God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  Satyrus swallowed with difficulty.

  ‘Would you really like me to tell you about Alexander?’ Ptolemy asked. ‘I will. I’ve always meant to put down a private memoir for the library, when it is finished. So that some day someone will have the real story.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘Or would you rather I kept it between me and the scribes, lad? It’s not always a pretty story. On the other hand, if you plan to be a king, there’s a lesson in it you must learn.’

  Satyrus looked at Leon, but the Nubian’s face was carefully blank.

  ‘Yes,’ Satyrus said. ‘Yes, I would like you to tell me about Alexander.’

  Ptolemy nodded. He smiled with half his mouth, and then he took the crown of Lower Aegypt from his head and handed it to a guard, handed another the sceptre, slipped the cowl over his head. Satyrus noticed that the King of Aegypt’s left hand was badly scarred, two of the fingers almost fused, but he seemed to use it well enough. He also noticed that the great King of Aegypt had a dagger on a thong around his neck. Satyrus had one, too.

  When he was done taking off the regalia, Ptolemy sat down in the red light of sunset on the steps of the dais. Alexander’s sarcophagus lay above him, the figure of the god-man himself reclining over his head, lit too brilliantly for mortal eyes to see by the last rays of the sun on his chryselephantine face.

  Gabias leaned forward. ‘My lord, Cassander’s envoy has waited all day.’

  Ptolemy put an elbow comfortably into the relief of the dais, where a young Alexander was putting a spear into a lion. ‘Let ’em wait. I need this.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘I doubt I can do this in a day, lad. So you’ll have to come back, now and then.’

  ‘I will,’ said Satyrus. The sunset on Alexander’s head was blinding him – he had to look away.

  ‘Well, then,’ Ptolemy began . . .

  ONE

  Macedon, 344–342 BC

  It’s not my earliest memory of him – we grew up together – but it’s the beginning of this story, I think.

  There were three of us – we must have been nine or ten years old. We’d been playing soldiers – pretty much all we ever did, I think. Black Cleitus – my favourite among the pages, with curly black Thracian hair and a wicked smile – had a bruise where Alexander had hit him too hard, which was par for the course, because Cleitus would never hit back, or never hit back as hard as the prince deserved. Mind you, he often took it out on me.

  No idea where Hephaestion was. He and Alexander were usually inseparable, but he may have been home for his name day, or going to temple – who knows?

  We were in the palace, in Pella. Lying on the prince’s bed, with our wooden swords still in our hands.

  There was a commotion in the courtyard, and we ran to the exedra and looked down to see the king and his companions ride in – just his closest bodyguard, his somatophylakes. They were wearing a fortune in armour – brilliant horsehair plumes, Aegyptian ostrich feathers, solid gold eagle’s wings, panther skins, leopard skins, bronze armour polished like the disc of the sun and decorated in silver and gold, tin-plated bronze buckles and solid silver buckles in their horse tack, crimson leather strapping on every mount, tall Persian bloodstock horses with pale coats and dark legs and faces. Philip was not the richest or the best armoured – but no one could doubt that he was in command.

  It only took them a moment to dismount, and a horde of slaves descended on them and took their armour and their horses and brought them hot clothes and towels.

  That was dull for us, so we went back to Alexander’s room. But we had seen a dream of power and glory. We were quiet for a long time.

  Cleitus scratched – he was always dirty. ‘Let’s play knucklebones,’ he said. ‘Or Polis.’

  But Alexander was still looking towards the courtyard. ‘Some day they’ll be dead,’ he said. ‘And we’ll do what they do.’

  I grinned at him. ‘But better,’ I said.

  He lit up like a parchment lamp at a festival. He hugged me to him. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘But better.’

  It’s odd, because that same day – at least in my memory – is the day that we heard Philip ordain the invasion of Asia and the war with Persia.

  We must have been invited to the great hall. We weren’t old enough to be pages, yet, and we never went near the hall once the drinking started. So I’m going to guess that it was Alexander’s birthday, or just possibly the Feast of Herakles, the great one we celebrate in Macedon. I had lain on a couch to eat, with my pater at home, and I had been served by slaves, because my family was quite rich. But I had never seen the reckless rout for Philip’s soldiers, courtiers and minions. I lay on a couch with Prince Alexander, pretending to be as adult as I could, trying to be bigger and fiercer and taller and stronger.

  After dinner, Philip, who was lying with his general, Parmenio, and a dozen other officers in a circle just to my right, began to carp at Parmenio about how long it was taking him to defeat Phokion and the Athenians, and Parmenio, who was a friend of my father’s and my hero, shot back that if Athens didn’t have free entry into the Persian ports . . .

  Antipater – quite a young man at the time, and already the schemer of the staff – sat up suddenly on his couch. ‘To the war in Persia, and the end of Athens!’ he said, and poured wine on the floor. ‘I send these winged words to the gods.’

  We had a dozen Athenians among us – mercenary officers, gentlemen rankers, courtiers, philosophers and a pair of ‘representatives’ from the ‘democracy’. Philip laughed aloud. ‘If I took Persia,’ he said, ‘I would be a god.’

  At my side, Alexander, who sought, even at age ten, to be in all things the first and best, stiffened and raised himself on his elbows. I caught his eye.

  ‘We’ll miss it!’ he hissed.

  ‘No we won’t,’ I said with the total bravado of the very young. ‘No we won’t.’

  And later that year, or perhaps the next – just before I became a royal page – Alexander came to one of our farms. We were among the first families in Macedon, and our wealth was old wealth – we had horses and land. Our stud farms were the best in Macedon, and perhaps the best in Hellas – my father imported stock from Thrace and Asia and even, once, a mare from Italia, and our horses were bred for war – big, tall, perhaps a trifle bony and heavy-faced for the purist, but tough, capable of carrying a man in armour and capable of surviving the Tartarus of horses, a summer on campaign. For that, a horse needs hard hooves – hard enough to stay hard in four days of rain, and hard enough to stay strong over roads that men have worn down to shards of sharp rock. A war horse has to be able to stay alive on the leavings of grass where a thousand horses have already grazed; has to survive a day in the sun without water, if its rider’s life depends on it. And it is a rare horse that can do all these things.

  But we bred them, and it was my pater’s life. He was the old kind of aristocrat, the kind of man who hated the court and never left his own farms if he could help it. I won’t say everyone loved him, because he was a very difficult man when crossed, but he was fair, and fairness is all peasants and slaves ask of a master. They don’t love us, anyway – but they ought to be able to expect the same treatment and the same justice every day.

  At any rate, Pater promoted and freed his slaves and made sure his freemen ended up on farms of their own if they did well for him, and that did as much for our horses as all our priceless bloodstock. Listen – let me tell you a story. It’s about Alexander, in a way.

  Years after this, I was in Athens – you’ll get to that part later – and I went shopping for vases. I wanted to send something to my father and to other friends, and the ceramics of Athens are the finest in the world.

  In the Keramaki – the ceramics quarter – were two shops next to each other. Both had big names, and both provided the sort of high-end wares I wanted – one specialised in scenes of gods and war, while the other specialised in scenes from plays.

  Outside the latter, a man in a dun wool cloak was beating a slave with a stick
. He was thorough and brutal. I passed that shop – interrupting a man beating his slave is like interrupting a man having sex with his wife. I went into the other shop, where two slaves behind the counter were burnishing the surfaces of finished pots with bone tools. Both were older men, clearly experienced, and they were chatting, laughing. At my entry, the nearer jumped up with a smile while the other continued burnishing. I watched him for a while, his quick, even strokes, and when I looked at a wine krater, I couldn’t find a spot that had been left unburnished. The surfaces were perfect – almost glossy.

  I didn’t want scenes from plays, but I loved the sheer quality of the finishes.

  Later, after a cup of wine with the master, I went back to the first shop, where the beaten slave, who proved to be the master painter, sat slumped in a corner. The master waited on me himself. His vases were fine, but the finishes were all sloppy.

  He saw me looking at the surface. He grimaced. ‘You can’t get good slaves any more,’ he said, and shrugged.

  I bought six vases, and all of them had scenes from Athenian drama. One is buried with my father. He loved it that much. In part, I gave it to him because he would have agreed. You can’t buy a good slave, but you can make him good with fair treatment, and in return, he’ll burnish the pot evenly. Understand me, boy?

  But I digress.

  Alexander came to our farm at Tyrissa, and stayed a week, riding our best horses and watching the running of a great estate with interest. He was not a farm boy by any means – I had been in the fields as soon as I could walk, because in Macedon, lords pick flax with peasants, and at haying, everyone gathers hay. Everyone but Prince Alexander, of course.

  But he loved it. We sacrificed to Poseidon every day (every horse farm has a shrine to the Horse God) and we rode, fed horses, mucked out stalls, and watched grooms and pages schooling the next year’s cavalry mounts. On this one farm, with eighty slaves and six hundred head of horses, we provided almost a tenth of all the cavalry remounts that Philip demanded every year, because war eats horses far faster than it eats men. In one season chasing Phokion around the Dardanelles, King Philip lost two thousand horses to bad food, disease and exhaustion – and we had to find new ones. In a bad year, the three-year-olds intended to be the next year’s cavalry horses are sent out early, green and nervous and flighty. An epidemic or a military disaster could force a farm to use up its stock – the superb horses used for breeding – sent as cavalry horses, and lost for ever. Two straight bad seasons could wreck a farm. Tree straight bad seasons could wreck a farm. Three straight bad seasons could wreck a nation, leaving it without cavalry. Waves of disease – the arrows of Apollo – or bad water, or a long heatwave – and messengers arrived at our farms with letters from the king demanding horses.

  I mention this not because Alexander’s visit had any long-term effect on his life, but because we are horse soldiers, and we loved horses. And used them and used them up. I have had three great horses, and Alexander had one – and my Poseidon was the best horse I’ve ever had between my legs. But great horses are as rare as great men, and as fragile, and need the care and attention that other men lavish on a lover or a best friend.

  The last day Alexander was on our farm, we built a fort of grape stakes, and with a few of my friends, we challenged the Thracian boys – the children of our slaves – to come and take it from us.

  There were twenty of them, and they hooted at us, unafraid as slave children are until they are beaten. They came at us without fear, with rocks and sticks, and we stood our ground with the same weapons, except that Alexander and I had small round shields made of wicker which we’d woven ourselves from old vines.

  They attacked twice and we drove them off with some blood flowing, and then we looked out over the fields, with herds of beautiful horses in every field, and fences of woven hurdle between the herds.

  ‘Why are they separated?’ Alexander asked me.

  I shrugged. ‘We have a mare from Arabia in that field, and we’re putting her with one of our best stallions – Big Ares, over there. He doesn’t think much of her yet,’ I said ruefully, because the stallion was at the far end of the field, ignoring the mare.

  ‘And over there?’ Alexander asked.

  ‘Pericles’s herd. The grey is Pericles – an old stallion, but still one of the best, with a healthy dose of Nisean in him from Persia.’

  ‘And nearer?’ he asked. He was clearly impressed with my knowledge. ‘They’re all different – large and small. Bay and black and white and piebald.’

  ‘Socrates, my father’s favourite. That field has a special purpose.’ I smiled. ‘It is a secret. Pater is breeding horses that are smart. Only smart horses go into that field.’

  Alexander nodded. ‘I’m to have a tutor,’ he said. ‘To help me learn to rule men. And yet your horse farm seems to teach all the lessons I need.’

  Later that afternoon, the Thracian children came for us again. But we were ready, and we beat them again, and then we chased them – a dozen of us.

  I kissed my pater the next day, because I was going to court to be a page, and Alexander was taking me as a companion. We both knew I was in for a long, tough time. But I thought I wanted it, and he was a fine enough father to let me go. He gave me a fine ring, and a bag of money. I guess he’d been a young man, once.

  I rode off, excited to be with my prince, excited to be going full-time to court, excited to be a royal page.

  I only went back to the farms to live just once, and that was much later, in virtual exile, as you’ll hear. I never thought, that bright sunny morning, that I was giving up horses and love and friendship and beautiful mornings to spend the rest of my youth avoiding rape and murder while working like a slave.

  A royal page.

  Alexander’s new tutor was, of course, Aristotle. And almost as soon as I became a royal page, Philip moved Alexander’s household to the Gardens of Midas. We were told it was time for him to leave his mother behind. I’ll speak more of Olympias later, but she was more like a force of nature than a woman. And she tried to rule Alexander rather than guide him.

  As a companion – almost a peer – I was educated with the prince. There were a dozen of us at any time, and I think only Amyntas, Cassander, Hephaestion, Black Cleitus and I went through the whole course with Alexander, although I may be missing somebody. At any rate, we sat through lessons together with Aristotle in the Gardens of Midas, and sometimes, when I was the favoured one, I sat beside Alexander on the stone bench – colder than you can imagine on an autumn morning – while the old oligarch explained exactly what Plato meant in the Gorgias, or the proper conduct of a gentleman in a symposium.

  Aristotle was one of us, or close enough – he knew what we were – but he’d been away a long time, with foreigners on Lesbos, and he could be quite naive. He loved the symposium and all of its trappings – the proper wine bowls, the krater, the sieve and the silver ladle, the bowls of good companionship, the small talk and the wit. I experienced them all later, and came to know that the philosopher was talking about something real – delightful, in fact. But you must imagine that we heard him through a veil of our own experience as pages at court, and for us, wine meant trouble. When we were at Pella, all of us – except the prince – were royal pages, and we waited on the guests at the feasts in the great hall. And that was horrible.

  Philip’s court had three groups. The first, and most dangerous, were the highlanders, the near-barbarians of the ancient upland kingdoms; Elimiotis in the south, Orestis in the west and Lychnitis by the lake, near Illyria. They didn’t like Hellenes, didn’t like Philip’s insistence on the trappings of Athenian culture and didn’t very much like Philip. They liked to steal cattle and kill each other and fuck.

  The second group was just as dangerous and just as violent. Philip attracted mercenaries the way rotting corpses attract carrion crows. He had the best – and most expensive – captains in the world, and the two I remember best were Erigyus and Laomedon, descendants of Sapph
o’s daughter, from Mytilene on distant Lesbos. Despite their air of culture and their distinguished poetic pedigree, they were hard men, killers with no shame in them, and no page ever came close to them once the drink was flowing.

  And the last group was the lowlanders, the courtiers, the great nobles and barons of the rich inner provinces of Macedon, men who had estates the size of small countries. They wore Greek clothing and most of them spoke excellent Greek, and they could speak intelligently about Plato. They were also as tough or tougher than their highland cousins, and their national sports were hunting wolves and regicide. My father was one of them, Lagus, son of Ptolemy. Our estates ran for parasanges – we owned people as Attic farmers own sheep, although, as I said, my pater was a fine leader and manager.

  The leader of our faction at court was Parmenio, the general – Philip liked to joke that the Athenians managed to come up with ten generals every spring, while he’d only found one in his whole life – that was how much he valued Parmenio. Well he might.

  At any rate, when men gathered to drink wine in the royal court at Pella, we pages served as quickly as we could and huddled together for safety under the eaves. Men died when the wine was flowing. And if anyone talked about Socrates or Heraklitus, I never heard it. Casual fornication was tolerated – slave girls and sometimes boys were used as freely as wine cups. One of my clearest memories of youth remains serving wine to Erigyus while he rode a girl on his couch. Beyond them, a highlander was kneeling on the floor, watching, incredulous, as his life ebbed away, blood all around him like spilled wine. He’d mocked Erigyus’s penis. The Lesbian cut his throat and carried on. That was the closest thing we knew to a symposium, and that was why it was sometimes difficult to understand what Aristotle was talking about.

  I don’t mean to dwell on my own youth. I mean this to explain – to myself, if not to you – why we killed the king, in the end. But to understand Alexander, you have to understand everything, and as with Aristotle’s lessons, it can be hard to see Alexander through the haze of later events. And to understand the man, you have to see some of the boy.