The Macedonian attack pressed forward, but the confusion of the fighting and the intermingling of companies from separate commands left the attackers disorganized – and vulnerable to a counterattack. From the gates to either side of the Cadmea poured just such a punishing reprimand – the phalanxes of Thebes marching in serried ranks, spears at the level, shields locked. Perdiccas, his blood up, waving a now broken pike in one bloodied hand and a sword in the other, charged like a madman, frothing at the mouth, into the Theban’s iron hedge.
Such valor spurred other Macedonians to similar bravery – and a similar fate. Cold and collected, the Thebans brushed off the disorganized charge and kept advancing. From his vantage point at the Heracleion with the old guardsmen, Captain Dimitrios raised a deep-throated cheer, as did the men around him. He cheered even louder when he spied that Perdiccas, desperately wounded, was carried from the field, still shouting hoarsely to his soldiers to press forward for the glory of Macedonia and its young king.
Behind the Macedonian lines, Alexander tried to make some sense of the confused battle, relying on his close-knit group of friends and aides to relay orders and receive reports from the front. One of those, Ptolemy, rode up and, barely pausing to catch his breath, reported: “Perdiccas is badly wounded my lord, but Amyntas has taken charge of both his and Perdiccas’ battalions. They have linked up with the garrison – but the Thebans have sortied, and our men are hard-pressed.”
“Those impetuous fools! I told them not to attack until we gave the Thebans time to surrender!” raged Alexander. “Ptolemy, go find Eurybotas the Cretan, tell him to take his archers forward to support what is left of Perdiccas' battalion. Find Attalos as well, have him send forward his Agrianian tribesmen – let’s see how the Thebans like being showered by their javelins, and by Cretan arrows. I’ll bring up the Hypaspistes in support, and if their spears aren't enough I’ll order in the Companions…”
“Damn bad ground for horsemen, my King…”
“Then I’ll dismount the Companions if I have too! Now go!” ordered Alexander firmly. “Perdiccas and that fool Amyntas got us into this mess, so we had better make the most of it. Damn those Theban bastards! If they want a war, then so be it – and it will be the last they ever make!”
True to the command of their prince, the archers and javelin throwers of the Macedonian advance guard rushed forward, and poured through the gaps the heavy infantry had torn in the outer palisade. They began a covering barrage, hurling their spears and firing arrows over the heads of their comrades – all in full view of Dimitrios and the elder hoplites hidden in the sunken road by the Heracleion.
“Up and at them, lads” shouted Dimitrios. “There’s easy meat for the taking!”
With a howl, the company of older hoplites roared out of the sunken road, moving to as full a charge these old men could manage as soon as they hit level ground. The lightly armed and quite unprotected archers and javelin throwers neither had time nor distance to react as they would on a battlefield. Trapped between the advancing Thebans and the palisade, dozens were cut down and the rest fled in every direction. Eurybotas the Cretan tried to rally a few of them to stand, but a Theban spear through the throat silenced him – forever.
Dimitrios was in the forefront of the charge, but his elation was as short-lived as the Thebans' victory. No sooner had they regained the line of the palisade and chased the light infantry away than they were blinded by the glare from a thousand brightly polished shields. Forward, in grim determination, Alexander himself at their head, came the Hypaspistes, the elite of the elite royal guard, the most experienced and most deadly of the heavy infantry of old Macedonia. With Nicanor, son of Parmenion, the late King Philip’s most trusted general, in their front rank, these hardened veterans moved ahead in perfect step and in deadly silence, the glare of death in their eyes even brighter and more piercing than the sun’s rays which reflected off their gleaming shields.
Dimitrios and his small elderly band tried to hold a breach in the palisade, but they were as driftwood swept aside by a tide. With so many of the old men down, their commander and a few of the others still remaining upright fell back, trying to drag the wounded back to the city. The captain and a handful of the rest covered their backs as they retreated. It was only with great difficulty, and often by slashing at fellow Thebans who also were racing back to the gates, that Dimitrios finally cut a path back into the city – with what seemed to be the entirety of the Macedonian army close at his heels. Even those who had come out to throw back Perdiccas were caught up in the tide of frightened men, men who had spent all the coins of courage they had brought to the field.
The gates to either side of the Cadmea still open, and the citadel garrison itself now pouring out to join the fray, no barrier remained to the Macedonian army. Organized resistance collapsed. Small groups of soldiers tried to form up and block some of the key streets while their families fled before the invaders. Others tried to make a stand in the agora, but Macedonians poured in from all sides of the open marketplace, catching them in the flank and rear. Deep into the city they drove, past the Spring of Ares and into the city's beating heart.
Some brave Thebans sought to staunch the flow of invaders, but, as with the fight in the marketplace, such engagements were brief and bloody. Wherever a group of Thebans formed ranks, they were soon either outflanked from a side street or overborne by the sheer weight of numbers – and by the blood rage of their attackers.
Fighting devolved into house to house and even room to room as the battle dissolved into thousands of individual combats. Here the professional soldiers of Macedonia had the advantage over the part-time citizen soldiers of Thebes. Men more familiar with their olive groves and fields of barley proved little match to men who spent their days on the drill field. Women and children barricaded themselves in back rooms while men too old or weak for war struggled to break through the walls leading to the houses behind, hoping to escape the rampaging Macedonians. Behind the Macedonians came an even more brutal wave - their allies from Plateai, from Phocea, and other cities and towns that had over the years suffered humiliation, enslavement, and ruin at the hand of Thebes. For them, this was payback time; and their grudges ran old and deep.
Alexander, himself now covered in blood and given over to a red rage, did nothing to restrain them. To the contrary, he let slip that army from his leash. So began the death rattle of ancient Thebes.
9
Thebes
Alexander's Tent
“Better a small city on a rock, governed by free men, than an empire of splendor filled with slaves,” or so the people of Thebes had boasted when they had overcome the Spartans. But that was 60 years ago, before the age of the newer, even deadlier Spartans – for so terrible had the soldiers of Macedonia become. And they demonstrated that terror with almost mechanical, even Spartan precision as they swept over the small city on the rock and crushed it flat beneath their hob-nailed boots.
Occupying a tongue of land between two streams, the Boetian Plain to its north and the swampy ground of Lake Copais to the south and east, Thebes was not easily navigated. No planned colony of Ionia, this ancient city built, shattered and built up again on the broken bones of the first, was no stranger to tragedy. What befell Thebes that day, however, was nothing less than an apocalypse, and the name of that apocalypse was Alexander.
Whatever lessons he had learned from Aristotle about how to treat the Greeks had been washed out of his memory once his blood was up. Seeing Theban cavalry trampling their infantry as they fled in panic, Alexander threw off the cloak of command and rode to the chase, like some mercenary savage from the horse tribes of the steppes, instead of a king and the son of a king.
His soldiers were no better. As the mad spree of murder and revenge intensified, so did the looting, the raping and the burning. Fires broke out all over the city. Some by accident, most set by victorious soldiers from the outlying towns out of spite – or for sport. An old city, the timbers holding up its roof
s were dry and caught fire easily. Buildings collapsed, burying those hiding within. Flames spread through the agora, swept through the crowded slums, and leaped across the narrow alleyways and even the streams. In fire, the city died, much to the delight of Macedonia's boy king.
Some who were there swore they saw the Keres, the monstrous part woman, part carrion bird daughters of Nyx, goddess of the night, sweep down into the flames to carry off and feast upon the dead. Others swore they saw their father, Erebos himself, in the dark, oily clouds of smoke that rose above the dying city.
But there were other demons and monsters about, mortal ones, their hands red with blood and gore, and their packs overflowing with the spoils of war.
Yet there were some among the Macedonian horde that had retained their humanity and had kept both their heads and their honor. One of these was Alexander's favorite childhood companion, Hephaestion, a slender man of such beauty and grace, he was one of the few able to calm the young king when the rage came upon him. But even Hephaestion had his limits.
Alexander had gone battle-mad, much as he had done when leading the pursuit of the broken enemy on the field of Chaeronea. Inflamed by the fighting, he had given himself to the passion of war, forsaking the responsibility of command for the adrenal rush of personal combat. Halted in his pursuit only by the exhaustion of his inexhaustible steed, the king, his eyes glazed over and his armor covered in blood, seemed to be in another plane of existence when his friend finally caught up with him.
“Alexander, my King, my Lord, my friend,” spoke Hephaestion gently, as he rode up behind Alexander, removed his helmet, and placed a comforting hand upon the king's shoulder. “Enough. Call an end to this. It is enough.”
The touch of he whom Alexander loved above all others, even almost above himself, did much to cool the king's battle ardor. As the red rage cleared from his eyes, and the adrenaline rush of combat dissipated, Alexander once again began to breathe normally. After a few gasping breaths, he become calmer, and started to feel the blessed release, the exhaustion that, like a lover spent, comes once the battle is finally done.
“Alexander, put a stop to this. For the sake of your own honor, if not in the name of mercy,” pleaded Hephaestion, “make it stop. Look, see here, I have brought some old men from Thebes to speak with you, to plead with you. I beg you, for your own sake, listen to them.”
Hephaestion motioned to one of his guards to bring forth three of the Theban elders, each of whom bore bruises, and whose clothes were torn and stained with blood, dirt and soot.
“You,” he said, pointing to the man closest to him. “What is your name again?”
“Cleadas, my lord,” the old man said humbly.
“Good Cleadas, tell the king what you told me.”
“Noble King Alexander,” began Cleadas nervously. “Please spare what is left of my city, and of my people.”
“Why should I show such mercy to traitors?” Alexander replied hoarsely.
“But we are not traitors, sire, no.”
“Oh? Then how do you explain this...this...this rebellion?” Alexander shot back, his temper uncooled and his anger rising.
“We were not disloyal, sire,” Cleadas said nervously, spreading out his hands before him. “We were...well...we were just gullible?”
“Gullible? Gullible? What do you mean, gullible?” asked Alexander, truly surprised by this line of argument.
“We were told you were dead, you see, my King,” the old man pleaded, the others with him nodding in agreement as he did so. “So we were not rising up against you, but only against those whom we believed would succeed you. And we have paid the price for that gullibility. We have more than paid the price,” he continued, tears in his eyes, his voice trembling. “Our beautiful city is a smoldering ruin, our young men dead on the field of battle, and there are bodies in the very streets of Thebes. Our women disgraced, our children homeless and fatherless, we have paid enough for our mistakes. I beg you, in the name of the city where your father, in his youth, was educated, to spare what little remains.”
As Cleades and the other Theban elders fell to their knees, groveling and weeping at his feet, Alexander began to take pity on them. He motioned for the guards to escort them away, took a deep breath, and turned to his friend.
“What would you have me do?”
“Only what is right and what is honorable. If this old man has not moved you, then there is another who, I believe, will.”
Hephaestion once again motioned to a guard who, in response, brought forward a young woman. Her face bruised, her hair disheveled and, beneath the Macedonian military cloak a soldier had draped about the woman, her dress torn to the point of immodesty, she knelt before Alexander.
“And who is this, Hephaestion?”
“My name is Timokleia, your majesty, youngest sister of Theagenes.”
“The general who led the army against us at Chaeronea?” asked Alexander, incredulously.
“The same, Majesty. His bones are still out there, along with those of the Sacred Band, and others who fought for the liberty and freedom of Greece,” she replied, with as much pride as she could muster in her condition.
Although Alexander bristled at her remarks, he nevertheless was impressed by her courage. “A brave and honorable soldier was your brother. He was a true taktikos, a worthy opponent who knew how to marshal men on the field of battle. He fought well. Many Thebans earned my respect that day, but none more than he.”
“Then in his name I ask for justice,” responded Timokleia, a tremor in her voice. “For me, and for my children, the nieces and nephews of Theagenes.”
“How so, good woman?” asked Alexander.
“For my children, that they be released from captivity. They have been taken by the slavers who follow your army.”
“It will be done, you have my word,” said Alexander. “And for yourself?”
“That I may be allowed to live, so that I may care for my children.”
“Has someone threatened your life, Timokleia?”
Hephaestion answered for her. “The Thracians, my lord. They were about to cut off her head when I came upon her.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Alexander.
“Because I killed one of their officers” responded Timokleia without a hint of regret.
“Why? How?” asked Alexander, his curiosity piqued.
“Because he raped me, and when he was done, demanded I give him all of my gold, and silver, and jewelry.”
“And did you?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I showed him the well in our garden where I told him I had hidden my family's treasure. When he leaned over the side to get a better look, I pushed him over, down into the well. Then I threw rocks and stones from our garden down at him, until I was sure he was dead.”
Alexander, taken aback at her story, did not know how to respond. Instead, he turned to Hephaestion once more, and ordered that she be escorted to where the slavers were encamped, and, once she had found her children, that she and they be escorted back to their home, and a guard placed to keep them safe.
“It is too late to save the city, Hephaestion,” Alexander continued, once Timokleia had been dismissed. “Too late to call the men back. They are drunk with victory. They won a war up north and, with barely a pause to cheer, were force marched 250 miles south in two weeks, only to fight another battle – a battle they did not seek; a truly unnecessary war. They are like hungry wolves turned loose among a flock of sheep. The feeding frenzy will not stop until their appetites – all of their appetites – are sated.”
“But surely you can still save something of Thebes?” pleaded Hephaestion. “You showed mercy to this brave woman, why stop with her? Would you have it said that you desecrated the birthplace of Heracles, or his temple? What of the tomb of Antigone? My noble cavalry, your own Companions, are still around you, still in their ranks. At least send some of them to protect what yet can be protected. No soldier will defy them; they respect a
nd fear the Companions too much, as they respect, and fear, and love you.”
“What would you have me save,” sighed Alexander, weary and exasperated; “what is there left to save?”
“Some of the temples, perhaps, or the homes of those Thebans who remained true to us. Or the house of that Theban poet Aristotle so often praised in our school days.”
“You mean Pindar? Yes, I suppose that would only be right. That is what Aristotle would surely advise, were he with the army. See to it, Hephaestion, see to it that the temples, the House of Pindar and all who dwell within are safe. Take some of the guard and make it so yourself. I depend upon you to salvage what is left of Thebes, if only for the sake of our old teacher.”
“We can always blame the Plateans and the Phoceans for all of this, I suppose,” mumbled Hephaestion.
“True,” nodded Alexander. “Send a message to our ambassador at the League of Corinth. Tell him to organize a vote by the members to condemn Thebes for breaking the common peace. Furthermore, I want them to demand the city be razed, in punishment for violating the peace now, and for what Thebes did as an ally of the Persians in the past.”
Hephaestion, stunned, stammered “but if we show some mercy...”
“Mercy?” chortled Alexander. “No, not mercy – for a few, maybe, like that brave woman, or those old men, or a few temples and fewer homes, but no more than that. A little terror,that is what we need here. Mercy is quickly forgotten, but terror is always remembered. Thebes will be an example. The rest of Greece will think twice before defying me, lest their cities suffer the same fate. The Persians, too, will hear of this – and it will make them tremble, knowing that they will be the next to feel such wrath.”
A Captain of Thebes Page 6
