The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  The girl, shouting out curses, entreaties, and the incomprehensible tale of her wrongs, ran up behind Alexander and grabbed his waist, holding him like a shield. Her hot breath was in his ear; her wet softness seemed to seep even through his corselet; he was half stifled with the rank female smell of dirty flesh and hair, blood, milk and sex. Pushing her arms away, he gazed at Kassandros with mystified repugnance.

  “She’s mine,” panted Kassandros, with an urgency hardly capable of words. “You don’t want her. She’s mine.”

  Alexander said, “No. She’s a suppliant, I’ve pledged her.”

  “She’s mine.” He spoke as if the word must produce effect, staring across at the woman. Alexander looked him over, pausing at the linen kilt below his corselet. In a withdrawn distaste he said, “No.”

  “I caught her once,” Kassandros insisted. “But she got away.” His face was plowed down one side with scratches.

  “So you lost her. I found her. Go away yourself.”

  Kassandros had not quite forgotten his father’s warnings. He kept his voice down. “You can’t interfere here. You’re a boy. You know nothing about it.”

  “Don’t dare call him a boy!” said Hephaistion furiously. “He fought better than you did. Ask the men.”

  Kassandros, who had blundered and hacked his way through the complex obstacles of battle, confused, harassed, and intermittently scared, recalled with hatred the enraptured presence cleaving the chaos, as lucid as a point of flame. The woman, supposing all this to be concerned with her, began to pour out another flood of Thracian. Above it Kassandros shouted, “He was looked after! Whatever fool thing he did, they were bound to follow him! He’s the King’s son. Or so they say.”

  Stupid with anger, and looking at Hephaistion, he was an instant too late for Alexander, whose standing leap at his throat took him off balance and hurled him to the rugged floor. He threshed and flailed; Alexander, intent on choking him, took kicks and blows with indifference. Hephaistion hovered, not daring to help without leave. Something rushed past him from behind. It was the woman, whom they had all forgotten. She had snatched up a three-legged stool; missing Alexander by an inch, she brought it down in a side-sweep on Kassandros’ head. Alexander rolled out of the way; with a frenzied rage she began to beat Kassandros over the body, slamming him back whenever he tried to rise; taking both hands to it, as if she were threshing corn.

  Hephaistion, who was becoming overwrought, burst out laughing. Alexander, regaining his feet, stood looking down, stone-cold. It was Hephaistion who said, “We must stop her. She’ll finish him off.”

  Without moving, Alexander answered, “Someone killed her child. That’s its blood on her.”

  Kassandros had begun to roar with pain. “If he dies,” said Hephaistion, “she’ll be stoned. The King couldn’t refuse. You pledged her.”

  “Stop!” said Alexander in Thracian. Between them they got the stool away. She burst into wild weeping, while Kassandros rolled about on the cobbled floor.

  “He’s alive,” said Alexander, turning away. “Let’s find someone reliable, and get her out of the fort.”

  A little later, rumors reached King Philip that his son had thrashed Antipatros’ son in a fight over a woman. He said offhandedly, “Boys will be men, it seems.” The note of pride was too clear for anyone to risk taking it further.

  Hephaistion, walking back with Alexander, said grinning, “He can hardly complain to Antipatros that you stood by and let a woman beat him.”

  “He can complain where he likes,” said Alexander. “If he likes.” They had turned into the gate. A sound of groaning came from a house within the wall. Here on makeshift bedding the wounded lay; the doctor and his two servants were going to and fro. Hephaistion said, “Let him see properly to your arm.” It had started to bleed again, after the brawl in the gatehouse.

  “There’s Peithon,” Alexander said, peering into the gloom with its buzzing flies. “I must thank him first.”

  He picked his way between mats and blankets, by the light from holes in the roof. Peithon, a youngish man who in battle had looked stern and Homeric, lay with his bandage seeping, limp with loss of blood. His pale face was pinched, his eyes shifted anxiously. Alexander knelt by him and clasped his hand; presently, as his exploits were recalled to him, his color livened a little, he bragged, and essayed a joke.

  When Alexander got up, his eyes had grown used to the shadows. He saw they were all looking at him, jealous, despondent, hopeful; feeling their pain, and wanting their contribution recognized. In the end, before he left, he had spoken to every one of them.

  It was the hardest winter old men remembered. Wolves came down to the villages and took the watchdogs. Cattle and herd-boys died of cold on the low slopes of the winter grazing. The limbs of fir trees cracked under their weight of snow; the mountains were blanketed so thick that only great cliffs and clefts in them still showed dark. Alexander did not refuse the fur cloak his mother sent him. Taking a fox among the stark black tangle of the rose-thorns near Mieza, they found that its pelt was white. Aristotle was very pleased with it. The house was pungent and smoky with its braziers; nights were so bitter that the young men doubled up together, only for warmth. Alexander was anxious to keep well hardened (the King was still in Thrace, where winter blew down straight from the Scythian steppes). He thought he should get through the cold spell without such coddling; but gave way to Hephaistion’s view that people might suppose they had quarreled.

  Ships were lost at sea, or land-bound. Even from as near as Pella, the roads were sometimes snowed up. When the mule train got through, it was like a feast-day.

  “Roast duck for supper,” said Philotas.

  Alexander smelled the air and nodded. “Something’s wrong with Aristotle.”

  “Has he gone to bed?”

  “No, it’s bad news. I saw him in the specimen room.” Alexander went there often; he was now apt to set up his own experiments. “My mother sent me some mitts; I don’t need two pairs, and no one sends him presents. He was there with a letter. He looked dreadful; like a tragic mask.”

  “I daresay some other sophist has contradicted him.”

  Alexander held his peace, and went off to tell Hephaistion.

  “I asked him what the trouble was, if I could help. He said no, he’d tell us about it when he was more composed; and that womanishness would be unworthy of a noble friend. So I went off, to let him weep.”

  At Mieza, the winter sun went down quickly behind the mountain, while the eastward heights of Chalkidike still caught its light. Around the house, the dusk was whitened by the snow. It was not yet time to eat; in the big living-room with its peeling frescoes of blue and rose, the young men hung round the fire-basket on the hearth, talking about horses, women or themselves. Alexander and Hephaistion, sharing the wolfskin cloak sent by Olympias, sat near the window because the lamps were not yet lit. They were reading Xenophon’s The Upbringing of Kyros, which, next to Homer, was just then Alexander’s favorite book.

  “And she could not hide her tears,” read Hephaistion, “falling all down her robe to her feet. Then the eldest man of us said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Lady; we know your husband was noble, but we are choosing you out for one who is not below him in beauty, or mind, or power. We believe that if any man is admirable, it is Kyros; and to him you will belong.’ When the lady heard this, she rent her peplos from top to bottom, crying aloud, while her servants wept with her; and we then had a sight of her face, her neck and arms. And let me tell you, Kyros, it seemed to me and all of us that there was never so beautiful a woman of mortal birth in Asia. But you must be sure to see her for yourself.’

  “‘No, by God,’ said Kyros. ‘Especially if she is as lovely as you say.’

  “They keep asking me,” said Hephaistion, looking up, “why Kassandros doesn’t come back.”

  “I told Aristotle he fell in love with war and forsook philosophy. I don’t know what he told his father. He couldn’t have come back with us; she b
roke two of his ribs.” He pulled another roll out of the cloak. “This part I like. Bear in mind that the same toils do not bear equally on the general and the common soldier, though their bodies are of the same kind; but the honor of the general’s rank, and his knowing that nothing he does will go unnoticed, make his hardships lighter to endure. How true that is. One can’t bear it in mind enough.”

  “Can the real Kyros have been quite so much like Xenophon?”

  “The Persian exiles used to say he was a great warrior and a noble king.”

  Hephaistion peered into a roll. “He trained his companions not to spit or blow their noses in public, not to turn round and stare…”

  “Well, the Persians were rough hill-people in his day. They must have seemed to the Medes like, say, Kleitos would to an Athenian…I like it that when his cooks served him something good, he sent pieces round to his friends.”

  “I wish it were suppertime. I’m clemmed.”

  Alexander edged more of the cloak around him, remembering that at night he was always drawing close because of the cold. “I hope Aristotle will come down. It must be icy upstairs. He ought to have some food.”

  A slave came in with a hand-lamp and tinder-stick, and kindled the tall standing lamps, then reached his flame to the hanging lamp-cluster. The raw young Thracian he was training closed up the shutters, and gingerly pulled the thick wool curtains across.

  “A ruler,” read Alexander, “should not only be truly a better man than those he rules. He should cast a kind of spell on them…”

  There were footsteps on the stairs, which paused till the slaves had gone. Into the evening snugness, Aristotle came down like a walking corpse. His eyes were sunken; the closed mouth seemed to show beneath it the rigid grin of the skull.

  Alexander threw off the cloak, scattering the scrolls, and crossed the room to him. “Come to the fire. Bring a chair, someone. Come and get warm. Please tell us the trouble. Who is dead?”

  “My guest-friend, Hermeias of Atarneus.” Given a question of fact to answer, he could bring out the words. Alexander shouted in the doorway for some wine to be mulled. They all crowded round the man, grown suddenly old, who sat staring into the fire. For a moment he stretched his hands to warm them; then, as if even this stirred some thought of horror, drew them back into his lap.

  “It was Mentor the Rhodian, King Ochos’ general,” he began, and paused again. Alexander said to the others, “That’s Memnon’s brother, who reconquered Egypt.”

  “He has served his master well.” The voice too had thinned and aged. “Barbarians are born so; they did not make their own base condition. But a Hellene who sinks to serve them…Herakleitos says, The best corrupted is the worst. He has betrayed nature itself. So he sinks even below his masters.”

  His face looked yellow; those nearest saw his tremor. To give him time, Alexander said, “We never liked Memnon, did we, Ptolemy?”

  “Hermeias brought justice and a better life to the lands he ruled. King Ochos coveted his lands, and hated his example. Some enemy, I suspect Mentor himself, carried to the King tales he gladly believed. Then Mentor, pretending a friend’s concern, warned Hermeias of danger, and invited him to come and take counsel on it. He went, believing; in his own walled city he could have held out a long time, and was in reach of help from…a powerful ally, with whom he had agreements.”

  Hephaistion looked at Alexander; but he was fixed in entire attention.

  “As a guest-friend he came to Mentor; who sent him, in fetters, to the Great King.”

  The young men made sounds of outrage, but briefly, being eager to learn what next.

  “Mentor took his seal and fixed it to forged orders, which opened all the strongpoints of Atarneus to Mentor’s men. King Ochos now owns them, and all the Greeks within them. As for Hermeias…”

  A brand fell out of the hearth; Harpalos picked up the fire-iron and shoved it back. Aristotle wetted his lips with his tongue. His folded hands did not move, but their knuckles whitened.

  “From the first his death had been determined; but that was not enough for them. King Ochos wished first to know what secret treaties he might have made with other rulers. So he sent for the men whose skill it is to do such things, and told them to make him speak. It is said they worked on him a day and a night.”

  He went on to tell them what had been done; forcing his voice, when he could, into the tone of his lectures on anatomy. The young men listened wordless; their breath hissed as they sucked it in through their shut teeth.

  “My pupil Kallimachos, whom you know, sent me the news from Athens. He says that when Demosthenes announced to the Assembly that Hermeias had been taken, he numbered it among the gifts of fortune, saying, ‘The Great King will now hear of King Philip’s plots, not as a complaint from us, but from the lips of the man who worked them.’ He knows, none better, how such things are done in Persia. But he rejoiced too soon. Hermeias told them nothing. At the end, when after all they could do he was still alive, they hung him on a cross. He said to those in hearing, ‘Tell my friends I have done nothing weak, nor unworthy of philosophy.’”

  There was a deep-voiced murmuring. Alexander stood rooted and still. Presently, when no one else spoke, he said, “I am sorry. Indeed I am truly sorry.” He came forward, put his arm around Aristotle’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. He stared on into the fire.

  A servant brought the warmed wine; he sipped it, shook his head, and put it aside. Suddenly he sat up, and turned towards them. In the upward glow of the fire, the lines of his face looked as if carved in clay, ready for casting in the bronze.

  “Some of you will command in war. Some of you will have the ruling of lands you conquer. Always remember this: as the body is worth nothing without the mind to rule it, as its function is to labor that the mind may live, such is the barbarian in the natural order God ordained. Such peoples may be bettered, as horses are, by being tamed and put to use; like plants or animals, they can serve purposes beyond what their own natures can conceive. That is their value. They are the stuff of slaves. Nothing exists without its function; that is theirs. Remember it.”

  He stood up from the chair, giving as he turned a haunted look at the fire-basket, whose bands were reddening. Alexander said, “If I ever take the men who did this to your friend, the Persians or the Greek, I swear I will avenge him.”

  Without looking back, Aristotle walked to the dark staircase and went up it out of their sight.

  The steward came in, to announce that supper was ready.

  Talking loudly of the news, the young men made for the dining-room; there was not much formality at Mieza. Alexander and Hephaistion lingered, exchanging looks. “So,” said Hephaistion, “he did arrange the treaty.”

  “My father and he caused this between them. What must he feel?”

  “At least he knows his friend died faithful to philosophy.”

  “Let’s hope he believes it. A man dies faithful to his pride.”

  “I expect,” said Hephaistion, “the Great King would have killed Hermeias in any case, to get his cities.”

  “Or he did it because he doubted him. Why was he tortured? They guessed there was something he knew.” The firelight burnished his hair and the clear whites of his eyes. He said, “If ever I get my hands on Mentor, I shall have him crucified.”

  With a complex inward shudder, Hephaistion pictured the beautiful vivid face watching unmoved. “You’d better go in to supper. They can’t start without you.”

  The cook, who knew how young men eat in cold weather, had allowed a whole duck to each. First helpings, with the breast, were being carved and handed; a warm aromatic smell enriched the air.

  Alexander picked up the plate they had put before him, and swung down his feet from the dining-couch he was sharing with Hephaistion. “Everyone eat, don’t wait. I’m only going to see Aristotle.” To Hephaistion he said, “He must eat before night. He’ll fall sick if he lies fasting in the cold, in all that grief. Just tell them to get me some
thing, anything will do.”

  The plates were being wiped with bread when he came back. “He took a little. I thought he would once he got the smell of it. I daresay he’ll have more, now…There’s too much here, you’ve been giving me yours.” Presently he added, “Poor man, he was half out of his mind. I could tell, when he made us that speech about the nature of barbarians. Imagine calling a great man like Kyros the stuff of slaves, only because he was born a Persian.”

  The pale sun rose earlier and gained strength; steep mountain faces let slip their snow-loads, roaring, to flatten great pines like grass. Torrents foamed down their gorges, grinding boulders with thunderous sound. Shepherds waded thigh-deep through wet snow to rescue the early lambs. Alexander put his fur cloak away, in case he should come to depend on it. The young men who had been doubling up went back to sleep alone; so he put away Hephaistion too, though not without some regret. Secretly Hephaistion exchanged their pillows, to take with him the scent of Alexander’s hair.

  King Philip came back from Thrace, where he had deposed King Kersobleptes, left garrisons in his strongpoints, and planted the Hebros valley with Macedonian colonists. Those who applied for lands in these uncouth wilds were mostly men unwanted, or wanted too much, elsewhere; the wits of the army said he should have called his new city, not Philippopolis, but Knavestown. However, the foundation would serve its purpose. Pleased with his winter’s work, he returned to Aigai to celebrate the Dionysia.

  Mieza was abandoned to its slaves. The young men and their teacher packed up their things, and rode along the track which skirted the ridge to Aigai. Here and there they had to descend to the plain, to ford swollen streams. A long while before they sighted Aigai, on the forest trail they felt the earth below them shudder from the pounding of the falls.

  The old rugged castle was full of lights and bright stuffs and beeswax polish. The theater was being readied for the plays. The half-moon shelf Aigai stood on was like a great stage itself, looked down on by wild hills whose audience one could only guess at, when in the windy spring nights they cried to each other over the sounds of water, in defiance, terror, loneliness or love.