Conquest of Persia

by Alexander Geiger

  Two hundred years of history lay behind the worshipful welcome. Pelousion, located at the eastern edge of the Nile delta and called the “Gateway to Egypt,” had witnessed more than its share of battles. In perhaps the most consequential battle fought under its walls, an Egyptian army commanded by pharaoh Psammetichos was routed by the invading Persians, led by Kambyses son of Kyros, who became, in due course, the first Achaemenid pharaoh of Egypt. In the wake of his coronation came two hundred years of ruthless exploitation, punctuated by repeated rebellions, interludes of independence, bloody suppressions of each revolt, followed by even more repression and despoilment. The final episode of autonomy ended when Nakhthorheb, the last native pharaoh, was defeated at Pelousion by Mentor of Rhodos, fighting on behalf of Artaxerxes Tritos Ochos, only eleven years prior to our arrival. Alexandros led the army that defeated the hated Persians and the citizens of Pelousion worshipped the ground he walked on. Or they would have worshipped it, had they actually permitted him to walk at all, instead of carrying him everywhere he went.

  *******

  There must have been a thousand ships in our armada, ranging in size from small rowboats and fishing vessels, to merchant galleys and military triremes, and up to large, flat-bottomed barges with covered quarters on deck. The barges had no intrinsic means of propulsion and had to be towed upstream – very slowly – by oar-powered tugboats. Some of the barges had huts constructed of reeds and covered with palm fronds on deck and a few contained cabins built of actual wood, affording unparalleled comfort for a riverine excursion. Alexandros had commandeered the biggest of these floating guesthouses, while Parmenion took the next largest one.

  Nobody begrudged a little indolent luxury to either Alexandros, who was still recovering from the wounds he sustained at Gaza, or to Parmenion, who had earned a little rest and relaxation by virtue of his rank and seniority. On Alexandros’s barge, which could have housed fifty men, there were only two people in residence, Alexandros and Barsine, with a rotating crew of aides, servants, and bodyguards in daily attendance. Parmenion chose to turn the fifteen-day cruise into a rare family frolic, enjoying the company of his three sons, Philotas, Nikanoros, and Hektor, and ignoring, as best he could, the presence of Philotas’s petulant paramour Antigone.

  We were on our way to claim Memphis, the capital of Egypt. Because the Nile was still swollen by its annual inundation, waterborne transportation was the only practical means of travel. Even with a thousand vessels placed at our disposal by the grateful Egyptians, there were not enough boats for the entire army to make the trip. We had to leave some of our men, most of our animals, and our entire baggage train behind in Pelousion. Almost all the camp followers, including Barsine’s children and sister, stayed behind as well.

  Of the soldiers who came along, most of the infantrymen sailed on triremes and merchant galleys, crowded on deck like shoaling fish on the first day of school. The cavalry floated on barges, fifty men and fifty horses to a boat. Notwithstanding the congested conditions on the ships, the unrelenting sunshine during the day, and the swarms of implacable insects at night, we were all having a great time. The shores were lined with peasants who stopped their work in the fields to stare and occasionally to wave at us. Naked children ran along, screaming and laughing, until they lost sight of us behind stands of sedges, rushes, and reeds or until some sunning crocodiles brought them to a screeching halt. Using small rowboats, we were able to visit our comrades sailing on other ships in the flotilla during the day and stop by any nearby villages or towns in the evening.

  Our trip up the Nile was the opposite of a military campaign. Instead of fighting off ferocious enemy warriors by day, we spent our nights fighting off nubile nymphs showering us with their attentions. (Some of my colleagues lost a lot of those fights.) Instead of marching twenty miles a day in a parching desert, we relaxed while others did the hard work of rowing. Instead of subsisting on limited rations of barley mush and sour wine, we feasted nightly on the bounty of the Nile, washing it down with prodigious quantities of the excellent local beer.

  I stayed away from Alexandros’s barge during the entire voyage, not wishing to risk violating his injunction against any contact with Barsine. On the other hand, I became a regular visitor to Parmenion’s barge.

  The old general was sitting on deck, reading, the first time I pulled up for a quick courtesy call. “I haven’t read one of these since I was young,” he said, looking up from his scroll. He and I had been in attendance at the same staff meetings for years and I’d even served under his command from time to time but I couldn’t recall the last time we’d engaged in a social conversation. “Do you read much?”

  I laughed. “I used to – when I was young.”

  “Go ahead, rub it in. If you’re no longer young, what’s that make me?”

  “Experienced,” I said. “What are you reading?”

  “Herodotos on Egypt.”

  “And how do you find it?”

  “Oh, he’s completely full of it. It’s like reading children’s fairy tales. But he’s got some amusing stories and there must be a grain of useful information in there somewhere. Now that we’re here, I figure it behooves me to learn something about this country.” He paused. “Did you ever expect to find yourself in Egypt?”

  “Sometimes circumstances dictate where we end up,” I said, more or less truthfully.

  “Are you one of those people who believe the Fates determine our actions?”

  I shook my head, a skeptical grimace on my face. “No, I don’t think so. I believe our actions determine our fates. Oh, it could be that, at some fundamental level, everything we do is predetermined for us but it certainly feels as though we control the choices we make. And even if that’s only an illusion, it’s a comforting illusion I choose to believe in.”

  “A philosopher, I see.” He smiled. “But if we control the choices we make, doesn’t that make us responsible for the consequences of our actions as well? Where’s the comfort in that?”

  We spent the afternoon in discussion, even though I’d really come to visit with his boys. It turned out Philotas was otherwise occupied. At one point, we could hear the unmistakable sounds of copulation coming from the onboard cabin and not necessarily consensual copulation, either. We continued our discussion, pretending not to hear. Nikanoros, meanwhile, was off, visiting friends on other boats. And Hektor was having the time of his life.

  Hektor was Parmenion’s youngest child, an unexpected surprise when his father was already fifty-four. He instantly became the old man’s favorite offspring. Parmenion hated to leave him behind while off fighting Macedonia’s incessant wars. When King Philippos put Parmenion and Attalos in command of the expeditionary corps charged with crossing the Hellespont and preparing the ground for the main-force invasion of Asia, Parmenion decided to take his then ten-year-old son along, even though the boy was obviously too young to be of any use. In the intervening four years, young Hektor proved himself to be an unexpected asset.

  Every soldier in the army knew him and considered him a good luck charm. While on the march, he would ride his small pony alongside the infantry troops, always ready to help in case of a mishap or breakdown. Although his proffered assistance didn’t have much practical utility, the soldiers appreciated his attitude. When the army was encamped, Hektor would flit from tent to tent, greeting the soldiers by name, listening entranced to stories of military feats and assorted conquests, and accepting the choice morsels of food the soldiers had saved for him. And before each battle, he’d stop by as many battalions as he could to wish the soldiers success, to laugh at their jokes and, if asked, to write down little notes to be delivered to their families in the event they didn’t come back.

  Now, at the age of fourteen, he was the acknowledged mascot of the army. He stood on deck, waving, laughing, and yelling at the soldiers on the passing ships. Every once in a while, he would dive into the muddy waters of the Nile and swim over to a nearby trireme, much to the consternation of his fathe
r and the joy of the passing soldiers, who’d pull him aboard, drink a toast in his honor, tell a few jokes, pat him on the back, and send him back. “There are crocodiles in there,” his father would yell when he climbed back on the barge but the youngster would just laugh and run to the other side to see which of his friends might be abreast of the barge over there.

  After that first visit, I came to their barge almost every day, as much to see Hektor cavorting as to engage Parmenion in enjoyable discussions about the merits of various writers and the workings of the Kosmos. I also spent some time with Nikanoros debating the finer points of military tactics but I never did see either Philotas or Antigone, although I heard them screaming at each other quite frequently.

  *******

  I knew it was only a matter of time. I tried not to look at Kleitos, who was standing to my right, because I was sure one look at his face would push me over the edge. I could feel his body vibrating as he fought to suppress his tittering. I glanced to my left instead, where Seleukos was turning red from holding his breath. His coloration betrayed either irrepressible levity or imminent asphyxiation.

  Alexandros had spent a good hour inside the inner sanctum of the Temple of Ptah, attended only by a jubilation of priests, while the rest of us stood outdoors, in the hot sun, awaiting his reappearance through the impressive main entrance of the temple. The simple, rectangular opening, which was at least ten feet tall, was dwarfed by the forty-foot-high granite statues of Ramses Deuteros that flanked it. Of course, standing in front of the temple walls, the twin effigies of the great pharaoh didn’t seem disproportionately large. The walls on either side of the main entrance were at least sixty feet high and two hundred feet wide. They were plain and primitive by Greek standards, flat and smoothly stuccoed, but they were also at least a thousand years old. It was evident they’d been repaired and repainted innumerable times but the unforgiving climate was once again exacting its inexorable toll on the recently repainted walls. In front of the main entrance stood a large wooden platform on which the public portion of the coronation ceremony would play out.

  Finally, Alexandros walked out of the temple and mounted the platform, trailed by dozens of high priests and middling officiants. It was his reappearance that had triggered our involuntary and inadvisable mirth. He’d stripped his armor and was wearing a long, leather apron in front, attached by a wide belt around his waist. His buttocks were al fresco but there was a long bull’s tail, hanging from the belt in the back, tickling his crack. His upper torso was bare. The risibility resumed above his neck. His hair was concealed beneath a garish, striped headcloth. Most of his face was hidden behind a fake beard that gave every impression of having been recently sheared off a giant, aging goat. His eyes and eyebrows were heavily outlined with kohl. He was sweating profusely, notwithstanding the vigorous waving of palm fronds by a phalanx of slaves, which was causing the goat’s beard and the bull’s tail to flutter in the resultant breeze.

  He couldn’t wipe his brow, not because he was worried about smearing the kohl, but because his hands were otherwise occupied: He was carrying a scepter shaped like a shepherd’s crook in one hand and a contraption I guessed to be a fly whip in the other. The funny thing was that he seemed transported by it all, oblivious to the farcicality of the proceedings.

  One of the priests was declaiming loudly, in Egyptian, and Alexandros was nodding wisely, although he could not possibly have had the slightest idea of what the man was saying. Two crowns were carried forward ceremoniously. One was a tall, peaked hat, made of gleaming white linen, decorated with gold thread and precious stones, representing the suzerainty of Upper Egypt. The other was a broad, red diadem of the ruler of Lower Egypt. One of the high priests seized the two crowns and, with a prestidigitator’s flourish, combined them into one head ornament. A different priest then took the double crown, raised it high in the air, and placed it on Alexandros’s head.

  It was when Alexandros attempted to acknowledge the moment that I lost it. He raised his hands and shook the shepherd’s crook and the fly swatter triumphantly. The motion of his arms caused the striped headcloth to slip backward, taking the double crown with it. Alexandros spun around, trying to catch the falling symbol of his new authority, whipping the bull’s tail around and exposing his bare butt. The tip of the tail struck the nearest priest in the crotch, causing the hapless old man to double over in pain.

  I’m not sure what happened after that because at that point I fell to my knees, partly to hide behind the backs of the people in front of us and partly because my legs grew weak under me, and I broke into uncontrollable laughter. My merriment proved contagious. Seleukos swayed uncertainly, his body shaking, although no sound escaped his lips, at least not yet. Kleitos, on the other hand, fell to the ground, laughing out loud and pounding the sand with the palm of his hand. Fortunately, the people around us were mostly ordinary Egyptians and they all assumed this was our strange, foreign way of paying obeisance to the new pharaoh. In fact, one or two of them, hesitantly at first, fell to their knees and started to laugh. Before long the entire audience was kneeling or even lying prostrate on the ground, pounding the hot sand with their hands, and guffawing fervently.

  Fortunately, Alexandros never noticed our amusement. He stood erect and motionless while a priest restored the headcloth and the double crown to his head. It was impossible to tell whether he was smiling or stern-faced because of the fake goat-hair beard but his forehead was uncreased and his eyes shone brightly, seemingly staring far beyond the present moment.

  The priests motioned for him to descend from the platform and start his ceremonial walk around the outer wall of the Ptah precinct. Alexandros was too deeply absorbed in the significance of the occasion to notice. Finally, one of the priests touched him on the arm and he seemed to return to reality with a start.

  Somehow Alexandros managed to maintain his dignity during the long walk around the white-washed walls of the sacred precinct, while trailing, like clouds of flatulence, a huge entourage of Egyptian priests, officers of the pan-Hellenic army, and ordinary Egyptians behind his naked rear.

  Eventually, the entire procession reached the Temple of Apis, home of the eponymous bull, who simultaneously served the dual role of sacrificial animal and earthly manifestation of Osiris, the god of transition from this life to the next, the god of death, resurrection, and regeneration. The current incarnation of the sacred beast was led out of his temple by a rope attached to a golden nose ring and paraded through the assembled crowd. Many of the natives were clearly affected by their proximity to this august bovinity, falling to their knees, kissing his hide, muttering prayers, and rapturously inhaling the animal’s exhalations. Miraculously, no one was trampled during the stately progress of the hulking deity to the large, outdoor altar. Once there, Apis the divine bull was stripped of his jewels and flowers, hammered down to his knees, and slaughtered.

  Many long, incomprehensible speeches, prayers, and incantations followed, after which the carcass was reverently lifted by a score of men, placed on a custom-designed cart, and hauled back into the temple for mummification. As soon as the dead Apis disappeared, a new, young bull was produced from somewhere and magically transubstantiated, through prayer and ritual, into the new personification of Osiris. The new Apis was then decorated and led away to replace his recently ascended predecessor in his new abode.

  Finally, the coronation ceremony was over, Alexandros was officially deified as the latest son of Ammon, the king of all Egyptian gods and hence Ruler of the World, and we were all free to return to our boats, grateful to whatever god was responsible for our overdue deliverance.

  *******

  In Pella, even the horses were in Olympias’s pay. Notwithstanding Antipatros’s pungent precautions, the queen mother stayed abreast of all the doings in the Macedonian capital and she did her best to keep her son, campaigning in the field in faraway Asia and Africa, informed about the latest palace intrigues, sending monthly letters detailing Antipatros’s lates
t usurpations of Alexandros’s royal prerogatives. Unfortunately, Kassandros, whom his father had put in charge of counterintelligence, became aware of Olympias’s epistolary exertions almost before she had finished composing her missives. His agents, the ubiquitous practitioners of the meretricious arts in Pella’s dens of iniquity, promptly identified Olympias’s couriers, plied them with their favors and other intoxicants, and stripped them of their confidential cargo. While the emissaries lay insensible in the arms of Morpheus, Antipatros and Kassandros read Olympias’s letters and composed, amid much hilarity, clever forgeries, which the sex workers substituted for the genuine article before their customers awoke. Occasionally, if there was not enough time to substitute a counterfeit message or if he was in an ornery mood, Kassandros simply had the couriers killed.

  Any incoming messages from Alexandros to Olympias were confiscated by the regent’s son in an effort to convince the queen mother that her efforts were for naught and she had been forgotten by her son. However, Olympias caught on soon enough to Kassandros’s machinations. Among other things, most of Pella’s ladies of the night were followers of Dionysos and Olympias continued to function as the high priestess of the licentious god’s cult. At their ecstatic revels and initiation rituals, Kassandros’s female agents regularly betrayed their latest assignations to their charismatic officiant.