Memnon rolled up the letter, got to his feet, and walked towards the gunwale. The lights of the city glowed faintly in the peace of the evening, and from the dark streets and squares came the shouts of children playing hide-and-seek, making the most of the last warm days of autumn. From farther away came a song, a young man’s serenade for his loved one who perhaps was listening, blushing in some nearby shadow.
He felt oppressed by an endless melancholy, by a mortal tiredness, but at the same time there was the awareness that his shoulders bore the destiny of a limitless empire, the hopes of a great sovereign and the esteem of his soldiers. All these things combined meant that he could not give in to those feelings of melancholy.
He had received news of the last of his diehard warriors; blocked in the acropolis at Halicarnassus, they were resisting to the bitter end, struggling against hunger and thirst. He could not bring himself to accept the fact that he had been unable to free them. Oh, if only the great Daedalus had really existed – father of Icarus, the inventor capable of making wings for man! He would fly to his wife by night to make her happy and then return to his place of duty before sunrise.
But the Great King’s orders were quite different – he was to sail for the island of Lesbos, from where he was to prepare for the landing in Euboea: the first Persian invasion in over one hundred and fifty years.
He had recently received a letter from the Spartans, who declared themselves ready to ally with King Darius and to lead a general uprising of the Greeks against Macedonia.
He returned to his table and began writing:
Memnon to Barsine, his dearest wife, Hail!
Your letter has stirred in me the most beautiful and moving memories – those moments we spent together at Zeleia and in Caria before our final separation. You cannot imagine the pain I feel in missing you and how the image of your beauty recurs every night in my dreams. I will desire no woman and I will have no peace until I succeed in embracing you once more.
I must make this final effort – this will be the definitive battle – and then I will return to live in peace alongside my sons and in your arms, for as long as the gods grant me life and breath.
Kiss our boys for me and take good care.
As he rolled the letter he thought how this inert material would receive the touch of Barsine’s fingers, light as petals and just as perfumed. He sighed, then he called the messenger and handed it to him.
‘When will it reach her?’ he asked.
‘Soon, in less than twenty days.’
‘Good. May your journey be a safe one, may the gods protect you.’
‘And may they protect you too, Commander Mem-non.’
He watched the sailor disappear on his launch before returning aft and calling for the captain of the ship.
‘We sail now, Captain. Signal the other ships.’
‘Now? But would it not be better to wait for dawn? Visibility would be better and . . .’
‘No. I want our movements to remain secret. What we are about to do is of the utmost importance. Signal to the other ships that I also want all the commanders of battle units to come to a meeting, here on the flagship.’
The captain, a Greek from Patara, bowed and set about his orders. Shortly afterwards, several launches approached Memnon’s ship and their occupants climbed on board.
One after another they saluted the commander and took up their positions on the benches arranged to the sides of the poop deck. Memnon sat at the stern, on the navarch’s throne. He wore his blue cloak and his armour. His Corinthian helmet was placed before him on a stool – polished and with the silver rose of Rhodes set into the forehead.
‘Commanders, at this moment fate offers us our last chance to redeem our honour as soldiers and to earn the money we receive from the Great King. There are no longer any harbours in which we can seek refuge, except for the remote ports of Cilicia or Phoenicia, many days’ sail away. We therefore have no choice, we must move forwards and cut off at the root the source of our enemy’s strength.
‘I have received a skytale with a secret message from the Spartans. If we invade the mainland they and their army are willing to join with us against Alexander. I have therefore decided to sail to Lesbos and from there towards Skyros and Euboea, where we will meet up with those Athenian patriots who will give us their support. I have sent a messenger to Demosthenes and I believe that his response will certainly be positive. That is all for now. Return to your ships and prepare for departure.’
The flagship slipped slowly out of the harbour with its stern lamps burning, and all the other vessels followed. It was a clear, starry night and Memnon’s helmsman was firm with the rudder. On the second day the weather changed and the sea swelled up under a strong southerly wind. Some of the ships suffered damage and the fleet had to proceed under oars for almost two full days.
They reached their destination on the fifth day and entered the great western roadstead, waiting for the weather to improve. Memnon gave orders for all the damaged vessels to be repaired and sent his officers to recruit mercenaries to join them. In the meantime he visited the island and was much charmed by it and asked to be shown the homes of the poets Sappho and Alcaeus, both natives of Lesbos.
In front of the house said to be Sappho’s, there were several itinerant scribes copying her lyrics to order on wooden tablets or on rolls of papyrus, which were much more expensive.
‘Could you copy one for me in Persian?’ Memnon asked a more oriental-looking scribe.
‘Yes, of course, my Lord.’
‘Well then . . . copy me the one which begins:
I see he who sits beside you
As an equal of the gods
For he may listen to you
As you speak sweetly
And smile so desirably.’3
‘I know it, Lord,’ said the scribe as he dipped his straw into his inkwell. ‘It is a song of jealousy.’
‘Yes, it is,’ nodded Memnon, apparently impassive. And he sat on the wall waiting for the scribe to finish his translation.
He had heard that Barsine had been for a while in Alexander’s hands and there were moments when this fact left him full of dread.
34
ON LEAVING HALICARNASSUS Alexander advanced eastwards with his army along the coast, even though everyone had tried to dissuade him. Indeed, there was a passage through Lycia, but no one would ever have attempted it in winter. The route was little more than a path along the cliffs which towered above the boiling, rocky seas below – all of it exposed to the western winds, which always brought rough weather.
As the waves broke on the rocks they exploded into great globules of foam, churning angrily against the rock before flowing back to rush and crash once more against the promontory, desolate and at the complete mercy of the elements.
Hephaestion had ridden as far as this headland and brought back with him vivid impressions of the place: ‘It is truly frightful,’ he told Alexander. ‘Imagine a mountain higher than Athos and more massive than Pangaeos, its surface smooth and black as burnished iron descending vertically to the sea. Its summit, perpetually enveloped in cloud, resounds with the rumble of thunder. I watched the lightning bolts flit between the sky and the top, and sometimes they fell to the sea below in blinding flashes. The pathway is a very old one, cut by the Lycians out of the rock, but it is always slippery because of the spray from the waves and the seaweed that grows in abundance during the winter season. Falling into the sea down there means instant death – the waves would immediately drive any man, no matter how strong a swimmer, on to the sharp rocks which form a sort of crown at the base of the steep slope and they would cut him to shreds in no time.’
‘Did you cross through to the other side?’ asked Alexander.
‘Yes.’
‘And how?’
‘I used the Agrianians. They fixed bolts in the cracks in the rock and tied ropes to them, so that we were able to hold on when the waves came.’
‘That seems an excellent
idea,’ said the King. ‘That’s how we’ll get through the pass.’
‘But there were only fifty of us,’ said Hephaestion, ‘you plan to send twenty-five thousand men and five thousand horses by this route. How will you manage with the horses?’
Alexander was quiet for a moment as he gathered his thoughts, then he said, ‘We have no choice. We’ll attempt this pathway and take control of all the Lycian ports – we will cut off the Great King’s fleet from our sea. If necessary I will go on ahead with only the infantry, but I will go, come what may.’
‘As you wish. We are not afraid of anything, but I wanted you to be fully aware anyway of the risks involved.’
They left the following day and soon reached the city of Xanthus, perched up on its rock above the river of the same name. In the surrounding area, carved into the rock, were many tombs with monumental façades in the shape of buildings or colonnaded temples. It was said that one of these contained the body of the Lycian hero Sarpedon, cut down by the sword of Patroclus during the Trojan War.
Alexander wanted to see it and he stood there enrapt before the ancient sepulchre, consumed by time and by the elements. The marks of an ancient inscription, completely illegible now, could barely be made out. Callisthenes, who was standing nearby, heard him murmuring verses from Homer – the speech made by the Lycian hero to his men immediately before the final clash in which he lost his life:
Ah, could we but survive this war
to live forever deathless, without age,
I would not ever go again to battle,
nor would I send you there for honour’s sake!
But now a thousand shapes of death surround us,
and no man can escape them, or be safe.
Let us attack – whether to give some fellow
glory or to win it from him.4
Then, turning to Callisthenes, he asked, ‘Do you think he would repeat these words if he were still able to speak today?’ And in his voice there was some inkling of a deep sadness.
‘Who can tell? No one has ever succeeded in returning from Hades.’
Alexander approached the tomb and put his hands and his forehead on it, as though trying to hear a voice made weak by centuries of distance. Then he turned and set off once more to lead his army on its way.
They proceeded down the river to the estuary, where the port of Patara opened up – the most important harbour in all Lycia. The city had some fine buildings in the Greek style and the inhabitants dressed in the Greek manner, but their language was very old and completely incomprehensible without the aid of interpreters. The King made sure his army was billeted properly and ordered a halt of several days. He hoped to receive news from Parmenion, who at that point should have been up on the interior highlands, but no word came from the general. A ship from Macedonia did arrive, however, the last one before the winter.
The commander had taken a difficult and little used route, so as not to risk any contact with Memnon’s fleet. He brought with him a report from Antipater on the situation in the homeland and on the bitter conflicts he was enduring with the Queen Mother, Olympias.
Alexander was upset and profoundly saddened by this, but he brightened up when he saw on another roll of papyrus the royal seal of the Molossians and the handwriting of his sister Cleopatra. He opened the missive with a certain apprehension and began reading:
Cleopatra, Queen of the Molossians, to her brother Alexander, King of Macedon, Hail!
My beloved brother, more than a year has gone by since I embraced you for the last time and not a day goes by that I do not think of you and miss you.
Echoes of your achievements have reached the palace here in Buthrotum and this makes me most proud, but pride is no compensation for your absence.
My husband and your brother-in-law, Alexander, King of the Molossians, is about to leave for Italy. He has gathered a great army of almost twenty thousand men, valiant warriors well trained in the Macedonian manner and schooled after the principles of our father, Philip.
He dreams of conquering a great empire to the west and of freeing all Greeks from the threat of the barbarians in those lands – Carthaginians, Brutians, and Lucanians. But I am left here alone.
Our mother is increasingly bizarre, irritable and moody, and I avoid visiting her when I can. From what I hear, she thinks of you day and night and offers sacrifices to the gods so that Fortune might smile upon you. I can only curse war which keeps the people I most love in this world far from me.
Take good care.
So the western enterprise was about to begin. Another Alexander, almost his mirror image, bound to him by such deep ties of blood and of friendship, was ready to march in the direction of the Pillars of Hercules to conquer all the lands as far as the river Ocean. And one day they would meet up again – in Greece perhaps, or in Egypt, or in Italy – and that day the world would live the beginning of a new era.
He made the most of their break to have Eumenes read the ‘Journal’, the daily report the secretary general drew up with news of what was happening on the expedition, the distances covered on the march, the visits made and the visits received, the minutes of the high command meetings, and even the accounts.
‘It’s not bad,’ he said after listening to a few pages. ‘The descriptive passages have a certain literary elegance – they might even be reworked for a true and proper history of our expedition.’
‘I don’t exclude that possibility at all,’ replied Eumenes, ‘but for the moment I am doing no more than recording the facts, within the limits of the time I have available. Callisthenes is looking after the real history.’
‘Quite.’
‘But not only Callisthenes. You know that Ptolemy is also writing about the expedition. Has he let you read any of it?’
‘Not yet, but I am curious to see it.’
‘And the work of your admiral, Nearchus, also proceeds.’
‘It seems everyone on this expedition is a writer. I wonder who will be given most credit. Anyway, I continue to envy Achilles, who had Homer to recount his deeds.’
‘Days of old, my friend. To make up for it we have Nearchus, who is carrying out excellent work in establishing relations with the various communities which inhabit these lands. He knows many people here and is much esteemed. He recently explained his mariner’s view of the situation to me.’
‘Which is?’
‘He is convinced that you cannot do without a fleet and that you should assemble one immediately. To leave Memnon with total domination of the seas is too dangerous.’
‘And what do you think? It will be a financial question, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Perhaps we could afford it now with the income from Sardis and Halicarnassus.’
‘Make arrangements then. Speak to Nearchus, negotiate with the Athenians, have the shipyards of the seaports we have conquered reopened. We can afford to take some risks now.’
‘I will meet Nearchus on his ship and we will work out a few sums together. I really don’t have the faintest idea how much a warship costs and how many we would need to make life difficult for that damned Memnon. But I also need to know what your intentions are for this coming winter.’
Alexander looked out of the window of the house he had chosen for his quarters and gazed at the snow-capped mountains, ‘We will push on until we find the road that leads towards the interior – I must meet up with Parmenion as soon as possible and reunite our forces. I am worried, Eumenes. If one of our two contingents should be wiped out, there will be no hope left for the other.’
The secretary nodded, gathered his papers and left.
Alexander sat at his table, took a sheet, dipped his pen in the ink and began writing:
Alexander to Cleopatra, his dearest sister, Hail!
My beloved, do not be saddened by your husband’s departure. There are men who are born to fulfil a destiny and he is among these. Alexander and I have made a pact and he leaves his land, his home and his bride in respect of our pledge. I
do not believe that you would rather be the wife of a nobody, of a man without hope and without ambitions. Life would have been even more hateful. You were born of Olympias and Philip, as I was, and I know that you can understand. Your joy will be even greater after your separation, and I am certain that soon your husband will send for you to go and see the sun set on the divine and mysterious waters of the far Ocean on which no ship has ever sailed.
Aristotle says that the Greeks in their cities look over this sea like frogs on the banks of a pond, and he is right. But we are born to know different lands and different seas, to cross borders that no one has ever dared cross. And we will not stop before we have seen the extreme limit granted to human kind by the gods.
This, however, is not enough to salve the pain of missing you, and I would give anything, right now, to sit at your feet and to rest my head in your lap and listen to your sweet voice.
Remember me, as we agreed in our pact, every time you see the sun set over the sea, every time the wind brings you voices from far away.
35
SOME TEN DAYS AFTER the arrival of Alexander’s army in the city, a visitor was announced – a man by the name of Eumolpus of Soloi.
‘Do you know who he is?’ Alexander asked Eumenes.
‘Of course I know. He is the best informer you have east of the Taurus mountains.’
‘If he is my best informer, why on earth don’t I know him?’
‘Because he always dealt with your father and . . . with me.’
‘I hope you don’t mind then if I actually deal with him personally now,’ said Alexander ironically.
‘Not at all,’ Eumenes responded promptly. ‘All I ever hope to do is save you from some of your more boring duties. In fact, if you prefer I’ll make myself scarce . . .’
‘Don’t be stupid, and have him come in.’
Eumolpus had not changed much since the last time Eumenes had seen him at Pella; the informer still felt the cold terribly and because the sea had been too rough he’d had to travel on a mule over the snow-covered mountains of the interior. Peritas growled as soon as he saw him with his fox-fur cap on his head.
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