by Mary Renault
The men of the cavalry looked happy, polished their gear and made much of their horses. Now, the coming battle would be in the plains.
The barley whitened, the olives ripened. By the calendar of Macedon, it was the month of the Lion. King Philip gave a birthday feast in the fort for Alexander. He was eighteen.
Elateia had been made snug; woven hangings on the wall of the royal quarters, tiles on the floor. While the guests were singing, Philip said to his son, “You’ve not named your gift yet. What would you like?”
Alexander smiled. “You know that, Father.”
“You’ve earned it, it’s yours. It won’t be long now. I shall take the right wing, that goes back time out of mind. You will command the cavalry.”
Slowly Alexander set down on the table his golden cup. His eyes, shimmering and wide with wine and visions, met Philip’s lopsided black glint. “If you ever regret it, Father, I shan’t be there to know.”
The appointment was cheered, and toasted. Once more the birth-omens were remembered: the Olympic racing win, the Illyrian victory.
“And the third,” said Ptolemy. “It’s the one I remember best, I was at the age for marvels. It was the day the great Temple of Artemis was burned at Ephesos. A fire in Asia.”
Someone said, “I never heard how it came to happen, without a war. Was it a thunderbolt, or did some priest upset a lamp?”
“No, a man did it on purpose. I heard his name once. Heiro—Hero—a longer name than that. Niarchos, can you remember?”
No one could. Niarchos said, “Did they find out why he did it?”
“Oh, yes. He told them all willingly, before they killed him. He did it so that his name should be remembered forever.”
Dawn glimmered over the low hills of Boeotia, heather and scrub burned brown with summer, scattered with grey boulders and gravelly stones. Dark and rusty like the heath, weathered like the stones, spiny like the thorn trees, the men poured over the hills towards the plain. They trickled down the slopes and silted in the river valley; the silt thickened, but steadily flowed on.
Along the smoothest inclines the cavalry came ambling, careful of unshod hooves. The horses made only a muffled thudding as they picked their way among the heather, their bare backs gripped by the men’s bare thighs. It was the harness of the men that clicked and rattled.
The sky lightened, though the sun still stood behind the great eastward bulk of Parnassos. The valley, scoured out by primeval floods and filled in with their topsoil, began to flatten and widen. Along it burbled through stones the Kephissos River in its summer bed. East of it, low on the terraced slopes, its pink-washed houses still mauve with shadow, stood the village of Cheironeia.
The flood of men slowed its onward course, paused, and spread sideways across the plain. Ahead of it was stretched a dam. Its thick line bristled, and glinted in the first slanting sunbeams; a dam of men.
Between lay a clear space of innocent fields, fed by the river. Mown barley-stubble round the olive trees was pretty with poppies and vetch. There was a noise of crowing cocks, a bleating and lowing of farm-stock, sharp cries of boys and women driving the herds away uphill. The flood and the dam both waited.
In the broad throat of the pass, the northern army made camp along the river. The cavalry went downstream, to water their horses without fouling it for the rest. The men untied their cups from their belts and unpacked their food for the noon meal; flat griddle-cakes, an apple or an onion, a crumble of dirty grey salt from the heel of the bag.
The officers looked about for unsound spear-shafts or javelin thongs, and took the feel of morale. They found a healthy tension, like a drawn bow’s; the men had caught the sense of something momentous. They were thirty-odd thousand foot, two thousand horse; the host ahead was as many; this would be the greatest battle of all their lives till now. They were aware too of the men they knew, the captain who was the squire at home, the village neighbor, the fellow tribesmen and kin, who would report their honor or their shame.
Towards afternoon the long baggage train labored down with the tents and bedding. They could sleep well, all but the outposts; the King held all the flanking passes, their position could not be turned. The army ahead could only sit and wait his pleasure.
Alexander rode up to the ox-cart with the royal tents, and said, “Put mine there.” A young oak gave shade by the river; under the bank was a clear gravelly pool. Good, thought his servants, it would save carrying water. He liked his bath, not only after a battle but, if he could manage it, even before. Some grumbler had said he would be vain even of his corpse.
The King sat in his tent, giving audience to Boeotians, eager to tell him all they knew of the enemy’s plans. The Thebans had oppressed them; the Athenians, their sworn allies, had just sold them publicly to the Thebans; they had nothing much to lose by a leap in the dark. He received them with charm, listened to all their involved and ancient grievances, promised redress, and made notes in his own hand of all they had to tell. Before dusk, he rode up the hill to look for himself, with Alexander, Parmenion, and the next in command, a Macedonian lord called Attalos. The Royal Bodyguard under Pausanias rode behind.
Below them spread the plain which some old poet had called “the dancing-floor of war,” so often had armies met there. The confederate troops spread across from the river to the southern foothills, a front of about three miles. The smoke of their evening fires was rising, with here and there a spurt of flame. Not yet in line of battle, they were clumped, like birds of different species, each city and state apart. Their left wing, which would face the Macedonian right, was based firmly on rising ground. Philip narrowed his good eye at it.
“The Athenians. Well, I must have them out of there. Old Phokion, their only general who’s good for anything, has been given the navy; he was too canny to please Demosthenes. Our luck; they’ve sent Chares, who fights by the book…Hm, yes; I must put on a good-looking assault before I start falling back. They’ll swallow it, from the old general who writes off his losses.” He leaned over with a grin to clap Alexander’s shoulder. “It wouldn’t do for the Little King.”
Alexander’s brow creased, then cleared. He returned the grin, and went back to considering the long bar of men below, as an engineer who must divert a river considers obstructing rock. Tall lank-cheeked Attalos, with his forked yellow beard and pale blue eyes, had edged his horse up nearer, but now moved quietly back.
“So, then,” said Alexander, “in the center we’ve the odds and ends; Corinthians, Achaians, and so on. And on the right…”
“The high command. For you, my son, the Thebans. You see, I’ve not stinted your dish.”
The river gleamed in the light of the paling sky, between tapering poplars and shady planes. Beside it, in orderly patterns, the Theban watch-fires budded into flame. Alexander gazed in deep concentration; for a moment he pictured in this distant firelight the human faces; then they dwindled into the spread of the great design. And all the gates were opened, and the warriors came pouring out, Foot and horse, and the din of onset resounded.
“Wake up, lad,” said Philip. “We’ve seen all we need; I want my supper.”
Parmenion always ate with them; so tonight did Attalos, newly come in from Phokis. Alexander saw with discomfort that Pausanias was on guard. Those two together in one room always put his teeth on edge. He greeted Pausanias with special warmth.
It was Attalos, friend and kin of the dead rival, who had planned the obscene revenge. It was a mystery to Alexander why Pausanias, a man with no lack of courage, should have come to the King demanding vengeance, rather than take it with his own hand. Could it be that he had wanted a sign of Philip’s loyalty? Long ago, before the change, he had had a kind of archaic beauty, which could have housed such an arrogant Homeric love. But Attalos was chief of a powerful clan, a good friend of the King, and useful; the dead boy’s loss had been bitter, too. Pausanias had been talked out of it, and his honor patched up with rank. Six years had gone by, he had been laughing
oftener, talking more, becoming an easier presence, till Attalos was made a general. Now once more he never met one’s eyes, and ten words were a long speech for him. Father shouldn’t have done it. It looks like a reward. People say already…
His father was talking of the coming battle. He brushed clear his mind; but an aftertaste lingered, as of tainted food.
Alexander had his bath in the gravelly pool, and lay on his bed, going over in his mind the battle-plan, point by point. There was nothing he had forgotten. He got up, dressed, and walked along quietly between the watch-fires, till he reached the tent Hephaistion shared with two or three other men. Before he had touched the flap, Hephaistion had risen soundlessly, thrown on his cloak and come out. They stood for a while talking, then went back to their beds. Alexander slept well till the morning watch.
The din of onset resounded.
Over the barley stubble and round the olive trees, crashing through vineyards half-picked when the laborers fled, knocking down the props and treading the grapes into bloody wine, the press of men swayed and mixed and seethed, their mass swelling and bursting like bubbles, rising and settling like yeast. The noise was deafening. Men yelled to one another, or to the enemy, or to themselves; or screamed in some piercing agony beyond what they had known that flesh could feel. Shields clashed, horses squealed, each corps of the confederate army shouted its own battle-paean at full stretch of its lungs. Officers roared orders, trumpets blew. Over everything hung a great cloud of rusty, choking dust.
On the left, where the Athenians held the foothills which formed the confederates’ anchor, the Macedonians shoved their long sarissas doggedly from below, the points of three graded ranks forming one row of weapons, bristling like a porcupine. The Athenians took them on their shields when they could; the bravest pressed between them, stabbing with the short spear or hacking with the sword, sometimes overwhelmed, sometimes denting the line. Along the far flank Philip sat his strong cobby war-horse, his couriers by him, waiting; for what, his men all knew. They heaved and strained in the line, as if their failure to break it was killing them with shame. Though huge noise was everywhere, among them it was somewhat less; they had been told to listen for the word.
In the center, the long front leaned to and fro. The confederate troops, strangers to their neighbors, sometimes rivals, shared the common knowledge that where the line broke disgrace and death would enter. Wounded men fought on till with luck the shields closed before them; or fell, and were trampled on by men who could not drop their guard or pause. The hot press churned in the hot dust, sweating, grunting, cursing, hacking, thrusting, panting, moaning. Where rock broke the ground, the melee heaved round it like sea-foam, and splashed it with crimson spray.
At its north end, where the river guarded its flank, there stretched as evenly as a string of beads the unflawed shield-line of the Sacred Band of Thebes. Now in action the couples were forged into a single bar, each man’s shield overlapping the left-hand man. The elder of each pair, the erastes, kept the right, the spear side; the younger, the eromenos, the side of the shield. The right was the side of honor, for a corps or for a man; though the youth might grow up the stronger, he would never ask his friend to cede it. All this was governed by ancient laws. Newly sworn lovers were here, intent upon their proving; and couples who had been in the corps ten years, solid bearded fathers of families, love rendered down to comradeship; the Band was too famous to be renounced at a dream’s passing. Its lifelong vows were battle-vows. Even through the dust, it glittered. Its bronze hatlike Boeotian helmets and its round shields edged with cable-work had been burnished to shine like gold. Its weapons were six-foot spears with iron blades, and short stabbing swords, still sheathed, the spear-hedge being unbroken.
Parmenion, whose phalanx faced them, had all he could do to hold them. Now and then they gave a great heave forward, and could have gone further yet, but for fear of breaking contact with the Achaians next to them in the line. They were polished and smooth like some old well-made weapon a man knows the feel of in the dark. Hurry up, Philip; these fellows have been to school. I hope you know what you’ve given your boy to bite on. I hope he has the teeth for it.
Behind the laboring phalanx, just out of bowshot, the cavalry waited.
They were massed in a thick column like a catapult bolt, with a tapering head, whose point was a single horseman.
The horses fidgeted at the noise, at the drifts of blood-smell on the wind, and the tension in their riders’ bodies; they blew from the tickle of the dust. The men talked to neighbors or called to friends, rebuked or fondled the horses, straining to see through the ten-foot dust-cloud how the battle went. They were to charge a line of hoplites, the horseman’s nightmare. Cavalry against cavalry, the other man could fall off as easily as you, pushed with the spear, or overreaching himself; he could be outmaneuvered, slashed with the saber. But to run at firm up-pointed spears went against a horse’s nature. They fingered the hard-cured bull-hide pectorals on their chargers’ breasts. The Companions found their own equipment; but they were glad they had listened to the Boy.
The foremost rider flicked off a fly from his horse’s eyelid, feeling with his thighs its strength, its knowledge of the coming fury, its implicit trust, its complicit horse-sense. Yes, yes; we’ll be going when I say go. Remember who we are.
Hephaistion in the next short rank felt at his sword belt; should it be one hole tighter? No, nothing makes him so angry as a man fixing his turnout in the line. I must catch him up before he gets there. His color’s high. It often is before an action. If it was fever he’d never say. Two days with it before the fort fell, and not a word; I could have carried extra water. A fine night I had of it.
A courier rode through the dusty trampled stubble, and hailed Alexander in the King’s name. The message was word of mouth: “They are taking the bait. Be ready.”
Up on the hill, above the pink-washed village of Cheironeia, in the tenth row back of the Athenian force, Demosthenes stood with his tribal regiment. The young men held the front; next behind were the strongest of the middle-aged. The whole depth of the line shifted and strained, as a man’s whole body does when his right arm alone makes some great effort. The day grew hot. It seemed they had been standing and swaying and staring down for hours; suspense ached in him like a tooth. Ahead men were falling, getting spears in their guts and chests; the shock of the blows seemed to travel all through the thick ranks, back to where he stood. How many fallen already; how many ranks still left between that and him? I should not be here, I am wronging the city by risking myself in war. The milling press made a long shove forward. It was the second in a short time; without doubt now, the enemy was giving ground. There were still nine ranks between him and the long sarissas; and their line was wavering. It is not unknown to you, men of Athens, that I carried shield and spear on the field of Cheironeia, counting as nought my life and my own concerns, though some might have called them weighty, and indeed you might have reproached me with hazarding your welfare in risking mine…A choking cry of pain came from the front rank, which had been the second. Men of Athens…
The roar of battle changed. An exultant shout ran like fire through the packed mass. It began to move, no longer in labored heaves but like a gathering landslide. The enemy was retreating! The glories of Marathon, of Salamis, of Plataia, flashed before his eyes. Men in front were yelling, “On to Macedon!” He started running with the rest, calling in his high sharp voice, “Catch Philip! Take him alive!” He should be led in chains through the Agora; after that they would make him talk, name every traitor. There would be a new statue on the Acropolis, next to Harmodios and Aristogeiton: DEMOSTHENES THE LIBERATOR. He shouted to those ahead who could run faster, “On to Macedon! Take him alive!” In his haste to be there and see it, he almost stumbled over the bodies of the young men who had fallen in the front line.
Theagenes the Theban, commander-in-chief of the confederate army, urged his horse behind the battle-lines towards the center. The long f
ront fermented with shouted rumor, too garbled to be of use. Here at last came one of his own scouts. The Macedonians were indeed, he reported, in retreat.
How? asked Theagenes. In disorder? In fair order, but getting away pretty fast. They had already fallen right back from the heights, with the Athenians after them. After them? What! Had they left their station, then, without orders? Well, orders or not, they were already in the plain; it was the King himself they were chasing.
Theagenes, cursing, beat his fist on his thigh. Philip! The fools, the misbegotten, fribbling, vainglorious Athenian fools. What had become of the line up there? There must be a gap as long as a hippodrome. He sent off the scout with orders that it must at all costs be filled, and the left flank covered. No sign anywhere else of the enemy falling back; they were laying on harder than ever.
The leader of the Corinthians received the order. How better guard the flank, than get up on the good rising ground where the Athenians had been? The Achaians, left feeling naked, spread out towards the Corinthians. Theagenes stretched out his own troops in turn. Let these Athenian speechmakers see what real soldiers look like. In their place of honor on the right wing, the Sacred Band changed order; briefly, as they moved, they showed in twos.
Theagenes surveyed the long threshing chain of men, now loose at one end, and weaker over all. Before him, the enemy rear was obscured by a tree-tall thicket of sarissas; ranks not engaged held them high, for the safety of those in front. With them and the dust-cloud, one could see nothing. A thought hit him, like a jolt in the midriff. No word of young Alexander. Where is he? On garrison duty in Phokis? Toiling unnoticed in the line? Yes, when iron floats. Then where is he?
There was a lull in the fight before him; almost a stillness, after the noise before; the heavy pause of earthquake weather. Then the deep bristling phalanx swung sideways, ponderously but smoothly, like an enormous door.
It stood open. The Thebans did not go out of it; they waited for what was coming in. The Sacred Band, turning face to face before they locked the shield-line and settled their spears, showed up in twos, once and for all.
