God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  He concentrated his columns around Marakanda and pushed north and east, and finally, east of Cyropolis, he faced the Massagetae confederation and all of Spitamenes’ Persians across the Jaxartes.

  We neither won nor lost.

  I fought all day – two charges in the morning and two in the afternoon at the head of my Hetaeroi. Alexander was wounded in the fighting by the river when the Sauromatae almost collapsed our right flank, and the Macedonian infantry – the phalanx – had to cover our withdrawal across the river. I think it was the worst day that the Hetaeroi ever had. We lost men – we lost horses.

  But the Massagetae could make no headway against the phalanx, and Spitamenes’ men took a beating from our left-flank cavalry. I almost reached him myself. By the time we withdrew, the Massagetae may have felt victorious, but the Persian rebels had ceased to be an effective field force.

  I’ve heard a hundred men who say we lost at Jaxartes river. But by Ares – we went across the river into the arrow storm, and we crushed Spitamenes. He mounted one more raid – one, and then he was through. Nor did the Massagetae want any more of fighting us.

  Best of all, the situation forced our Macedonians to fight. They didn’t fight well, but as Alexander put them in a position where the choices were to fight or to die, they chose to fight. After Jaxartes, the pezhetaeroi began to regain discipline. We didn’t lose. Had we lost, we’d have been exterminated.

  Alexander, however, was deeply affected by the battle. It was the closest he’d ever come to a loss, and he had never before failed to take the enemy camp, seize the enemy’s baggage, provide his army with the benefits of victory.

  Combined with four wounds in as many months, his lack of victory made him all too human. The god was hidden.

  The man was angry.

  As I have mentioned, the greatest internal problem facing our army – since we marched into Hyrkania – had been the division between ‘old’ Macedonian officers and ‘new’ Persian officers. This is a gross oversimplification. First, the rift was built on the factions left over from Parmenio’s time. Alexander had begun to employ non-Macedonian officers from the first – Erigyus of Mytilene is a fine example. Philip did it as well. Philip was never afraid to employ Athenians, Spartans, Ionians – he’d hire whomever he could get, the best men, the most expensive.

  Alexander merely continued that policy in Asia. He drafted Lydian cavalry after the Granicus, and as soon as we had Persian defectors, they were given rank and employment. Why not? I still cannot fully understand the anger of the ‘old’ faction.

  But after Parmenio’s death, the question was complicated by Alexander’s attempts to be all things to all men – to be a Persian king for the Persians while remaining a Macedonian to us and being a Greek for the Greeks. He thought he was both clever and successful. He was not. And the worst of it was that none of us could tell him that he had failed – he never believed us. His hubris blinded him to the simple ignorant anger of his Macedonian phalangites, who wanted no part of putting Asians in the ranks of the phalanx.

  The sad truth was that we knew – we, the officers – that there was nothing remarkable about Pella, or Amphilopolis – or Athens or Sparta. We could take young Bactrians or Persians or Lydians or Sogdians and make them passable pikemen. The phalanx – ours, not the Greek kind – won battles by walking forward relentlessly with courage, good training and really, really long pikes. Our veterans imagined themselves irreplaceable, but they were not.

  We knew it, but again, the problem was far more complex than it appeared. Because the phalanx couldn’t be replaced. They were the heart of the army, and if they mutinied – well, they could turn on us. Alexander had taken them on a five-year rampage across Asia, and he’d taught them that anything can be taken at the point of the spear. Including the King of Macedon.

  We’re still paying for that lesson. Eh?

  At the same time, the king was losing touch with his staff. Even at Marakanda, even on campaign, he had a growing personal staff of subservient Asians. He liked it that way. Let’s not mince words. He didn’t want to be surrounded by the teasing and mockery of peers. He didn’t want sharp-tongued friends reminding him of the consequences of his actions.

  He was not Kineas.

  That summer, the conflict boiled over and people died.

  So did friendships.

  Alexander gave a dinner to celebrate the appointment of Black Cleitus as the satrap of Bactria. Cleitus deserved the post – ten years of absolute loyalty – and we were getting Nearchus back, so Alexander could spare Cleitus.

  And Cleitus had developed an unfortunate habit on campaign – the habit of needling Alexander about his own failings. Cleitus didn’t have the brilliant mind that Alexander had, but he was thoughtful, penetrating – and as the man who had most often saved the king’s life, he was free to speak his mind.

  Increasingly, he did. And thus it came as no surprise to me that Alexander was sending him away.

  I was lying on my couch, far from the inner circle. No amount of hard fighting at Jaxartes could restore my reputation. I had lost a fight, even though I had had only Sogdian tribesmen in my command and had taken very few casualties. And as I say, the king was isolating himself from anyone who might have spoken out, and that included me.

  Which, I must confess, was fine. I was sick of him.

  That night, I had just decided to be unfaithful to my Thaïs. It was a funny sort of decision – we’d never pledged to each other and thus, I felt, my honour was fully engaged. She was free to take lovers – she was, after all, a courtesan, a matter of which she never ceased to remind me when she was angry. I hadn’t seen her in a year.

  I’m making excuses. I had purchased a Circassian – fine-looking – as a slave. I hadn’t allowed myself to think what I was doing, but the longer I owned her – well, make your own conclusions. I lay on my couch in the dust, angry with myself and drunk and ready to behave badly. I was anxious to leave the dinner, go back to my tent and see how far her willingness would extend. I assumed that it would extend quite far.

  I drank more. We are never worse than when we are about to behave badly. And conscience – I have to laugh. I could have fucked a slave a day, and no man in that army would have thought the worse of me.

  Alexander was busy rehashing every battle he’d fought. He was talking about the enemy commanders he’d killed or maimed in single combat.

  I’d heard it all before, and I tuned him out, until he mentioned Memnon.

  I was daydreaming of my soon-to-be concubine – a mixture of salacious thoughts and anger at my own weakness – when I realised that the king had just claimed that he had killed Memnon at Halicarnassus.

  I shook my head.

  Black Cleitus laughed. He was lying on the king’s right, as was proper since it was his day. He snorted, as he used to do when they were boys and he thought that Alexander was getting above himself.

  ‘Memnon died of the flux at Mytilene,’ Cleitus said.

  Alexander stopped. Who knew what went on in that head? But he shrugged. ‘Who are you to argue with me?’ he asked. He was very drunk. ‘I am the very god of war, and you are merely one of my warriors.’

  Cleitus barked his snorting laugh again. ‘You’re a drunk fuck, and saying you are the god of war is blasphemy. Don’t be an arse!’

  Alexander got to his feet, and then tripped over something on the floor and almost fell. The unaccustomed clumsiness made him angrier. ‘Zeus is my father! I have waded in blood and made war across the earth, and I don’t have to listen to you – what have you ever done for me?’

  Cleitus had thus far played carefully, but this stung him, and he leaped from his couch. ‘Saved your useless life, ingrate!’ he roared.

  Never tell the truth to the powerful.

  Lysimachus rolled off his couch. Hephaestion got a hand on the king, and Lysimachus and Perdiccas both got between the king and Cleitus.

  Alexander, in the hands of Lysimachus, leaned forward, his face red, a
nd yelled, ‘Your sword couldn’t have kept a child alive! Name me a victory you have won? Any of you? Of the lot of you, I’m the only one who can fight and win.’

  I’d got hold of Cleitus by then. I could see what was coming, and I was damned if I was going to allow Cleitus to lose his position in the army. But I couldn’t get anyone to help me and I couldn’t shut him up – a problem I’d had since childhood, to be frank.

  ‘You know who you remind me of ?’ Cleitus shouted. ‘Philip. Your fucking drunk father. It is a shameful thing, for you – the King of fucking Macedon – to humiliate your own men – who have followed you across the world – in the midst of these enemies and foreign traitors!’ Cleitus spat. ‘You insult your best men – who have been unfortunate – while jackals laugh at them, who have never faced an enemy sword!’

  Alexander turned to Perdiccas. ‘I have never before heard cowardice described as misfortune,’ he said, intending to be heard. ‘Although now that I hear it so described, I suppose it is the bitterest misfortune a man can endure!’

  Cleitus got a hand free from me. I was trying to get anyone to help, but the men closest to the king on couches were sycophants, flatterers, vultures – not men who would help me, even if they had the courage to try.

  ‘Was I a coward at the Granicus? If my sword hadn’t been by you, you would have been dead there and twenty other places.’ Cleitus slammed his elbow into my stomach to get me off him, but I was ready – I rolled with the blow and got an arm around his neck.

  ‘It is by our blood, our wounds, that you have risen so high!’ Cleitus called. ‘You think that you did this, Alexander? You think that you won those victories? Your hubris disgusts every man here. Your father built this army – your father Philip. You pretend that a god is your father! It’s a lie! You are a man!’

  ‘That’s how you talk about me behind my back, isn’t it!’ Alexander said, quite clearly. And he wasn’t looking at Cleitus. He was looking at me. Perdiccas later told me that Alexander looked at him, too.

  I believe it. I think, by then, the king wanted us all gone. All the boys of his childhood. All the ones who knew that he was a man, and not a god.

  Alexander turned back to Cleitus, suddenly icy and calm. ‘I know the things you say behind my back,’ he said. He turned slowly, and pointed with his free hand – Lysimachus still had his left – at Cleitus. ‘You and your friends cause all the bad blood between my Macedonians and my Persians. Don’t imagine you are going to get away with it!’

  Cleitus stood straight. Something in Alexander’s tone sobered him for a moment. ‘Get away with it?’ he asked. ‘We’re dying for you every day, Alexander. And the ones who live get to bow down like sodomites and show their arses like these Persian fucks! While you wander around in a white dress and a diadem like a play-actor!’

  Alexander turned to Eumenes, who had joined the men trying to restrain him. ‘Don’t you feel that the Macedonians are like beasts? Any Greek is like a god by comparison.’

  Cleitus punched me in the eye. It hurt, and he was about to launch himself at the king, so I swung hard and hit him in the head.

  Alexander picked up an apple – it was the first thing under his hand – and threw it at Cleitus, hitting him in the face.

  I think Cleitus confused the two blows. Either way, he went off his head, drink and pain combining to make him bellow like a bull. But by then Marsyas had his other arm, together with Philip the Red.

  We began to drag him, step by step, from the tent.

  Perdiccas got the king in a choke hold, and Leonatus – the king’s friend – took the king’s sword from its scabbard and hurled it across the tent as Alexander reached for it. He went for the knife he always wore around his neck, but Lysimachus beat him to it – the king was so enraged he was ready to knife the men who had hold of him. As he wrestled with three men, his inhuman strength bearing all three of them down, he shouted, ‘It is a plot! To me! They are trying to murder me! Sound the alarm!’

  His hyperetes refused. He had his trumpet, and he shook his head, eyes narrowed – like a proper Macedonian, he could make his own decisions about the king’s state. He wasn’t a slave. And when one of the Persian vultures grabbed for the trumpet to blow it – to sound the alarm, and summon the hypaspitoi – the king’s hyperetes bashed the Persian with the trumpet and put him down.

  I had Cleitus clear of the tent by then, and I wrestled him out into the cooler night air, and Marsyas, whose wounds were suddenly bleeding again – Cleitus was struggling as hard as the king – kicked Cleitus in the balls.

  Cleitus bellowed again, and flattened Marsyas with one blow, breaking his nose. And I missed my hold, and Cleitus stumbled back into the tent, where the king was shouting ‘Turn out the guard!’ at the top of his lungs and Perdiccas was trying to get a hand over his mouth.

  I was right behind Cleitus. He got all the way into the command tent, and drew himself up. ‘Alas!’ he roared. ‘What evil government is come to Hellas?’

  The hypaspitoi surged in through the doors, and it was over – I could tell just looking at the men coming in, in full armour, that they had been warned. Their faces were set, and they didn’t move to surround the king – rather, they moved to prevent any further violence. Alexander sagged against his captors.

  Cleitus held his arms wide. ‘When the public sets up a war trophy, do the men who sweated get the credit? Oh, no – some strategos takes all the prestige!’ He was quoting from Euripides’ Andromache. ‘Who, waving his spear, one among thousands, did one man’s work, but receives a world of praise. Such self-important “fathers of their country” think they are better than other men. They are worth nothing!’

  Alexander ripped his arms free from Perdiccas and Leonatus. And in one step, he had the spear – a short longche – from the hypaspist closest to him, and he plunged it to the socket through Cleitus, who was, of course, wearing no armour.

  I saw the spear-point come through his back.

  His mouth opened.

  I’m told his eyes never left the king’s face.

  And he died.

  Coenus, Perdiccas and I were exiled a few weeks later to chase Spitamenes. That’s not how it was put to us, but that was the truth of it. Leonatus had already been sent away.

  The king mourned for three days, until the weasel Anaxarchus told him that as he was a god, he was above the law. He justified the king’s actions, and the king accepted his word and moved on.

  So much for his closest friend, the man who had stood by him since infancy.

  After Cleitus died, we – the former inner circle – knew that no man was safe. Philotas, to some extent, had it coming – Parmenio had always been the king’s rival. But Cleitus was merely blunt – his loyalty had never been questioned, and without him, the king would have died. Several times.

  I wanted no more of it. When I was sent to find and defeat Spitamenes, I went happily.

  And we caught him. He had three thousand Dahae cavalry and several hundred of his Persian adherents, but the forts kept us informed by beacon, and too many villagers had had enough – or perhaps they were more scared of us than they were of Spitamenes. We cornered him in a deep valley, and while Perdiccas took his taxeis up the hillside to block their retreat, Coenus and I charged home. We broke the Dahae easily enough – they didn’t want our kind of fight – and most of the Persians surrendered. They had had enough.

  In a matter of weeks, we had Spitamenes’ head. And that was the end of his revolt. Overnight, a man who had held us longer than Memnon or Darius was gone, killed by his own wife, and we were, at last, masters of Sogdiana.

  I was between Coenus and Perdiccas, riding slowly, because our column was tired and because we were done and our men weren’t in the mood to be hurried.

  I took a breath, enjoying the mountain air for the first time in two years. ‘I think . . .’ I said, and Perdiccas grinned.

  ‘Do you?’ he asked. ‘I thought I smelled something.’

  I punched him. ‘I th
ink we have to make him go home now,’ I said.

  Perdiccas nodded, the happy look wiped from his face. ‘Do you think – if we get him home . . .’

  Coenus laughed. It was a desperate laugh.

  I turned. ‘We can get him home,’ I said. ‘If we work at it.’

  Coenus wiped his eyes for a moment. ‘We’re not going home,’ he said. ‘We’re invading India. In the spring.’

  I was still in charge of the army’s food and supplies, and I hadn’t heard a word of it. But then, I’d been out of favour half a year.

  In fact, it was another year before we marched on India. The king was careful about the reconquest of Sogdiana, and he developed a lust of heroic proportions (the only kind of lust he ever had, really) for the daughter of one of the Sogdian chieftains – Roxanne – or so he claimed. She probably saved a lot of lives with her superb face and lush, velvety skin.

  We received drafts from home, and Alexander mustered our veterans – as many as he could. And he began to bring foreign officers closer in – he tried to appoint Cyrus to command half of the Hetaeroi in place of Cleitus, and Hephaestion talked him out of it.

  I was scarcely paying attention. With the Prodromoi and all the intelligence I could muster, I was trying to figure out how to feed the army when it marched east, to India. The king arrested Callisthenes on a trumped-up charge, and I can’t pretend I’d ever loved him, although he was better than the lickspittle Anaxarchus. Alexander tried – repeatedly – to induce us to perform the proskynesis. Leonatus mocked any man who did, and Polyperchon was arrested in Alexander’s presence for direct refusal. And again, Hephaestion went to the king and begged him to relent.

  A group of pages plotted to kill the king. But, in the best tradition of Philip’s court, they fell out among themselves – sex and dominance were involved. Alexander had them executed, and used the incident to justify moving against the Macedonian faction, which had been ‘proved’ disloyal, and after the fact he implicated Callisthenes in the plot and executed him.