Текст книги "God of War -The Story of Alexander the Great"

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

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I had forgotten what happened in the hours after the death of Philip. I had been away from Alexander for three months.

I caught up with him at a tiny village called Shakrak on the edge of a volcanic lake. Cleitus was the officer of the day.

I reported to him. He saluted me, embraced me, held a snap inspection of my reinforcements and immediately split them up among the existing taxeis. He didn’t ask Alexander, and he didn’t ask me, and when he was done and it was too late to do anything about it, I snapped.

‘That was my command,’ I said. I had intended it to sound humorous – it came out the way I really meant it, as bitter.

‘You don’t have a command,’ Cleitus said. ‘Neither do I. Nor do most of the old boys.’ He glanced around. ‘Ask yourself why. Or don’t. But don’t be surprised if you don’t hold any more commands.’

I tried not to shoot the messenger. ‘I’ll find the king,’ I said.

Black Cleitus shrugged. ‘Your funeral,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t.’

I did, anyway.

My timing was poor. I had entered Alexander’s marching camp on the heels of a dust cloud, and that cloud was the harbinger of a troop of Prodromoi with a pair of Persian traitors. The commander of the city of Persepolis – the very capital of the Persian Empire, no less – had offered to hand the city over to Alexander.

I entered the command tent. Alectus saluted me and smiled. Hephaestion looked up to see what the interruption was, and even he managed a smile.

Alexander was facing two handsome Persians. The one wearing a pound of gold foil was apparently named Darius, and he was the son of Tiridates, the commander at Persepolis.

‘My father says come now, and come quickly,’ the boy insisted. ‘Before there is looting.’

Men were turning – Philotas gave me a little wave, and Perdiccas grinned at me. Alexander looked up. His eyes went to me – and slid right off me.

‘Silence, there,’ he said. ‘Will your father recognise me as King of Kings?’

The young man gave Alexander the strangest look. ‘No. You are not the King of Kings, are you?’

Remember, Persians value telling the truth above all things. They don’t prevaricate well.

Alexander flushed. ‘I am the King of Kings. Are you Persians blind as well as deaf and dumb? I amthe absolute master of Asia.’

Young Darius stepped back a pace. ‘My father,’ he said again, ‘bids you come as quickly as possible.’

Philotas shook his head. ‘Let me go, lord. It could be a trap. Where better? Their terrain, every peasant is one of theirs, and only this boy’s word on it.’

Alexander glanced at him. ‘Never fear, Philotas. You will go. With me.’

The Persian boy leaned forward and spoke quietly into Alexander’s ear.

Alexander’s eyes grew wide.

‘Stop!’ Philotas said. ‘Tell all of us!’ He was obviously angry, and just as obviously distrusted the Persians.

Alexander turned on him. ‘Desist. Do notgive orders under my roof. Go to your tent – I will send for you.’

And Philotas went.

Zeus Soter, the world had changed while I was gone.

Alexander didn’t stop to greet me. He assembled his household cavalry and prepared to ride off to Persepolis.

But technically, I was still a troop commander in the royal Hetaeroi, and I mounted my horse – it was bitter cold, the very edge of a two-day snowstorm in the mountains. My troopers looked at me and laughed, or slapped my back – they were all men I knew. Polystratus took the trumpet from the troop hyperetes, and no one said a word. Philip the Red had been commanding my troop, and he simply clasped my hand and fell back a rank.

It touched my heart.

We rode like the wind. The bridge over the river gorge was gone, destroyed by Darius. We stripped a village of roof trees – in the depths of winter – and prepared to build our own bridge. A troop of enemy cavalry hovered on the far side of the winter torrent, but they only watched us. We put a line of horses across the stream to break the current, and then men – knights of the royal household, aristocrats and veteran soldiers – stripped naked and waded in, bellowing at the cold, carrying the roof trees of the stripped village on our shoulders. We got that bridge across in two hours, and not a single arrow was lofted at us.

We built big fires, warmed ourselves for half an hour and mounted up.

The cold river did something good for my hip and pelvis. I’d been in pain every mile of the ride through the hills, and now, suddenly, the pain was gone. At the time, I thought my balls might be gone, too, but they remained intact.

Up and up, into the hills.

Just before darkness fell, my troop was in the lead – the most aristocratic Prodromoi in history, I suspect. I had Polystratus and Theodore and all his former grooms – all of whom were Hetaeroi now, of course – prowling every track we passed, but it was snowing hard enough that I had reached the point old soldiers reach too often, where I didn’t particularly care if some enemy troopers wanted to ambush me. I was too cold and tired to care, and the snow was piling up on the shoulders of my thickest cloak and starting to melt through, so that trickles of freezing water snuck down my neck and back under my breastplate. You cannot get warm once that starts to happen.

Up and up.

No one ever thinks of Persia as cold.

And then, across the track in front of me, there were three men, like ghosts, or like some horrid set of masks. The light was odd – early sunset in heavy clouds and snow, an amber light with a grey edge to it, cold, hard and evil.

Polystratus reined in, but he’d missed them, or they were supernatural. He was past them.

Here we go, I thought. An ambush.

But the supernatural remained uppermost in my head. There was something wrongwith them. I was half a stade away, and with the snow and the light, they looked like corpses. Closer and closer and the wrongness grew worse. The hair rose on the back of my neck. I checked the draw on my kopis.

I retrieved my spear. I had tucked it under my leg so I could keep my hands warm, and now I put it in my right hand and looked around.

Three horse lengths, and they stilllooked like raven’s food come to life, and my hands were shaking. Philip the Red, at my back, was praying, and he was not a pious man.

Polystratus turned his horse and came cantering back, his horse’s hooves throwing snow.

He was too late.

The middle figure raised an arm.

The arm had no hand, only a stump.

Close up, I saw that he didlook like raven’s food. Neither he nor his two companions had either noses or ears.

I reined my horse in so hard that he reared.

‘Pardon, lord!’ the central figure said in Athenian Greek.

I was fighting to control Medea, who was spooked.

‘Greetings!’ said the next figure. Zeus, they were hideous.

They seemed excited. Even happy.

They spoke Greek.

‘Please say you are Greeks!’ the leader said.

I got my knees, frozen through, locked around Medea’s barrel and restored her to order. ‘Greek enough,’ I said. ‘Who might you be?’

‘I am Leonidas of Athens,’ the leader said. He raised a hood from his cloak and hid his face. His right hand was intact.

He moved carefully. The swirling snow made him more hideous than he might otherwise have been.

I realised that one of his legs was made of wood.

‘You—’ I began.

‘Artaxerxes ordered that all of us who had taken arms against him be mutilated,’ he said. ‘I have my lips. Many do not.’ He took Medea’s bridle in his good hand. ‘So it is true. You are here! Alexander is here to avenge us!’

‘Zeus!’ I muttered. ‘Were you taken in arms against the Great King?’

He nodded. ‘Most of us were taken in Aegypt,’ he said. ‘The old king kept us here. He would come to our village and watch us.’

He was crying by this time, and he tried to embrace my horse. My horse!

I cannot do justice to how hideous he appeared, and how his tears and those of his two wretched companions made him look worse.

‘It is true!’ he cried.

I dismounted, and forced myself to accept their embraces. They were not lepers. They were brave men who had fought the same enemies I fought, and had come to this bitter end.

I sent Polystratus for the king. I sent him with strict orders to warn Alexander what lay ahead, so that he was not taken by surprise.

The Greeks had built fires, and they took us forward to their village, which lined the Royal Road. They were despicable beggars, to the Persians, but they had prepared fires and food for us.

I warmed myself, and made myself accept the embraces and the thanks – the thanks! Of a hundred miserable wretches with no eyes, no lips, no noses, no ears, no hands or feet.

I watched them tend each other. They were like file mates – the man with no legs depended on his mate with two to fetch for him.

The king rode out of the snow.

He dismounted, threw his arms around Leonidas and walked through them, embracing these wrecks of men, and promising them that their troubles were over.

He did it well.

I thought it possible that these men would die of joy. I had never seen men to whom pleasure was so very painful.

And eventually, Alexander made his way to me.

‘You did well to send me word,’ Alexander said to me. He nodded. ‘This – it is for this that we march to destroy the rule of Persia.’

The falsity of his speech sickened me. I had never heard him sound so openly pompous.

Whatever passed over my face, he missed it, but Hephaestion didn’t. He looked at me with a special kind of pleading. The way a parent looks at another parent, begging that a child notbe told something.

So I let it go.

In the morning, we rode on, to Persepolis.

Tiridates surrendered it. When we marched through the passes to the city over the next day, we couldn’t believe he hadn’t made even a token effort to hold it, but of course Alexander had massacred almost every man who held the Susian Gates, and that may have broken Tiridates’ will to resist.

We rode into the city of the Persians, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had seen Aegypt and Babylon – I don’t use that phrase lightly.

The magnificence of the city rolled on and on, so that the eye couldn’t drink in all the splendour at once, and skipped from detail to detail. It wasn’t like Athens – which I love – or Memphis – which I dream of – or Babylon. All three cities have a magnificent central focus that draws the eye and holds it, and any man or woman watching the sun set on the Acropolis has to ask if mere men built the Parthenon, yes? And the same with the temple complex at Memphis, or the Temple of Bel in Babylon. And Athens was ancient when Hector died at Troy, and Aegypt was ancient when Herakles walked the earth, and Babylon – by the gods, Babylon is just ancient.

But at Persepolis, there’s more than you can see at a glance, and so you try to look everywhere. Or you did. It is no longer a problem.

And it was all new-built, like the house of a parvenu rich man. The oldest building was perhaps two hundred years old.

The lower town populace stayed in their houses. A hundred Persian cavalrymen met us outside the gates, led by the traitor in person. We had almost two thousand cavalry with us, and Alexander ordered Philotas to take the gates with his personal troop.

And then we rode in.

I remember that at some point, after most of the column had passed the ceremonial gate, I looked back to make a comment to Philip the Red. I can’t even remember what I meant to say. But behind him, one of my gentleman troopers – Brasidas, a highlander – fumbled his helmet and dropped it. It struck the stone street pavings with a hollow clang that sounded as loudly as a hundred temple bells.

That is how silent Persepolis was as we rode through the streets.

I still do not understand how it was that Darius chose to leave it intact. Or why he abandoned his treasury.

We rode to the palace. And Alexander threw the reins of his horse to the slaves and grooms as if he were the owner, and walked into the palace, led by Tiridates, who took him to the throne room.

I knew what Alexander intended. Apparently, Tiridates did not.

Alexander went to the throne – the great throne, with the winged lions supporting it. And sat. He had to get a table to climb into it. I helped carry the table, and two Persian servants standing by, shocked, burst into tears when the alien usurper sat on the king’s throne.

Alexander turned and looked at them.

‘Now I am your king,’ he said.

The silence inside the palace was thicker, if anything, than the silence in the streets.

‘Now take me to the treasury,’ Alexander said.

Our footsteps were loud. And the palace was immense.

It was utterly different from Memphis. At Memphis, enthusiastic priests led us from room to room of a living palace.

Despite the presence of the full staff at Persepolis, we were looking at the corpse of a palace, and I could feel the hate from every servant, every eunuch – even the slaves.

We crossed the complex to the double tower that acted as the royal treasury. A pair of eunuchs made trouble, and then subsided, and their keys were taken from them. And the doors were opened.

I walked in, one of perhaps eight or nine men behind Alexander. I looked at him. He had stopped, transfixed, in the midst of a marble floor inlaid with black basalt. He had a look – like the Greeks. Raw joy. Hunger.

I lifted my eyes from him, and saw it – I can testify to what it looked like.

It looked like all the gold in the world.

A talent of gold will feed a peasant for his entire life.

We launched the invasion of Asia with forty talents in our war chest.

A hundred thousand talents was, in a very real way, all of the gold in the world. Every treasure that the Persians had taken from every empire that they conquered – from the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Jews, from Thrace, from Euboea in Greece, from Athens; from India, from the Saka, from the desert tribes of the East, from the hill tribes – here it was, the product of two hundred years of ruthless war. Melted down, refined, stacked in bars that reached to shoulder height in front of us and vanished on either side into the murk of the vault, with chests of jewels, swords, armour, mirrors of silver, nets of pearls, the tribute of a hundred kings to the might of Persia.

Alexander made a sound like a moan – the sound of a woman in the joy of love. In that place, a hideous sound.

In that moment, Alexander ceased to care about Macedon. Macedon was an appendage of his treasure room.

Because the veins of Ares are not full of ichor, but molten gold. War requires gold as a horse requires hay and grass. War consumesgold.

We had all the gold in the world, and our king moaned with pleasure to see that he could make war for ever.

We were four months in Persepolis. The army moved up to us, and then the baggage moved up, little by little.

The soldiers began to grumble. They knew the scale of the treasure we’d just seized. They wanted some of it. The older veterans – especially Parmenio’s oldest men – made it obvious that they thought it was theirs.

I was adapting to my lack of place with the king. He scarcely seemed to recognise me when I attended him, and I was never summoned to council. He did say my name from time to time – but usually only to put me in my place.

I might have been bitter, but I had lost my heart for it. There was a busy crowd around him, fighting for supremacy and power. Viewed from the outside, it looked . . . obscene.

But the near mutiny of the old soldiers was being ignored at every level. Men like Craterus were obviously afraid to bring it up with the king. You’ll note there’s not a whisper about it in the Military Journal.

I sent a note to Hephaestion, requesting a cup of wine with him. He was, as far as I could see, the last of the old crowd still close to the king.

I dressed carefully. I had a feeling that this was very important. That appearances now mattered more than reality. That somehow, we were becomingPersians, with their elaborate rituals and their empty honours.

When I entered Hephaestion’s tent, he wasn’t there, and his servants gave me a cup of wine and did not offer me a place to sit.

I waited for a long time.

It is odd how waiting affects you. I grew angrier and angrier, of course – who does not? But the oddest part was my inability to decide whether I should sit or not. The only place to sit was on Hephaestion’s bed, and it was not at a good height for sitting. I couldn’t help but think what I’d have done to Hephaestion if he’d kept me waiting when we were young.

But I remained standing.

My knees grew tired.

My hips hurt.

Eventually, he came into the tent, reading a scroll. He looked at me. He was puzzled, and then shook his head. ‘Oh – Ptolemy. Of course. I can give you two minutes. What do you want?’

We were only a few feet from Alexander’s great red-purple tent, and suddenly I heard the king’s voice. He was angry.

‘What do you mean, you will not?’ he shouted.

I knew that tone. He was enraged.

‘I amthe Great King. I demandthat you hold the spring festival.’ He was spitting – I could hear it.

Hephaestion glanced at me. ‘What do you want, Ptolemy?’ he asked brusquely.

I had had an hour to consider how I was going to put this, but all my good resolutions fell away.

‘I want the king to get his head out of his arse,’ I said.

That got Hephaestion’s attention.

‘Some of Parmenio’s men – most of the phylarchs in the four senior taxeis – are on the verge of mutiny,’ I said. ‘Do you know about it?’

Hephaestion froze.

‘The king has taken all the loot of Asia that you may remember he promised to the troops – soldiers don’t forget that sort of thing.’ I stepped across the tent towards him, and the bronze-haired bastard flinched. ‘He’s fucking around with some Persian festival and he’s bribing the magi – the Persian priests – and he’s all but told the army that we’re marching east, not west.’ I was close to Hephaestion now. ‘And none of you useless fucksseems able to tell him. They’re going to refuse to march. And the troops will back them.’ I was looking into his eyes. ‘Someone might decide that the easiest way to go back to Pella is over the king’s corpse.’

Hephaestion looked at me, took a breath and behind him the king screamed, ‘You will have the spring festival, and I will walk in it and take the part of the Great King, or by all the gods we both hold sacred, I will destroy you.’

‘The king has other troubles just now,’ Hephaestion said blandly. ‘Leave my secretary a list of the ringleaders and I’ll see it’s dealt with, and see to it you get appropriate credit.’

There is a difference between living a story and telling it. Even as I tell you this tale, I know that I foreshadow, I embellish and I explain. So that moment, when Hephaestion treated me as a minor court functionary – I have probably made it seem natural. I have probably prepared you for this, and you nod, and say, yes, the king has started to behave as a tyrant.

But I was stunned. ‘Hephaestion – there are no ringleaders.’ I remember shaking my head. ‘We are talking about – I don’t know – a thousand men. The very heart of the army.’

Hephaestion took a deep breath, and released it. ‘Very well,’ he said. He met my eye. ‘You tell him.’

And so I did.

Hephaestion took me to the king’s tent. The magi were nowhere to be seen. He was on his couch, staring at the roof.

‘Patroclus, why do the gods send me fools—’ he began. And then he saw me.

‘Ptolemy has news he deems serious,’ Hephaestion said carefully. Hedging his bets.

‘Achilles, sulking in his tent,’ I said.

Alexander sat up. He opened his mouth.

I shook my head. ‘Your veterans are on the edge of mutiny,’ I said. ‘Pay is late, and you have just seized all the gold of the empire – a mountain of gold. You made them help load the mules – they know to the talent how much you gained.’ I looked at Hephaestion, but he was no help. ‘They are talking mutiny in the streets.’

‘I asked him to give me the names of the ringleaders,’ Hephaestion said.

‘There are no ringleaders,’ I said. ‘Nor are there any dissenters.’

Alexander nodded, once, decisively, as he did on the battlefield. He assimilated what I was saying, matched it to other data and agreed that I must be right – as ruthless with his own notions as with enemy troops.

‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘Yes. And you will, as usual, tell me that I have been blind,’ he said, looking at me with a disarming smile.

But by the gods, a false smile, like an actor in a mask, or worse.

He nodded again. ‘Very well. We shall give them a bone, and perhaps send a warning to other quarters at the same time.’

‘A bone?’ I said. ‘You need those men. They are the officers and file leaders of your army.’

Alexander shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t need them. I can buy any army I want.’

‘Didn’t work for Darius,’ I said.

‘Darius was not me,’ he said. ‘Your concern is noted. Gather an army council, son of Lagus. And you have my thanks for this timely warning.’

It was still winter in the mountains. Hephaestion gathered all the spears of the army – all the Macedonian citizens. They came with spears, and with torches. They came ready, I still believe, to mutiny.

Alexander stood before them in the white and gold of a Macedonian king. He’d had a few hours to prepare, and he had with him on the besa a half-dozen of the disfigured Greek veterans.

‘Men of Macedon,’ the king said. ‘The time has come to avenge these men. Look at them well. Professional soldiers – men of Amphilopolis and Pella, of Athens and Sparta, of Ionia and Aeolia. Tortured and mutilated by the Persians. Look at what Persia really is.’

Even as he spoke, the poor miserable things shuffled through the crowd, and more of them emerged from behind the king to stumble or push themselves or drag themselves in among the Macedonians.

‘Don’t flinch!’ the king said. ‘Look at them. Had we been defeated at Issus or Arabela, we would have shared this fate. I would be dead, or I would have no lips and no ears. That is the peacewe would have earned from Persia. Ask a Euboean. Ask an Athenian!’

He had them, and they had never even voiced their discontent.

‘Persepolis is the richest city in the empire,’ he said. ‘I give it to you, my loyal troops. I reserve only the temples and the treasury and the palace. Take the rest. Kill the men, and take the women for your own, and let every house be looted and the spoils shared as is the custom of the army.’

We had lived among these Persians for six weeks. Eaten their bread. Laughed at their children and tickled them.

But these men were Macedonians.

They roared.

And then they went and raped Persepolis.

I helped massacre the population of Tyre. I did not help at Gaza. But at Persepolis, I actually stood aside.

The hypaspitoi moved into guard positions around the treasury, the palace and the temples. The magi were carefully protected, as was our growing camp of collaborators.

Every other man in the city was butchered. Perhaps some escaped. I never met any.

It must have fallen like a bolt from Zeus. As I say, we’d lived among them for six weeks. And then, one night, with no warning, their town was sacked.

There was an orgy of destruction. I did not watch it.

But I’m sure you can imagine, if you put your mind to it.

And the next day, most of the lower town was burned flat. The temples and palaces remained untouched, somehow yet more noble for the ruins at their knees and feet. The wailing of women – the cry of absolute degradation and horror – could be heard everywhere in the temple complex. And in the palace. It was as if Persepolis itself wept.

Two days later, when Thaïs arrived with the mules returning from carrying the great treasure down to Susa, the town still smoked and the women were still weeping.

I embraced her, buried my face in her neck and kissed her, but when my hand sought the pins on her chiton, she pushed me away.

‘Raped women are an offence to Aphrodite,’ she said coldly. ‘I will not make love, even with you, while they weep for their dead and their virtue and the sanctity of their bodies outside my tent.’

What could I say? I nodded. Stepped back. ‘I took no part,’ I said.

‘Did you take action?’ she asked.

I turned away. ‘It is probably my fault,’ I said. ‘I wanted Alexander to see what the soldiers thought. Instead, he told them what to think – made them beasts, and rewarded them for it.’ I drank wine. I was drinking too much, in those days. ‘And all to pressure a handful of recalcitrant priests into holding some festival.’

‘The Festival of the New Year,’ she said. ‘I am sorry, Ptolemy. But my body cannot love while I listen to all that hate and despair.’ She crossed the tent to me and kissed me. ‘Why does he imagine that he will be allowed to celebrate the New Year festival?’

‘It’s about being the Great King,’ I said. ‘It is like Tyre. Only the Great King may accept the sanctity of Ahuru Mazda. If he’s allowed to celebrate the festival, that makes his rule legitimate.’ I shrugged. ‘Aegypt accepted him as Apis. Babylon accepted him as Serapis.’

She smiled. ‘Aegypt is older and wiser, and Babylon is the whore of cities.’ She motioned for me to pour her wine. ‘Persepolis has never been conquered before.’

‘We have a thousand Persian noblemen with us now,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘They will collaborate only until there is an alternative,’ she said. ‘Because Alexander thinks himself the ultimate power on earth, he cannot imagine the strength they can derive from their culture and their god. I have met with magi in Susa and in Babylon. They mean to resist.’

I shrugged. ‘He has done everything he can to appease them, and the Queen Mother.’

Thaïs shook her head, this time vehemently. ‘She hates him, now.’ She began to fiddle with her leg-wraps, and I knelt to help her get them off – we were having this conversation when she was no doubt cold and saddle-sore. She sat back. ‘I have missed you, son of Lagus. It’s harder and harder to get good help.’ She smiled at me. Then turned away. ‘He must be pushed away from the lure of Persia. If he makes himself Great King in fact, he will be a monster beyond the rich imagination of Plato or Socrates.’

A month in Babylon, and Thaïs had never been so direct.

Persepolis is where it all happened.

I was invited to ‘court’ more and more frequently. As if, having proved my usefulness again, I was welcome back once more. As if . . . nothing. That’s what had happened every time I left, and this time, my eyes were opened to the process. Out of sight, out of mind. In sight, rewarded.

It was chilling to talk to him. He had forgotten who I was. He spoke to me as if I were a stranger – with a false charm and a manicured sociability. In fact, he wooed me.

I didn’t want anything, and that made me dull.

Weeks passed, and I attended parties. Thaïs came and played her kithara. I tried not to be jealous that sometimes, when he’d had enough wine, the king treated her with the mixture of respect and mockery with which he’d once treated all his inner circle.

He no longer had an inner circle. Callisthenes was careful to flatter him, but increasingly, I think, disillusioned. Anaximenes was such a blowfish that he continued on his own path of subservience. But the former pages, such as Cleitus and Philip, and the older men, such as Craterus and especially Parmenio, found themselves alienated.

I had some excellent dinners with Kineas and his friends – Gracchus, Niceas, Diodorus, Coenus – gentlemen all, and we went hunting in the former royal parks. Alexander went hunting almost every day, but he took only his Persians and Hephaestion and some of the younger pages.

I found that I could not discuss the changes in the king with foreigners, even with Diodorus or Kineas.

And then the date of the Festival of the New Year approached.

Alexander stopped hunting in the hills.

A dozen talents’ worth of royal costume arrived by mule from Susa – rich vestments encrusted in gold, and a pair of towering headdresses, from the same priests who had made the costume for Darius.

I saw them on him. He modelled them for us, explaining with precision what each garment represented, how it symbolically linked the wearer to the sun god and to the ceremony.

He was still confident that the priests, the magi, had received the message of the destruction of the lower town.

They had.

On the morning of the festival, the complex was silent. Of course it was silent. The town was gone, and in its place was a population of soldiers.

When hypaspitoi went to the temples to fetch the magi, they were gone. Except the six chief magi, who had committed suicide.

For the first time in the history of mighty Persepolis, there was no feast of the new sun. The New Year was not praised. No King of Kings rode the sacred way, nor wore the high crown.

‘Bah!’ the king said. ‘Get me my friends. We’ll celebrate a feast of Dionysus, instead!’

But he fooled no one. His rage was as vast as his power, and unlike lesser men who succumb to rage, he had the power to act it out.

I saw that his hands shook, and his face was blotched, red and white.

He ordered couches brought to the high temple, where hours before the magi had stabbed themselves to death. And he assembled a hundred of his officers, and most of them were ordered to bring their partners – from great ladies of Macedon or Aegypt to prostitutes grabbed from the camp. Not a single of the new Persian officers – even the most trusted ones – was invited. In fact, I was present when Hephaestion ordered Nicanor to post men at their tents.

But every Greek in the army was invited – every Greek officer, Athenian, Ionian, Spartan and Megaran and Plataean, all the way down the ranks to phylarch. Kineas was invited. He brought a beautiful girl. I had seen her at parties – a girl who was somewhere between a prostitute and a courtesan, and Thaïs had invited her to our pavilion for wine, discussed her profession, admitted her to the lower priestess rank of Aphrodite. She was called Artemis, I remember, and she was slim and sharp and moved like a fighter.

But I digress, like an old man. Except I will tell you, lad, that the memories of beautiful women outlast all the foolish battles. Ashurbanipal had something, whatever Alexander said. Eat, drink and fuck. The rest is not worth a snap.

We ate venison and mutton with foreign spices, and we drank Greek wine. The Great King had vats of good Greek wine. There were stacks of barley rolls, as if we were in Athens.