God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  He still adored Alexander, but in private he told me that his father’s loyalty to the cause was costing him in the Assembly and in everyday business – that the anti-Macedon faction had unprecedented popularity.

  That was sad. Athenians are fools, and democracy is an idiotic way to run a state.

  Alectus came down from the hills and learned that we were to share the brigade of Psiloi. He came and had dinner with me, and we embraced and agreed to be good partners. In everything.

  ‘Which nights do I get Thaïs?’ he asked with a broad wink at her. In my home, she ate with my friends.

  ‘All the nights I don’t want her,’ I said.

  Thaïs snorted. ‘All the nights I don’t want him,’ she said to Alectus with her dazzling smile.

  But I got the better smile, and Alectus rolled his eyes.

  ‘It’s the tattoos, isn’t it?’ he said.

  He was sixty if he was a day, and his abdominal muscles stood out like soldiers on parade. She ran a hand over his stomach.

  ‘Some people could learn a thing or two,’ she said wickedly.

  I went back to training four hours each day.

  Alectus laughed. But he always did.

  Alexander recruited a small army of non-soldiers. Many were philosophers – men who studied plants and animals, who studied other men, who wrote about government. Their master was Aristotle’s nephew, Callisthenes, who had an even bigger mouth than I have and never hesitated to use it. I liked him fine. He made me look good.

  Although it was never officially said, all those civilians came under my command – or rather, I was responsible for them. There were more than two hundred of them, with that many again in slaves, and not a fighting man among them, believe me. They had to be cosseted, protected and fed – marched about, saved from predators, kept warm – amid a constant stream of whiney abuse. Once, in the Trans-Oxiana, I wanted to kill them all myself, but that’s another story. Alexander was using them to make him famous. What they actually accomplished was, and is, so much more than any of us ever expected – well, that’ll come in time. But for the moment – in a way, they all helped me keep the Journal. Callisthenes began a History the moment he joined us, and he used to read it some nights. It was tougher than the Journal – sometimes more accurate, but nowhere near as detailed in military information. All the scrolls on the far side of the tomb are my copy of Callisthenes. He was a poor philosopher but a superb historian, and he did a better job than I. However, he was no soldier.

  Later, let me add, the corps of scribes, as we called them, or the Philosophoi, filled up with two-obol hacks and con artists out to take Alexander, but at the start, the men who joined us were adventurers as much as we were, and the army had some respect for them. Later – well, later was later. Everything was different later, as you’ll see.

  In early March, Alexander ordered me – and Perdiccas, Cleitus the Black and Marsyas – to organise a set of games to rival those of Nemea or Olympus. We were given thirty talents of gold to spend.

  Perdiccas and I could take a hint – we each added ten more talents, and our games were as lavish as any ever given. We put them on down country at Aegae, and we rebuilt Philip’s stadium. We added a triumphal arch, we paid poets and actors from all over Greece – well, to be honest, mostly from Athens – acrobats, dancers – and athletes. The rest of the competitors came from inside the army.

  Kineas, for instance, won a crown of gold laurel leaves boxing. He was superb. No one could touch him. He defeated two Olympic champions and all the Macedonian contenders.

  We had horse races, foot races, races in armour, javelin throws ahorse and afoot, swordsmanship, spear-fighting and all the usual sports – pankration, boxing, wrestling, throwing the shield. And noble prizes for every one, crowns for the victors, handed out by Alexander himself.

  The Homeric imagery was relentless. Alexander was Achilles, Hephaestion was Patroclus and every one of the somatophylakes had a Homeric name. We wore Homeric costumes, and the performers performed scenes from the Iliad.

  Thaïs, to be honest, planned most of it. She was brilliant at this sort of thing, and it allowed her to bring in all of her friends from Athens and other cities – performers, some free, some slaves. Scene painters – fantastic chaps, men who could make a piece of flat hide look like a mountain.

  Her seamstresses made the king his purple tent, large enough to allow a hundred guests to recline in comfort.

  She planned the themes, and she watched the rehearsals. Alexander lost interest, sometimes – when the real war in Asia took over his head – but she stayed on target. She would come to meals with a stack of scrolls.

  I remember one night, I went to dinner with Antipater. We were working together on the logistics for Asia, and for the games, and sometimes we shared a meal. We went to his house, where he ate in splendour, served by twenty slaves. His wife came through once, heavily veiled, to check on us.

  I laughed. I was so used to my establishment, with a woman who had her own work and yet shared all of my life, that the glimpse of a ‘real’ Macedonian wife made me laugh.

  I won’t say I hated the work, either. I’ll just mention that in many ways I was relieved when the opening ceremonies went off, and I’ll note that much of the conquest of Asia was easier. Destruction is much easier than creation. Eh?

  And yet, we had fun. I remember a wild party at my house in Aegae, with Kineas and his friends and a crowd of Thaïs’s demi-monde friends – slaves and free, dancers, hetaerae, the scene painters, a sculptor and a crowd of actors. Altogether, there must have been fifty of us crowded into my andron.

  The laughter went on and on, and Thaïs led them in an indecent retelling of the Iliad, which was hilarious – and which attacked Alexander in a hundred ways, and yet was hugely funny.

  Kineas, always a man of immense personal dignity, laughed until wine and snot blew out of his nose.

  Diodorus declaimed a long speech with an arm around one of Thaïs’s dancer friends. He was playing the part of Achilles, dying in his mother’s arms, but he managed to claim, in between stanzas, that as long as she would pillow his head on her breasts, he’d keep declaiming. This reached surprising heights of comedy – he was quite inventive – and every time he looked to expire, she rolled one breast or the other under his eyes, and he’d splutter and go on again, and we’d all laugh – oh, I remember that laughter as well as I remember anything in the whole crusade. I had thought Diodorus merely acerbic before that, but after that night, he and I were friends. We shared some love of laughter that transcended his dislike of Macedon and ‘my kind’. It went well for him – look at him now!

  And when we had all laughed and laughed, Kineas threw a grape at Diodorus, who was running his tongue along the young lady’s flank, and yelled, ‘Get a room’ and she rose, took Diodorus by the hand and led him away. He looked back at us from the doorway.

  ‘Better a fiery death in glory than a long life and a dull end,’ he declaimed as she led him through the curtain.

  Damn, that was the best exit line I’ve ever heard, and I still laugh to think of it.

  And when most of the actors were gone, or asleep in the corners, and it was just Kineas and Thaïs and Diodorus and Niceas and, of all people, my Polystratus, sitting over a last cup of wine, Kineas got up (unsteadily) and raised his cup.

  ‘Let’s drink together – an oath to the gods, to remain friends always. We will conquer Asia together. Let’s drink on it.’

  We all rose – no one mocked the notion – and we all drank, even Thaïs. Nearchus was there, and young Cleomenes, and Heron, and Laodon. The cup passed – we all drank.

  ‘I can feel the gods,’ Kineas said, in a strange voice – but no one laughed because, as Thaïs said afterwards, we could all feel them.

  And indeed, I sometimes think that the gods are as drawn to laughter and happy drunkenness as they are to battlefields and childbirth – and if that is true, we must have had all Olympus by us that night.

 
The night before we were due to march, Olympias summoned Alexander to her. I was there when the summons came, and despite his love for her and his endless patience with her, he rolled his eyes like any teenage boy summoned by his mother. He was in a state of exaltation that was nearly dangerous – he was about to achieve the entire ambition of his life.

  We shouted for him to go and come back, and he waved a hand, pressed Hephaestion to stay and keep the couch warm, and left us. I remember because I passed the time of the king’s absence by playing Polis with Cleitus, and I won, and Cleitus, who was drunk and in a mood, punched me, meaning only to give me a tap, but he hit me so hard that I had a bruise for a week, and only Nearchus kept me from hitting him back, or worse.

  Alexander came back into the ruckus, and he was white, his lips were almost indistinct and he didn’t notice the tension – which dissipated instantly, because no little quarrel was as important as the king’s anger. He was angry – or worse.

  In fact, he looked terrified.

  Hephaestion took a look at him and ordered us all to bed. And we went – Alexander in one of his moods could be deadly.

  Of course, nowadays, everyone knows what his mother told him – that he was not the son of Philip, but the son of Zeus Ammon, and that she had been made pregnant by the god.

  It’s easy to be incredulous and cynical. But in Macedon, we take gods seriously. We’re not like fucking Athenians, who think the gods are so far away that they don’t exist. In Macedon, we credulous barbarians always believe that the gods are present in daily affairs. And every noble in Macedon is the direct descendant of one of the gods.

  And Olympias was no madwoman. Say what you will of her – her only addiction was power, and she played the game better than almost anyone in her generation. She was brilliant, cunning and beautiful, and utterly without scruple, except when it came to defending her son. She used murder, the army and her body with equal facility. She could reason, cajole, threaten, seduce or eliminate. But she was not mad, and if she told Alexander that he was born of a god, it’s best not to dismiss the idea out of hand. Certainly Thaïs – a cynical Athenian hetaera – accepted the story at face value. Priests at Delphi accepted it. Aegyptian priests accepted it. It is fashionable now to say that Alexander was not half a god – merely a man. Very well. But I knew him, and I say that there was something beyond the human – something inestimably greater, and yet sometimes less than human, in him.

  Regardless, Alexander believed her. The cynic might say that he had to – that having participated in the murder of Philip, he needed to be told that he was not Philip’s son. Perhaps – but again, Alexander was never so simple, and I never saw him betray the least guilt about Philip.

  What I can say is that from that night, he never again referred to Philip as ‘my father’. And that, in turn, had consequences that none of us could have foreseen.

  Next morning, we marched for Asia. We marched with forty thousand men, and we had our supplies sitting ready in magazines all the way down to the Asian shores, and Alexander was determined to march along the same route that Xerxes had used. And we did.

  We made excellent time, passing from Amphilopolis along the coast route to Sestos in the Chersonese. But the tensions grew every day, and they made the trip harder and harder.

  It was all but open conflict between the king and Parmenio.

  Parmenio issued orders to the army without any reference to the king. Parmenio summoned army councils and sent the king an invitation. Parmenio changed the route of the march and the intended crossing-point without speaking to the king. Alexander had intended for the army to cross at Sigeon, near Troy, which was in our hands and had a protected port.

  I had my own reason for anger. In the first three days it became increasingly clear that I was not to have command of the Psiloi. Attalus – another Attalus, one of Philip’s men – received the command from Parmenio. I received a verbal message from Alectus, asking me to meet him, and he insisted that we meet outside the camp.

  It was a difficult meeting – Alectus got to tell me I’d been replaced, and I didn’t know how to respond – I lashed out at Alectus instead of saving my ire for the man responsible.

  I went straight to the king, and pushed through his companions – as was my right – to where he was donning armour.

  ‘I have been deprived of my brigade,’ I said.

  Alexander was just being put into his thorax. Hephaestion was holding it open for him, and he was pulling his heavy wool chiton into folds to pad the metal. ‘Good morning to you, too, son of Lagus,’ he said.

  ‘Parmenio has given my brigade to another of his old men,’ I said.

  Alexander nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  I remember the feeling of horror I had as I realised that the king was not going to do anything. Either he could not or he would not.

  I was reminded of Pausanias, somehow.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. Quietly, he added, ‘There’s nothing I can do. We are all young and inexperienced.’

  I stormed out of his presence without asking permission, and I was allowed to go without rebuke.

  I considered going home.

  Thaïs checked me. ‘Sooner or later, Parmenio intends to kill him,’ she said. ‘Probably on campaign. Will you just ride off and leave him? He’ll die without you.’

  It was an interesting role reversal, and it did our relationship a world of good. At Thebes, it had been I talking her into staying with the army – with Macedon. Now the situation was reversed, even if the minutiae were wildly different.

  ‘I’m staying,’ she said that night, with utter finality. ‘Go home if you like. I have sacrificed everything to be there when the king marches into Asia.’

  Once I would have reacted to that. I would have attacked her for the suggestion that she had sacrificed everything. But I knew better, now.

  She came and put her arms around me. ‘He’ll die without you,’ she said again. ‘Nor will I be very happy.’

  She was in a position to know. With Parmenio in complete control of the army and the scout forces, Thaïs was the effective chief of the king’s intelligence service.

  I continued to have charge of the Military Journal and attached functions, and what rankled me – perhaps more than anything else – was that Parmenio was unfailingly polite and cheerful, and acted as if nothing had happened. He insisted that his officers supply me with their daily reports, so that the Journal ran more smoothly than ever before. Even officers like Amyntas, who affected to despise me, were quick to send their adjutants to report on numbers and effectives and men sick, ground covered, and all the details that made war possible.

  Acting as a glorified military secretary was not what I had in mind, however. It was perhaps four days after I discovered that I would not have command of the scouts, and I was in the headquarters tent, listening to Eumenes the Cardian – he’d been military secretary to Philip, and he was busy trying to take the Journal away from me. I didn’t really want it, but basic competitiveness and a deep inner knowledge of how courts work kept me from letting it go – and besides, Eumenes and I got along from the first, so that the struggle was surprisingly amicable and without the drama of some of Macedon’s other conflicts. He was a brilliant man, as his later campaigns show – a superb fighter, and a witty, educated man. I liked him.

  In fact, I liked a great many of Philip’s former officers – some of whom had been my father’s friends and childhood companions. It wasn’t a simple case of old versus young. But as soon as I warmed to one of them, he’d make a slighting remark – an insistent remark – about Alexander’s sex habits or his ‘effeminism’. In fact, every day I had revealed to me where Demosthenes’ propaganda came from about the king. It came from Parmenio and his men – they had a low opinion of the king, and they weren’t afraid to show it. They treated him with a gentle, eternally condescending contempt. And I hated that.

  At any rate, three or four days after I lost my command, Parmenio was in
the headquarters tent, issuing rapid-fire orders – all simple stuff about our magazines and their replenishment, and tax relief for those districts charged with our food – Eumenes held up a hand. ‘Need a minute, here,’ he said. ‘Lot to write. You need this copied out fair?’

  Parmenio nodded. ‘As soon as you can,’ he said. ‘Messenger for Pella is waiting.’

  Eumenes went out to get another set of wax tablets, and Parmenio turned to me – ignoring a crowd of taxiarchs and under-officers.

  ‘Men tell me you are angry about the Psiloi brigade,’ he said. He held up a hand to forestall anything I might say. ‘Listen, lad – it was never yours. The king should stop being dishonest about it. When the king is older and more experienced, I’ll give him a share of the command appointments, and I am sure you’ll get one. But he does not have that authority right now, and you were a fool to accept such a commission from his hand. That sort of behaviour can lead to discontent and is bad for discipline. Understand?’

  This was a glorious opportunity for me to show my hand and tell Parmenio just what I thought of him. On the other hand, if the king wasn’t taking him on, who was I to engage him? And Thaïs’s comments were ringing in my ears.

  And he was still my childhood hero. Let’s not forget that.

  So I swallowed it, and went back to commanding sixty troopers in the Hetaeroi – half a troop, in the new system. I was in Philotas’s regiment. Philotas was not a friend.

  On the bright side, all the reports suggested that the Persian command was badly divided – that Darius had all his best troops in Aegypt, and all his personal troops out east subduing rebels, and we were going to land in Asia unopposed.

  We were twenty days to Sestos, and we arrived in excellent shape, because Antipater and I had done a thorough job. The men were well fed and their wages were paid up, and the fleet – all one hundred and sixty vessels, the whole fleet of the League – was waiting for us.

  At Sestos, Alexander showed his hand. He summoned Parmenio – I was there – and informed his general that he would be taking the elite of the army – the hypaspitoi, the entire Hetaeroi and his elite Agrianians and Thracian cavalry – and marching down the coast to Elaious, where he’d intended to trans-ship, and he requested that Parmenio send us sixty ships from the fleet to cover our crossing. Alexander pointed out that by spreading our crossing, we left the Persians with an insurmountable tactical problem – either force could get behind the flank of any enemy that opposed the other. He also made plain that he intended to make religious sacrifices at Troy.