The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  The men took it quietly. They had themselves condemned Philotas; they were ready to suppose there was evidence against his father. It was the veteran officers, the old school of King Philip’s training, who remembered Parmenion had won him a victory the day Alexander was born; it was these who brooded. Philip, it seemed, had been a proper Macedonian. Having freed the Greek cities of Asia, he would have been content to go home, and be master of Greece, which was what he had always wanted.

  Our moving city dragged on over barren moors scorched brown with summer, now chilled with autumn winds that sang through the broken crags. It was harsh country; among the camp-followers the sickly died; someone from their home place would scratch them a grave in the hard ground. Nobody starved; the wagon trains came from the west, and droves of cattle lean with traveling. We labored along, mostly without Alexander; he was scouring the wastes for Bessos, who was reported moving east.

  After days or a half-month, they would come back, thin men upon thin horses, having outrun their supplies. Or now and again some stubborn hill-fort would hold out, and he would make a siege-train; catapults taken apart to load on mules, wood for ladders if the land was treeless; if he could bring one up, a jolting siege-tower, drawn by ten yoke of oxen; litters for the wounded, if it was too rough for wagons. He would ride up and down the line, seeing everything for himself. It was almost beyond belief, out of so many thousand men, how many he knew. Often they laughed; the soldier with the King, or the King with the soldier.

  The soldiers knew their part in him well enough. Most had not even seen him in Persian dress; they knew him in hard-worn Greek clothes, and armor of old leather with the bits of iron plating working through at the edges. They wanted no properer Macedonian than their young unbeaten general, who sweated or froze or starved with them, never sitting down till he had seen them fed and their wounded cared for; never sleeping drier than they; snatching victory out of peril. What did they care if he appointed Persian satraps, when some Macedonian might have ruled and fleeced the province? They looked for their share of loot, and he shared it fairly. If he slept with Darius’ boy when he had the time, what of it? He had a right to his share too. But they began to think about home.

  They had had the cream of the spoils, the wealth of the great cities. They had swum in gold. Once, I was told, a transport mule in the treasure-train had foundered; the trooper who led it, careful of the King’s goods, had shouldered the heavy pack, staggering under it. Along came Alexander, and said, “Bear up a little longer. Just get it to your tent. It’s yours.” So they had lived. They had had their pickings from the Persians, and wanted no more part of us.

  Not so with Alexander. His hunger grew by feeding. He loved victory; Bessos was still unconquered. He loved magnificence; our palaces, our manners, had shown him what that could be. As a boy he’d been taught to despise us; he had found beauty and valor among our lords, bred in for generations; also, he had found me. He loved kingcraft; here was a whole empire, weak with misrule, whose bridle had scarcely felt his hand. Above all, he had his Longing. That moment of eager joy I had felt at the Kaspian Gates with the pass ahead, with him reached far into the distance, craving for wonders rumored in travelers’ tales. Great anguish lies in wait for those who long too greatly.

  Still he kept his soldiers faithful. Like Kyros, he cast his spell. He told them too that to retreat without settling Bessos would invite contempt, and a rising of all the tribes; they would lose their victories and their glory. They still cared for that. They had proved themselves masters of the barbarians, and valued it.

  From them he would come back to me. As for sex, he was glad of it, having been a long time without; but he could have gone longer, there were things he needed more. He liked to return to his other kingdom, and find love there; to know there is one beauty of the sun, another of the moon. He liked, I found, to be sent to sleep with the long tales of the bazaar, about princes seeking the phoenix’s egg, riding to towers of adamant ringed with flame, or coming in disguise to enchantress queens. He liked to hear about the court at Susa. At the rites of the getting-up, the bedtime and the bath, he could not keep from laughing; but to the etiquette of audience he listened carefully.

  He trusted me. Without trust he could not live. He trusted Hephaistion, too; not all to my misfortune, as now it proved.

  Philotas’ power had proved too great for one man. The King now divided it between two commanders: Black Kleitos, a veteran officer he had known since childhood, and Hephaistion.

  If trust were everything, Hephaistion would have had it all. But the army had its politics; already the parties were dividing. Hephaistion was known as the King’s right hand in everything new he was doing. He had learned our forms of courtesy; was as tall and handsome as the Iranian lords, who admired and liked him; he was Persianized, said the men of the old school. Stocky bearded Kleitos, getting the same rank, was a surety they were not left out in the cold.

  What all this meant to me, was that often Hephaistion would go out on his own campaigns.

  He had proved himself well in war. He was a lord’s son of Macedon, and required honor, even if it took him from Alexander’s side. I wished him all of it he could go and find, I who required one thing alone.

  About harvest-time, we came to the Valley of the Benefactors. To find this place delighted Alexander. I had told him the story, left out like so much else from his book on Kyros, of how these people had brought his army food when they were starving in the wasteland; how he found them so virtuous, he freed them from tribute and let them rule themselves. It was he who named them. Their breed endured; slow, shy, quiet, broad-faced people, friendly even to soldiers, since none had troubled them since Kyros’ day. Their valley was wide and fertile, sheltered from the lancing northern winds. Alexander rested his men there, bought their produce at the best rate they’d ever had, and promised a hanging out of hand to whoever harmed them.

  He himself, who could never be idle anywhere, used to ride out hunting. Often he let me come along. Xenophon, he told me, said hunting was the image of war. It was for Alexander. Dangerous rocky ground, long runs, a fierce quarry, lion or boar for choice, were what he looked for. I remembered Darius in the royal park, shooting at driven game. After Alexander’s hunts, I felt nearly dead. But I’d have died sooner than own it; before long I hardened, and came back just hungry for my supper.

  While we were camped there, a Persian lord gave a great birthday feast, and asked the King to honor it. He came to bed hardly drunk at all. Persians drink deep on their birthdays; but they hold it better than Macedonians. He was always careful among them, and watched his friends as well.

  As I was settling him into bed, he said suddenly, “Bagoas, I’ve never asked you, in all this time. When is your birthday?”

  He could not make out why I was crying. I knelt by the bed with my head in my arms, and he patted me as if I had been Peritas. When at last I got it out, he leaned over me, and I heard him swallow a sob. It was absurd; I ought to have been ashamed.

  He would not await the day, since, he said, I had missed so many, but next morning gave me a beautiful Arab horse and a Thracian groom; and two days later, when the jeweler had finished it, a ring with his portrait carved on chalcedony. I shall be buried with it. I have put that in my will; along with a curse, to keep the embalmers from stealing it.

  Not only were the Benefactors a kindly people; they had worked out just laws among themselves. He greatly took to them. Before he went, he offered to double their lands; but they asked just for the tail-end of their valley, the one bit they did not own; it would round them off, which was all they wanted. He sacrificed to Apollo in their honor.

  Bessos was lingering in the north, with no sign of raising a powerful army. While his generals and satraps were subduing the country round about, Alexander moved eastward, towards the outer skirts of Great Kaukasos; taking his time, making his mark; here and there founding a city.

  I remember, the first I saw him make was upon this march; on
e of his Alexandrias. The site was a rocky hill, easy to defend; on a good trading route, as the Phoenician merchants told him; with a clean year-round spring for the public fountain, and good land next it. It commanded a pass for caravans, which had harbored robbers. Every day he was scrambling over it, with his architect Aristoboulos; marking out the places for the garrison fort, the market, the gates and their defenses, making sure the streets were well laid out, with channels to drain off the muck. He thought nothing like that beneath him. He had slaves to quarry and hew the stone, and free craftsmen to do the building. It amazed me, how quickly it all went up.

  Then he had to people it. He would put in veteran soldiers, not all of them Macedonians; there were Greeks, and free Thracians, mostly with women and children they’d gathered on campaign; they were glad to be given a farm, though some grew homesick later. Some of the craftsmen settled there. They might not be very good, or they would have followed the lords and generals; but here they would not have rivals, and they brought something into the wilds, of Susa or of Greece. For all these people Alexander left laws, never too foreign to their ways or the gods they followed. He had a feeling for what they would understand, and see the justice of.

  He put his whole soul into this city, all day till suppertime. He did not get drunk—there was good water up there, so nobody sat down thirsty—but after the day’s work, he liked to sit talking with the cup before him. Founding a city always stirred his mind. He knew it would make his name live among men to come; it made him think of his deeds. At these times he liked to go back over them, some said too much. Well, he did them. Does anyone deny it?

  He would talk to me sometimes, after, the wine still in him, his spirit still burning it up. I asked him once if he had known, before he crossed to Asia, he would be Great King. He said, “Not at first. It was my father’s war; I wanted to win it faster than he’d have done. I was appointed general of the Greeks, to free the Greek Asian cities. When I’d done it, I disbanded their troops; and after that it was my own.” He paused; then, seeing that I understood, said, “Yes, it was after Issos. When he ran away, leaving me his chariot and his royal mantle and all his arms; his friends’ bodies who had died for him; his wife—even his mother!—then I said to myself, If that’s the Great King, I think I could do better.”

  I answered, “Kyros himself did less.”

  I know the envious Greeks have written that I flattered him. They lie! Nothing was too good for him, or half good enough. I felt the impatience of his greatness, reined and curbed by the dullness of lesser men. They say I took his gifts. Of course I did. The best of them was to see his delight in giving. I took them in love; not, like some who claimed to be his friends, in covetousness soured with envy. If he had been a hunted man with a king’s price on his head, I would have gone barefoot with him through Asia, starved with him, lain down in the market stews to buy him bread. All that is as true as the face of God. So had I no right to make him happy in his victories? There was never a word that did not come from my heart.

  When the city was founded, he sacrificed, and dedicated it to Herakles and Apollo. I did a dance for Apollo, who, Alexander thought, must be the same as Mithra. I hope both gods were satisfied; I danced only for him.

  I was someone now at court. I had my two horses, my baggage mules, my tent, and some pretty things in it. As for power, I wanted that over one heart alone. Sometimes I remembered Susa, and all those who had tried to buy my interest with the King. Only unwarned newcomers tried it now. The Persians said, “Bagoas the eunuch is Alexander’s dog. He will feed from no other hand; let him be.” Macedonians said, “Watch out for the Persian boy; he tells Alexander everything.”

  Sometimes, when I waited on him in his bedchamber, he would say I ought not to do servants’ work; but that was just his courtesy. He knew I lived for it. He would have been sorry, too, to do without me.

  We marched eastward towards the heights, over high passes, with only the tracks the herdsmen made, following the poor grass with the seasons. In the rock-clefts grew little bright dry flowers like jewelers’ work. Great skies spread to dark horizons. I lived in the hour, I was young, the world unrolled for me; as it did too for Alexander, riding always ahead, to see the next turn of the road.

  Of an evening he asked me to teach him Persian. (I had taught him some, but not of a kind which would do at all for an audience.) The sounds are hard for westerners; I never pretended he spoke it well. If he was cross from disappointment, it was over in a moment. He knew I saved him from making a fool of himself in public, which his pride could not endure.

  “See what mistakes I still make in my Greek, Iskander.” I had put in a slip or two, to cheer him up.

  “How are the lessons? Has he tried you with reading yet?”

  “He only has two books, and they’re both too hard for me. He asked Kallisthenes to lend us one; but he said the sacred treasures of Greek thought were not to be smudged by barbarian fingers.”

  “He said that to your face?”

  I had not reckoned on his being quite so angry. This Kallisthenes was so grand he must not be called a clerk, but a philosopher; and he was writing Alexander’s chronicle. I thought my lord deserved someone who would better understand him; but one must go carefully with great men.

  He said, “I am tiring of this fellow. He’s too full of himself by far. I only took him on to please Aristotle, who’s his uncle. But he has all the old man’s set notions, whose errors I had to find out for myself, and none of his wisdom for which I honor him. He taught me what the soul should reach after. He taught me the skill of healing, which I’ve saved some lives with; and how to look at the natural world, which has enriched my life. I still send him specimens, wild beasts’ skins, plants, anything that will travel … What’s this blue flower?” He took it from behind my ear. “I never saw that before.” It was nearly dead, but he pressed it carefully.

  “Kallisthenes has none of that,” he said. “Does he often insult you?”

  “Oh, no, Sikander—”

  “Al-ex-ander.”

  “Al’skander, lord of my heart. No, mostly he doesn’t see me.”

  “Never mind if he thinks himself too good for you. I see signs that it will be my turn next.”

  “Oh, no, my lord. He says it’s he who will make your fame.” I had heard that myself, and thought he had better know.

  His eyes turned pale. It was like watching a storm from shelter. “Will he so? I have left a few marks about the world, to be remembered by.” He started pacing the tent; if he’d had a tail he would have lashed it. “He wrote of me first with such fulsomeness that the truth stank like a lie. I was a boy, I didn’t see the harm it did me. I rounded Cape Climax with god-sent luck and good guessing, but he had the waves bow before me. And heavenly ichor flowing in my veins! Men enough have seen the color of my blood, and so I told him. And none of it from his heart.”

  The sun was setting into a great horizon, the moorlands darkening in waves, the watch-fires budding flame. He stood to look, putting away his anger, till the slave kindled the lamps. “So you’ve never read the Iliad?”

  “What is that, Iskander?”

  “Wait.” He went into his sleeping-place, and came back with something gleaming in his hands. “If Kallisthenes is above bringing you Homer, I am not.”

  He put on the table what he held; a casket of pure white silver, gold lions on its sides, the lid inlaid with malachite and lapis, carved into leaves and birds. There could not be two in the world. I gazed in silence.

  He looked at my face. “You have seen this before.”

  “Yes, my lord.” It had stood by Darius’ bed, under the golden vine.

  “I might have thought. Does it hurt you? I’ll put it away.”

  “Truly no, my lord.”

  He put it down again. “Tell me, what did he keep in it?”

  “Sweets, my lord.” Sometimes, when he was pleased with me, he used to put one in my mouth.

  “See what I use it for.” He li
fted the lid; I caught the scent of cloves and cinnamon. It choked me with the past; for a moment I closed my eyes.

  He brought out a book, even more worn and mended than the Kyros one. “I’ve had this since I was thirteen. It’s old Greek, you know, but I’ll make it a little easier. Too much would spoil the sound.”

  He read a few lines, and asked if I had understood.

  “He says he is going to sing about the anger of Achilles, which brought terrible trouble to the Greeks. Men died in great number and the dogs ate them. And the kites, also. But he says it fulfilled the will of Zeus. And it began when Achilles quarreled with—with some lord who was powerful.”

  “That’s very good. It’s a crying shame you’ve had no books yet. I’ll see to that.” He put the book away, and said, “Shall I tell you the story?”

  I came and sat by his knees and laid my arm across them. If it kept me here, I did not care what kind of tale he told me. Or so I thought.

  He told just the tale of Achilles; leaving out what I would not understand. So, after he had quarreled with his Great King and refused allegiance, we came quite soon to Patroklos, who had been his friend from boyhood; who took his part and comforted his exile, and died of taking his place in battle; and how Achilles avenged him, though it had been foretold his own death must follow. And after the duel, while he slept in weariness, Patroklos’ ghost came to him in his dream, to require his funeral rites and recall their love.

  He did not tell it with art, like the taletellers in the market, but as if he had been there and remembered everything. At last I knew where my rival stood, grafted into his spirit, deeper than any memories of the flesh. There could be only one Patroklos. What was I, to that, but the flower one sticks behind one’s ear and throws away dead at sunset? In silence I wept, and scarcely knew that my eyes were shedding tears, as well as my heart.

  He lifted my face, and, smiling, wiped my eyes with his hand. “Never mind. I cried too, the first time I read it. I remember it well.”