Текст книги "Alexander the Great"

Автор книги: Robin Fox

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For the moment, Alexander could escape a confrontation by moving westwards; his road, like the veterans', still led in the general direction of home, and reports from the last stage of Nearchus's voyage up the Persian Gulf, had aroused his interest in the river routes from Susa. He learnt he could sail down the river Pasitigris, venture on to the sea or a linking canal, and return up the mouth of the Tigris until he rejoined the Royal Road; the idea appealed to him, so he detailed his new brother-in-law Hephaistion to bring the troops in attendance by land, and he embarked on the fleet to carry it out. The Pasitigris was pleasantly navigable and allowed him to inspect the irrigation methods of the area, but the Tigris had been blocked by weirs 'because the Persians, themselves poor sailors, had built them at regular intervals to prevent any ships sailing upstream and seizing their country'. Alexander 'said that such devices did not befit a victorious army and he proved them to be worthless by easily cutting through what the Persians had been so keen to preserve'.

At the mouth of the Tigris, he was able to lighten his load. Where the Dur-Ellil canal meets the eastern edge of the river estuary, the Persian kings had founded a royal garrison two hundred years before and stocked it with Carian settlers, fellow countrymen of Scylax the sea captain and thus well suited to naval work on the Persian Gulf. The garrison had fallen into disrepair and Alexander felt inclined to replace it; now that Nearchus had explored the Persian Gulf, a city at the mouth of the Tigris could resume the Carian sailors' duties and serve as the port for India's shipping and traders. The descendants of the Carians' garrison were recruited as settlers and combined with as many army veterans as could decently be shed. Once again, an Alexandria took its cue from an ancient oriental outpost, and again it would live up to its founder's hopes. The new Alexandria lasted barely a hundred years before being ruined by floods, but the site was twice restored by Greek and Parthian kings and became the main port for near-Asian trade with India, visited by the Roman Emperor Trajan and still maintained by the Arabs a thousand years after Alexander's foundation. Its neat parallelogram of streets and houses, designed as if it were a military camp, has recently been found by an English air survey. Alexandrias, as their founder recognized, were his surest claim on posterity.

Rid, therefore, of a few hundred veterans, Alexander left his new city to be built and sailed up the Tigris, removing weirs and allowing his surveyors to measure the length of the river. At Opis, on the river bend south of modem Baghdad, he paused to meet Hephaistion and the land army. He knew now that there was no escaping his problem. From this point onwards, his route and the veterans' would have to diverge, for it was impossible for boats to sail up the Tigris any further, and at Opis the road system offered an alternative; he could either strike west for Babylon or else follow the great eastern highway into Media and Hamadan. The late summer weather would make Babylon intolerably hot, so like the Persian kings, Alexander opted for a visit to Media and the cool of the hunting-lodges of Hulwan. But if the veterans followed him, they would be doubling back and veering away from home. They had to go west, and at Opis the issue was brought out publicly.

Ever since Susa and the sight of the Successors, the troops had been sullen and discontented. Now Alexander called them together and told them that the aged and infirm were to be discharged and returned to Macedonia; they would be handsomely rewarded 'both to the envy of their friends back home and to the emulation of those who stayed in service'. It was the least well-received suggestion he had ever made. The troops rioted and shouted him down. 'Go on campaigning,' they said are to have told him, 'in the company of your father,' meaning Ammon, not Philip, 'but if you dismiss the veterans, you must dismiss us all.' Other reports differed, as the taunts of mutineers are never recorded with accuracy, but whether or not men had referred to Ammon, their disobedience was curtly treated. Alexander jumped down from his platform attended by his closest officers, and pointed out the trouble-makers whom he wished them to arrest. Thirteen men were seized and marched away to their death: Alexander remounted the platform and launched into one of his powerful speeches. Then he strode away to the royal quarters, where he shut himself in, refusing to see any of his Companions or attend to his personal requirements. Only his intimates were allowed inside. None of his officers is known to have described the mutiny, but there is no mistaking the points at issue. Nobody complained that Alexander had lost his sense of proportion or his ability to rule the empire, yet many officers, even a Hipparch, had sided with the veterans, a rare split between Alexander's commanders and his close friends. They booed him, not because he had led them into Makran or because he was likely to lead them into further battles, but because he was trying to exclude them from the future they knew he still offered. It was not a mutiny of men who wished to go home, for after ten years in Asia, a home in the marches of Upper Macedonia had lost its very few attractions: former hill-shepherds had seen and plundered a vastly richer world and they meant to stay at the top of it. They did not intend to leave it to a corps of oriental Successors and a mixed brigade of Persian Companions, when there were perfectly good Macedonians, or so they felt, to carry on instead. It was a mutiny of men who wanted to stay firmly put; had they lost their faith in Alexander, they could have murdered him the moment he jumped off his platform, bodyguards and all. They did nothing, because they needed him.

But Alexander saw it differently. Many of the men he wished to disband were over sixty, or even seventy, years old; they were often unfit and generally resistant to change. Had he known how they were to return and dominate the battlefields after his death, he might have hesitated, but at Opis, he was thinking of his own future and for that, old men were too short-term a liability. His ambitions would strain Macedonia's manpower, a source on which he had not been able to draw for the past seven years, and it made sense to call on his large oriental reserves to replenish an army which had been humbled by Makran. The province of Persia alone had more fighting men than his father had ever commanded in his new Macedonia, and by recruiting them, he could involve them in the profits and responsibilities of conquest. His weddings at Susa, his Iranian Companions and Successors were proof, to his great credit, that he knew where the loyal governing class of the future should be made to lie. He did not want a court which was recruited exclusively from Macedonians any more than he wanted the equality or the brotherhood of man; he wanted, rightly, to 'draw on the best recruits, whether Greek, Macedonian or barbarian'. There was no better guard against inflaming the national feelings of the peoples he had conquered than to invite their governors to share in his court.

The army had threatened him with what they believed he would never do, but being Alexander, it was not long before he announced that he would do it all the same. They had told him that if any veteran was dismissed they would all desert and leave him to liis new Iranian friends; after an ominous silence from the royal tent, news came that the Iranians were his perfect and sufficient army of the future. There were to be Iranian Shield Bearers, Companions, Foot Companions and Royal Squadrons; the army commands were to be held by picked orientals, who would be treated as the king's equals and therefore allowed the traditional privilege of greeting him by a kiss. For two days after the announcement, Alexander remained in his tent, seen only by his Iranian officers, close Companions and Bodyguards. He was bluffing boldly, but if the troops had been stubborn, he would no doubt have carried on with his design.

With their leaders dead and their wages in danger, the troops hesitated, struck by Alexander's new announcement. It was a very different situation from the mutiny at the Beas. There too, Alexander had threatened to march on without them, but they had known they were indispensable. This time, they had challenged him to disband them and he had shown every sign of being prepared to do so. Many officers heard their rank was passing to Iranians, a hint that they too had sympathized with the mutiny. Alexander's close friends stood against them, and this they could not break. Threatened men, they took fright:

They ran to the royal quarters and threw down their weapons before the doors, as a fervent entreaty to their king; then they stood and began to shout to be allowed inside; they promised they would give up the instigators of the mutiny; they would not depart from the doors, day or night, until Alexander took pity on them.

Not for the last time in history, a group of agitators had led a majority where it wished it had never gone.

Alexander 'came out rapidly, and when he saw their imploring attitude and heard how many were crying and lamenting, he too began to shed tears'. An elderly Hipparch of the Companion Cavalry came forward to voice the men's entreaties. Persians, he said, had been made Alexander's Royal Kinsmen with the traditional right to kiss the King, but 'no Macedonian has yet sampled such an honour'. Alexander replied that from that day onwards, he called them all his kinsmen, widening a title to please them in the best tradition of the Macedonian kings, whereupon 'the Hipparch came forward to kiss him, as did any others who wished to do likewise. Then they took up their weapons, shouted and raised the song of victory on the way back to camp.' Master of the moment, Alexander followed up his success with a judicious festival: he offered sacrifice to the usual gods, Ammon, therefore, included, and announced a public banquet for the senior members of the court and army.

This banquet was planned with all Alexander's inimitable sense of style. A feast was laid out on the grass and around him sat his senior Macedonians; in a circle outside sat Iranians: outside again, sat distinguished representatives of other tribes in the empire. It was a scene of merriment and ritual on the grandest scale: Greek priests and magi led the ceremonies in their own distinctive manner and presided over the libations which Alexander and those around him poured together, ladling their wine from the same huge bowl. Those outside followed suit, until shared conviviality was rounded off with a common prayer. Alexander, in their midst, prayed for 'other blessings and for concord between the Macedonians and Persians and a sharing of the rule of the empire between them'. All the guests, to the number of 9,000, poured a common libation and accompanied it with a shout of triumph.

At this memorable moment the triumph was Alexander's.

Soon afterwards, all such Macedonians as were too old or disabled to fight departed from him, but now, as volunteers; they numbered more than 10,000. Alexander gave them their full pay not only for their past service but also for the length of their journey home; in addition, he presented them with a talent's bonus.

On reaching Macedonia, they would be rich enough on this alone to occupy a higher social position than they could ever have imagined possible ten years before; a talent's bonus meant more than fifteen years' combined wages for an ordinary soldier, and bonuses took no account of Indian plunder and oriental jewels. 'If they had any children by their Asian wives, they were to leave these with him so as not to import quarrels and strife into Macedonia between foreigners and foreign children and the native families and wives they had already left there.' These strays would be dependent entirely on Alexander as their mothers would no longer be recognized wives and by Greek law, children of unrecognized mothers were regarded as illegitimate. They had also been brought up to life in camp, where Alexander promised to sec that they were educated in Macedonian fashion and trained especially for war; 'when they were grown up, he would bring them to Macedonia and hand them over to their fathers'. The promise of a Macedonian education was a careful sop to the veterans' feelings, but the arrival of several thousand bastard Asians in the life of long-neglected Macedonian women was one of the more unenviable meetings which history was spared through Alexander's death. Small wonder that 'his promise was vague and uncertain'.

But his handling of the mutiny had been masterly throughout. His speech, his rapid arrest of the leaders, his complete acceptance of his men's overhasty threats, his two days' silence and his banquet of reconciliation: no man could march an army through Makran and remain unchanged by the experience, but it is sequences like these which show that the change had not cost Alexander his astonishing flair for leading men. He showed none of the indecision or the meanness which attaches to the declining despots of fables and sermons; being a politician, he was of course ruthless, but being a great politician, he had the far rarer gift of making his purpose convincing. He could never have reduced his mutineers to abject pleading unless he had first been a man of extraordinary personality; the same blunt tactics from a mere tyrant would have ended in a war in the camp, or his execution by the bodyguards. His succeeding generals learnt that soon enough.

The banquet, however, was his master-stroke. He managed to seat Macedonians and Iranians together, the Macedonians around him in the position of honour, the Iranians in an outer circle, and he coaxed men who only two days before had been deriding any such pretensions to join with one accord in common libations and a prayer for concord and participation between their two peoples. Concord was a catchphrase of the time, but the emotions of the audience were brilliantly managed, and this effect was not forgotten: the form of the feast at Opis was to be copied eight years after Alexander's death by an officer who had witnessed it, again at a moment of friction and crisis. The gift of commanding a crowd can be a dangerous one, but at Opis it had been applied to the most commendable of ends; in the emotion of a common banquet, those who had refused to share their empire with its high oriental families and abundant soldiers were rightly and properly routed.

For, until these last years, Alexander had not fought to change but to take over. The royal scrolls of the Persian empire were still stored in the same files; the Royal Road still ran through the same post houses with the same immemorial threat of levies and requisitions. There were Honoured Friends at court, Royal Relations, Royal Fires, the royal harem, eunuchs, and a king who studiously wore the Persian diadem; gold brooches and purple robes were bestowed as marks of rank and even the daily outlay on the king's and Companions' dinners remained at the level long fixed by the Persian kings. In the provinces, there were satraps, Eyes of the King and treasurers under the same old Persian name: the Alexandrias were built, for the most part, on the sites of previous Persian outposts, however different their culture, street plans and constitutions. The one perceptible change in government, apart from minor alterations in the satrapal boundaries, was that satraps had gradually lost the right to issue their own silver coins. This continuity is not a criticism, for against the unalterable facts of time, distance and native tradition, deep change in the empire would have been either naive or irresponsible. But from a Greek point of view, such continuity was itself surprising; when taken to the lengths of Iranian brides and Successors, it broke completely with the slogans of the early invasion. To Greeks at home, Alexander's most memorable change had been to be conservative of what he conquered, but this conservatism had changed shape during the expedition. He had begun, mistakenly, by reappointing Darius's satraps; by the time he married Roxane, he was planning ahead, employing Iranians as separate army units and already thinking of younger Iranian recruits. Since coming out of Makran, he had shown an increasing keenness to treat all suitable orientals as equals in court and camp, if not in the satrapal commands; it is incorrect to explain this only in terms of replacing his heavy losses in the desert, as his 30,000 Iranian Successors had already been chosen three years before the attempt on Makran was considered. Like the Persian queen and her daughters, these new recruits were to be taught Greek and trained in Macedonian customs; the children of the Susa weddings, no less than the abandoned families of the returning veterans, were to be educated likewise, with the added asset of mixed parentage behind them.

Alexander's policy of fusion did not extend to a new way of life. For political reasons he wished to recruit from and marry into his oriental subjects but he was not acting from a racial faith in the half caste or a belief in the mixed culture of new blood. All his courtiers and soldiers were to be given a Greek or Macedonian education, just as Barsine and her relations were brought up to Greek ways. The ideals of spreading Greek culture through cities and dignifying Asia with a Greek education were already much in the minds of Greek contemporaries; Alexander has been hailed as the founder of the brotherhood of man or criticized for betraying 'purity' of race, but it is as the first man to wish to westernize Asia that he ought to have been judged.

After the banquet, it was only natural that the disbanded veterans should be led home by the oldest and most conservative officers. Their command was entrusted to Craterus, a very close friend of Alexander, who was known for his doggedly Macedonian outlook: he was unwell, and so he received the seventy-year-old Polyperchon as his deputy. Polyperchon belonged to the royal family of the most backward hill-kingdom attached to Macedonia and as an officer who had once ridiculed the Persians' act of proskynesis , he would have little sympathy with Alexander's future government. The departure of their 10,000 men would thin the army of its Macedonians, nowhere more so than in the infantry battalions, where the three thousand Silver Shields, mostly veterans of Philip's corps of Shield Bearers, were leaving for home with their battle-scarred commanders. A mere 6,000, perhaps, of the 23,000 Macedonians recruited in the past ten years for Asia had survived or now remained in service in an army that wore an oriental look. Not that Alexander was unmoved to see their fellows go: 'He took his farewell of them all with tears in his eyes and they too cried as they left him.' Cratcrus, on arrival, was to take charge of Macedonia and 'the freedom of the Greeks', that specious slogan of Philip's Greek alliance, 'while Antipater was to bring out young Macedonians as replacements'. He had written to Antipatcr that the veterans and their families should enjoy seats of honour in the theatre for the rest of their lives; after ten years' absence, he naturally wished to see his ageing marshal, now over seventy, in person, but whether Craterus's appointment to Macedonia was to be temporary or permanent is uncertain. Camp gossip suggested that at last Antipater was to be supplanted after so much contention with Olympias the queen, but 'nothing open is reported to have been said or done by Alexander which would imply that Antipater was not as high in his affection as usual’. There was little point in inviting the marshal casually to Asia through the orders of a departing general, unless Antipater was more than likely to agree. And yet the last had by no means been heard of the marshal in Alexander's history.

As the veterans left Opis, many of them sick like Craterus and ill-suited to a rapid march home, Alexander was left to the diversions of his friends. After the high emotions of the past three months, it was a sudden and flattening moment and as for the first time there was not the prospect of immediate war, it is important to recognize who his friends would be. During the expedition, age, battles and conspiracy had accounted for half of his known officer class, or some fifty-five Companions and governors, but it is most remarkable how for the past three years his closest friends and camp-commanders had survived disasters almost to a man. Since the start of the Indian invasion, only two known generals had disappeared from court, one of whom was Coenus the Hipparch, a sick man; after Makran, the other great names still lived on, the same commanders of the Foot Companions, the Shield Bearers and five of the brigades of the Companion Cavalry. The seven royal Bodyguards remained unchanged, as close as ever to the man they protected, and they welcomed the favoured Peucestas as an eighth among them. Exclusively Macedonian, they were the nobles whom Alexander loved and trusted, whether tough like Dionnatus, famed for his gymnastics, or shrewd like Ptolemy, a friend from childhood; Hephaistion still predominated, faithfully inclining to the Iranian customs of his king and lover. Each had his family and favourites, none more so than the clique of Perdiccas, which included two of the leaders of the Foot Companions. Already, Alexander's eventual successor had founded his influence among the men who mattered, but they were not a divided group. Unless they had supported their king, he could never have won the Opis mutiny, for rulers never fall unless they are divided amongst themselves.

Bodyguards were not the only intimates. Ever since his childhood Alexander had been well disposed to Greeks from the outside world and enough of this earliest circle still lived to share the hopes and troubles of the day. Nearchus was safely and happily at court, a friend for life; the bilingual Laomedon, whose even dearer brother Erigyius had been buried in state six years before, was available to reminisce on all they had been through in the past decades. Eumenes, the Greek secretary, had first served Philip, then earned Alexander's closest confidence: his wiles had long worked in private and aroused both jealousies and firm allegiance, until his influence caused him to clash pettily and constantly with Hephaistion. Others of Philip's Greeks were loved for less menacing talents. Thettalus the tragic actor had always been a favourite of Alexander, a lifelong friendship which his prizes on the Athenian stage had done nothing to cool. He was still with the king at Opis, ready for a talk about Euripides or a recitation after dinner. The philosopher Anaxarchus offered civilized companionship and the Greek engineers could always be questioned on their new machines of war. Architects and artists, musicians and poets of all kinds were keen for friendly patronage, while the Greek doctors and seers could claim high rank by their essential skills. Aristander the prophet was loved and alive, Philip the doctor and his associates still worked on, imperative friends for a king in a country of sicknesses and poisons. Pages and ball-boys were favoured, if more capriciously; Chares the Greek master of ceremonies was as appreciative as his high position demanded, while Greek aristocrats from Thessaly were always ready for a drink or a game of dice, and had prospered accordingly. Among Greeks alone, even if his officers had deserted him, the king had no cause to feel bereft of friends.

Officially, Alexander would dine among sixty or seventy Companions every day, and here, too, there were friends who deserved their courtesy title. The regiments were in impressively safe hands, especially now that eight of their oldest commanders had set out for Macedonia: men like Seleucus, future king of Asia, or Alcctas, brother of Perdiccas, sympathized with the plan of sharing their status with chosen Iranian nobles. They were easy to like for their opinions, while the Iranians themselves were a fresh source of conviviality, not only the favoured Bagoas, but also Roxane's family, the sons of Mazaeus and Darius's own brother, still a Companion: Darius's mother Sisygambis held Alexander in specially high regard. The 10,000 veterans had been replaced by 10,000 Iranian Immortal Guards from Susa, a thousand of whom served in their glorious embroidery beside the most intimate corps of the Macedonian Shield Bearers as a new Guard of Honour outside the king's tent. Harpalus, maybe, had let his friend Alexander down, but what with his new Iranian attendants and old Macedonian intimates, not to mention the copious concubines of the royal harem, three oriental wives, Bagoas and a mistress, it was not a lonely Alexander who reflected on his treasurer's brusque desertion. He lived among three groups of friends, Greek, Macedonian and oriental, where his worry was the jealousies and incompatibility of a varied company. Men who love a powerful or popular man do not therefore love each other, and it is no surprise that Craterus, for example, hated Hephaistion, Hephaistion hated Eumenes and Eumenes hated the leader of the Shield Bearers. Alexander, at the centre, did not spare himself in their interest. He had shown he would weep when taking his leave of veteran friends; now, he had more money than any man in the world and he was commendably willing to spend it. Emotionally and financially generous, he had the qualities to fete his court, never more so than with the desert behind him. In return, they gave him devotion and except for but Hephaistion had caught a fever and retired to bed; the games continued without him, and his doctor confined him to his room and put him on a strict diet. As it did not seem too serious, the doctor left to attend the theatre; equally untroubled, Hephaistion ignored his orders, ate a boiled chicken and washed it down with a flagon of wine. Disobedience aggravated the fever, perhaps because it had become typhoid and reacted to any sudden intake of food; the doctor returned to find his patient critical and for seven more days the illness showed no sign of abating. The games went on, however much Alexander worried; there were concerts and wrestling matches, but on the eighth day, when the crowds were watching the boys' races in the stadium, news arrived to the royal seats that Hephaistion had suffered a grave relapse. Alexander hurried to his bedside, but by the time he arrived it was too late. His Hephaistion had died without him, and it was on this cruel note that Alexander broke down for the second, and most serious, time in his life.

His grief was as uncontrolled as the rumours of it, the like of which had not been heard since the hours after Cleitus's murder; some said he lay day and night on the body, refusing to be torn away; others that he hanged the doctor for negligence and ordered a local temple to the god of healing to be destroyed in mourning. Certainly, he refused to eat or drink for three days after the event, whereupon envoys were sent to Amnion's distant oracle at Siwah to ask if it was proper to worship the dead man as a hero. At this moment of tragedy, the king was turning once more to his personal comforters, for it was said, probably truly, that he cut his own hair in Hephaistion's memory and clipped off the tails and manes of the horses in camp. The ritual has a Persian precedent but more tellingly, it also has a parallel in Homer's Greece: in the Iliad, Achilles had shorn his horses in honour of his dead and beloved Patroclus, and as Hephaistion had long been recognized as the new Patroculus to Alexander's Achilles, it is entirely appropriate that first Ammon, then Homer, came to the surface of Alexander's sorrow.

In his wild lamentation, Alexander was to show how much he minded about the one sure relationship of his life. For a week or more, he was in no state to take a decision; Bagoas, Roxane and the comforts of the Bodyguards meant nothing to him, and preparations for the funeral were left to be finalized at Amnion's bidding. The courtiers could only wait and suggest that Hephaistion needed a local memorial; it was a fortnight before Alexander had recovered enough to sanction it and decree that like other fallen Companions, Hephaistion should be honoured with a large stone carving of a 1 ion: it still stands to this day, the Lion of Hamadan, more or less where Alexander ordered. Lion monuments were the one

Macedonian legacy to art, extending out to India from a kingdom where lions still abounded; centuries later, when Hephaistion had long been forgotten, the ladies of Hamadan would smear the nose of their lion with jam, hoping for children and easy childbirth. Hephaistion had ended his fame as a symbol of fertility.

There was no such perspective to comfort Alexander. He was a distraught man, stripped of all externals: he felt the loss of his love more bitterly than anything in his career and it did not seem as if time or renewed ambitions could ever reconcile him to sudden bereavement. Within the month, he braced himself to leave the Hamadan which he had come to hate, but a new and chilling feature had entered into the mood of the court, new but not entirely unexpected; Hephaistion was dead, Alexander almost despaired of living, and one man, at least, had been proved most curiously right. Five months before, when the rebellious satraps were being purged, the commander of Babylon had asked his brother, a prophet, to test the omens in the city; in due course, a sacrifice had been offered, first to consider the fate of Hephaistion. The victim's liver had been seen, surprisingly, to be without a lobe; hastily, the prophet had sent a letter to his brother, now in Hamadan, advising him that he need have no fears of Hephaistion as death was very near. Hephaistion had died, as predicted, the day after the letter had been opened in Hamadan; the commander was impressed by his brother and meanwhile, unknown, the brother had sacrificed again. This time, the offering was for Alexander and once more, the liver had no lobe; a letter was already on the road for Hamadan, predicting further doom. Only in a crisis do prophets detect bad omens: there was death in the air, and men were beginning to remember how Calanus the Indian had mounted his pyre and taken a cryptic farewell; he was said to have told the king he would be seeing him again in Babylon. It was all very strange: the liver had had no lobe, the Hindu sophist had talked, it seemed, of death and a Babylonian funeral, and now from Hamadan, a mere month later, Alexander was about to begin a roundabout march down through the hills of Luristan, south-west across Mesopotamia, and so to the very Babylon he had hitherto avoided. Nobody knew where the next year would lead them, whether to Greece or the Caspian, west to Carthage or south to the Arabs of the Hadramut valleys. The decision was Alexander's, but however firm he stood against Hephaistion's loss, the omens had implied he would never take it.

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