God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  ‘By the gods,’ he said. ‘Alexander! It’s Ptolemy, with a goddess.’

  Alexander called, ‘Come.’

  I went in first. Alexander was alone except for two slaves, both armourer’s men, who were fitting him for a helmet. Theban smiths make good work, but these men were Athenians – I could see their samples. The best armourers in the world.

  Alexander turned to me. ‘A goddess, Ptolemy?’

  It seemed a promising start. ‘Lord, the hetaera Thaïs has agreed to spend some time with me.’

  Alexander smiled. ‘She is here? The jewel of Athens came to our camp?’

  ‘And will live here, if you give her leave,’ I said.

  Alexander nodded. ‘Well done, Ptolemy. A cunning stroke, worthy of Odysseus. I gather you were crowned with success?’

  ‘A deputation is behind me – ten leading men, headed by Demosthenes himself. Kineas’s father, Eumeles, is the actual speaker.’ I held out a scroll tube of ivory. ‘Athens agrees to have you as hegemon and agrees to provide five hundred cavalry for the crusade in Asia.’

  ‘Well done!’ Alexander shook his head. ‘You do well at anything to which you turn your hand. The hypaspists – four weeks, and you made them like gods.’

  ‘I had help,’ I said, but his praise was like strong wine.

  ‘The last time we spoke, you reminded me that, at the root of it, I am king under the sufferance of my subjects – at least, of my elite subjects.’ He was not smiling now.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘You needed reminding.’

  Cleitus coughed.

  Alexander shook his head. ‘You are just not getting this, Ptolemy. I suspect you don’t get it because you are, in fact, so blessedly loyal to me – but a man who warns the king that he can be dethroned by force – is that the man to command the king’s inner guard – to win their absolute devotion?’

  Sometimes, I am slow. In this case, I had to laugh. ‘So,’ I said. ‘That’s what this is about. You were afraid—’

  ‘I am afraid of nothing,’ Alexander said. He was quite calm. ‘But some of my friends are afraid.’

  Our eyes met.

  ‘Attalus is dead,’ Alexander said. ‘Parmenio had him killed. It happened two days ago.’ The king shrugged. ‘I suspect that you were, and are, right. He had to die. Much as I hate him, I could have used him. As I will use Lord Amyntas and Lord Parmenio.’ His eyes never left mine – like a lover’s. ‘But I saw Cleitus’s look when I ordered his death – and Hephaestion’s.’ He nodded slowly, eyes still locked on mine. ‘Listen, Ptolemy. The longer I am king, the less I will understand of what happens outside this tent. The more power I’ll have, the less information to help me use it. Think of Pater – Philip – in those last days. He didn’t even know that Attalus had had Pausanias raped. No one told him until you did.’

  I nodded.

  ‘But he didn’t love you for telling him, and I’ll never love you for it, either. Kings don’t say “I’m sorry”, and they don’t say “You are right”. Eh?’

  Eyes still locked.

  ‘Find a way to do it,’ he said, very quietly. ‘Find a way to keep me from . . . ignorance.’

  I smiled.

  ‘But find a way to do it without making it a war between us. I am king.’ Alexander’s eyes bored into mine, and I realised that I was doing it – challenging him – refusing to break the eye contact.

  Quite deliberately, I looked away. Then back, like a flirting girl.

  He smiled. ‘Now I want you to bring your goddess for dinner. But first, I want you to swear me an oath that you do not now, nor will ever, seek the throne of Macedon.’

  It was right there, the possibility of my indignation boiling over. Fuck him. How dare he? I’d nearly died for him – twice.

  But he was the king, and he was not responsible for the shit people poured into his ears. I knelt. ‘I swear by Zeus, lord of the gods, lord of slaves and kings, Zeus of the eagle, Zeus of the thunderbolt, may I be burned to invisible ash and no man ever remember my name if I have ever sought the throne of Macedon, or ever do so in future.’

  Alexander put his hand on my shoulder and crushed it, his grip was so hard. He left a bruise.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said very quietly. ‘I cannot give you the hypaspists. What do you want?’

  I had Thaïs. ‘I’ll go back to my squadron of Hetaeroi,’ I said.

  Alexander nodded. ‘Excellent. Perhaps you and Laodon would put in some time improving the grooms, as well. Now – the goddess?’

  Cleitus, who could hear every word, held the flap, and Thaïs came in. She was wearing a wool chiton, very plain; a long riding cloak of transparent wool, so light it flowed like silk, and a hat woven of bleached straw, very fine and also white. She was the only woman I knew who owned a pair of Boeotian boots made to her size – open-toed, for riding. She still had her long whip in her hand. Upon entering, she unpinned her hat and made a deep obeisance. ‘My lord,’ she said. ‘You will not remember me. We met at a party.’

  ‘Ah – I would be unlikely ever to forget you, Despoina.’ He inclined his head gravely. ‘Your presence here is a triumph for Macedon – we have taken the finest thing Athens ever had.’

  ‘But my lord,’ she said, ‘Athens never had me – I am an Athenian, and I am here of my own free will. I am not an object – I am here to be a subject.’

  Alexander looked at me. ‘I’ve seldom been corrected so gently. Perhaps you might teach Ptolemy your arts?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, and her eyelashes fluttered, ‘I could try, but women of my sort seldom train a potential rival, and Lord Ptolemy is already a very good companion.’

  Alexander, who never, ever spoke of sex, blushed. And then laughed, because her joke was so subtle – the Greek word for courtesan was hetaera, but it was merely the feminine form of Hetaeroi – our word for the king’s bodyguard – his companions. Damn it – that’s funny, lad! She was comparing courtesans and bodyguards . .

  Never mind. You’re too young. The king laughed his arse off, and that didn’t happen often.

  ‘Would we shock the world if we had the Lady Thaïs to dinner tonight?’ Alexander asked Hephaestion.

  He looked at me as if to say I told you so. ‘No ambassadors. Possibly the last night it’s just the army. So I’d say yes.’

  It was quite a dinner. Thebes rose behind us like the backdrop for an Athenian tragedy. Because of Thaïs, the talk was light and witty and educated. Bad as we Macedonian barbarians might be, we had all been educated by Aristotle, and even Perdiccas and Cassander could manage to sound vaguely like men of culture.

  Thaïs helped them. She had a way of capping a quote before a man could finish it – as if she understood that he was going to say something erudite, and she loved to help him finish. Cleitus, for example, struggled to participate. Thaïs always liked Cleitus – almost always – and that first night, as he stuttered through a quote from the Odyssey, she smiled.

  ‘With you quoting Odysseus’s part, I suppose I must respond with Penelope’s,’ she said.

  His relief was obvious – he got the credit for a good quote and she’d done all the work.

  It’s not the best example, just the best one I remember.

  She smiled around the company. ‘But I don’t want to stay at home like Penelope. If you, my lords, are going to Troy, I want to go!’

  Alexander smiled and shook his head. ‘The queen of the Amazons fought for Asia,’ he said.

  ‘Who needs to be bound by the classics?’ she said. ‘And what of Atlante? Eh? Or Athena? Not that I compare myself to the grey-eyed, but still.’

  Hephaestion smiled. ‘What would you do, in a camp of soldiers, lady?’

  Thaïs smiled, and Hephaestion blushed. She never said a word. He looked away, and Alexander blushed.

  ‘Laundry,’ Thaïs said.

  Her timing was beautiful, and the whole tent burst into an approving roar. I’d seen her at work in a symposium in Athens, and so had Alexander, but none of the others had, a
nd they had no idea how powerful was her command of song and speech. She gave them a taste – sang a few popular love songs to her own accompaniment on the kithara – but she intended to remain a guest and not a performer, and she declined to play more.

  Alexander came to her couch after she had sung, and sat on the end. ‘You spoke of our crusade in Asia,’ he said.

  ‘Ptolemy speaks of little else,’ she allowed. ‘And men in Athens – my friends, like Diodorus and Kineas and their faction. Men say that you will throw down the Great King, and make all Asia subject.’

  He breathed in sharply, like a woman at the climax of love. ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘But I love to hear it coming from you.’

  She smiled. ‘When your crusade marches – will you let me accompany you?’

  Alexander laughed. ‘After one evening, lady, I think we would beg you to accompany us. Ask me another boon – anything you like. Your presence will enhance every dull evening on campaign. You make my officers better men just by being here. Perhaps this is what Helen brought.’’

  ‘Anything?’ Thaïs asked, and her voice was suddenly . . . odd.

  Alexander caught it – but the need to be Achilles and Agamemnon rolled into one always took over from common sense. ‘Anything.’

  She nodded. ‘May Zeus hear you, Lord King. May we all some day be where I might have my boon. For now, I ask nothing.’

  Alexander loved a moment of drama. ‘I swear it by Zeus, by Herakles and by the River Styx.’

  Cleitus sat up on his couch. ‘I heard the shears of Moira – that oath went to Olympus.’

  What I noticed was that Alexander did not swear by his father, Philip. A month ago, he had.

  That night, I lay with Thaïs in my own tent. She had her own, but she wanted to play, as she called it, and we made love – slowly – under my cloak. She was quiet and careful.

  And in the morning, her head was on my shoulder when I awoke. The smile that came to my face stayed all day.

  Even when, about midday, when Polystratus brought me sausage and leeks where I was drilling the grooms, he said, ‘People need to sleep.’

  I tried to pretend I didn’t understand.

  He just shook his head. ‘If I bring a girl and fuck her all night, will you laugh it off?’

  I could have told him to go and sleep somewhere else. But that was not the way between master and man, if you wanted loyalty kept. I understood, and he understood.

  Alexander didn’t really understand, and that worried me, but I had sworn to defend him, and I realised that afternoon that more than anything, I would have to defend him from himself.

  In fact, the next day, when Alexander dispatched heralds all over Greece to summon the cities to a meeting of the mighty League of Corinth, Philip’s tool for governing Greece, I rode away from camp alone. Thaïs wanted to explore, and she’d begun to collect her own household – a military household. She meant to come with us. She approached it intelligently, and paid Polystratus cash to coach her in her hiring, which won him over in two different ways.

  I rode to Plataea. Above Plataea, to the place where Kineas’s family had an altar – high on the summit, a day’s journey to climb. A day’s journey for a man who could run thirty stades.

  I climbed alone, except for Ochrid, and I left him with the horses. I went up to the top, where you can see the whole rim of the world. And there I caught a deer and killed it, my own sacrifice to Artemis and to Zeus, and I offered my own oath to protect the king.

  Before I was done speaking, thunder rumbled and an eagle, borne on some rapid updraught, shot up from lower on the mountain into the sky on my right, the best of omens and a clear sign of the High God’s approval.

  I came down the mountain, elated, and like many men who are elated, I suddenly wanted to talk. And I missed my way, somehow, so that instead of coming down by our horses on the northern slopes, I came down the western slopes and found myself above the ancient tomb of the Hero of the Trojan War. They say Leitus went with the Athenians, and came back after many fights and died in his bed, at peace with the gods. And that he never did anything worth recording – he was not an outstanding fighter, or a brilliant runner – except that, on that day we all know in the Iliad when Achilles sulked in his tent and Hector drove the Greeks to red ruin by the ships, Leitus rallied a dozen average men – average for the Trojan War, of course – and formed a tight little wall of shields, and their locked shields kept Hector at bay for the crucial time it took to rescue Odysseus, who had taken a wound.

  Veterans go to that shrine. Leitus is the hero of every warrior who stands his ground and hopes to go home again – not the ones who seek joy and death in battle, but the sane ones who seek to show courage and then live to plough their fields and their wives. His precinct is always well kept, and there are always ten or fifteen men there at the tomb – an old Tholos beehive, high above the road over the mountain to Athens. I had gone there one afternoon with Kineas, and now I stumbled on it by accident.

  An old man was sitting on the steps of the little cabin, and he had a dozen boys and adolescents at his feet, sitting in the dust and the late summer leaves. He was very fit, that old man, with neck muscles like whipcord. He was teaching them, of course.

  ‘What is your duty to the city, boys?’ he asked.

  They all looked at me, as boys do when they want to avoid work. But I kept my face blank, and the teacher gave me a friendly nod – man to man, so to speak – and the boys guessed that I wasn’t going to stop the lesson.

  The eldest stood. ‘To protect the walls. To stand our ground in battles.’

  The teacher frowned, but nodded. ‘There is more to life than war, though.’

  ‘To defend our freedoms. To attend every Assembly ready to vote on every issue on the agenda set by our elders,’ said another boy in the sing-song voice of one who has learned by rote.

  ‘How is democracy like war?’ the teacher asked.

  ‘In war we use spears, and in democracy we fight with words and ideas,’ the boys chorused.

  ‘And who is the winner? The loudest?’ he asked.

  ‘The last standing!’ one boy called out. And they all laughed, even the teacher.

  But one boy shook his head. ‘Teacher, what if the city is wrong?’

  The teacher raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me more, sprout.’

  ‘What if the free man finds himself . . . disagreeing – with the city? What if the city orders a wrong action? Say a man goes away to fight for Alexander, and comes back to find that a tyrant has taken his city, or a madness has come over the Assembly, and they give outrageous commands?’

  I laughed to hear a fifteen-year-old suggest that a man might go from Plataea to fight for Alexander. Although, of course, it was about to happen, and I knew it.

  The teacher nodded. ‘It is the duty of every man who votes in the Assembly to accept the will of other men when he is outvoted,’ he said. ‘To behave in any other way is to be a bad sport, a poor loser. A cheat.’ He looked at them. ‘But despite that, there can come a time when a city, or a tyrant, or a king leaves the path of good actions. Faction can make this happen, or personal enmity, or a curse, or lust for power.’ He looked off into the distance. ‘And then a man must ask himself where his duty lies. For war is an ugly mistress, and civil war is the worst hag of the lot. But to allow yourself to be made a slave – is not to be born, is it? So there can come a moment when the freeman must accept the consequence that his state, his city, his king, has failed him.’ The old man shrugged.

  The boy was amazed that he had participated in something so profound. But he was still curious. ‘But . . . what should he do?’

  The old man smiled a bitter smile. ‘He should kiss his wife and child, order his burial shroud and declare himself dead. And then he should gather men of like mind, and march. Not expecting to live, but prepared to die to prove his point. Because such rebellion must never be for personal gain, but for the good of the city.’

  The boys were silent. I s
aid, ‘You sound like Aristotle, sometimes.’

  The old man smiled. ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘A philosopher,’ I said.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, and shook my hand. ‘I’m no philosopher. I was a phylarch under old Phokion, and now I teach war to the boys.’ He looked at me. ‘You don’t look like a philosopher yourself, young sir. Cavalry officer, I’d be guessing.’

  ‘Under Alexander,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘I fought Philip a few times.’ He laughed. ‘Outmarched his arse a few times, too!’ He looked at the boys, and shooed them away. ‘Home to the fields, lads,’ he said.

  He took my arm and we walked to the edge of the clearing. ‘Being Plataean was just a status in Athens, you know. Thebes razed our city to the ground. But Philip saved us from exile, and now we’re trying to raise a generation that sees Plataea as their home – not the south slope of the Acropolis!’ He shook his head. Picked up an amphora of wine. ‘You’ve killed a man in combat?’ he asked. Except it was not really a question.

  ‘One or two,’ I said. I mistook his tone.

  ‘It’s a serious thing, taking a life,’ he said. ‘You’re just the age where it’s going to start to occur to you that every man you put down had a life. That they ain’t just meat-bags waiting to help you run up your score. Eh?’

  I said nothing. I think that if I’d come on purpose, I’d have been prepared. But I wasn’t prepared. And because I was unprepared, I almost burst into tears. It was a sudden thing.

  He put an arm around my shoulder.

  ‘Didn’t you come here to talk, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Got lost,’ I said. ‘I went to the top to pray to Zeus.’ I shrugged.

  ‘And he sent you here. Come – let’s pour a libation together, and I’ll set you on your road.’ He grinned.

  He filled a big Boeotian cup of wine, and we poured it on the rocks at the edge of the tomb.

  ‘I can afford a sacrifice,’ I said. I felt wonderful – elated. Hard to describe. I felt the way I felt after making love to Thaïs. Clean.

  He shook his head and made an odd face. ‘No you can’t,’ he said. ‘Leitus has no sacrifice but men.’ He looked away. ‘And you, praise to Ares, ain’t the one. Sometimes a man comes, and the hero screams for his blood, and the priest puts him down at the door of the tomb.’ He shrugged.