Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  Ptolemy and the king’s other companions waited outside as Alexander walked into the temple and shut the doors. What exactly happened next is a mystery subject to endless speculation, but what we can say with certainty is that Alexander’s experience before the oracle of Zeus-Ammon changed him profoundly. All the questions and doubts that had plagued him during his short but turbulent life were put to rest. He would later write to his mother that he had heard astonishing news in the sanctuary, but would tell her the details in person when he returned to Macedonia. Since he never did return home, the ancient reports we possess are based on words the king let slip to friends in later years or on propaganda invented by early writers. Whatever the case, the sources say that Alexander first asked if the murderers of his father had been punished. The oracle, mostly through a series of nods in response to questions from the king, indicated that it was not possible to kill his true father, since his sire was not human. But the prophet continued that Alexander could put his mind to rest since the assassins of Philip had indeed all been punished. The king now had no need to ask about his paternity since the question had already been answered, so he instead posed a final query asking if he was destined to be master of all the world. To this the oracle gave a simple but profound nod of assent. It was, as the historian Arrian says, the answer his heart most desired.

  Now at last Alexander knew who he was and what destiny stretched before him. He gave splendid gifts to the priest of Zeus-Ammon as thanks and departed from the citadel. Soon he would begin to call himself a son of the god whose voice he had heard at Siwa. He would even strike coins showing the characteristic ram’s horns of the deity on the sides of his own head. He was still a man who could bleed and die like any other, but from that day forward Alexander knew a spark of the divine burned inside him.

  Alexander spent little time in Siwa after his visit to the oracle. Spring was fast approaching and Darius would be waiting for him somewhere in Mesopotamia. After his sojourn in the western desert, it was imperative that he return to his army at Memphis as quickly as possible. He still needed to organize the government of Egypt and settle military affairs in the province before he departed the Nile valley. Most ancient sources say he returned the way he had come, back across the desert to Paraetonium, then on to Alexandria and up the Canopic branch of the Nile to Memphis. But Alexander’s companion Ptolemy says the king chose the shortest route directly east across the desert. This was still more than three hundred miles through some of the most desolate terrain on earth. The eastern route was the very path long used by the inhabitants of Siwa to trade with the land of the pharaohs, so it is reasonable to assume Alexander recruited several locals to act as guides. The direct route was perilous, but given Alexander’s record of taking risks, it is exactly the sort of challenge he would have relished.

  With a last look back at the green valley and the temple of Zeus-Ammon, the king’s camel caravan left behind the desert paradise of Siwa and struck east toward the Nile. The trail was every bit as bleak as the route Alexander had taken from the Mediterranean coast. The men passed over barren gravel flats and towering dunes, then rode beside sandstone formations that had been eroded faster at the bottom than top, making them look like giant mushrooms springing from the desert. For the first two days after leaving Siwa there was no sign of water, so that the Macedonians must have wondered if the guides were leading them astray. But soon they found a series of small oases scattered among the sand dunes. The men of Siwa would have warned them, however, to fill their water sacks to the brim at the last pool they visited as it would be more than a hundred miles before they would again see so much as a blade of grass. The little party rose the next morning and plodded on beside the camels day after day through the sun, sand, and wind. Finally, after at least a week of trudging toward the rising sun, Alexander and his companions saw the oasis of Bahariya on the horizon.

  Bahariya was the main stop on the trade route between Siwa and the Nile, but it was also an important commercial center for a string of oases stretching like a great arch through the western desert. Beyond the town the ground was black from the eroded rubble of ancient mountains, but the town itself was much like Siwa, with abundant fruit trees, grapevines, and fields of wheat. There were also hot and cold springs that Alexander must have visited to wash away the layers of dirt he had collected in the wilderness. Trade was very much on the king’s mind as he traveled throughout Africa and Asia, so he surely inquired about distant cities and valuable commodities from the merchants he met at Bahariya. In later ages, archaeologists would discover a small chapel to the cult of Alexander on the edge of town along the route leading to Memphis, a sanctuary that may have been founded on the king’s stopover by natives eager to impress the visiting sovereign.

  But there was no time to linger in Bahariya for worship or relaxation. His army was waiting for him, so Alexander set out again northeast over more inhospitable desert until finally he reached the fertile valley of the Nile and the city of Memphis. The grueling journey to Siwa and back had taken at least a month, but aside from the new confidence it gave Alexander in his divine birth and ability to conquer the world, it must have been a grand adventure that the young king and his friends would remember for the rest of their lives.

  Back at Memphis, there was much to do but little time remaining until Alexander had to leave Egypt. He first held a festival to honor Zeus the King, whom he now regarded as his father, and celebrated more athletic games and musical festivals for his army before the business of war was to begin yet again. Antipater, ruling in his name in Macedonia, had sent an additional force of mercenaries and Thracian cavalry to meet him on his return from Siwa, but this was fewer than a thousand men, an indication that affairs in Greece were unsettled, especially with King Agis of Sparta still causing trouble from his base in the Peloponnese. Whatever the size of the Persian army waiting for him in Mesopotamia, Alexander would have to face it with the troops he now had on hand.

  New embassies from the Aegean were also waiting for him on his return. One from Miletus reported that the sacred spring at Didyma near their city that had long been dry had miraculously sprung to life. The Persians had deported the priestly Branchidae family of Didyma to central Asia years ago, but the new priests and their oracle were working overtime predicting favorable news for Alexander. They asserted that he would defeat Darius in a major victory and that the Great King would soon meet his death. Sparta, they declared, would continue in its rebellion but would fail. As soon as they heard about the king’s experience in Siwa, they suddenly remembered that their oracle had foretold the very same thing, affirming that Alexander was indeed fathered by Zeus. Not to be outdone, another delegation from the nearby Ionian town of Erythrae declared that their prophetess at the temple of Athena had also foretold that Alexander was the son of Zeus. The king realized perfectly well that these new oracular pronouncements were simply different cities trying to curry his favor, but he was willing to use them to further his own ends. If they spread the news to the Greeks that he was the child of Zeus, so much the better. Perhaps the citizens of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes would then think twice before causing him any more trouble while he was busy fighting in Asia.

  The final bit of business in Egypt was the appointment of military and civilian rulers over the province. It was a tricky situation since the land along the Nile was large, heavily populated, and immensely rich. Any satrap he selected to rule would have the potential to become a mighty king in his own right if he revolted. He therefore applied the same prudent measures of dividing powers that he had used at Sardis in Lydia, but on a grander scale. To keep the native Egyptians happy, he appointed two puppet rulers, Doloaspis and Petisis, to continue the ancient forms of governance along the river valley. Petisis declined this empty honor, but Doloaspis was happy to play his part. The peasant farmers of Egypt would continue to farm the same land and pay the same taxes as they had since the time of the first pharaohs, only now the revenue would go to the Macedonian treasur
y. Local officials were largely kept in place. One grateful Egyptian bureaucrat named Petosiris praised Alexander in a hieroglyphic inscription as the righteous “prince of Egypt” for his actions, as opposed to the oppressive and unjust Persians who came before.

  Alexander split control over the regular troops he was leaving behind between two trusted Macedonian officers, one at Memphis and the other at Pelusium. An officer from northwest Greece would command the mercenaries, but he would share power with a Macedonian who would keep a close eye on him. Watching both mercenary commanders would be two overseers reporting directly to the king. Another officer would have autonomous command of the navy, protecting the mouths of the Nile with a fleet of thirty triremes. In a further division of power, the African coast west of Egypt and the Arabian regions around the Sinai peninsula were given to separate administrators, the latter to a Greek from the colony of Naucratis named Cleomenes. There were so many different men in charge of Egypt and nearby regions that Alexander was confident it would prove impossible for any one to gain control. This would later prove a mistake, but for the present it was an effective policy.

  With great fanfare, Alexander, pharaoh of Egypt, left Memphis on a spring morning sailing down the Nile to Pelusium. The event was marred only by the death of one of the king’s friends, Hector, the youngest son of general Parmenion. The youth was so excited by the festivities that he jumped in one of the smaller boats and tried to race Alexander’s trireme down the river. But the craft was top heavy with men and supplies, overturning in the river with the loss of almost everyone on board. Macedonians were not known for their swimming skill, but Hector struggled valiantly in his waterlogged clothes until he at last crawled half dead onto the riverbank. There, worn out by exhaustion, he collapsed and died. The king was genuinely heartbroken at the loss of his friend, though he had little affection for the rest of Parmenion’s family. Alexander’s last, sad memory of Egypt would be the body of young Hector burning atop a funeral pyre on the banks of the Nile.

  6

  MESOPOTAMIA

  ON THE FOURTEENTH DAY OF THE MONTH

  TASHRITU . . . ALEXANDER, KING OF THE WORLD,

  ENTERED BABYLON.

  —BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMICAL DIARY

  Two hundred desperate men, women, and children made their way through the desert canyons west of the Jordan River clutching their few belongings as they fled deep into the mountains. The refugees carried with them precious jewelry, silver coins, seal rings, fine linens, and legal documents on papyrus proving their privileged status as the honored aristocracy of their people. They were Samaritans, a group regarded by their Jewish neighbors as semi-pagans who had strayed from the true faith ever since they had mixed with foreigner settlers in the land three hundred years earlier. The Samaritans, on the other hand, considered themselves the true keepers of the ancient faith of Israel, although they accepted only the first five books of the Bible as a guide for their lives. And even the Jews had to admit that those religious laws the Samaritans kept, they kept scrupulously. Whereas the Jews might enjoy a good meal and short walk on the Sabbath, the Samaritans forbade warm food and stayed close to home. They considered nearby Mount Gerizim as the center of their faith instead of Jerusalem. They prided themselves on being pious and honest businessmen, not radicals prone to making trouble with the parade of ruling Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian powers that passed through their land over the centuries. Thus as they stumbled through the wilderness, they must have wondered why they had burned alive the new satrap appointed by Alexander of Macedonia.

  Alexander heard the disturbing news while he was on the march from Egypt back to Phoenicia. The previous year the king had appointed Andromachus, who had been in charge of his fleet during the siege of Tyre, as governor of the small province of Samaria. Now he received word that the normally equable Samaritans had seized Andromachus, tied him to a stake, and set him ablaze. It may be that with the change in regime, the local aristocracy had decided this was a propitious time to declare its independence. The aristocrats may have calculated that Alexander would be in too much of a hurry to meet Darius in Mesopotamia to bother with a detour into their highlands to punish the offenders. They were wrong. Alexander set out immediately into the hills of Samaria with his best troops to track down and punish those who would dare to kill his appointed governor. When he came to their capital city, he destroyed it and established a Macedonian colony at the site. Some of the Samaritans who had stayed behind bought their lives by revealing the whereabouts of the nobles who had murdered Andromachus and leading Alexander into the mountains after their countrymen.

  The ragged group of refugees could hear the Macedonians approaching from the valley below as they ran up narrow passages in the rock barely wide enough for a donkey to pass. Crying and exhausted children were silenced as the parents realized the soldiers were closing in. Finally, they found a cave on the hillside with a tunnel leading deep into the darkness. Bats covered the roof while thick layers of guano on the cave floor burned the eyes of the fugitives and gave off such a stench that they could hardly breathe, but there was little choice but to keep moving as they groped their way hundreds of feet into the cavern. There they huddled in the suffocating darkness hoping against hope that the Macedonians would not find them. But Alexander had no trouble following their trail and soon reached the mouth of the cave, ordering torches brought up at once. Without any thought for the women and children or separating the good Samaritans from the bad, he led his troops into the cavern and slaughtered every living soul. The jumbled skeletons left behind for archaeologists to discover more than two thousand years later tell a story more vivid than any words of the swift and merciless vengeance taken against anyone who defied the will of Alexander.

  From the hills of Samaria, Alexander marched back down to the sea and up the coast to Tyre. He was indeed in a hurry to meet Darius in battle, but there was business to take care of first in Phoenicia. It must have been a grimly satisfying experience to walk across the causeway to Tyre that he and his men had labored so hard to construct the year before. The city was slowly recovering as new inhabitants moved in to take the place of those killed or sold into slavery. The temples were still functioning, so once again Alexander sacrificed at the shrine of Hercules and made a rich donation to the god. There were also new appointments to make and justice to render. Samaria needed a new satrap, so the king selected a Macedonian named Menon to replace the murdered Andromachus. The Athenians had sent another embassy, this time in one of the city’s sacred galleys, to beg once more for the release of their fellow citizens taken captive and enslaved at the battle of the Granicus River three years earlier. Whether because Alexander was growing tired of their pleas or because there were few of these slaves left alive after so long in the mines, he granted their request. He also received reports of King Agis and the Spartans launching a new revolt in the Peloponnese and on Crete. He sent an old family friend, Amphoterus, whom he had used for difficult missions in the past, to help the Greeks who were loyal to him deal with Agis. Alexander was not particularly worried about the Spartans, but the last thing he wanted as he marched deep into Asia was to leave an ongoing rebellion stirring to his rear. He trusted Amphoterus and his regent Antipater to deal with any further trouble in Greece.

  There was also the problem of Harpalus. His childhood friend had absconded to Greece just before the battle at Issus two years earlier with as much gold as he could stuff into his traveling pack, but now he was begging Alexander to receive him back into his good graces. Harpalus, who had been given charge of the king’s finances instead of a military command because of a physical handicap, swore that it was all a misunderstanding and that he had been led astray by a conniving Greek colleague. For some reason Alexander had a soft spot for Harpalus and not only allowed this scoundrel to return to his camp but once again set him in charge of his treasury, now a much more lucrative position since his victory over Darius and conquest of Egypt.

  The king made other appointmen
ts and sorted through more petitions from cities in Greece and Asia Minor, but he also found time to organize another series of athletic and dramatic contests for his troops. He knew that the most difficult struggle his army would face was just ahead on the plains of Mesopotamia and he wanted his army to enter this critical period of the campaign in a good humor. The kings of Cyprus were eager to curry favor with Alexander and offered to fund the celebration. There were classic tragedies as well as comedies and choral songs in honor of the god Dionysus. The king enjoyed the productions immensely and was in a generous mood. When the Greek comic actor Lycon inserted a line in his play asking for money, Alexander laughed along with the rest of the audience and gave him the gold. An enthusiastic student of Greek theater, Alexander was especially keen on the tragic drama contest between two actors, Athenodorus and Thessalus, the former having joined him in Egypt for the earlier festivities at Memphis. Athenodorus was one of the most famous and sought-after artists in the Greek world, having won numerous contests over the past twenty years. Thessalus, on the other hand, was a longtime companion of the king who may not have been as talented as Athenodorus but was unswervingly loyal to Alexander. Philip had arrested Thessalus years before and thrown him in prison when he served as Alexander’s messenger to King Pixodarus in Caria proposing a secret marriage alliance. Alexander did not wish to show preference for his friend and so allowed the judges to award the crown, which they gave to Athenodorus. The king hated to see Thessalus lose the contest so much that he later claimed he would rather have given up part of his kingdom than see Athenodorus win. But Alexander was not one to hold a grudge over artistic matters. When he found out that Athens had levied a huge fine on Athenodorus for breaking his contract and canceling a performance in their city to play before him, he cheerfully paid the penalty from his own treasury.