it at once, taking the Thessalian horse who

had managed to hold the beach that day thus giving the war-

riors of Thessaly first chance at greater loot.

[150]

ISSUS

When Parmenio unearthed at Damascus a group of envoys

from Greece who had been negotiating with the Great King,

Alexander made a point of including them in his gesture of

liberation, dismissing the charge of treason laid against them

by Parmenio. He found odd reasons for such amnesty. The two

agents from Thebes, he said, were guiltless because Thebes

itself had been destroyed by Macedonians (so that in seek-

ing aid from the Great King they were acting as patriots).

Other agents he dismissed because they had won honor in the

Olympic games. Finding Iphicrates, the son of the great general

of mercenaries, among the Athenians, he kept the soldier with

him as adviser; even the Spartan agent he kept only under

observation.

He wanted no more enemies along this coast of Asia, and his

policy of sheer generosity utterly unexpected, after the near

disaster at Issus impressed these suspicious people strongly.

Shipbuilders sailed in from Cyprus to investigate the new

state of affairs and to offer their services. Keepers of the ancient

shrines on the islet of Aradus petitioned him to make sacrifice

at their altars, and emissaries of the merchant-trading houses

of Beirut brought gifts and an invitation to visit their garden

city built against the breast of the mighty Lebanon founded,,

so they said, by the sea nymph Beroe or perhaps by the goddess

Astarte who had appeared out of the forest riding a lion. (Actu-

ally Beirut is a Semitic name, its meaning, The Wells.)

It seemed to these easterners that Alexander possessed a

power which could derive only from the gods. Besides, they esti-

mated that he would influence the course of trade for at least

two years.

[151]

IX THE WOMAN OF DAMASCUS

IF THE YOUNG LEADER showed only healthy gratitude when

darkness came down on Issus and they learned that the

defeat of the Asiatics had been a complete rout, the officers

became nearly hysterical in their excitement. While Alexander

had been returning along the escape road, many of them had

been investigating the immense Persian field camp, captured

intact with its tents standing and food ready to serve.

Promptly they led Alexander within a barricade now with-

out guards to a group of pavilions where lamp flames flickered

through colored glass. They walked in on carpets, showed Alex-

ander an onyx bath filled with scented water. He started to take

off his arms.

"Let's wash off the dirt," he said, "in Darius' bath."

"Not in Darius'," someone corrected him, "in Alexander's."

Stripped, he examined curiously the silver water jars,

wrought-gold ointment vessels, and glass scent throwers. They

put him in the portable tub, sluiced him with fresh water, rubbed

him down with nard, and saturated the air with rose water.

"So this is royalty," Alexander said. The towels were im-

mense and soft as duck down. The colored lights shed illusion

over the hard sunburned faces of his friends.

Draped in one huge towel, Alexander laughed, shouting for

cooks and supper.

"Well, look," yelled the Companions.

They led him through a curtain. There low tables of hard-

wood inlaid with ivory figures had been loaded with fruits,

spiced meats, and rice, in gold dishes. Embroidered quilts lay

[152]

THE WOMAN OF DAMASCUS

around the tables. Surveying these, Alexander ordered most of

the rich food carried outside to other officers' mess. Even in

Corinth he had never seen so much food in one room. He lay

down on a quilt, peering at the embroidered pattern of heraldic

beasts fighting each other, his injured hip swollen into a knot

of torture.

Pouring libations, gulping wine, snapping dirty jests, the

Companions reveled, wiping at their own hurts. Coldly schem-

ing, ambitious, they were gifted builders, and deceivers. They

felt that night something like awe for the big tired man with the

unchanging, questioning blue eyes who had grown up with them.

Between goblets they called him Achilles, and Heracles. They had

'seen sacks weighted with gold coins, they were eating sweetened

food from gold plates, and that man in the towel had driven

the Great King, the King of the Lands of the Earth driven

him headlong, on a racing horse into the night. Why, Darius

I had merely stopped trying after Marathon and had turned

back with his armada; the royal Xerxes had gone off after

Salamis in state with the Phoenician fleet. But here, this night,

on Asia's soil . . .

They called him Enyalios and got up to pat his shoulder and

kiss his cheek. They had found Asiatic women in the camp, slen-

der Syrian girls, small, trim Cypriotes, half -negroid girls from

Memphis and other kinds they did not identify. Besides, they

had Alexander's promise that the last great battle was behind

them, and usually they could prevail on him to keep a promise.

Sipping his wine, Alexander listened to them, not caring to

drink but feeling warm and comfortable in their exultation.

Then he heard the shrill wailing of women.

What was that? Only, they told him, the women of the Great

King in the tents next this dining pavilion. The women who had

seen or heard of Darius's shield and bow brought back from

that road. ... So they thought he was dead, and they wailed.

Who were they?

The mother o Darius, the wife of Darius whose name

[153]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

sounded like Statira, who had a better figure than Thais, a real

beauty and a couple of daughters, along with an infant son.

Calling over Hephaestion (or, as some say, Leonnatus) Alex-

ander gave instructions about the royal women. "Tell them all

I have of Darius' cwre the shield and bow. Darius is alive. Tell

them. And" he made decisions swiftly "give them my assur-

ance that they shall be now as they were before. Have they

servants ? Yes, well, they are to keep those servants "

"Eunuchs too?" someone asked.

"All of them. What money was paid them before they shall

have in the future. And they shall not be approached without

ceremony."

Even the drunkest of the company fell silent at this. It meant

that Alexander would keep the royal Asiatic women hostages,

apparently for a long time. It meant that all Macedonian officers

would have to avoid the sanctuary of these women, because high-

born Asiatics secluded their females even more closely than the

Greeks. It meant, lastly, that Alexander did not intend to

enjoy physically the heaven-sent opportunity of having the

daughters and the wife of his enemy.

"But," objected one, "the beauty of these Persian women!"

"Their beauty," said Alexander, "is a torment to my eyes."

The Companions found no comfort in these words. The physi-

cal attraction of the oriental women was no torment to them.

Most of them had been separated from their homes for a year

and a half, except for some of the newly wedded, and most of

them had had only longing for companionship.

They did not understand Alexander.

Few of them seemed to believe what was often said, that

Hephaestion and the king were inseparable, and lovers. Such

homosexuality among the Greeks was common enough had

been more common than not in the Sacred Band of Thebes who

had died for the most part at Chaeronea. Besides, there was

often a mystical soul fellowship shared by two men. That would

not have troubled the army officers.

[154]

THE WOMAN OF DAMASCUS

Alexander, however, appeared to be an ascetic. His thoughts

were bound up too much in sacrifice and fasting and nightly

study. Yet they felt that he had too much vitality in him to be

a true ascetic. And the army had no desire to practice such

asceticism.

A few days later Alexander laid down another premise. He

sent a written order to Parmenio to try, and to execute if found

guilty, two of his officers who had violated the wife of an allied

officer. The women of allies, whether barbarian, Asiatic, or

Greek, should be respected as their own. "Such men as those

two are to be treated as wild beasts," the letter ended.

Just about this time one of his own staff wrote to say that a

certain Theodorus of Tarento had two lovely boys- for sale.

Alexander, reading, was heard to mutter, "What filth have all

of you observed in me, to offer me such boys?" And he dictated

a short answer to his lieutenant: "Alexander to Philolexus,

greeting. This Theodorus and his merchandise can go to hell

with my good wishes.' 9

When he received another offer of a Corinthian boy, he lost

his temper. And Parmenio, getting wind of the army's talk,

rode in for a discussion with his young commander on the sub-

ject of women.

Probably the chief of staff pointed out that Alexander had

no wife, mistress, or child, or even a Greek prostitute. He,

Parmenio, had sons of his sons Philotas and Nicanor, serving

with the army. Even Harpalus had a son who was an officer. 1

Without a son to succeed him when he died, Alexander would

become more alone. Such a condition was abnormal, and bad for

his health. Besides, there was the question of succession to the

throne, et cetera. . . .

"You call these barbarian "women soulless dolls," Parmenio

reminded him. "Since you would not marry in Macedon, it is

a Boys in that Hellenic age often married at fifteen or sixteen. And they might

serve as cadets in the army even younger. Often men of twenty-five were

veterans of ten years' service. The Macedonian commanders were young, on the

average, but had seen almost continued service.

[155]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

better to take a common barbarian girl into your bed than a

woman of royal Asiatic birth."

Alexander had seemed to avoid women. Undoubtedly, after

freeing himself from his mother's morbid domination, he saw

something of his mother in other women. The death of Cleo-

patra's baby and his father's obsession with mistresses might

have influenced him, sensitive as he was. It seems also that he

did not like to have prostitutes following the tents of the higher

officers. To this he could not well object if he had such women

of his own.

Whether Parmenio's advice decided him, or whether he was

attracted to her, soon after that he did take a woman into his

tent, on the coast. He singled out Barsine, the widow of Memnon

of Rhodes, who happened to be among the captives taken at

Damascus.

Of Barsine it is known that she was quiet and gentle, daughter

of a noble Persian house but educated in a Greek school. She

must have been a few years older than he.

Certainly Barsine did not try to influence Alexander. Placidly

she kept to her own quarters, working with her few servants,

listening to such talk of the men as she happened to hear, and

making no demands for herself.

Calm in her seclusion, the widow Barsine accepted Alexander

as neither an honor to her nor a punishment. To other men she

appeared as a shadow in the curtained space that was her por-

tion of the pavilion. Yet Alexander seemed to find rest in her

tranquillity.

The quick-witted Ptolemy noticed this. And he quoted a verse

describing the loneliness of the King Menelaus beyond the seas :

"So much Tie grieves, this queen beyond the seas this phantom

queen mil walk within his halls and guide him on the winged

path of sleep. 99

Yet the army as a whole was pleased that he had taken Ber-

sine into his tent. Alexander did not find it so easy a matter to

dispose of the question of women in the army camps.

[156]

THE WOMAN OF DAMASCUS

Probably Alexander never understood Barsine. Before him,,

she had known a brave and shrewd man, Memnon of Rhodes, a

state builder who had nonetheless given his loyalty to the Great

King. The Macedonians had respected Memnon ; now they had

no such respect for Darius, who had left his army, his women,

and his weapon's behind him when he had become afraid. Greatly

as Alexander had been afraid, in the chill anxiety of stress he

knew now that he would never turn and run, to escape. The force

driving him on toward danger was inflexible ; it was greater than

his own dread or foreboding. ,

Not that Barsine shared such thoughts. There was little in

Alexander for her to share. Before sunup he made sacrifice

alone, at the rocks outside the pavilions, overlooking the sea.

When he flung himself down in the tent entrance to eat grapes

and barley cake, officers would be sitting around to talk to him.

When he took his stand outside the Agema post, bareheaded, in

the sun's warmth, there would be groups of soldiers or country

people with charges and pleas and petitions. For Alexander,

when he first entered a country, made a point of hearing civilian

cases as well as the military matters of routine. By discovering

the problems of individuals he thought he could begin to under-

stand the needs of the country.

No lawmen appeared to argue at such times, nor did spokes-

men present the views of a class ; because rights belonged to the

individual, who must accordingly explain his own point of view.

Most men here could speak Greek or the universal JcoinS; those

who spoke only Aramaic or the Semitic dialects brought inter-

preters.

Even when no officers or petitioners stood before the tents

Barsine did not find the Macedonian idle ; he dictated letters to

a young Greek as swiftly as he had heard the judgment cases.

Once he had made a decision it passed from his mind. But he

kept a multitude of details in his memory. After receiving the

list of treasure stored at Damascus, he sent eight hundred

talents back to Aristotle for the expenses of the philosopher's

[157]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

new Lyceum, and he picked out a hundredweight of precious

myrrh to send to Leonidas, his first tutor. He dictated a letter:

"So that you, Leonidas, will not need to skimp the offering to

the gods."

It seemed that ten years ago Leonidas had censored Alexan-

der for throwing too much incense on the embers. Another

tutor, Lysimachus, now gray in the beard, had come along with

the scientists, although his only skill lay in reading Greek. Alex-

ander let the old man potter among the manuscripts that filled

a chest in their sleeping room. Sometimes at night he had Lysim-

achus read from Aeschylus, while he lay outstretched, his

muscles relaxed. Usually he did not sleep until after the middle

of the night. There were mornings, after a rest period in camp,

when Alexander lay with his head buried in his arms, oblivious,

until the heat of noon, being drunk with fatigue, not with wine.

Barsine noticed that these spells of oblivion came after a quiet

day, not upon the march or when the Macedonians were debat-

ing important problems. At such times she would not wake him.

When marching, he would not use a shaded litter. Usually he

walked, passing from one unit to another, talking with the men.

Or he took bows and rode off to the side, to hunt game. When he

was in a chariot he liked to practice jumping on and off at a full

gallop yet he did not like to watch violence in games.

Barsine noticed that when a budget of letters came from dis-

tant Macedon he opened first those from Antipater, smiling as

he read, laying them aside carelessly. The missives from Olym-

pias his mother he would let no one else see, except occasionally

his silent shadow Etephaestion, and then he touched Hephaes-

tion's lips afterward with his seal ring, so that the other would

speak no word of what he had read. Barsine understood from

the talk of the men that Antipater, the military regent in Mace-

don, complained as bitterly of Olympias as the queen mother

complained of Antipater.

"Doesn't the fool know," Alexander burst out once, "that all

his argument avails nothing against one tear of a mother? 55

[158]

THE WOMAN OF DAMASCUS

This sudden impatience with people frightened Barsine a

little. Because Alexander did not seem to be irritated by acci-

dents or failure. He was very patient when things went wrong.

But people could anger him quickly and seriously when they

failed to do what he had expected. He had a way of looking at

them, his open blue eyes questioning, not amused or puzzled, as

if stripping away the mask of their flesh and thinking nothing

of their words, but searching for what was hidden in them. As

if he searched for something more than human flesh, and, finding

it, became angered or pleased. He could be deceived easily by a

clever lie, but he could not be deceived so easily as to the inner

nature of men whom he had met face to face.

The quick-witted, caustic, and unscrupulous Ptoleiny, son of

Lagus, tricked Alexander often into doing things, and Alex-

ander must have known it ; yet he trusted Ptolemy with more

and more responsibility. While the most brilliant of the Com-

panion officers, Philotas, son of Parmenio, who went about with

an escort of aids and experts, like a small monarch, and carried

out orders faultlessly when this Philotas left him, Barsine ob-

served how he struggled with uncertainty and voiceless anger.

Outwardly he treated both officers alike ; inwardly he seemed to

feel that Ptolemy could do no wrong not even when he paraded

a new mistress, shining with gems and silks, in his chariot -

while Philotas could do nothing right.

Barsine thought that Ptolemy, who might have been fathered

by Philip, was a dangerous rival more dangerous as Alexan-

der's power increased. Whereas Philotas was the son of Par-

menio, whose loyalty only an insane man would have questioned.

She wondered if Alexander was actually as sane as other men*

Once when she had put on a trinket given her by a slave on a

feast day, a twisted snake of green copper, Alexander had torn

it off her arm the instant he saw it. He had hurt her hand. And

he had thrown it off the rocks of the shrine, down into the surf.

Nor did he make any excuse to her for doing it.

[159]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

After that she was afraid that Alexander would discover her

own secret.

The only evidence of that secret lay concealed in a miniature

ivory gem case, not locked with a key but cleverly held shut by

a hidden catch. This case she kept with her more intimate pos-

sessions and never opened it unless alone in the tent, when moon-

light allowed her to look into the case without the risk that other

eyes might see what it held.

After throwing away the snake Alexander brought her an-

other bracelet of gold set with moonstones, without any snakes.

This Barsine wore daily, to please him, although she used nc

other jewelry even the fillet binding her brown hair was no

more than a band of gilded leaves. Alexander noticed that.

Then they brought him the casket. Some soldiers offered it as

a gift, because it had tiny figures of winged royal heads on it,

and they thought it fitting for him. Jesting with them, he asked

what precious thing they had in mind that he should keep in

this fine. casket. And when they laughed, suggesting this and

that, he took up an old manuscript book of the Iliad that he

kept near his bed and a declared he had nothing more precious

than that, and it fitted into the new casket nicely. But Barsine

felt frightened because, like herself, Alexander kept no private

store of valuables about him. Usually he gave away the carved

gems and gold images that came into his hands. Nor did he make

use of Darius's ornamented pavilions or the gold plat$ service

only using the onyx bath'because he liked it and said it reminded

him of Issus.

So when Alexander placed the silver casket near his couch

Barsine tried to keep the small gem case out of his sight. What

it held was most precious to her.

Whether he observed that she concealed the case she could

not tell. But one evening when the lamps were lighted she found

him poised over her corner of the sleeping tent where her clothes

chest stood and her combs, bronze mirror, and slippers were

ranged. Except for ointment boxes and fibulae and a little

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THE WOMAN OF DAMASCUS

terra-cotta model of a ship, Barsine possessed nothing more.

She did not want to have about her now what she had had before,

because those things of the past grieved her. But she had not

been able to part with the things hidden within the case.

Alexander lifted the veil covering the ivory box. Holding it

lightly in his fingers, he gazed at it, his body still. His fingers

moved, searching for a lock.

"It holds no poison," Barsine smiled at him, "for you or for

me."

At once his eyes probed her, looking through her 'face which

he knew so well, seeking for what lay hidden within her. She

felt as if he had pulled a veil away from her and was looking

inside her body, angered. She thought of words she might say,

and then she reached forward and pressed the corner of the case.

Inside gleamed the precious things, set in order, the arm-

bands, the miniature tiara and earrings, and all the personal

jewelry of a woman, each piece inscribed with minute letters,

The love of Memnon of Rhodes. Alexander examined a bracelet

of thin silver, put it back, closed the lid, and gave her the case,

"You need not wear the bracelet of Alexander of Macedon,"

he said, and went away, seemingly forgetting her secret from

that moment. But when, months later, he began his journey to

the east, he did not take Barsine, the widow of Memnon.

Still, he had been influenced by this woman who had first

shared his life -physically. She had been a woman of the east,

not a Macedonian.

Alexander had spent months on the Syrian coast during the

second winter watching the sea. Unable to go out on it, he stud-

ied it the fishing craft using nets inshore, the war and mer-

chant fleets passing far out, against the sunset, avoiding the

shore now that he occupied it. For this Syrian coast was his.

It stood back against the far-off snow of mountains ; it mur-

mured pleasantly where streams flowed down to the towns al-

most touching each other, to the small harbors, man-made.

[161]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

Along the coast road threaded camel, mule, and cart caravans,

the drivers often singing in the warm winter sun.

The Macedonian coast had been mist-bound, almost deserted.

This shore was both a garden and a gateway to a whole world.

There had been no more than forests and barbarian folk

behind the Macedonian shore. Behind him, here, millions of

human beings wandered over trade routes, climbed to aged

shrine summits, and led their children through streets imme-

morially old. The rocks where he sacrificed were marked with

figures that had never been made by Greek hands. This coast

had changed masters but it had not changed its nature, like the

shores of Greece.

In the limestone cliffs he saw where quarries could take out

the stone ; in the river beds, where clay could be taken for pot-

tery. In the groves of the Lebanon the trees stood tall and

straight, ready shaped by natural growth for long ships and

great houses. Already his workmen were taking out the stone

and timber, on sledges, down to Tyre.

These things Alexander saw because his fathers had been

tribal chieftains, ordering the planting of crops and breeding

of animals, ministering to sickness and compensating for death

by violence among the folk who served them. Alexander, study-

ing the strange coast with patient eyes, thought of what could

be built and what could be grown here, where his ancestors had

never ventured. He thought of the needs of human beings and

the use of things, not of plans or laws. A barbarian himself, he

had been taught in Aristotle's school to rely upon natural forces

as he could shape them, and not upon abstract ideas. In the

natural world nothing emsts without a purpose.

If that purpose could be known . . .

The months after Issus had freed him from his worst anxi-

eties. The gold reserve and valuables found at Damascus allowed

him to send more treasure home and to support his expedition

here for a year or so. Volunteers had come in, numerous enough

[162]

THE WOMAN OF DAMASCUS

to make good his losses. And he no longer had to play the part

of a captain-general of Hellas.

Moreover ambassadors had arrived from the Great King,

bringing a weak, bargaining letter and adding their pleas to it.

They had asked the Macedonian to cease injuring the countries

of Asia, to agree to a peace with the Great King, and to return

to him his family.

I am here as commander in chief of all the Greeks, Alexander

had written in answer, because your agents instigated the mur-

der of my father and corrupted my -friends. You sent money to

the Spartwis, to create enmity against me and dissolve the,

league of which I am head. You say the battle was decided ~by

will of the gods. Then am I here in possession of your lands by

the will of the gods. I am protecting the men of yours who came

to me of their own will. As my father was killed, so was Arses,

the ruler of this land, killed by you, a usurper, in violation of

the law of the Persians and Medes. &

Come to me then and ask for your motlier, your wife, and

your children. Ask for what you will and it shall be granted, and

you shall be safe. Only come and ask as of the King of Asia, who

is no longer your equal but lord of your lands. If you dispute

this, you ccm fight another battle; but do not rim away. For

wherever you are, I intend to march against you.

He instructed his envoys to deliver the letter but not to talk

about it. He did not think it would add to Darius's peace of

mind.

The staff devoted some thought to Darius's state of mind.

War they knew to be merciless; but war embraced more than

any clash of armed forces. War could be controlled 6y human

minds, so its success or failure depended upon human minds

that is, upon such qualities of mind as the will to resist, or to

attack, or to endure. Had not these very Persians sapped the

will of the Greeks by feeding them luxuries? Did not this Great

King still control the seas because he had made it more profit-

able to the Phoenicians, Cypriotes, and Rhodians to collaborate

[163]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

with him than to preserve their own independence in trade?

Had not the brilliant Greek generals learned the value of treach-

ery and tricks? What else had been the famous wooden horse

that the Trojans themselves hauled into the gate of Troy?

It was both easier and more saving of life to attack an enemy's

state of mind than to advance against an enemy's horsemen.

Antigonus had developed a whole technique of intimidation and

deception, and Ptolemy was proving an apt pupil. Only Alex-

ander seemed backward in grasping this new method of war-

fare.

Alexander went along, daydreaming about building, intent

on exploring, until he was caught in difficulties. Then he fought

his way out brilliantly. It was almost as if he believed in

fate. . . .

In this war against the mind of Darius the staff and the

philosophers had been at great pains to earn the friendship

of the Syrian coast; here no traitors had been executed, no

prisoners confined to labor. No payments had been levied on

the rich cities, which instead were now free to choose their own

form of government. Volunteers were honorably received even

the captive family of Darius was treated with exactly the same

honor as had been theirs by right.

Only Darius was held up to scorn, in the open letter sent him.

After receiving that letter and not being allowed to discuss it

with the envoys Darius could have only two possible alterna-

tives open to him : to come back to the coast to give battle with

a new army, or to separate himself entirely from the coast, never

venturing hither again. Alexander had agreed perfectly with

the wording of this letter ; in fact he had phrased it himself.

Parmenio, Antigonus, and Ptolemy guessed which alternative

Darius would take. They based their guess on the facts that

the so-called Great King of Asia had fled helplessly from the

Macedonians in battle. and that the captivity of his family must

be tormenting him. So they expected him to surrender all the

Mediterranean coast to get his family back and to secure

[164]

THE WOMAN OF DAMASCUS

Macedonian recognition that he was indeed the Great King,

of the vastly greater eastern portion of his dominion. The event

proved them right.

But shrewder minds than theirs had reasoned otherwise in

Tyre. And now Tyre resisted them.

[165]

X GATES OF THE SEA

THE MEN OF TYRE were the most experienced politicians

of the eastern Mediterranean world.

For a millennium they had balanced risks and seized

advantage, and prospered and gained power. People called

their city the mistress of the seas not the master of the seas.

They were called Phoenicians, their city the Gate of the Sea.

About them the Macedonians heard vague traditions. In the

dawn of time they had controlled the caravan trade within the

Red Land, the great Arabian desert now, facing the Red Sea.

With the caravans they had appeared in time upon the coasts

and had adapted themselves easily to shipbuilding and coastal

trading by ship. They had built larger ships. They had sailed

to Cyprus and North Africa. In order to lay up 'their great

trading vessels during the winter storms they had built winter

bases in the west, with warehouses to store the goods and forts

to guard them. These bases had grown into colonies, and in

time the colonies outgrew the mother cities, except for Tyre

which had been the offspring of Sidon, the first Gate of the

Sea, where the caravan route from Damascus, passing Mount

Hermon, had terminated at the coast. Now the aged mother

Sidon struggled for life against the mature child, in deadly

rivalry as Tyre struggled with its own child, Carthage.

For the inhabitants of Tyre were Phoenicians, Canaanites,

raising themselves to a high standard of wealth, dispossessing

rivals, striving to gain monopoly of the Mediterranean trade in

purple dye, in glass, perfumes, gems, and slaves. Their god had

been the El of the deserts, the one creator of life upon the

[166]

GATES OF THE SEA

earth. (The Macedonians thought of the Immovable Mover of

Aristotle.) But now their concept of El had changed to the hot

worship of god-masters, Baal and Dagon. Before the giant

images of Baal and Dagon they burned sacrifices.

The Sidonian Phoenicians accepted the presence of the Mace-

donians gratefully, and Alexander ordered a sport stadium

built on the hill behind Sidon. Their rivals of Tyre reasoned

that the Macedonians were a small army, bound to move else-

where in time, victorious, of course in the spectacular affair of

Issus, but strategically in a weak position, holding to a narrow

coast, between the land power of the Great Bang and the sea

power of Tyre or rather of the fleet of Tyre, allied to the

fleets of Cyprus and Egypt.

Also their city of Tyre was situated on an island off this coast,

where an army on land could not besiege it. At least it had suc-

cessfully resisted other sieges.

Quite plainly the Tyrians could expect no advantage at all

from opening their city to the Macedonians. On the other hand,

they could foresee a great and real advantage in maintaining

their strongpoint here between the sea and the land, balancing

themselves between the temporarily successful Macedonian

force and the ultimately victorious forces of inner Asia. By pre-

serving the Mediterranean fleet for the Great King they could

claim renewed privileges, monopolies, and rewards, at the ex-

pense of Sidon, which had gone over to the Macedonians.

So they bargained, as the Milesians had bargained, and that

made Alexander furious, because he had no patience with bar-

gaining- he wanted either friendship or enmity. There was a

preamble of deception on both sides, the Macedonian command-

ers requesting only permission to allow the army to visit the

shrine of Heracles within Tyre, while the Tyrians suggested

visiting instead the much older shrine on the mainland opposite

Tyre, and hinting that they would agree to bar out Persian

agents as well as Macedonian soldiers.

[167]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

Thereupon the Macedonian army council reached the deci-

sion to besiege Tyre for reasons given by Arrian :

To advance the expedition into Egypt would not be safe, as

long as the Persians hold mastery of the sea. Nor mil it be safe

to advance inland. The situation in Greece is too doubtful,

with the Spartans ready to move against us and the Athenians

restrained only by -fear of us.

But if we capture Tyre the remaining fleets of the Phoe-

nicians must come over to us, having no ports to go to. Cyprus

will then need to grant us the use of her fleet. When that hap-

pens we shall hold the mastery of the sea and its islands. Then

we can make the advance into Egypt without effort. With

Egypt secured, and the sea controlled, we need have no further

anxiety about Greece. Our own land mil be safe. And we could

then, if we so decide^ undertake the expedition inland to Baby-

lon with greater security because we will hold all maritime

cities cmd the territory as far as the Euphrates. And we will

have more prestige tha/n now.

This plan of action if it was indeed exactly their plan,

as Arrian and others relate was amazing for two reasons.

First, they ignored the probability that they might not take

Tyre or that Darius would attack during the siege. Second,

this plan was actually carried out in all its t successive steps

(although the final step was taken against the bitter opposition

of Parmenio and some of the staff).

It called for taking successive risks amounting to a gamble.

Yet the gamble would be for high stakes. This daring became

characteristic of Alexander's actions during the next years.

He began to take extreme risks for the greatest possible gain.

He avoided wasting time, effort, or men for small gains, no

matter how sure.

The men in the ranks felt dubious about Tyre. They remem-

bered that Philip had never allowed them to be drawn into a

major siege operation, while the oracles had foretold that the

sea would be baneful to Alexander.

[168]

GATES OF THE SEA

Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps because he actually had

such a dream on this shore opposite Tyre, Alexander related

how the hero-god Heracles had appeared to him in his sleep and

had taken him by the hand to guide his steps down to the shore.

Called upon to explain this portent, Aristander the Telemessan

pondered it and declared it meant that the Macedonians would

succeed at Tyre, but only with extreme labor because Hera-

cles had achieved miracles by great toil.

The Canaanites told Deiades, chief of the Macedonian engi-

neers, that once the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar had besieged

Tyre from the land, and had gone away after a long time,

leaving it as it was. After how long a time? "After fifteen years,"

said the Canaanites.

There were only three ways by which men could capture a

walled city. By introducing a few men to open a gate or hold

a spot on the wall so that others could get in after them as

had been done in historic Troy by a small band disguised as

horse herders (not by the fabulous wooden horse) or this

might be accomplished by treachery. The Macedonians much

preferred this first method, because it was much easier to open

a gate than to break it down. The second method was to batter

down enough of the wall to admit the head of a storming col-

umn. This had the disadvantage that the defenders usually

built a second wall inside the breach, and after that a barrier

within the streets. The third method was to wait outside until

the defenders ran out of food or otherwise broke down.

None of these methods seemed to fit the case of Tyre.

A prolonged survey revealed to the Macedonian engineers

the following situation. The island of Tyre consisted of a rock

foundation, with stone walls rising sheer from the rock.

This island fortress lay about a half mile out from the shore.

For the greater part of the way out the water was shallow, the

bottom being rock pools and reefs. Near the city the water deep-

ened to an eighteen-foot channel.

[169]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

Tyre had two harbors, also fortified. The one on the southern

side, called the Egyptian harbor, was a small indentation with

a narrow entrance closed by a boom. The one on the northern

side, called the Sidonian, was somewhat larger but also in the

nature of an interior basin, and its entrance could be closed by

the prows of three war galleys moored thwart to thwart.

Secured by these basins, Tyre kept a small but most serviceable

fleet of warships galleys armed with sharp brazen beaks and

stone-casting engines. In addition, Tyre's merchant fleet car-

ried on business as usual, bringing in supplies as needed even

some siege experts, later on, from the colony at Carthage.

On their part the Macedonians had no fleet. So the first and

third alternatives by which a walled city could be entered were

impossible. (Of course by the first and best alternative a

few men might be landed against the walls at night, or even a

gate opened by the hand of treachery. But that would serve

no purpose as long as the attacking army could not follow, over

the water.)

Now there is no record that the Macedonians ever attempted

the impossible. Such as, for instance, expecting untrained or

weak, allied troops to stand against a stronger enemy ; or expect-

ing a small garrison to hold out in a strongpoint against su-

perior forfce. The Macedonian army crossed snow ranges in

winter, crossed great deserts in summer, joined rivers together

by canals, built fleets eventually where no ships had floated

before, flung bridges over great rivers in flood, found food out

of strange plants and insect life where no food was known to

exist. It did things that were incredible but always possible.

And the only possible alternative at Tyre was to get the

army inside by breaking down a section of the wall. And that

meant extending the land out to a section of the wall. Construct-

ing a mole out to the wall.

For the seemingly impregnable Tyre had the one weakness

that it could not move away.

This battle of the land against the sea at Tyre became a con-

[170]

GATES OF THE SEA

flict of engineering skill, of machine against machine, of the

projection of massive rocks, the tenacity of cement, the height

of wooden towers, the heat of flaming naphtha and bitumen,

the force and the resistance of materials. During this conflict

Alexander often absented himself to explore the hinterland

around the snow peak of Hermon and the lake called Galilee

the Macedonians called this hinterland Arabia.

In doing so the young commander vanished one night. They

had been threading through the hills above the headwaters of

a sluggish river, the Jordan, when they were overtaken by

darkness. Alexander kept on with his small force of Agrianians

because he did not care to camp in the hills of the Samaritans,

an inhospitable people who sold him supplies but attacked and

robbed stragglers.

They were going single file along the heights when Alexander

missed Lysimachus. The Greek tutor had begged to come

along sight-seeing. Without saying anything to the men around

him, Alexander dropped back to look for Lysimachus and

found him a long way back among a nest of Samaritan night

fires. It did not seem as if Lysimachus could overtake the

Macedonian column, nor could the two of them escape observa-

tion.

In this dilemma Alexander took the most audacious way out.

With the tired tutor scrambling after, he raced down to the

nearest fire, shouting, "Here are some of them I" Beholding a

Macedonian soldier coming out of the shadows in full armor,

the hillmen fled, and Alexander occupied their fire, sitting at

ease and discussing Homer with Lysimachus. No one bothered

them, until the frightened soldiers, having missed their com-

mander, appeared in search of them.

The construction of the mole at Tyre went easily, Deiades

and the engineers ripped down the old city of Tyre on the coast

for materials. Stakes were driven to form cribs to hold sand,

crushed limestone, and the foundation covered with planks.

[171]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

About two hundred feet in width, this mole extended itself,

creating a neck of land, to the deeper channel within a hundred

yards of the towering wall of Tyre. There it stopped.

Missile fire from the height of the wall put an end to the

construction work, in spite of protection rigged for the workers.

Also the eighteen- foot depth of pulsing sea was not easily filled

in.

The Macedonian engineers erected defense towers on the

molehead, as high as the wall, to stop this harassing fire.

Then Tyrian warships approached the sides of the mole

and with arrow, javelin, and engine discharges made com-

munication between the towers and shore hazardous. As a de-

fense the engineers set up heavy wooden barricades on the sides

of the mole.

The Tyrians shifted to launching fire missiles from the wall

engines; a sheathing of fresh animal hides was put on the

towers to insulate against this annoying fire.

Tyrian science destroyed the twin towers by a most ingenious

fire ship. This large vessel appeared out of a harbor, looking

like anything but a ship. Weights abaft lifted high its prow.

Extra masts had been stepped in this prow, with huge

caldrons slung to the yards. Pitch, brimstone, and oil filled

the caldrons. Beneath these masts wood and plaited straw had

been stacked, impregnated with pitch. The crew of this floating

combustible guided it against the towers, using a favorable

wind. They flung torches into the bow, ran the elevated prow

aground on the molehead between the towers, and escaped by

swimming as the flames roared up against the Macedonian

towers. When the fire broke through the deck the forecastle

masts fell against the 'towers, the caldrons overturned, poured

their chemicals into the conflagration, and the towers went up

in smoke, while the army watched from the shore.

The Macedonian answer to the fire ship was to broaden the

mole so that towers could be spaced farther apart and more

engines set up. But this new construction was raided at night

[172]

GATES OF THE SEA

by small craft from the harbors, covered by the ubiquitous

galleys.

To the desolation of Deiades and his engineers, the at-

tempt to extend the molehead had to be abandoned. It couldn't

be done. But a pretense of activity was kept up.

Alexander and the staff had decided long before that they

would have to use floating platforms. Ships. They had declared

a full amnesty up the coast, to all mariners and owners of any-

thing that floated. This amnesty had effect because it had

become clear to the Sidonian Phoenicians and the naval powers

of the islands that Alexander meant to destroy Tyre. Shipping

experts from Rhodes and Byblus joined up, the war fleet of

Cyprus a hundred and twenty sail appeared unexpectedly

off Sidon. Barges were towed down the coast, engines rigged

on flat hulks, towers erected on the capital ships. One of fifty

oars was brought over from the Macedonian coast.

Nearchus of Crete and the officers with sea experience drilled

the Macedonian shield-bearers and the engineers at Sidon in

the use of weapons and engines aboard ship.

By early summer the summer of 332 the Macedonians

had, not a sea-going battle fleet, but a floating armada of siege

craft, transports, and engine carriers. It was a weird-looking

navy, but it almost filled the shores, the sides of the mole, and

the channel, and its appearance stunned the Tyrians.

They made, of course, thrusts with their fine fighting ships,

and damaged or sank a large part of the armada. Being out-

numbered, the Tyrian ships had to strike and run back to

the basins. They tried to screen their preparations to go out

by rigging a curtain of sailcloth across the Sidonian harbor

entrance. Alexander, who enjoyed this matching of speed and

wits, countered by moving out from the opposite side of the

mole with the best of his fighting craft and going around the

island to cut off the Tyrian craft by racing for the harbor

entrance out of which they had come.

The Macedonian floating batteries could now approach the

[173]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

sea wall of the island. (The section opposite the molehead had

been made so strong that the Macedonians did not trouble to

approach it again.)

To use the engines they had to anchor the craft. Divers swam

out from the city and cut the rope cables of the anchors. The

Macedonian engineers replaced the rope cables with chain.

Tyrian engines countered by dropping immense boulders

where the siege craft tried to anchor. In the offshore swell the

ships broke their bottoms on these rock points.

Cranes were rigged on small barges, to clear out the boulders.

Assault craft were fitted with flying bridges at their mastheads.,

to attempt landing men on the wall. The Tyrians countered by

erecting towers that overtopped the mastheads.

But the engines had shattered and broken down the wall

at two points near the harbor entrances.

The conflict no longer lay between machines ; men were begin-

ning to exert their force against men, and Tyre was doomed.

The Macedonians, impatient now, and raised to a fever pitch

of hatred by the savage defense Tyrians had been exhibiting

prisoners on the wall summits, and cutting them open by de-

grees, then dropping them into the sea ended the operation

by a combined assault. On a day when the sea was calm, all the

shipping closed in upon the walls. The fleets made feints at the

harbor mouths, while small craft manned by archers and engi-

neers were run aground at the wall breaks. Actually some of

the phalanx soldiers were first over the wall, from the draw-

bridges.

Eight thousand Tyrians died, and thirty thousand were sold

for slaves.

The Macedonians then linked up the mole to the island.

They dragged the biggest war engine into the temple as a

dedication. They hauled the biggest warship into the temple

square as a monument. They offered thanksgiving sacrifice in

the temple of Heracles within the city, and celebrated by a

[174]

GATES OF THE SEA

parade and games. Around the broken walls they paraded their

new fleet.

"I took Tyre," Deiades said afterward, "with Alexander's

assistance."

The siege of Tyre had lasted for seven months. The siege of

Gaza took two months.

That citadel on the commercial road from the Philistine

coast to the land of the Pharaohs should not have closed its

gates to the Macedonians. Not after Tyre. Not as we look back

upon the event now. The fact that Gaza resisted then was an

indication that its inhabitants felt the power of the Great King

to be nearer at hand than the Macedonians believed possible.

This resistance, however, gave Deiades and his engineering

staff the opportunity to create their masterpiece: a causeway,

running up from the red sands of the plain to the summit of

the wall, two hundred and fifty feet above the level of the

plain. The master trick, however, lay not in the construction

of this gigantic ramp but in the circumstance that within

tunnels beneath it the Macedonians excavated beneath the

wall, so that when the causeway came within touch of the

summit of the wall the wall came down. The Arabians who

defended Gaza were killed, fighting, to a man. The women and

children were sold as slaves. Gaza, however, had exacted a toll

from Alexander. A bolt from a machine had smashed through

his shield, breaking the bones of his left shoulder.

Then the causeway was taken down. But the mole now

connecting Tyre's island with the mainland was left in place.

It stretches out today to the rock foundations of ancient Tyre.

The Macedonians, it seems, wanted to leave citadels with

small garrisons along the connecting land routes. But they

wanted to leave behind them no more citadels of the sea like

Tyre.

During the operation at Tyre Alexander had familiarized

[175]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

himself with ships. He had built them, altered them, experi-

mented with different types, until he knew the qualities of each,

and how sails were set and timbers calked. From that time on

he knew what ships could accomplish. He had worked with

Nearchus and other expert mariners from the islands. Al-

though, except for his half-mile dashes around Tyre in the

hit-and-run skirmishing on the water, he had never sailed out

on blue water.

He had never set foot on the famous islands of the Aegean.

Those islands of the Aegean and the Cyclades chain the

steppingstones from southern Greece to the Asiatic mainland

now acknowledged Macedonian supremacy. Tenedos and Chios

opened their harbors. Some vestiges of the Great King's 'sea

power still survived where individual officers and Greeks who

were shifting for themselves controlled nuclei of ships. But

they were now pirates, barred from all major ports.

The Macedonian army had obtained this control of the

eastern Mediterranean by marching on its own legs for more

than fifteen hundred miles around the perimeter of the sea, from

Mount Athos to Egypt. Thereafter no citadel of the sea or land

in all the Mediterranean world resisted a Macedonian officer.

The Macedonians kept no battle fleet on blue water; they

merely occupied the shores. But when Alexander moved on into

Egypt he kept a fleet of galleys and transports in company.

These ships drew up on the beaches at night the crews camped

with the army columns. And Alexander created a new unit of

experts, shipbuilders from Rhodes, Cyprus, Phoenicia, and

Egypt, with a few master mariners. With this unit, after its

experience at Tyre, the army was capable of building its own

fleet on strange and still unexplored waters.

Down the river he sailed imtil he reached the sea. Around

the Lake Maeotls he sailed, and disembarked. This spot seemed

to him good for the building of a city. So says Arrian.

The river was the Nile, more precisely the western mouth of

[176]

GATES OF THE SEA

the Nile. And the city he built was Alexandria the first of

thirteen or more Alexandrias.

It seemed an odd thing to do, for a twenty-three-year-old

Macedonian to pick out a site between a salt lake full of rushes

and waterfowl and the shore of the sea, and to order work

begun on the foundations and' quays of a city.

But instead of being odd it was in reality inevitable. These

Macedonians were pioneers, still thrusting forth to explore and

create. Alexander himself had grown up in the new capital of

Pella when Philip was a-building. He had never wanted to add

a cowshed to Pella itself, nor did he do so. Then he had watched

how the Greeks extended across the sea by settlement cities,

moving on in this fashion, cell by cell. (He had just passed by

their small and noisy trading port called Naucratis.) More-

over for months he had been marching almost in the white froth

of the surf, studying the way of ships upon the sea, listening to

navigators like Nearchus.

Now he had come to the end of that march, with power to

direct that sea-borne traffic. Moreover he had reached, at the

end of his Mediterranean campaign, a quiet land, drawing life

from a ceaselessly flowing river, the water of which might have

been destined to flow through the desert in this fashion by the

unseen gods. At Heliopolis and Memphis he had beheld cities

of permanent stone of dark porphyry and gleaming limestone,

cut into massive shapes wherein stone figures of monsters and

beneficent deities were so illumined by sunlight that they

seemed to live and breathe. Some of these temples had stood

for a millennium before stones were laid in place on the small

Acropolis at Athens.

So had the people existed here, unchanging, carving their

records in picturegraphs and script upon these walls of stone.

They had endured, and what they had built would be destroyed

by no tumult in the market place, or advent of an invader.

Alexander observed much and remembered much. His width of

imagination came from no uncontrolled impulses of the mind

[177]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON"

but from the immense field over which his mind had passed.

There was even a passage in Homer about this spot, where

an island lies within sounding surf an island Pharos on the

Egyptian shore.

After his exploration of the Ionian coast he had appreciation

of the tracks followed by commerce. Here the Nile river traffic

might meet the coastal route; at all events this mouth of the

Nile lay closest to Crete and the ports of Greece. Ships could

anchor in the great salt-water basin, protected from the outer

surf.

Evidently Alexander meant it to be more than a port. It

was to be the first construction of a new type of metropolis

although resembling Corinth in many respects a combination

of seaport, international settlement, and center of worship and

study. For in place of the small pillar serving as lighthouse

at the end of Pharos he planned an immense lighthouse and

observatory, matching the height of the royal pyramids up the

Nile, having the square, sky-scraping tower of the Mausoleum

at Halicarnassus. He asked for an academy vaster than the

squat stone buildings of Mieza and apparently without the

nymphs of the garden. He called for a temple to be laid down,

like the one at Sardis, a gymnasium and a sports arena such

as he had had built during the long halt on the coast back of

Sidon. Lastly he requested a library a whole building to house

books such as he had seen at Memphis.

If Deiades had besieged Tyre with Alexander's assistance,

Alexander planned this first metropolis with Deiades's assist-

ance. He liked to employ the engineer corps upon something

more useful than destruction. It was not so strange that he

should build Alexandria as that he should build it here on the

shore of Egypt.

A story persists that Alexander wanted to mark out on the

ground the lines of the city's wall before he left. No one seemed

to have any serviceable markers on the spot, so they took the

ground barley from the jars of the soldiers 5 kits and made

[178]

GATES OF THE SEA

heavy white lines where Alexander paced off the ground. By

the time they had finished, the birds from the marsh were flock-

ing in like a cloud and eating up the barley.

Alexander and the builders were arrested by this unexpected

omen. They called in Aristander and other soothsayers to

explain it. Even Aristander seemed to be at a loss for a while.

Then he said that the city would prosper, but only from the

harvests of the earth. Others said that Alexandria, when built,

would feed multitudes. In any event it prospered.

It prospered and it grew. Today, after more than 2277 years,

it is still a great naval base and something of an international

settlement ; but it is no longer a world center of worship and

learning.

[179]

XI THE TURNING TO THE EAST

THE MACEDONIANS had encountered the Semitic gods with-

out displaying any particular interest in them. At least

they had selected Heracles as the ruling deity in Semitic

Tyre. But in Egypt they observed a gigantic and impressive

pantheon, extending the length of the Nile.

In particular Ammon-Re, the God-Father of the Nile,* pos-

sessed a series of lofty monoliths called obelisks, visible for a

day's march across that level valley. Ammon-Re was also de-

picted in the wall carvings sailing in a ship across the sky.

This could not have escaped the Macedonians, who began

to argue about Ammon-Re. If Ammon-Re were indeed the God-

Father, creator of the divine in human beings, was he not in

fact the Zeus of the Hellenes? True, the tall beardless figure

in the sky ship did not look like the Zeus of the Athenian

sculptors Lysippus was clear on that point but if different

sculptors turned out quite different likenesses of Zeus even in

Greece, might not the Egyptian artist be trying to represent

Zeus in their own style?

It is known that Alexander argued the point with an Egyp-

tian savant, Psammon. Psammon maintained that the power

of creation was a divine power, emanating from the God-

Father. Alexander had been taught that from Zeus descended,

through the Titans, the spark of divinity common to the best

of men but not to the masses. So, was not Zeus in fact Ammon-

Re, just as Apollo might be Osiris, who was slain only to return

to life again the visible evidence of the divine power among

mortals?

[180]

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

It was important for Alexander to be certain of this. When

he heard that the oldest sanctuary of Ammon-Re lay not along

the Nile but a long way out in the western desert, and that this

sanctuary at the oasis of Siwah was also the most authentic

oracle of Egypt, he insisted upon going there. When they

warned him that the journey to Siwah was dangerous he deter-

mined to go.

The guides led him west more than a hundred and eighty

miles from the foundations of Alexandria (so they would have

passed the modern El Alamein and turned inland about at

Matruh) before striking south into the barrens. As it was

winter then, they did not lack for water, finding pools lying in

the rocks. But sandstorms bewildered them, and at least once

they lost their bearings guiding themselves at that point by

the flight of ravens to the south.

They gained the shelter of the olive and palm trees of the

oasis, where they found cold springs and amazingly clear rock

salt.

What happened in the semidarkness of the small stone sanc-

tuary when Alexander appealed to the oracle of Ammon-Re

as to Zeus is variously told. Alexander himself wrote to Olympias

about it afterward but allowed no one to see the letter.

The robed priests of the sanctuary, confronting the young

Macedonian, welcomed him to the presence of the God-Father.

One story has it that Alexander then asked for an oracular

response had he punished the murderers of his father as they

should have been punished?

"Take care," said the priests, **whom you name as your

father."

"His name is Philip."

The priests accepted this name and said gravely that the

murderers of Philip of Macedon had met full punishment.

Alexander then asked whether he would be successful in what

he undertook next, and the oracle responded tlmt he would

succeed. Alexander made no comment. He gave gold to the

[181]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

priest attendants. But those who followed him to Siwah declared

afterward that the oracle had pronounced him the son of

Ammon-Zeus.

For some reason, either because he wanted to explore a new

route or because the guides told him it was impossible, he

returned to the Nile at Memphis the shortest way. This route

took him around the southern edge of the terrible Kattara, over

the clay plateau to the stagnant Fayum. But he got back*

This was the beginning of his long and incredible journey

east.

Two things were happening in Egypt, hardly perceptible at

first. There Alexander had been separated from the bulk of

his army, which now that the Mediterranean campaign was

over extended in numerous settlements, shipyards, trading

centers as far back as Tarsus. Some of the Macedonian farmers

were experimenting with crops along this coast ; the scientists

were gathering specimens ; the physicians had set up hospitals

at the likeliest spots. Alexander, necessarily, had absented him-

self from the mass of the army. No longer could the phalanx-

men see him going in and out of the adjoining quarters of' the

Agema. The guard had to move elsewhere, escorting Alexander.

So when he did appear at a settlement on the big black

horse, with a few Companions following, the men rushed to

greet him, to touch his knee, to ask what was doing next.

Whenever he rode through the palm-shaded streets of Memphis

the crowds drew back, inclining their heads and sometimes

kneeling.

For Alexander was now the Pharaoh of the Egyptians.

He had not been able to escape that. Egypt might be modern

in its commerce and rice and grain agriculture, and in its

shipping ; yet it harked back to the tradition of the Pharaoh,

the Great House of despots ruling when science had advanced

with such tremendous strides, harnessing the Nile waters by

irrigation, calculating time itself by the movement of the con-

[182]

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

stellations, raising those monumental buildings temples and

tombs more than palaces which became the pride of the mod-

ern people and visible evidence of the existence of life after

death. Whoever ruled Egypt had to be a Pharaoh, and a Phar-

aoh was kin to the immortal gods. Alexander, as Pharaoh,

might move among the crowds at a decent interval or climb

the stones of a pyramid to gaze at the gray, shining ribbon of

the river, but he was indubitably a despot and divine. Otherwise

the Egyptians, especially the all-powerful priesthood, would

have had to change their concept of their Pharaoh.

This gave Ptolemy, son of Lagus, and the others who kept

records food for thought. It pointed to something both incred-

ible and absurd but nevertheless true.

They compared their journals. All records agreed on this

point. Alexander had been king of the Macedonians tribal

head, as chosen by the council and protector of the Delphi

shrine. Simultaneously he had become captain-general of the

Hellenes, and then overlord of the Ionian cities, military ruler

of Tyre and the Syrian coast, as well as the islands. Now, in

Egypt, he had become a Pharaoh and a god.

"It may be easy to say, and explain away, 95 Ptolemy observed

to Anaxarchus, the Greek sophist. "But when you write it

down, it doesn't make sense."

"There is little enough of sense, 55 Anaxarchus pointed out,

"in this expedition. 55

With this Ptolemy agreed inwardly. The Macedonian com-

manders were intelligent and realistic individuals, quick to turn

a profit or seize an opportunity. This sight-seeing and dis-

cussion and building in Egypt seemed to them to be a waste

of time, when so much spoil was to be had for the taking. In-

stead they had to treat the Egyptians more respectfully than

the lonians, who at least could speak Greek.

<6 What doesn't make sense is Alexander himself. Try writing

down his titles sometime."

"Well? He accomplished a miracle in three years."

[183]

ALEXANDER OP MACEDON

"Did he?"

Ptolemy did not think that. Miracles were for the poets. The

Macedonians had performed the nearly impossible by taking

this eastern end of the Mediterranean within three years. Yet

it had been accomplished not by Alexander but because of

Alexander.

Writing a few words on parchment, the general showed them

to the sophist. Alexandras III, Strategos Tyrant Demagogue

Pharaoh. And after a second's hesitation, while Anaxarchus

read, he added the word Deos. "His titles, as from today. In

their simplest form. If he can live up to all those it will be a

miracle."

Whereupon he rubbed out the written words with sand.

When Hephaestion invited the two to a feast, announcing that

he had received a gift for his table from Alexander, the Greek

sophist was disappointed in discovering that the gift consisted

only of a basket of fish from the river. "You who have accom-

plished great deeds, like to those of the immemorial heroes,

should have greater reward than headless fish, 55 he said sono-

rously.

"It's as much as his table ever has," Hephaestion defended.

"Do you think Alexander is altogether human?"

Ptoleiny washed down his fish with wine, and Hephaestion

answered.

At Gaza, he said, Alexander had been warned by Aristander

that he would be severely injured if he joined in the attack.

Por some time after that the king kept back from the danger

zone. But when the men were involved in hot action on the

causeway he plunged into it and was carried out with the wall

of his chest broken through. Bleeding and in pain, he had said

to the Companions around him, "You see, that is human blood

and no ichor of the immortal gods. 5 '

"Blood, yes/' The sophist studied Ptolemy delicately. "But

did he say from what father his lifeblood came? Did he ever

say?"

[184]

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

When Hephaestion repeated this conversation to Alexander,

the Greek sophist was summoned to the commander's tent. He

found Alexander occupied with a writing board, by a chest of

record rolls. The one lamp shed a faint light on the board, but

Alexander had not troubled to move the lamp closer. In one

corner stood the dark shield that was supposed to have been

the shield of Achilles. It bore no mark of having been used in

battle. "Carry my greeting to the Athenians," said Alexander,

"and this/*

Scrawling his signature on the square of parchment, he held

a stub of wax over the lamp flame for a minute. Pressing the

soft wax down at the end of the signature, he waited a second,

then licked the surface of his seal ring, impressed it in the wax,

and gave the sophist the parchment.

Anaxarchus had to hold it close to the lamp to read it. It

was a grant of the island of Samos to the city of Athens. The

signature Alexandras, Strategos. The grant, then, was from

the captain-general of the Hellenes.

Startled, Anaxarchus muttered something about a royal gift.

"It is not my gift. It is the gift of my lord and father, Philip

of Macedon." Alexander waited, but the sophist made no com-

ment on that. "I heard him say, once, that Samos should belong

to the Athenians/*

The sophist began to say that the Athenians knew how to

be grateful. After a moment he felt that the Macedonian was

only half listening. His head on one side, his long legs

stretched out toward the shield, he waited patiently, as if for

something he did not hear. Then he stirred restlessly and

asked, "What is Demosthenes doing?"

Anaxarchus did not think he meant this to be an insinuation.

He simply asked the question. Actually Demosthenes, in favor

again, was still speaking against the Macedonian tyranny, and

Anaxarchus suspected that Alexander knew this well enough,

He only said : "The orator is not as young as he was. Few people

share his opinion now."

[185]

ALEXANDER, OF MACEDON

This last was a lie. Alexander nodded, as if satisfied. And

the sophist took the nod as a sign to leave. On his journey home

across the sea he thought often and carefully about his own

remark concerning the fish, suspecting that Alexander had

been testing him in some way. But Alexander had done no

more than give him the deed to Samos and ask about Demos-

thenes.

When Parmenio came down from Tyre, Perdiccas told him

that he had no army now. Instead he had taxis of military set-

tlers, breeding children on these eastern women and raising

strange fruits and grains. They were even planting wine

grapes here, that they had got somehow from home !

Parmenio, however, had other worries. Harpalus, a calcu-

lating miser, had absconded from Sardis with the treasury,

taking refuge like a fool on an island. Then, when he had been

brought back after some trouble, Alexander had not only

refused to punish him but had reinstated him as treasurer,

saying that he did not think Harpalus would make the same

mistake again, while another man might.

"There's no discipline outside the army camps." Ptolemy

was petulant. "Every peasant and caravan broker does as he

feels like. He washes his backside in a fountain while a Mace-

donian soldier waits to fill a water jug. If a Phoenician girl

wants to fill her jug a soldier can't even touch her, and if you

want a horse you have to pay for one. You even pay a horse

thief. And with what? We have plenty of good Asiatic gold

coins for once. But they are not so good. Alexander's made the

Athenian owls standard, so our gold isn't worth its weight, as

coinage. The dealers here weigh our gold coins and give us

no more than eleven for one."

It seemed to Parmenio and to most of the officers that Alex-

ander was disciplining the military, in 6rder to let the inhab-

itants do exactly as they pleased. He took pains not to change

their native ways. In Memphis he offered sacrifice to Ammon-

[186]

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

Re, as he had sacrificed to Zeus at Pella. He had not shifted

one palm tree or horse block in the broad streets of Memphis

he had only bridged the Nile here at this city. Instead he had

laid down a great new metropolis, Alexandria, upon sand and

marsh and a lighthouse island.

Alexander granted all the requests of the emissaries who now

flocked to his tent like eagles sighting food to be picked up.

He released the last of the war prisoners and settled them in

Gaza and Tyre. When the Arabian tribes of the interior asked

for a governor he named an eastern Greek, and warned him:

"Don't make any change in their customs."

In fact, from Troy to Memphis, Alexander had made no

change in the local governments. Although supposedly Pharaoh

of the rich land of the Nile, he left it in charge of two Egyp-

tians, attaching only two Macedonian officers and a sea captain

to this Memphis administration as advisers security officers.

In Libya he posted a fiscal officer.

Studying Alexander's measures of control for this great

Mediterranean area, the astute and experienced Parmenio

could detect only one new departure. In each land tribute col-

lectors had been appointed who were independent of military

control. The moderate payments these treasurers gathered in

were used for road and bridge building, for hospital equip-

ment, and even for new water clocks. So all along the coast

the garrison officers had no control over the money; if they

wanted funds they had to send a request to Sardis. With this

unusual measure Parmenio had no quarrel; but he foresaw that

it would lead to trouble if ever Alexander should be absent

from the coast for long.

He recalled Aristotle's saying: It is more difficult to organize

peace than to win a war; but the -fruits of victory in war will be

lost if the peace is not well organized.

But the organization, such as it wets, of Alexander's new

Mediterranean world resembled no rule or government hitherto

known. To be certain of that, Parmenio noted down all the

[187]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

types of government known to the Greek world, as Aristotle

had listed them. And the list showed :

Polis (city-state) : rule by representation of all educated citizens.

Democracy : rule by the propertyless masses.

Aristocracy: rule by the small minority of the best men.

Oligarchy: rule by the small minority of the privileged and the

owners of wealth.

Monarchy: rule by the one most gifted individual.

Tyranny: rule by the one individual who has seized military power.

Study this list as he might, the chief of staff could not fit

Alexander's imperium into any of its variations. He recalled

that Aristotle had believed that the most workable form of

government lay somewhere between an oligarchy and democ-

racy. Then, too, he remembered vaguely that Aristotle had

believed it to be useless to set up an ideal form of government.

You had to start with the best workable form, improving it not

by statute but by improving the conditions by which it was

shaped. With this thesis Parmenio agreed; yet it seemed to

him too difficult to put into practice. Philip, he thought,

would not have attempted it. Philip had wrested tangible bene-

fits for the Macedonians silver mines, seaports, military con-

trol.

What frightened Parmenio was that Alexander's imperium

appeared nameless, and his actions certainly seemed aimless.

For nearly three years he had drawn one half the young man-

power of Macedon out of the land; in that time he had sent

back only letters and trophies and enough bullion to pay Antip-

ater's expenses. Here, on the east coast, he was building roads,

shipyards, pouring medicines into hospitals, designing acad-

emies, gymnasiums, theaters for the future, He was working

with the strange peoples here, apparently to improve the con-

ditions shaping their lives. So far as it made sense, this was

the sense of his conduct. He was shaping the whole Mediterra-

nean world ~by changing the conditions in which it existed. . . .

[188]

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

And that, to Parmenio's thinking, was not sense but absurd-

ity. It was worse than setting up a Platonic republic, in which

men cultivated virtue by the process of acquiring knowledge.

Parmenio knew well enough by experience that human beings

did not cultivate virtue when they acquired more knowledge.

They were more apt to cultivate vices. Alexander knew this.

Weary of trying to visualize a plan in what they were doing,

Parmenio went as always to Alexander. He asked about a

tangible point, something that could be grasped and held to.

Why did Alexander continue to sign orders as captain-

general of the Hellenic league, when the project of the Hellenic

League had broken down almost as soon as they crossed the

Hellespont?

Alexander signed as captain-general because he was that,

officially, still.

But even the Greeks themselves did not believe in the Hellenic

League idea and never spoke of it. Instead they made orations

about their civic liberties.

Yes, Alexander knew that.

Then why hold to pretense instead of reality? Philip had

planned something real, a Macedonian monarchy superim-

posed upon a united Greece. Macedonian rule could unite

Greece.

Not without sacrificing the independence of the individual

cities. Of the polis. If you united Greece you put an end to

the city-state. The weakness of the city-state was that it could

not extend itself to protect Greece. It had tried to do this by

forming leagues which soon broke down. Given protection from

outside, the individual city-state could continue to exist.

Athens, for example. And it would torture him if Athens should

cease to be Athens in order to become a city of a united Greece.

"Torture? Torture whom?" the chief of staff demanded,

puzzled. "You? Philip's ghost?"

"Demosthenes."

Parmenio gave up his exploration of this dangerous level

[189]

DEB, OF MACEDON

of inquiry into Alexander's mentality. "Demosthenes/ 5 lie said

curtly, "has abandoned his Philippics only because he now

has Alexander as the object of his hatred. If you want to be

an individualist you will find that Demosthenes will keep you

company." And when Alexander did not respond to this touch

of irony Parmenio tried ridicule.

"A few days ago you gave an order, after consulting me. It

directed the commander of the Cyprus fleet of galleys to pro-

ceed with a hundred ships toward the southern coast of Greece

and to cruise off Spartan territory, ostensibly to watch for

pirates, actually to observe any attempt of the Spartans who

are still allied to the Great King to assemble a fleet. You gave

this order, and I heard it, as captain-general which you are

not of the Hellenic League which you have just admitted

does not and cannot exist. Why?"

Alexander answered at once, seriously: "Because the Spar-

tans are stupidly proud. If they thought the fleet was sent

against them they would stand to arms indefinitely along their

coast. Do you think there is a better way to work it? 55

Parmenio gave up his probing. It seemed to him that Alex-

ander had no plan and that they were all drifting from oppor-

tunity to opportunity, doing whatever seemed to work out

best at the time.

This suited unthinking men like Nearchus perfectly. But

Ptolemy had an opinion of his own. He thought Alexander was

going through a process of self -mortification, perhaps to atone

for Philip's death. Imitating Heracles, their commander la-

bored for the sake of laboring. Certainly he did not bear him-

self like an offspring of the gods. Worse than that, he seemed

to think of himself now as an agent of something but of what,

only the gods knew.

, The men in the ranks had no such misgiving. Whenever

Alexander appeared among them, they raised a shout: "Eny 'al-

ios."

Ptolemy turned his back on Memphis reluctantly. When he

rode across the new bridge he looked over often at the soaring

[190]

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

pylons and the pyramid tips rising from the plain. Memphis

seemed to him calm as a lovely, sleeping woman. In Memphis

he had found Thais, who somehow combined the innocent ap-

pearance of a girl with the spiritual savor of a priestess, in her

skill as a prostitute.

Early that spring the Macedonian army was gathering by

order at the new base of Tyre, and at Tyre occurred the first

bitter quarrel between Alexander and Parmenio and many of

the staff.

That winter the Great King had offered terms of peace,

simple enough and apparently sincere. He would ransom his

wife and family from the Macedonians for ten thousand tal-

ents ; he would cement friendship between Alexander and him-

self by offering one of his daughters in marriage ; he would sur-

render all the territory between the boundary river Euphrates

and the Greek seas.

The quarrel between commander and chief of staff on this

issue is handed down through the historians by this passage:

PARMENIO : "If I were Alexander, I would accept peace on

those terms."

ALEXANDER : "So would I, if I were Parmenio."

Reading beyond these words, it is clear that a decisive con-

flict of opinion divided the Macedonian planners in this spring

of 331 at Tyre. Conservative counsel pointed out that they had

fulfilled all Philip's plan and Isocrates's and more. Includ-

ing the Balkans, the Macedonians had taken over about nine

times the extent of their original territory. They had no

further reservoir of manpower at home upon which to draw.

They were, on the contrary, fairly secure along this coast

where they had the desert at their backs, except for the fertile

northern belt around the headwaters of the Euphrates. They

had enough ; why risk what they had to gain more?

The risk-takers felt that nothing remained secure so long

as the main Persian army existed inland. Until that army was

eliminated they could only hold the coast on sufferance.

[191]

AI/EXANDER OF MACEDON

What Alexander said is not known. What he did was to

order an advance eastward. This decision marked a change

in Macedonian affairs. Alexander had imposed his will on the

veteran generals and Companion nobles. The army moved

henceforth as he directed.

After that conference at Tyre a change is noticeable in Par-

menio's behavior. He merely carried out tactical orders, as

directed. And before another year ended he was left behind in

command of a base. From that time on Alexander depended

more upon the advice of the younger minds, Hephaestion's,

Ptolemy's even upon Perdiccas's and Nearchus's.

At Tyre Alexander could have had no conception of how

far he would need to journey. into the east, nor of all that lay

beyond the Euphrates and Babylon. For one thing, he had

no maps to show him the true size and configuration of the

continental mass ahead for another, he was leaving the area

known to Greek traders and settlers. In the way of texts he

had only Herodotus's colorful narrative, the Anabasis of

Xenophon, the world plan of Hecataeus.

Moying inland around Mount Hermon, passing through

Damascus, he angled sharply north, to keep to the fringe of

good grazing and to avoid the heat of the central Syrian plain.

So he crossed the Euphrates, on bridges already prepared,

where it was little more than a sluggish stream near its source.

Here he found himself on the broad prepared King's Way,

leading to Babylon. And here he noticed as the army brigades

which had marched separately assembled to cross the bridges

how the army had been swelled by the arrival of another year's

recruits from home. And how the wagon trains had grown,

carrying more of the engineers' machines and even a few

women. Some new units had been added interpreters, ship-

builders, technicians from Sidon, and mathematicians from

Memphis. Perhaps thirty-five thousand in all now followed the

patrols feeling their way across the plain between the Two

Rivers the Euphrates and Tigris.

XII LADY OF THE BEASTS

UPON THAT PLAIN even in the north the grass had been

burned by the intense summer heat. Harvests were

being gathered near the villages. For days the columns

marched across land as level as the sea. They pushed forward

into a hot, dry wind. When this wind blew, the horizon danced

hazily and white streaks of water appeared on it, vanishing into

dry clay as the columns came up to the mirage. They were

pushing forward into space.

The Greek historians say that at this point the marchers

made sacrifice to a new god and that the name of the new god

was Fear. The men in the ranks had not been afraid when they

had marched down the seacoast two years before along the

highway threaded with ancient cities. But here they were mov-

ing across a sea of dead grass, toward unknown Powers. Some

of the new Greek recruits began to complain, asking what

purpose drove the commander in this direction and what he

sought this man who had forsaken his own land and disowned

his father. The Macedonian veterans jeered at the recruits.

They said they knew Alexander's purpose : to gain a treasure

and to end the war.

Still, it was undeniably a new kind of earth lying before them.

No one had beheld such a plain as this. No intelligence service"

here could acquaint the marchers with what lay ahead of them.

They had seen a few Asiatic horsemen along the Euphrates.

And captives had informed them that the Asiatic army was

gathering somewhere behind the next river. From the stories

of the captives, the veterans judged that this new army would

[193]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

be larger than the masses they had met at Issus, and that gave

them food for thought. They wondered how Alexander could

cope with still greater masses of horsemen on a plain such as

this. They were not yet afraid, but they wondered.

Instead of striking due east toward the second of the Two

Rivers, Alexander led them northeast, until the earth turned

red again and the flat-roofed villages changed to clusters of

clay cones, like beehives. He led them up to the mountains again,

climbing into fir-clad foothills and gray rock ravines before

turning east again. Here the air was cooler and water flowed

swiftly down from the heights, and they could march with the

comfortable feeling that no enemy was in these mountains above

them. Some of the veterans who had gossiped with the surveyors

guessed that these mountains led back to the Gordium plateau

land, and they spoke of them as the Gordyene Mountains.

Being on the shoulders of these mountains gave them confidence.

When they crossed a rushing gray river in a long valley they

became more confident, because the surveyors said this must

be the headwater of the Tigris itself, and so the army had

crossed the Tigris, the second of the Two Rivers, without being

sighted by the Asiatic army.

Yet while they forded the Tigris the moon had darkened in

a total eclipse that was surely a sign of a crisis approaching.

Phoenicians among the engineers argued that the darkening

of the moon foreshadowed the approach of the Lady of the

Underworld, who was also called Astarte, who held great power

over this land of the Two Rivers. This Lady was served by the

beasts of the three worlds the sky, the earth, and the under-

world. So she might appear mounted upon a dragon or a lion

or a great serpent. In any event her advent would be ominous

of evil. These Phoenicians, far from their seaports, became

very much afraid.

Having passed the Tigris safely, the columns united for a

while, turning south along the river and then leaving it to

[194.]

LADY OF THE BEASTS

follow an open valley where clouds and mist hid the heights

around them.

When they dropped down out of the cloud level they encoun-

tered gray buffalo, which resembled oxen only in their passivity

and strength. They might have been oxen transformed by

Circe or this Lady of the Beasts. When they sighted a dark

gray plain far beneath them the outermost scouts came in with

tales of fresh wonders. The scouts had stumbled on giant stone

beasts with wings and hoofs and the heads of kings. These

winged monsters had been standing on either side the gate of

an empty city, where armed men and eunuchs also stood, life-

less, partially projecting from the tiled walls, all facing the

same way, as if waiting.

Also the scouts had seen a dry aquaduct, raised upon a stone

causeway, disappearing into the mountains. The next day the

columns passed the face of a cliff upon which the giant figures

of kings or gods had been carved. The experienced Phoenicians

made little of such rock carvings, only saying that they were

Assyrian kings and gods, a long time dead, and so plainly with-

out power to harm or to aid.

When the scouts sighted the first force of strange c^alry

moving on the plain beneath, a mounted regiment stiffened by

troops of Companions and guards were dispatched to bring

back informants. They learned from the few captives they took

that the army of the Great King had assembled directly below

them, where the foothills merged into the open plain. And this

army now had the corps of Persian Guards, the spearmen called

the Immortals, as well as new contingents of armored cavalry

and horse archers from the inner reaches of Asia Scythians

and Bactrians. It had more horsemen than infantry.

Alexander was now faced by a greatly superior force of

horsemen, on open ground. For three days he camped in the

lower foothills, resting the men and perhaps hoping that the

Persian host would advance to attack him on the higher ground.

Then he broke camp after dark and made a rapid night

[195]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

march down through the rolling grassland, coming over a ridge

into full view of the enemy at sunup. The Macedonians in the

ranks had expected to be deployed and led on into action, in

phalanx formation, that dawn. Instead they were halted, once

the battle line was formed, and rested. The engineers fortified a

camp enclosure behind them, and the officers spent the day rid-

ing out to study the ground and the enemy's formation.

Because no Macedonian had ever seen as many horsemen as

were gathered there, near the village of Gaugamela, confront-

ing them.

The fear that had been in the minds of the Macedonians dur-

ing the marches grew greater that day and increased at eve-

ning, when torches and oil-fed fires blazed in a long line, cutting

the night in front of them, marking out unmistakably the vast

extent of the enemy's masses.

When the waning moon rose, marking shadows on the earth,

and a night wind stirred the brush around them, it seemed to

the watching men as if hostile forces were in motion over the

ground. The night touched them with horror. The officers felt

this fear. They took measures against it. They had fortified the

camp in the rear, but that would be a flimsy defense if the

Macedonian formations were broken through. To guard against

encirclement staff officers divided the infantry phalanx, or-

dering the rear half to be prepared to face about.

Fear touched the mind of Parmenio and the elder staff of-

ficers. They urged Alexander to get the ranks into motion and

to make a night attack. Under cover of darkness infantry

might move against cavalry, and the Macedonians might have

a better chance against four to five times their number. Against

this inhuman multitude waiting to destroy them.

Alexander would not order a night attack. He would not

trust to a movement in darkness, with torchlight in the eyes of

his men. After observing that the Asiatics were standing armed

in battle order, with lights, he told the officers to rest the men

[196]

LADY OF THE BEASTS

where they were and to get what sleep they could. The conflict of

the next day, he said, would be the last battle, because it would

decide who would rule Asia, the Macedonians or the Persians.

And he warned the officers to be careful to carry out orders

quickly it would be dangerous to delay.

He felt the fear around him, like a tangible pressure coming

out of the darkness into the minds of his men. But he showed

no signs of nervousness. When his officers kept on arguing and

talking about the next day he turned back into his small sleep-

ing tent and lay down.

He was still sleeping when those who could not sleep gathered

around the tent in the chill before the first light. When Par-

menio came up Alexander had not stirred. He had overslept.

Parmenio ordered breakfast to be served in the ranks when

light touched the line of hills to the east. When he could see a

veil of mist below the hills he went in to wake Alexander and

had to call him twice by name. Alexander got up and looked

out, and put on a light quilted jacket that had been captured

at Issus, with a light helmet of thin polished iron.

The black war horse Bucephalus had been led to the tent.

But the men around him noticed that Alexander mounted an-

other horse, although now he always rode Bucephalus in a close

action. He seemed to be putting off that final moment of en-

gagement, for which every preparation had been made during

the spring and summer now past. . . . The Macedonians were

afraid as men are always afraid when they move forward into

the space between themselves and other men in which they may

be killed or broken or blinded. They go forward because an or-

der has been given, because they have always done so, and be-

cause it is unthinkable to turn back alone when the others are

moving forward, until the danger in front of them ceases to

be there in that ever-narrowing space, or .until it gains force,

controlling their physical actions and drives them back and

away from the danger. . . . Late in the morning Alexander

was riding Bucephalus, moving forward at a walk with the regi-

[197]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

ments of the heavy cavalry, as he had been accustomed to do

and as the cavalry had been trained to do. There was no open-

ing for them as yet in the insane confusion ahead of them.

Twice messengers had come to Alexander, asking for sup-

port. The enemy had broken through and held the Macedonian

camp behind them. The left of the army had been broken apart,

and Parmenio sent a personal plea for support. The Com-

panion cavalry waited, moved on a few paces, waited. They

waited while the units on their right were enveloped, twisted,

and flung about. They could not do anything now but wait,

while the advanced end of the Macedonian phalanx edged,

step by step, deep into the masses of the enemy, and the Agrian-

ians and the Thracian cavalry pushed forward the other side

of the wedge.

Then there was a shifting of the masses in front of them. A

body of Asiatic horsemen had swung out of position, to circle

out to the right.

Into this opening between the forward edge of the phalanx

and the struggling Thracians charged the heavy Companion

cavalry. It burst out of the tip of the wedge into the space

vacated by the Asiatic horsemen, it angled past other units,

and struck at full gallop into the rear of the close-packed

Persian Guard, the Immortals, so called. The thrust bit deep

into the guard.

Directly in front of them the fear within the body of the

Great King Darius mounted beyond his control. Physically he

was a coward, and he could not wait there in his chariot in the

path of these oncoming horsemen.

For the second time Darius ran away too soon from a battle.

His chariot raced back, out of the path of the Companions,

and the chariot horses ran away. His flight at first did not af-

fect the greater part of the masses that obeyed him. It caused

no more than a drifting back of the escort and guards around

him ; a drifting that gradually became a pull exerted outward,

drawing back the center of the army.

[198]

LADY OF THE BEASTS

That army had assembled upon the plain of Gaugamela be-

cause it obeyed the personal command of an emperor. Its parts

had assembled from Babylon, from the Kurdish and Armenian

mountains, and far Bactria and Soghd and Scythia, because

an order had been given to the satraps who themselves gave

orders in the provinces. Except for the Armenians and Kurds,

these portions of a warlike host, met together for the first

time, had come far from their own lands. No hatred or defiance

of the strange Macedonians drove them into action near this

village of Gaugamela. They had merely followed their own of-

ficers hither.

But when the news that Darius himself had run away passed

from unit to unit the army of the Persian Empire was held to-

gether by nothing, and it broke apart, as different units fol-

lowed their officers away from danger. This army had not been

defeated. It had ceased to exist.

Alexander, at the moment of the first breaking up, had led

the cavalry around to Parmenio's beaten troops, where he

joined the fine Thessalian horse, still holding its own. By then

the Persians were leaving the field, and, being mounted, they

went quickly.

This battle of Gaugamela (for a long time identified by the

name of "Arbela" or Irbil, the citadel toward the mountains,

sixty miles away) was recorded in all its details by the Roman

historians much later. They describe it as an extraordinary

example of how an inferior force, mainly of infantry, advanced

to attack a far superior force, mainly of cavalry, upon an open

plain, and succeeded. They take notice of the superior discipline

of the Macedonians that held them together under stress, and

the superiority in leadership of Alexander when opposed to

Darius. But they make no mention of the fear that drove the

Macedonians forward against the levies of the Great King,

which had much less to fear.

For the Macedonians could not retreat from Gaugamela.

They had to scatter and to drive to a distance that much

[199]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

greater strength of horsemen in order to survive themselves. 1

Whereas the Asiatic horse could retire with little harm. The

Macedonians had no alternative but to break the opposing

ranks, terribly and completely. This controlling force of fear

was added to the cohesive force of their discipline and training,

and the driving impulse of Alexander's personality. It was true

of the Macedonians, as a Roman pointed out later concerning

his own legions, that they were never so much to be feared as

when they had most to fear.

In the vast confusion of the plain that afternoon the Mace-

donians gathered in strange and rich spoil, including armored

elephants and scores of chariots equipped with scythe blades,

and the gilded spears of the Immortals, and regiments of dour

mountain men who spoke a strange tongue Armenian and

skilled horsemen who wore loose trousers and flowing turbans

Kurds. These captives indicated that they came from the

mountain wall to the east.

As soon as Parmenio's shattered command had been disen-

gaged Alexander assembled the least-wearied mounted units

and launched a headlong pursuit down the main highway to

the south, where he knew great cities lay, and where he sus-

pected Darius had fled. Parmenio followed within a few hours

with the main command, pausing only to load the wounded and

*Four Roman armies at various times offered proof, later, of the hopelessness

of fighting a losing action against Persian horsemen on this Syrian plain.

Marcus Antonius ("Mark Antony" of Cleopatra notoriety) saved a portion of

his command by retreating into the mountains. A Roman army was almost

annihilated at Carrhae, where the Emperor Crassus was killed, much closer to

the coast than Gaugamela. Another was destroyed near Edessa and its emperor,

Valerian, taken captive. (At least two cliff carvings by Persian artists still

survive, showing Valerian kneeling before Shapur, mounted.) The fourth was

led by the Emperor Julian as far as Ctesiphon, and suffered severely in a long-

retreat up the Tigris, Julian dying on the way and one wing of his command

disappearing entirely.

Xenophon's retreat with the famous ten thousand out of this valley, north to

the sea, was accomplished without opposition from any unified command; the

Greek mercenaries simply fought their way through and lived off the country,,

and they had a hard time doing it. At least they wept with joy when they

beheld the sea again,

[200]

LADY OF THE BEASTS

most valuable loot weapons, instruments, and bullion into

carts.

This time there could be no celebration or delay. Alexander

called a halt at a stream after sunset and allowed his pursuit

force to rest for five hours, then took the road again. Within

forty hours he covered the sixty miles to the rock citadel of

Irbil almost at the mountains' edge. From this height he could

observe the plain where dust layers marked the routes taken

by the retreating units of Darius's command. Apparently they

were fanning out southward and eastward into the mountains.

And again, this time;at Irbil, he found Darius's gold-adorned

chariot and bow case. But this chariot seemed to have been left

for him to find. Darius, he learned, had headed east along a

mountain road with the fine Bactrian horsemen and nuclei

of the Greek hoplites and Immortals. Into those mountains

Alexander dared not follow as yet.

Because at Irbil he realized the dilemma into which he had

fallen by entering this eastern Mesopotamian plain. The battle

at Gaugamela had decided nothing, militarily. He was still

leading some thirty thousand wearied men across ever-widening

space. Hostile forces still lay south and east of him. He had

scattered those vastly superior forces at Gaugamela. He had

not crushed them.

Thinking back, he recalled that, except for some cavalry of-

ficers, the forces at Issus had not been the same as at the affair

on the river Granicus. Except for some Greek, mercenaries and

Babylonian units, the Asiatic army at Gaugamela had con-

tained none of the commands he had faced at Issus.

The lesson to be drawn from this was unmistakable. He was

leading his thirty thousand against a manpower of many mil-

lions. A manpower scattered over plains, mountain heights,

and desert areas that dwarfed the Mediterranean coast. Pro-

vided new armies could be assembled against him as he ad-

vanced, he would meet inevitable defeat in the end. Each en-

gagement would reduce the strength of the Macedonians, while

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ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

the Asiatics could recruit fresh armed forces from new terri-

tory. It was evident already that these lands of Asia could

breed new contingents of well-armed and dangerous horsemen.

Also each day's march was now moving the Macedonians far-

ther from their base on the Mediterranean.

"It's like fighting a Chimera," Hephaestion pointed out.

"When you cut off one head of a Chimera, another one bites

you. You can't kill a beast with many heads until the last head

is cut off."

"No, not a Chimera," Ptolemy corrected. "This is a new kind

of monster, with one head the Great King and many bodies.

No ancient hero faced a monster like that. It's really un-

natural."

Nothing, however, could be unnatural. Once a situation was

understood, it ceased to have hidden potentialities for evil. With

his young leaders Alexander studied the situation to determine

what advantages it might have.

It had this in his favor. He could gain, as he advanced, fairly

accurate information about the forces ahead of him ; they could

not know what reserves he had behind him. The tale of his vic-

tories had not lost in the telling. Certainly no contingent of

Asiatics that had faced the terrible Macedonian attack cared

to run that risk a second time. Evidently the Asiatic peoples

understood by now that they were facing no force of hired

Greeks, who made a profession of military service, on one side

or the other. The miracle of the overthrow at Gaugamela laid

a paralysis on all this countryside. That happy effect might

endure for a month or two. After that he would have to pro-

duce a new miracle or retreat like Xenophon's ten thousand to

the coast.

Then the Macedonians possessed the inestimable advantage

of Darius. This commander in chief of the immense forces of

Asia was not only a coward, little respected by the generals

serving under him, but a coward whose hesitation hindered any

united move against the Macedonians.

[202]

LADY OF THE BEASTS

The Asiatics, it seemed, obeyed Darius not because they re-

spected him but because they reverenced the person of the Great

King, the King of the Lands of the Earth, successor to the-

first Darius, and the mighty Xerxes, who had in turn grasped

the imperium of the Assyrian monarchs, whose likeness ap-

peared carved in stone upon palace and cliff walls. They gave

loyalty to the human being who was emperor, the incarnation

of divine power. So the Macedonians were opposed not so much

by the human Darius who had actually been of great ad-

vantage to them as by the concept, in Asiatic minds, of the

ruler who was destined to sit upon the throne.

So much being clear, Alexander acted upon it at once. He

had only a small margin of time to encompass vast space.

Therefore he moved with the utmost speed down the plain,

keeping between the Tigris and the mountain wall not daring

to divide his forces now in march columns, prepared for ac-

tion, himself riding in the newly captured chariot, wearing

his plumed helmet and white floss cloak, followed by a host of

captives. This made an impressive pageant.

Meanwhile he sent ahead at utmost speed two officer-

messengers, to the two nearest capitals, Babylon and Susa.

These officers announced the approach not of an enemy but of

the new ruler of Mesopotamia, destined to succeed the fugitive

Darius. They summoned Babylon and Susa not to submit but

to welcome the new Great King who would grant freedom of

worship to all temples, who would disturb no provincial gov-

ernment nor exact tribute of any personal property.

Yet Alexander approached Babylon cautiously, deploying

the head of his column. He passed through dark fertile gardens,

over wide canals fed by water pumped up from the river, under

groves of date palms and citrus-bearing trees, along wide road-

ways where the dust was laid by sprinkling carts.

And he was met by a procession of priests and officials, wel-

coming him to Babylon with gifts of shining metal and gems

and embroidered cloth. He barely paused for their greeting but

[203]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

pushed on, across the great canal, seeing immense walls rising'

from an embankment, and above the walls the pinnacles of

ziggurats and palace summits, of terraced gardens towering

over the immensity of roofs.

In full procession he traversed the long avenue leading to

the tiled Ishtar Gate, passing between towers so massive that

they dwarfed the temples of Memphis. He rode up the ramp of

the palace, looking out over summits of buildings, above the

green of trees, where the brilliant sunlight flashed on the gold

and black and turquoise blue of the temple towers. And he dis-

mounted where the spear-bearing Immortals stood at the palace

entrance.

So Alexander of Macedon came to Babylon, his capital city.

Babylon had an effect of shock upon the Macedonians, who

found here a creation of strange hands, immense and perma-

nent. There was nothing Greek about it. The sculptor Lysippus

walked through corridors without a single statue, yet glowing

with tiles and enlivened by processions of fantastic animals

within the tiles. The sign of the Lady of the Beasts, the crescent

moon, rested upon the lintels of towering gateways. Space, out-

lined by walls stretching to the horizon, gained new meaning

here. A human figure, walking up a ramp toward a pinnacle,

was dwarfed by the structure upon which it stood.

Yet a little investigation convinced Lysippus that these gi-

gantic walls and summits were built out of clay, molded by the

hands of slaves and baked in ovens or dried in the sun. Even

the ornamental tiles were no more than this earth, cleverly

glazed. Learned Chaldeans showed him libraries of tablets and

thin squares of clay, stamped with wedges and then dried so

that they never yielded to age. Such tablets recorded marriages,

loans, and gifts made centuries before. The bricks of the lower

walls carried the stamp of Nebuchadnezzar.

Building out of the earth itself, the Babylonians had tried to

escape the earth's surface by raising their edifices in step-back

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LADY OF THE BEASTS

pyramids to the upper levels of cooler air. Such a structure

had been called the Tower of Bab-El the Gate of the Lord

in the time when the wandering Hebrews had lived by the

waters of Babylon, waiting to journey on to their Mount of

Sion.

Aristotle might have wondered at the fertility of this soil,

impregnated by the heat of the sun and the constant moisture

from the canals, so that plant life covered every exposed por-

tion and human life, sustained by an abundance of food, multi-

plied itself swiftly. The Macedonians marveled briefly at these

waters of life. They considered that these hanging gardens of

Babylon were a greater wonder of the world than the Mauso-

leum at Halicarnassus or the other pyramid graves along the

Nile.

As quickly as possible Alexander arranged for the govern-

ment of the Babylonian province. Keeping his promise, he re-

opened the great temple of Bel, and that of Marduk, and at-

tended the opening himself. In the palace he installed the hos-

tage family of Darius. The handsome wife of that Persian

monarch had died in childbirth during the journey being

pregnant when she was captured at Issus. Alexander had

taken pains to give her a ceremonious burial.

While he inspected the shipping along the narrow canal that

bisected Babylon, connecting the metropolis with the Tigris,

he sat late at night with his surveyors, hearing the account of

the Babylonian revenue agents who told him of lands stretch-

ing south to a great gulf or inland sea, and of roads that pene-

trated the mountain wall to the east.

Beyond those mountains, the Babylonians said, he would find

the other three capital cities of the empire, where the gazaphy-

latda, or imperial treasures, were kept, in Susa, Persepolis, and

Ecbatana so his Greek secretary wrote down the names.

The treasure in Babylon he confiscated. With a few words

he disposed of the administration, leaving the viceroy of Darius,

Mazai, in charge, with a Macedonian officer and a small garri-

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ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

son. The schools, the temples, the tithes, and the charities of

the metropolis were to remain as they had been before, until

his return.

And in Babylon, with a touch of malice, he left the women,

the heavier baggage of the army, and the loot that had been col-

lected at Gaugamela. He left here his own favorite actors who

had staged plays on the journey and the Athenian lady Thais

who belonged to Ptolemy. He gave orders sharply, hurrying

preparations for the road, playing the new part of despot of

the east.

At the end of work in the hot nights he stripped and went

swimming in the river. After drying off he liked to sit out on

one of the lofty terraces, watching the lights in the tall build-

ings and listening to his interpreters explaining how the Chal-

deans had completed their tables of the known stars. He drank

a little wine while his officers drank much they were not so

keen as Alexander for the long mountain marches ahead, with

winter closing in on them. They did not care that somewhere to

the east lay the greater barrier of the Parapanisades, marking

the edge of the known world.

Always the dark-eyed Mazai watched his new lord, who had

arrived in Darius's chariot and had occupied the royal palace.

He heard the Macedonian officers jest about that, saying how

Alexander was making himself into a Great King.

"Instead of one Darius," Mazai said once, "he may be mak-

ing himself into many Alexanders."

When they marched from Babylon through the Ishtar Gate

and turned east along the highway, up into the mountains, they

met a messenger bearing a letter from the officer who had hur-

ried on in advance to Susa. He reported that Susa welcomed

Alexander and that all the imperial revenues and stores within

that city would be kept sealed against his arrival.

Susa projected from the hills like the Acropolis at Athens,

with the main citadel surrounded by hillside suburbs straggling

. up from the river. It had been the favorite resort of the Great

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LADY OP THE BEASTS

Kings during spring and fall, as Babylon had been their winter

residence. The treasure there amounted to fifty thousand tal-

ents equal to the yield of the Macedonian mines for fifty

years.

There also they found statues that Xerxes had carried off

from Athens generations before. Among them were the bronze

figures of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Alexander sent them

back to Athens.

It seemed to the Macedonians to be a good omen, to find these

statues, which rejoiced Lysippus, so far within the eastern

mountains. And when Alexander allowed them to celebrate

with field sports and a torch race they were more than willing

to push on in winter, not caring that they were leaving behind

them the escape route to the now distant coast.

Even in autumn it was too hot in Susa to please the Mace-

donian highlanders. (Susa stood not far above the modern

Ahwaz.)

"Here the sun fries everything not in the shade," they com-

plained. "When lizards cross the stones of the street they are

fried before they can get across. We don't have to cook meat

here we only lay it out on the stones. 5 '

[207]

XIII PERSEPOLIS

THE FOUR CAPITAL CITIES of the Great Kings had been

capitals of different nationalities in the past. Susa, per-

haps the oldest, had been the vital center of Elam;

Ecbatana [modern Hamadan] had been the great city of the

tribal Medes; Babylon had been the metropolis of the neo-

Babylonians, who had risen along with the Medes upon the

ruins of Assyrian power. Only Persepolis, "City of the Per-

sians," had been built by the Great Kings in their homeland,

upon the Persian plateau itself.

The Macedonians were now marching against time toward

this heart of Persia itself, hoping to arrive there before Darius

could mobilize new manpower to meet them. Leaving the foot-

hills around Susa, they struck into the first of the long valleys

that threaded through the mountain wall. They were heading

southeast as they climbed.

And immediately they ran into a bit of comedy. The inde-

pendent tribes of these highlands, living upon sheep and cattle,

had been accustomed to exact a toll from dignitaries using the

highway. These Huzha (the Greeks called them Uscii) tribes-

men, very much like those in the same regions today, were

poorly informed about political changes in the outer world,

while they clung steadfastly to their own ancient privileges.

They sent word to Alexander that he would not be allowed to

pass through with his forces unless he paid to the Huzha the

toll customarily paid by the Great King.

Al^s:ander sent back word for them to come down into the

defiles to receive this prescribed toll. Complacently the tribal

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PERSEPOLIS

warriors thronged down toward the road to get their fee. They

had no conception of what a Macedonian army in the field and

in a hurry might do. The next sunrise they awoke to find Mace-

donian units posted along the road, while others were occupy-

ing the nearest Huzha villages having encircled them by a

night march.

The confusion that ensued caused more panic than blood-

shed. It ended with the Huzha perched on distant summits with

the remnants of their cattle, having received, as Arrian relates,

these gifts of honor from Alexander. At this point the mother

of Darius, who had come to be a friendly counselor to the young

Macedonian, interceded for the tribal folk and explained their

psychology. Alexander agreed to allow the Huzha to return

to possession of their lands and to pay for that privilege a

yearly tribute of one hundred horses, five hundred cattle, and

thirty thousand sheep. He had observed that the tribes had

no money, nor did they till the land, so he asked for the ani-

mals and left the Huzha to wonder ruefully how it had hap-

pened that instead of gaining money they were forfeiting cattle

to this demoniac Great King.

The Macedonians noticed that Alexander was taking pains

to restore order in this eastern limbo. After consulting with

the guides from Susa and the chastened Huzha, he divided his

forces, sending the baggage with Parmenio over the winding

wagon road and taking the better troops with him over a high

level trail that led straight toward Persepolis.

The second stoppage was more serious, but again the Mace-

donians had to get through in a hurry.

It was Alexander's column that met the obstacle. The trail

they followed led through a narrow defile to the summit of a

pass. This defile had been walled up and was defended in force.

The Macedonians attacked the wall itself, made of rocks

roughly fitted together. They were thrown back the first day

and went into camp to consider the situation.

[209]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

They had taken a -few prisoners. From these they learned

that a trail led over the mountains on the right to the river be-

yond the pass.

Over this trail Alexander started with the Macedonians of

the phalanx and the Agrianians and other picked units. With

the prisoners as guides they worked their way up at night and

covered a distance of twelve miles. The camp in the valley had

been left in command of Craterus, a new leader whose persuasive

magnetism made him a favorite with the men. Craterus, slender

and elegant as a Corinthian, could get more miles out of a

marching column than the others. He seldom gave orders,

usually contenting himself with advice., smiling when he prom-

ised his command that no other brigade of Macedonians would

earn so much glory as they. Alexander did not object to this

theatrical pose. Now he left only a small force with Craterus,

believing that the Persians in the defile would not venture to

attack the main Macedonian camp.

High on the shoulders of the mountains Alexander's com-

mand had to wait out the day before they could move again

without being seen by the Persians. At evening he sent Philotas

and Coenus with cavalry and engineers ahead to rejoin the

main route at the river and begin the construction of bridges

across the river.

They could see now on either side of them, above the cloud

level, giant snow peaks standing sentinel-like, as if to mark an

invisible gateway. The soldiers christened the one above them

Olympus-in-Asia and the pass itself the Persian Gates, All in

all, they believed the apparition to be a favorable omen, es-

pecially as the name of their chief guide turned out to be the

Wolf, and they remembered that it had been predicted that a

wolf would lead Alexander to success.

When they worked their way down toward the pass they did

have success. They managed to capture or drive uphill three

separate cordons of sentries without alarming the Persian camp

below. Before full light they poured down in the rear of the

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PERSEPOUS

camp. When they sounded the trumpets the signal agreed on

with Craterus the Macedonians in the valley attacked the

wall.

Outnumbered and attacked from front and rear, the Persians

broke out of the valley. When they ran into more Macedonians

holding the river they scattered in panic. The flight became ter-

rible, Arrian relates, when men threw themselves over the cliffs.

Alexander marched on without rest to the river, where the

bridges were being finished. Without stopping at the river, he

started the forty-five miles of descent toward Persepolis, drop-

ping down from the cliffs into dense forests and emerging upon

fields of grain where villages hugged the streams. Pushing on

with the cavalry, he came out on a plain as level as a temple

floor, where slaves plowed the earth with buffalo. Against the

hills at the edge of this garden valley the Macedonians sighted

the gleaming limestone of Persepolis.

They had outstripped the news of their coming.

Of the four gazaphylakia, the treasure cities of the Great

King, the Macedonians anticipated most from this, his inner-

most dwelling place. They ended their hard march down from

the heights, as if coming in to the finish of a Marathon. The

best mounted of the Companion horsemen streamed across the

garden plain, with scouts and archers straining to keep up

with the wearied horses. They leaped water channels, cut

through cherry orchards, rode the horses up the massive stone

stairway to this hidden acropolis of the Persians. They raced

in, to secure the treasure of gold coin and gold leaf, and purple

dye and perfumes, and solid plates of precious metal, before

the Persian officials could make off with the treasure.

Half drunk with fatigue, muddied, laughing, joyous, they

smashed through the fragment of Immortals the celebrated

bowmen mustering at the stairhead. They pushed between the

winged daimons of the Xerxes Gate before the massive doors

could be closed. They battered in the portals of the Hall of the

Hundred Columns, herding before them a frightened mob of

[211]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

servants. They scattered through palaces where gigantic wooden

pillars supported roofs gleaming with solid silver plate.

Like hunting hounds in a rabbit warren, they nosed through

the palaces of Darius, the small edifice of Artaxerxes. Realizing

that they had won the race and gained the mighty wealth of

Persepolis intact, they drank heavily of the wine standing in

porous jars in the cooling chambers.

When torches were lighted and the wild search penetrated

the corners of this palace height, the apadana, or throne room,

of Xerxes caught fire. The flames spread to the adjoining bar-

rack and women's quarters. By the time the officers could or-

ganize fire fighters the apadana was a blazing torch, the flames

climbing the woven hangings and carved, gilded woodwork.

The silver plating melted, running down in streams, spattering

through the embers.

Alexander, moving through the fire fighters, saw where a

stone slab bearing a likeness of Xerxes on the throne had been

overturned. Abruptly he stopped, asking what it was. For a

moment he studied it, while the men watched him all of them

conscious that this was the portrait of the Great King who had

destroyed Athens generations before. Alexander said, "Shall

we set him up again ?" Then he went on, leaving Xerxes where

he lay.

When he received the satrap of Persia the next day he seated

himself with ceremony on the throne of Artaxerxes, which had

been used by the last Darius. Some of the veteran Macedonians

wept with relief and joy perhaps with the fumes of wine still

strong in them. One, Demarath the Corinthian, an old man,

wiped away his tears, muttering that he grieved for all the

Macedonians and Greeks who had died before they could see

their commander on the throne of Persia. To such veterans this

was the end of the war and the unceasing marching. . . .

The tradition persists that Alexander of Macedon burned

Persepolis. If you travel through Iran today you will hear that

tradition ; authorities repeat it, and by repetition it has come

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PERSEPOUS

to be the single circumstance universally connected with his

life. But it is dangerous to assume that whatever happened in

Alexander's presence happened because of his presence.

If Alexander ordered the Persepolis palaces to be burned,

why did he order it? Certainly he did nothing of the kind at

Babylon or Susa or later at Ecbatana. (Although he did order

such destruction still later and still farther to the east, espe-

cially in what is now Turkestan and India.)

The Greek and in consequence the Roman narrators give

many versions of this burning. The romantic version, featuring

Thais, is well given by that able writer Plutarch, who was more

interested in the working of human souls than in the account

of battles.

Before taking the road again to go after Darius, Plutarch

relates, Alexander entertained his officers at drinking, even al-

lowing everyone's mistress to sit by him. The most celebrated

of these was Thais, an Athenian, mistress of Ptolemy who 'was

afterward King of Egypt. At this feast she spoke up daringly 9

although excusably being an Athenian. She said it was some

compensation for her toils in following the army over Asia to

sit here drinking in the palace of the Persian kings. But it\

would be much more fun if she could take a torch and set fire

to this hall of Xerxes, who had burned Athens in his time.

Everyone applauded this whim of hers. The king himself put a

garland on his head and took a torch in his hcmd. So he led

thtm around the hall, while they danced and sang and set fire

to the hangings. When the Macedonians outside saw what was

doing 9 they also ran in with torclws. They did so with huge de-

light, for they saw in this destruction a sign that the king had

no desire to stay among these barbarians and was inclined to

go home.

This scene fascinated poets and playwrights for centuries.

Yet it is not probable that Thais, if she was ever present at

Persepolis, had made the march with Alexander's column over

the heights. And if Alexander destroyed a palace to please her,

he never did the like again in his career.

[218]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

Other explanations, rationalizing after the event, have it

that he wished to avenge the destruction in Greece more than a

century before, that he burned Persepolis for the moral effect

on the Asiatics, or to emphasize that the old Persian dynasty

was gone and that the Asiatics were dealing with a new king.

Arrian has Parmenio argue that it would be a mistake to burn

Persepolis if Alexander planned to remain inland in Asia. Yet

Parmenio is known to have favored, with his faction of the staff,

occupation of the western coast rather than the inland region.

Against this there are clear indications that the apadana of

Xerxes burned in the confusion after the inrush of the Mace-

donians. The fire destroyed much of the gold and silver orna-

mentation of this hall, and apparently Alexander, or his officers,

ordered it put out. At any rate it destroyed only the central

portion of the palaces, not all the palace height. And certainly

later on Alexander took pains to seal up and preserve intact

the tomb of Cyrus, not far away.

In all probability the fire started accidentally and was put

out as soon as possible.

The Macedonians rested at Persepolis for a month or two,

until winter ended and snow cleared from the roads over the

passes around them. In this time Parmenio's slower-moving

column came in, and supplies were got from the countryside.

They could afford to take this time to rest, because they heard

that Darius was pretty well snowed in among the mountains of

the Medes and that he was having trouble assembling a fourth

army.

To the Macedonians in the ranks this seemed to be no more

than a necessary pause before the last move and the end of the

campaign. The wealth taken in at Persepolis staggered their

imagination enlarged though their concepts had been after

listing the spoil of Susa,

On the charts of the military surveyors something equally

amazing showed. In the last ten months the army had passed

PERSEPOUS

through or around a huge area some three hundred and sixty

thousand square miles. To this immense space in the east, of

course, were added the terzritories taken over earlier, the Ionian

coast, the islands, Egypt, Libya. A dozen Macedons could be

fitted inside these new additions. The surveyors were no longer

certain of their exact position on the earth; they had no fa-

miliar landmarks to work from ; already they were making cor-

rections in the world plan of Hecataeus.

Those officers like Ptolemy, son of Lagus, who still kept con-

nected journals, had similar worries. The army controlled this

new area because it had confiscated the public wealth, arranged

for tribute to be paid, policed the roads, garrisoned the great

cities and trading points. It had assumed responsibility, for

what?

Already the mere task of administration overtaxed the staff,

experienced as it was. Insensibly the body of the army had

grown. Women, who had been ordered to remain at Babylon,

appeared mysteriously again out of the baggage trains. The

popular actor Thessalus turned up again and gave perform-

ances on the moonlit hillside above Persepolis. The contingents

of servants increased. Wrestlers, musicians, and even the be-

loved roots of the wine grapes somehow made the journey after

the army. The Macedonian farmers hurried to get the roots

into the ground while it was still cold and wet. No one person

had ordered all this. It simply happened, at Persepolis as at

Memphis. The army, it seemed, had tangible appendages that

could not be severed from it. Only now these appendages had

grown. Money, for instance. The soldiers disliked leaving it

behind, no matter how safely it might be stored in their names.

Once on a route march Alexander had noticed a transport

driver. This man had shouldered heavy bales that had been

loaded on a mule, when the mule went down. The weight was

too much for a man, and Alexander asked him what he was

trying to carry.

"It's your property," the Macedonian growled. "Valuables."

[ 215 ]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

"Then get it into camp if you can."

Alexander said nothing more then, but at camp he ordered

the contents of the bales to be given to the man who had carried

them in. He seemed to be indifferent to the new wealth, so far

as it concerned him personally. He gave decisions about funds

without thought, except to make gifts. Already there was more

than enough for everybody.

The men noticed that their commander liked to be asked

for gifts. An actor extemporized a plea for cash for deserving

thespians during an evening's performance, and Alexander

laughed and gave it. One young officer, however, made no such

request although his duty kept him close to the king. After a

time Alexander became aware of this. "Why don't you ask for

anything? 5 ' he demanded.

The officer did not explain, but at the games soon afterward

when they were tossing a ball from hand to hand he made a

point of throwing the ball to everyone except Alexander, who

stopped the game to inquire why he was being left out of it.

"Because you haven't asked for it," the officer told him,

Alexander laughed and presented him with a gift. While he

seemed to grow more indifferent to the value of money, he did

not relax discipline in Persia. As much as possible he gave

judgment himself, and the men said he kept a finger on one

ear at such times to remind himself to listen to justice, not to

arguments. When he heard that a local culprit had been pur-

sued into a shrine that was a Persian sanctuary, and that the

Macedonians were going in to arrest the man, he advised them

to stay outside and try to trick the man into coming out of

the sanctuary.

The Macedonians thought this reverence for local customs

unnecessary, and they blamed the wings and the Achaemenians

for it.

These wings were a pair of eagle's wings, carved in the stone

over the entrances to the tombs. Such wings had been seen in

Egypt, where they formed the emblem of Osiris, the sun god.

[216]

PERSEPOLIS

They had also been found in Babylon, attached to the shoulders

of the bas-reliefs of the grotesque god Marduk. Here they

supported only a head, the head of Ahura, the Lord of Wis-

dom, who also shared in the power of the sun. If Ahura, within

his disk of the sun, supported himself on the pinions of an

imaginary eagle, it was all one to the soldiers, who had seea

many images of strange gods by now. But it interested Alex-

ander greatly. He wanted to know why the rulers of Persia

were related to the sun and to the wings of the eagle.

When he discovered that the only temples of this land were

stone altars on high places where fire burned at night, he ques-

tioned the Zarathustrians the Greeks called them Zoroastrians

who attended these fire altars. They said that the eagle, the

great bird dwelling nearest the sun, formed a link between men

and the sky. They believed that the Si-murg, the spirit of the

eagles, descended to the hilltops to aid men.

These Zarathustrians thought that human fate was not pre-

ordained, to be interpreted by the circling of the stars as the

Babylonians claimed. Instead the human spirit endured

through eternity, struggling to raise itself out of darkness to

light, losing strength when it came under the power of evil,

gaining strength when it progressed toward good.

Unlike the Yahweh of the Semites, or the Lord [Bel] of the

intelligent Babylonians, the god Ahura took no share in war,

being involved only in the struggle with evil, as such. In this

Ahura differed also from the Father-God Zeus of the Greeks.

"The sky is their Zeus," the soldiers said of these Zarathus-

trians.

Yet they had a legend that the deity of the sky who descended

to earth, Mithra, had been born in the night of the winter

solstice in a cavern that was the grotto of the world between

the star constellation of the ox and that of the ass. This had

come to pass at the time of the ascendency of the sign of the

virgin in the night sky.

So, precisely, had the divine Dionysos been born. Mithra

[217]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

was a very twin to Dionysos. And it seemed to Alexander that

the Persian Zarathustrians his men called them Magians, or

magicians had drawn their knowledge from the same source

as the ancient Greeks. Only the names differed and he dis-

covered that the Zend, the ancient speech of the Persians, did

resemble Greek. The family of their Great Kings, the Kings of

the Lands of the Earth, was Achaemenian, not Achaean.

At some time in the past, then, the Greeks and Persians had

been related. But where had the Persians come from?

From the north and east, the Zarathustrians said. From an-

cient Iran-venj, their lost paradise. There, far off in the limbo

of the steppes, they had been close to the divine Powers. Emerg-

ing, they had bred horses and ridden horses they called the

ancient breed the splendid Nisaean herd and they had worked

metals. These early Iranian tribes had migrated out of the

lost paradise through the land of Soghd, through Bactria and

Parthia, around the waters of the clear inland sea. The

Iranian tribe called Parsa had given their name to Persia, to

the great plateau where the good grass grew that fed their

horse herds. The Achaemenian clan had been leaders of this

Parsa tribe.

The foremost of the Achaemenian clan, Kurush 1 called

Cyrus by the Greeks had gained supremacy over the Medes

of the mountains and had swept with his horsemen westward as

far as the Mediterranean Sea. Only two centuries before,

Kurush had reined in at the waters of the sea. He had united

the different peoples under his rule. He had laughed at the

gold stored up by Croesus of Lydia, on that coast. With his

horsemen and his camels he had ridden over Lydia.

1 In this book proper names are given in their most familiar form, whether

of Greek or Latin origin. Modern usage has clung to Alexander instead of

AkxandfoSj and to Hephaestion, Ptolemy, and Thais. Nearchus appears most

often ia Latin guise. In the case of oriental names an attempt has been made

to give them as they were actually pronounced. The early Persians wrote

"Kurush" and not "Cyrus" as the name of their first emperor, and "Rushanak,"

mot "RosaJja/* as tle name of Alexander's bride.

[218]

PERSEPOLIS

This Kurush had mocked at the Greeks of the cities who had

to get their food, he said, by gathering together in a place called

the market place, to dispute and pay money for what they ate.

Among his peoples, Kurush had said, food was given and not

sold.

The tomb of this Kurush stood back in the hills under bare

trees by the thread of a stream. It was built of simple blocks

of limestone, worn and burned to a golden hue by the sun. The

name Kurush meant the Sun.

Alexander visited the tomb of Kurush, whom he had begun

to admire. Climbing up the pedestal and sitting on the top

tier against the sarcophagus chamber that had a pointed roof

like a house, he could see the wide steps across the fields leading

up to the hall and the few buildings of the first town Kurush

had built, called Pasargadae.

Going over to Pasargadae, he found no inhabitants there.

The space of the hall had been leveled off against the slope of

a small hill, and it had no fortification. You climbed easily up

the broad steps and sat in the shade, looking out over the fields

now turning green. It was good country for horses. Only a few

Zarathustrians attended the tomb of Kurush, who had formed

the western Asiatic world into one, joining the people under

him but allowing them to have freedom in their lives. Alex-

ander told the Zarathustrians to keep on with their guard. He

did not want the tomb molested.

It seemed to him that there was a meaning in this solitary

white tomb among grazing herds. He did not know what mean-

ing the tomb had for him, but he felt it.

At the bend of the road going back to Persepolis he saw the

rock tombs of the later Achaemenians, of Darius the Great and

Ahasuerus, whom the Greeks called Xerxes. They all had the

eagle wings and the disk of the sun above the threshold. But

no city was near them. Only a single fire altar, tended by

priests.

He thought that Persepolis itself had been built not as a city

[219]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

but as a palace home. The columns were shaped like the trees of

a vast forest, the open halls were like pavilions pitched by

wanderers for a night's shelter. At first the Achaemenians had

tried to dwell within this place, then the administration of their

immense domain made up of kingdoms had drawn them farther

and farther afield, so that they returned only at rare intervals

to the homesite by the tombs. They had become lords of the

first world empire.

Around here, the Zarathustrians said, there had been no war

for two centuries. The Achaemenians, in that respect, had made

their home like the ancient Iran-venj, of the first Aryans.

Alexander recalled that Iran-venj, the lost sanctuary, must

lie toward the east, beyond the knowledge of the Greeks, be-

yond Parthia and Bactria and Soghd, and the beginning of the

steppes. And he remembered that route clearly, as he remem-

bered such things. For in his imagination that easternmost

point had been the dwelling place of the gods.

There was so much he could not understand in this that he

sent a message west to Aristotle, asking for someone of his

school to travel out to this new region, if he could not come

himself.

Aristotle did not come, but he sent a nephew, Callisthenes by

name.

When snow melted along the heights in that spring of the

year 330 B.C. the Macedonian army took up its pursuit of the

elusive manpower of the Great King Darius.

It headed directly northwest along the higher ridges past the

cliffs where Alexander had inspected the Achaemenian tombs,

moving at about cloud level where the horses could graze on

fresh grass. So it almost doubled back on the line of march of

the autumn before only keeping east of the summits of the

Zardeh Kuh, or Yellow Mountains, among tribal people where

food abounded. Alexander 'arranged for the future government

of these uplands as he marched through, quickening the pace of

[220]

PERSEPOLIS

the army as it circled through the valley leading to Ecbatana

some six hundred miles distant from the starting point at

Persepolis.

As they neared Ecbatana the Macedonians found the situa-

tion changing. The warlike mountain folk, who had tasted

Macedonian power at Gaugamela, showed no further inclina-

tion to support their overlord Darius ; instead the chieftains of

the Medes and Kurds came in to discuss terms with Alexander.

So the Macedonians were able to parade into the last of the

four capital cities, Ecbatana, while their commander took over

the responsibility of all of the western half of what had been

the Persian Empire.

The last Darius had escaped again, but this time with no

more than a couple of thousand Greek mercenaries and some

light cavalry following him. He headed down across the Iranian

plateau to take refuge, and to recruit new forces, in the east.

Thus at Ecbatana Alexander began the last stage of the

pursuit of Darius, starting east with the nucleus of his army,

the Companions, Macedonian phalanx, the archers and light

cavalry and the ever-present Agrianians.

The pursuit at this point became a test of endurance and

speed. Swinging down from the Ecbatana hills, Alexander

pushed the army nearly three hundred miles in eleven days.

Magians with the army told him that he was now tracing

the path of the Iranian migration of long ago. The Nisaean

horses had bred on the rolling pastureland. Soon they sighted

the solitary snow peak in the north that the Magians called the

Blue Mountain .[Mount Demavend]. From the summit of this

peak a plume of wind-driven snow swung up and vanished in

the clear sky.

Within the walls of ancient Ray, hugging the foothills of

the Blue Mountain, Alexander halted. Information reached

him that Darius had passed on, several days before, through

the narrow defile called the Caspian Gates. Coenus was sent out

from Ray to forage for supplies, while Alexander waited for

[221]

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON

laggard units, left behind on the march, to catch up. Before

they could do so and before Coenus could return, new intelli-

gence came in. Darius had been arrested by his own satraps,

who held the Great King prisoner as they pushed east.

At once Alexander took the road with the cavalry and the

toughest of the infantry, carrying rations for two days.

Craterus was left to maintain liaison at Ray.

The pursuit force kept going that night, passing through

the dark walls of the Caspian Gates after daybreak stopping

at noon at a stream to rest and sleep for a few hours. They

marched all night, wearied men dropping out and horses dying.

They reached the campsite that the Persians had vacated only

a day and a half before.

Here they heard that the satraps now in command of the

resistance force planned to push due east with their royal

prisoner, to raise a new army in Bactria.

After three or four hours 5 sleep Alexander marched without

halting for a night and a day, coming on the camp the fugitives

had left some twenty hours before.

Until now they had been following the caravan road skirt-

ing the foothills, keeping the open desert on their right. Now

Alexander learned that there was a way straight across the

desert, but without water. Inspecting the units that had kept

up with him, he dismounted five hundred of the most weary

cavalry, replacing them with the same number of infantry in

the best condition. Leaving the remainder of the foot behind,

he struck across the desert by moonlight.

This time he did not stop. Through the day the mounted

column began to thin out. In the noon heat the men went on

like automatons, because Alexander kept on. They were out

of water. Some scouts came in with a small skin or a helmet

filled with water that they had scooped up from rocks. This

they offered to Alexander.

"Who are you bringing this to?' 5 he asked.

"To you/ 5

PERSEPOLIS

Around the water hundreds of men were gathered, their eyes

on it. No one said anything. Alexander emptied the water out

into the sand. "It does no good for one to drink alone," he said.

Toward the end of the afternoon they sighted the dust of the

fugitives, on the road close to the hills. The desert march had

lasted for forty-seven miles.

The men were in no condition to go into action, but Alex-

ander led them on, past Persian stragglers and abandoned

carts. (The Greek mercenaries had turned off into the hills

long since.) The satraps had escaped into a ravine. The ex-

hausted survivors made only a semblance of resistance, throw-

ing themselves down as the leading Macedonians came up.

There was no sign of Darius. One cart, apparently without

a human occupant, was being dragged away by a pair of mules.

The thirsty animals had smelled water, and were moving toward

a spring. In this cart, just before daybreak, the pursuers found

the body of Darius, murdered by his own officers. With one of

his theatrical gestures, the Macedonian threw his white cloak

over the body of the Great King.

XIV THE WINGS, THE SUN, AND

THE EMPIRE

f ^HIS IGNOMINIOUS DEATH by a knife in the hand of a fol-

I lower, in a cart, was of little importance. This man who

JL wore the high tiara and shawl robe of a King of Kings

had ceased to be a leader Darius himself had assassinated his

predecessor, the last of the true Achaemenians. Since Persepo-

lis, Alexander of Macedon had held the mastery in these lands,

and since entering Ecbatana he had assumed the responsibility

of a ruler.

Ecbatana itself had met him with an almost physical impact.