The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  In the stubble-field among the trampled poppies, Alexander lifted his sword-arm, and yelled the note of the paean.

  Strong and sustained, the voice trained by Epikrates rang down the great square of horsemen. They took up the paean; it lost in its passage the sound of words, dinning like the fierce outcry from a cloud of swooping hawks. It goaded the horses more than spurs. Before ever they came in sight, the Thebans had felt their thunder through the ground.

  Watching his men like a shepherd on a mountain trail, Philip waited for news.

  The Macedonians were plodding back, sullenly, carefully, fighting for every few yards of ground. Philip rode about, directing their retreat just where it should go. Who could believe it, he thought. When Iphikrates was alive, or Chabrias…But their orators appoint their generals now. So soon, so soon. A generation…He shielded his eyes to scan the line. The charge had begun, he knew no more.

  Well, he’s alive; if he fell, the news would fly quicker than a bird. Curse this leg, I’d like to take a walk among the men, they’re used to it. A spearman all my life. I never thought I’d breed a cavalry general. Ah well, the hammer still needs the anvil. When he can bring off a planned fighting withdrawal like this…He understood his briefing. Everything pat. But only half there, he had that look of his mother.

  Thought changed to tangled images like a knot of snakes. He saw the proud head lying in blood; the mourning, the tomb at Aigai, the choice of a new heir; idiot Arridaios’ jerking face, I was drunk when I got him; Ptolemy, too late now to acknowledge him, I was a boy, what could I do?…What’s four-and-forty, I’ve good seed in me yet. A sturdy square dark-haired boy ran up to him, calling, “Father!”…

  Shouts sounded, nearing, directing a rider to the King.

  “He’s through, sir. He’s broken the line. The Thebans are standing, but they’re cut off beside the river, the right wing’s rolled up. I didn’t speak with him, he said ride straight to you when I saw it, you were waiting for the word. But I saw him there in the van, I saw his white crest.”

  “The gods be thanked. A bringer of such news deserves something. See me after.” He summoned the trumpeter. For a moment, like a good farmer at harvest-time, he viewed the field which through his careful husbandry stood for the reaping just as it ought. His cavalry reserve had appeared upon the heights, before the Corinthians could command them. His withdrawing infantry had spread into the shape of a sickle blade. Enclosed in its curve were the jubilant Athenians.

  He gave the order to attack.

  The knot of young men was still resisting. They had found a stone sheep-pen, nearly breast high, but the sarissas came thrusting over. In the filth on the ground a lad of eighteen was kneeling, clutching at his eye which was falling down his cheek.

  “We should get away,” said the older man in the middle, urgently. “We shall be cut off. Look, you can see, look round.”

  “We’re staying here,” said the young man who had assumed command. “You go if you want, we’ll never notice the difference.”

  “Why throw away our lives? Our lives belong to the City. We should go back and dedicate our lives to restoring Athens.”

  “Barbarians! Barbarians!” yelled the young man to the troops outside. They replied with some uncouth battle-cry. When he had time to spare, he said to the older man, “Restore Athens? Let us rather perish with her. Philip will blot her from the earth. Demosthenes has always said so.”

  “Nothing is certain, terms can be made…Look, they have almost closed us round, are you mad, wasting all our lives?”

  “Not even slavery, but annihilation. That’s what Demosthenes said. I was there, I heard him.”

  A sarissa, poking forward out of the thick of the attackers, caught him under the chin and went tearing up through his mouth into his brain-base.

  “This is madness, madness,” said the middle-aged man. “I’ll have no more part in it.” Dropping shield and spear, he scrambled over the far wall. Only one man, inactive with a broken arm, was looking when he shed his helmet too.

  The rest fought on, till a Macedonian officer came up, calling that if they surrendered the King would spare their lives. At this they laid down their arms. While they were being marched off, between the dying and dead strewed everywhere, to join the herd of captives, one of them said to the rest, “Who was the little fellow who ran away, the one poor Eubios was quoting Demosthenes to?”

  The man with the broken arm, who had been a good while silent, answered, “That was Demosthenes.”

  The prisoners were under guard, the wounded were being carted off on shields, beginning with the victors. This would take many hours, many would be there at nightfall. The defeated lay at the mercy, for good or ill, of those who found them; many, unfound, would be with the dead tomorrow. Among the dead too there was precedence. The conquered would lie till their cities sued for them; their bodies, asked and granted, were formal acknowledgment that the victors possessed the field.

  Philip with his staff rode down the long wreck-strewed shore of battle from south to north. The moans of the dying sounded in fitful gusts, like wind in the high woods of Macedon. Father and son said little; sometimes a landmark of the fight would prompt a question. Philip was trying to make real to himself the event with all its meaning. Alexander had been with Herakles; it took time to come down from that possession. He did his best to attend to his father, who had embraced him when they met, and said everything that was proper.

  At length they reached the river. Here by its shore, there was no straggle among the dead of men caught flying. They lay compactly, facing all ways outward, except where the river for a time had guarded their backs. Philip looked at the cable-trimmed shields. He said to Alexander, “You went in here?”

  “Yes. Between them and the Achaians. The Achaians stood well; but these died harder.”

  “Pausanias,” called Philip. “Have them counted.”

  Alexander said, “You will find there is no need.”

  The count took time. Many were buried under Macedonians they had killed, and had to be disentangled. There were three hundred. All the Band was there.

  “I called on them to yield,” Alexander said. “They called back that they didn’t know the word; they supposed it was Macedonian.”

  Philip nodded, and sank back into his thoughts. One of the bodyguard who had done the counting, a man fond of his own wit, turned one of the bodies over on another and made an obscene joke.

  “Let them alone,” said Philip loudly. The uncertain titters died. “Perish the man who says they did or bore anything base.”

  He wheeled round his horse, followed by Alexander. Unseen by either, Pausanias turned and spat on the nearest body.

  “Well,” Philip said, “the day’s work done. I think we have earned a drink.”

  It was a fine night. The flaps of the royal tent were opened; tables and benches overflowed outside. All the chief officers were there, old guest-friends, tribal chiefs, and various allied envoys who had been following the campaign.

  The wine was tempered at first, because people were dry; when thirst was slaked, it went round neat. Everyone who felt happy, or thought it useful, started a new round of toasts, and pledged the King.

  To the rhythm of old Macedonian drinking-songs, the guests began clapping, slapping their thighs, or banging the tables. Their heads were crowned with wreaths from the broken vineyards. After the third chorus, Philip rose to his feet, and proclaimed a komos.

  An unsteady line was formed. Anyone in reach of a torch snatched it up and waved it. Those who were giddy grasped the next man’s shoulder. Swaying and limping, Philip lurched along at the head of the line, arm in arm with Parmenion. His face glistened red in the shaking torchlight, the lid of his dead eye drooped, he bawled out the song like battle orders. The truth of the wine had lit for him the vastness of his deed; the long plans ended, the vista of power ahead, the downfall of his enemy. Freed from careful southern graces as from a hampering cloak, one in soul with his highland
forebears and nomad ancestors, he was a chieftain of Macedon, feasting his clansmen after the greatest of all border raids.

  The lilt of the song inspired him. “Hark!” he roared. “Listen to this:

  “Demosthenes decrees!

  Demosthenes decrees!

  Demosthenes of Paiania,

  Son of Demosthenes.

  Euoi Bakchos! Euoi Bakchos!

  Demosthenes decrees!”

  It spread down the line like fire in tinder. It was easy to learn, and even easier to sing. Stamping and shouting, the komos wavered out through the moonlit night over the olive fields by the river. A little way downstream, where they would not foul the water for the victors, were the prisoners’ pens. Roused by the noise from exhausted sleep or lonely brooding, the drawn grimy men got to their feet and stared silently, or looked at one another. The torches shone on still rows of eyes.

  Near the tail of the komos, among the young, Hephaistion slipped from his neighbors’ convivial arms, and walked along through the olives’ shadows, looking out and waiting. He kept along by the komos till he saw Alexander leave it; he too looked about, knowing Hephaistion would be there.

  They stood together under an old tree with a gnarled intricate stem, thick as a horse’s body. Hephaistion touched it. “Someone told me they live a thousand years.”

  “This one,” Alexander said, “will have something to remember.” He felt at his brow, dragged off the vine-wreath and stamped it under his heel. He was cold sober. Hephaistion had been drunk when the komos started, but that had soon cleared his head.

  They walked on together. The lights and noise still meandered before the prisoners’ pens. Alexander walked steadily down river. They picked their way over broken spears and sarissas and javelins, round dead horses and dead men. At length Alexander stopped by the riverbank, where Hephaistion had known he would.

  No one had stripped the bodies yet. The bright shields, the victors’ trophies, glimmered softly under the moon. The smell of blood was stronger here; bleeding men had fought on longer. The river chuckled gently among the stones.

  One body lay by itself, face down, feet towards the river; a young man, with dark crisply curling hair. His dead hand still grasped his helmet, which stood by him upside down, with water in it. It was unspilled, because he had been crawling when death overtook him. A blood-spoor, along which he had been returning, led from him to the heap of dead. Alexander picked up the helmet, carrying the water carefully, and followed the trail to its end. This man too was young; he had bled a wide pool, the great vein of his thigh being severed. His open mouth showed the dry tongue. Alexander bent, with the water ready, and touched him, then laid the helmet aside,

  “The other had stiffened, but this one is hardly cold. He had a long wait.”

  “He would know why,” Hephaistion said.

  A little way on, two bodies lay across each other, both facing upward to where the enemy had been. The elder was a strong-looking man with a fair clipped beard; the younger, on whom he had fallen back in death, was bareheaded. On one side he was bare-skulled; a downward slash of a cavalry saber had flayed off the face to show a bony grin. From the other side, one could see that beauty had been there.

  Alexander knelt, and as one might straighten a garment, replaced the flap of flesh. It adhered, sticky with blood. He looked round at Hephaistion and said, “I did this. I remember it. He was trying to spear Oxhead through the neck. I did it.”

  “He shouldn’t have lost his helmet. I suppose the chin-strap was weak.”

  “I don’t remember the other.”

  He had been speared through the body, and the spear wrenched back in the urgency of battle, leaving a great torn hole. His face was set in a grimace of agony; he had died wide awake.

  “I remember him,” said Hephaistion. “He came at you after you struck the first one down. You had your hands full already. So I took him on.”

  There was a silence. Small frogs chirruped in the river shallows. A night bird sang liquidly. Behind them sounded the blurred chant of the komos.

  “It’s war,” said Hephaistion. “They know they’d have done the same to us.”

  “Oh yes. Yes, it is with the gods.”

  He knelt down by the two bodies, and tried to compose the limbs; but they were set hard as wood; the eyes, when he had closed the lids, opened again to stare. Finally he dragged the man’s corpse over, till it lay by the youth’s with one stiff arm across it. Taking off his shoulder-cloak he spread it so that both faces were covered.

  “Alexander. I think you should go back to the komos. The King will be missing you.”

  “Kleitos can sing much louder.” He looked round at the still shapes, the dried blood blackened by moonlight, the palely shining bronze. “It is better here among friends.”

  “It’s only right you should be seen. It’s a victory komos. You were first through the line. He waited for that.”

  “Everyone knows what I did. There’s only one honor I want tonight, to have it said I wasn’t there.” He pointed at the wobbling torchlight.

  “Come, then,” said Hephaistion. They went down to the water and washed the blood from their hands. Hephaistion loosened his shoulder-cloak and wrapped it around both of them. They walked on by the river into the hanging shadow of the willows fed by the stream.

  Philip finished the evening sober. As he danced before the captives, a certain Demades, an Athenian eupatrid, had said to him with quiet dignity, “When fortune has cast you for Agamemnon, King, aren’t you ashamed to play Thersites?”

  Philip was not too drunk to feel, through this harshness, a rebuke from Greek to Greek. He stopped the komos, had Demades bathed and freshly clothed, gave him supper in his tent, and, the next day, sent him back to Athens as an envoy. Even in drink, Philip’s eye had been good; the man was one of Phokion’s party, who had worked for peace but obeyed the call to war. By him, the King’s terms were conveyed to Athens. They were proclaimed to an Assembly stunned silent with incredulous relief.

  Athens was to acknowledge the hegemony of Macedon; so far the condition was Sparta’s of sixty years before. But the Spartans had cut the throats of all their captives at Goat River, three thousand men; they had pulled down the Long Walls to the sound of flutes, and set up a tyranny. Philip would release his prisoners without ransom; he would not march into Attica; he left their form of government to their own choice.

  They accepted; and were granted in due form the bones of their dead. They had been burned on a common pyre, since they could not last out the days of peacemaking. The pyre was broad; one party of troops stoked it all day with timber, another fed it with corpses; it smoked up from sunrise to sunset, and both details finished worn out. There were more than a thousand men to burn. The ashes and calcined bones were boxed in oaken chests, awaiting a state cortege.

  Thebes, stripped and helpless, had surrendered without condition. Athens had been an open enemy; but Thebes, a faithless ally. Philip garrisoned her citadel, killed or dispossessed her leading anti-Macedonians, and freed the Boeotians from her rule. There being no parleys, her dead were quickly gathered. The Band were given the heroes’ right of a common tomb, and remained together; above them the Lion of Cheironeia sat down to its long watch.

  When his envoys returned from Athens, Philip let the Athenian prisoners know they were free to go, and went off to his midday meal. He was eating in his tent when a senior officer asked leave to enter. He was in charge of dispatching the convoy. “Yes?” said Philip. “What’s wrong?”

  “Sir, they’re asking for their baggage.”

  Philip put down his soup-soaked bannock. “Asking for what?”

  “Their stuff from their camp, bedding-rolls and so on.”

  Macedonian mouths and eyes fell open. Philip gave a bark of laughter. He grasped his chair-arms, and jutted his black beard. “Do they think,” he roared, “that we beat them at a game of knucklebones? Tell them to get out.”

  As the grumbling exodus was heard, Alexander s
aid, “Why not have marched on? We need not have damaged the city; they’d have left it when you came in sight.”

  Philip shook his head. “One can’t be sure. And the Acropolis has never fallen, so long as it was manned.”

  “Never?” said Alexander. A dreaming aspiration shone in his eyes.

  “And when it did fall, it was to Xerxes. No, no.”

  “No. That’s true.” Neither had spoken of the komos, or of Alexander’s leaving it; each had welcomed the other’s forbearance. “But I wonder you didn’t at least make them hand over Demosthenes.”

  Philip swept his bread around his soup bowl. “Instead of the man, there would be his hero-statue. The man will be truer to life…Well, you can see Athens for yourself very shortly. I am sending you as my envoy, to return their dead.”

  Alexander looked round slowly; he had supposed for a moment he was the object of some obscure joke. He had never thought it possible that, having spared Athens both invasion and occupation, his father would not himself ride in as a magnanimous victor, to receive her thanks. Was it shame for the komos? Policy? Could it be even hope?

  “To send you,” said Philip, “is a civility. For me to go would be thought hubristic. They have the status of allies now. A more fitting time may come.”

  Yes, it was still the dream. He wanted the gates opened from within. When he had won the war in Asia and freed the cities, it was in Athens, not as conqueror but honored guest, that he would hold the feast of victory. And he had never even seen it.

  “Very well, Father, I’ll go.” A moment later, he remembered to express thanks.

  He rode between the towers of the Dipylon Gate, and into the Kerameikos. On either side were the tombs of the great and noble; old painted grave-steles faded with weather, new ones whose withered grave-wreaths were tasseled with the mourners’ hair. Marble knights rode heroically nude, ladies at tiring-tables remembered beauty; a soldier gazed out at the sea that kept his bones. They were quiet people. Among them, the noisy crowds of the living milled to stare.