Alexander the Great

by Anthony Everitt

  Philip ensured that no Macedonian soldiers should set foot in Attica and raised no objection to an epitaph in honor of the Athenian fallen, carved in marble and erected on the battlefield. It read:

  STRIVING TO SAVE THE SACRED LAND OF GREECE

  WE DIED ON THE FAMOUS PLAINS OF THE BOEOTIANS.

  Negotiations were conducted with an enemy who had been defeated, not conquered, and Philip made no attempt to interfere with the Athenian democracy. Hostile politicians, such as the great orator Demosthenes, were not pursued.

  There was, of course, a price to be paid for friendliness. Athens had to accept the loss of her interests in the Chersonese and the winding up of her maritime league, although she was allowed to keep some of her overseas possessions (Delos, for example, and some other islands). The city’s lifeline to the Black Sea and Scythian grain supplies remained intact, but was vulnerable, for Philip was now in a position to close the Hellespont whenever he wanted. The Athenians would think twice before annoying him again.

  Many Greeks were quite pleased with the new Macedonian ascendancy. Not only had their leaders been showered with golden philips, but also the king guaranteed their security without interfering in their domestic affairs. There were to be no punitive garrisons (except for unreconciled Thebes and a couple of other places). The constant quarreling between hot-tempered ministates would now be a thing of the past. In the Peloponnese, Sparta was still furious at having lost its status as a superpower (at Leuctra) and, in its efforts to regain that stature, was a constant threat to its neighbors. In the autumn of 338 Philip toured the region, announcing, to great acclaim, that he would seek redress of grievances against Sparta. When Sparta refused to cooperate, he simply confiscated its frontier lands and gave them to the complainants. The once all-powerful Hellenic superpower was too weak to react militarily.

  Philip’s generosity was not disinterested. He wanted to see a formal “common peace” incorporating all the Greek states, not only the recent belligerents. Naturally, it would be agreed and implemented under his guidance. So in addition to bilateral accords, he summoned a general peace congress at Corinth in late 338. A treaty was negotiated, or perhaps dictated, which established a supranational political institution, the League of Corinth. Each member had a seat on a governing council, and a league leader was to be elected.

  All the delegates swore a solemn oath:

  I swear by Zeus, by Ge [the earth], by Helios, by Poseidon, by Athena, by Ares and by all gods and goddesses I shall abide by the treaty and shall not break its terms, nor shall I bear arms against any of those who abide by their oaths…nor shall I overthrow the kingdom of Philip nor the constitutions that were in existence in each city, when they swore the oaths concerning the peace….I shall make war upon the one who transgresses the common peace, in accordance with whatever is resolved by the common council and whatever the hegemon, or leader, orders and I shall not desert the cause.

  This is a telling document. Practical, clear, and decisive, it bears all the hallmarks of Philip’s authorship. It forbade constitutional change; a democracy was to remain a democracy, an oligarchy an oligarchy, a monarchy a monarchy. This was a policy designed to encourage cooperation and loyalty. All the oath-givers swore to take military action against transgressors, but it was implicit that the Macedonian army was the one to be feared and to keep order. The league council had executive powers, but was most unlikely to test the patience of the Macedonian king. He was happy to risk opposition, in the reasonable belief that most Greeks favored peace and would give him a majority of votes at meetings. The identity of the “leader” was left unstated, but hardly needed to be spelled out. Philip was elected as hegemon, and the isles of Greece looked forward to a long period of tranquillity.

  In Athens the oath was inscribed on a marble stele, but, to remind Philip that the city was not altogether a pushover, it passed a law against tyranny, also displayed on two inscriptions surmounted by a personification of Democracy about to crown the People of Athens. It decreed that “if anyone revolts against the people for the purpose of setting up a tyranny…whoever kills him shall be free from prosecution.”

  Philip had no intention of governing Greece directly; that would have been too much trouble for no reward. His military superiority guaranteed good behavior, and the pretense of self-government smoothed over the bitter truth of defeat. If the Greeks kept their heads down, he would not interfere in their affairs. The league was a clever invention to assert his power with the minimum effort and expense. Another telling lesson in statecraft for the crown prince.

  Some months later, in 337, the king summoned a second congress at Corinth. This time he had a new project to announce. He was at last taking the advice of old Isocrates. His plan was nothing less than to invade the Persian empire. It seems that the supreme leader, the hegemon, had the right to convene a Panhellenic army and to lead it on campaign as supreme commander (strategos autokrator). He required military contributions from member states, calculated according to the size of their populations.

  How long had the king been mulling over this ambitious scheme? And what exactly were his war aims? These are important questions and very hard to answer. Philip guarded his secrets. To exact revenge for the humiliations of Macedonia when it was a province of the Persian empire may have been a dreamy adolescent’s fantasy, especially after he had digested Xenophon’s Anabasis. Every young Greek boy—everyone who aspired to acceptance as a genuine Hellene—recalled with rage the expeditions of Darius and Xerxes. It was time for Philip to get his own back.

  Are we to take the rhetoric of revenge seriously? It incorporated a large quantum of propaganda, which veiled true motives such as greed, ambition, and a growing sense of Persian weakness. That said, the memory of past wrongs has often enough infused the language of political debate with true feeling.

  We can be sure that the adult Philip did not regard a crusade as a practical proposition until he had transformed Macedonia from a gory backwater into a great power. Perhaps Isocrates’ pamphlet of 346 marks a turning point, but even so years would pass before the idea of a Hellenic crusade became a settled policy. The Macedonian army could not possibly leave for Asia until Greece had been made safe—until Chaeronea had been fought and the League of Corinth created.

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  THE CONDITIONS WERE NOW right for an invasion and there was a good practical reason for moving fast. Philip seldom had much cash in hand. His bribery and corruption budget was heavily oversubscribed and his large professional army consumed money. If his empire did not continue expanding, it would have no alternative but to contract.

  We have no precise idea what the Macedonian war aims were to be, but Isocrates has left helpful clues. His pamphlet discusses the available options as offered by an intelligent and well-informed contemporary. A minimum objective would be to free the chain of Greek city-states along the Asian littoral. The catch was that, although their liberation would be easy, they would be difficult to defend. The infuriated Persians would do all they could to regain what they had lost. There would be endless trouble.

  Philip was not so frivolous as to suppose he could overthrow the vast Persian empire, but there was a halfway option at which the Macedonians could tilt. This was the conquest of Asia Minor up to a defensible frontier in Cilicia and the Taurus Mountains. Isocrates recommended that permanent Hellenic settlements be founded to create buffers between the newly acquired Greek lands and the remainder of the Persian empire. This may well have been the king’s intention.

  Before taking any important decisions, the Greeks were careful to discover the will of the gods. One way of doing this was to consult the oracle at Delphi.The Greeks were afraid of their regiment of gods and goddesses, who lived in human shape and, like humans, could be fierce and unpredictable. The main purpose of religion was to please them. An oracle was a divine institution where the pious could ask for guidance a
bout the future. The most famous was the one at Delphi, and leading men of the age often asked for its opinion before taking any major step, such as declaring war. It was administered by priests, but the prophecies were announced by the Pythia, a local peasant woman of blameless life. Entranced, she uttered frenzied cries, which officials translated into comprehensible verse. Apollo spoke through her.

  The oracle was well-informed about current affairs and its advice was often astute, although it had a reputation for giving dangerously ambiguous responses. It appears occasionally to have taken bribes. However, the Greeks were a religious people and there is little reason to suppose that the priests at Delphi were regularly guilty of conscious deceit or fakery.

  Philip sent a delegation to ask the Pythia whether he would conquer the Great King. She prophesied:

  The bull is wreathed. All is done. There is also the one who will smite him.

  The king was puzzled, but took the view that this was a favorable response, signifying the sacrificial slaughter of the Persians. He gave the go-ahead for the invasion.

  The expedition was set to take place in the spring of 335 and, in the meantime, an advance force was dispatched to cross the Hellespont and enter Anatolia. It was to be led by his father’s foremost general, Parmenion. Philip said of him: “The Athenians elect ten generals every year, but in many years I have only found one general—Parmenion.” The veteran commander was joined by Amyntas, son of Arrhabaeus, one of three princeling brothers from Lyncestis in up-country Macedonia, and, later, by Attalus, a leading Macedonian close to the king. They were probably friends of that other Amyntas, son of King Perdiccas, who (readers will recall) had been supplanted as monarch by Philip on the grounds that he was a child and not competent to rule.

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  THEN SOMETHING WENT TERRIBLY WRONG. Philip, now in his mid-forties, fell in love. His new object of desire was a pretty young noblewoman called Cleopatra (also Eurydice), whom he chose to be a new wife, the first for some years. Apparently, he forced Olympias, his chief queen, to share the palace with her. Relations at court became strained. Olympias took mortal offense and incited Alexander to oppose his father.

  During a celebratory banquet on the wedding day, matters came to a head. It was an occasion in the Greek style: guests lay on couches and food was served to them. After the meal, large quantities of alcohol were consumed. Cleopatra’s uncle, Philip’s general Attalus, who had not yet left for the east, was present. He became very drunk and shouted out: “Now, for sure, we’ll have legitimate kings, not just bastards.” By this he meant either that Olympias was promiscuous or, perhaps, that Alexander was born of a foreign mother and so not fully Macedonian.

  In any event, the crown prince was enraged. He jumped up from his couch, yelled back, “Cretin, do you take me for a bastard, then?” and hurled a drinking cup at Attalus’s head.

  The king, also drunk, heard the exchange and lost control of himself. He lurched to his feet and drew his sword against his son. But he was so overcome with wine and fury that he tripped and fell flat on his face. Alexander jeered at him: “Look at the man who was preparing to cross from Europe to Asia, and who can’t even keep his balance when crossing from one couch to another.”

  He stormed off, collected his mother, and galloped out of the country. He left Olympias at her native Epirus, where her brother Alexander was king. He then rode north to Paeonia, ancient foe of Macedonia, where he may have stayed with King Langarus of the Agrianians, a Paeonian tribe.

  One ancient source claims that Philip now announced, “Alexander is not my son,” and divorced Olympias for alleged adultery. Whether or not the story was true, the unity of the royal family was irretrievably broken.

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  HOW CAN THINGS HAVE arrived at such a disastrous pass, and so suddenly? Philip, usually a wily and astute politician, had managed to destroy harmony in his family at a single stroke. It was now next to impossible for him to leave for Persia while his embittered son was at large and doubtless plotting against him.

  According to Plutarch, the king’s motives were purely personal. His love for Cleopatra trumped all other concerns. But this does not sound like the Philip we knew, who was used to slaking his lust whenever he felt like it and whose polygamy was regulated by raison d’état. We may allow him to have been attracted by his new wife, but there must have been some weightier rationale for his behavior.

  One possibility is that the marriage was an insurance policy. We have seen how dangerous warfare was for Macedonian kings. They were expected to be in the thick of the battle, as Philip’s tally of wounds goes to show. Both father and son could well lose their lives in the impending clash of arms, as Philip’s elder brother, Perdiccas, had done. The union with Cleopatra was intended to produce an additional male heir. Although it would be many years before the infant was old enough to rule, he could at least represent the Argead dynasty and be a focus for loyalty. As it happened, Cleopatra gave birth to a girl, called Europa.

  The incident at the banquet suggests that relations between Alexander and the king were cooling. Attalus was unlikely to have made his provocative remark unless he believed that Philip would appreciate it. Inaccurate gossip had it that the crown prince deserved the credit for victory at Chaeronea. Philip claimed to be delighted when people spoke jokingly of Alexander as their king and himself as their general. But it was the kind of remark that could have rankled. History is strewn with quarrels between rulers and their underemployed offspring, suddenly grown-up and eager for action.

  It has even been argued that Philip believed that Alexander and the impossible Olympias were plotting his overthrow. It is true that a monarch’s heir was often a magnet for a regime’s critics, but in this case there is no evidence, not even the whisper of a rumor.

  The simplest explanation for the quarrel may be the best one: namely, two male lions cannot coexist in a single pride. Alexander was energetic, glamorous, and talented, with a mind and temper of his own. It stands to reason that he would clash with his father, who was unaccustomed to competition in his own home. Very probably, irresponsible courtiers such as Attalus pursued their own interests by egging one or the other of them on.

  As we know, Alexander liked to compare himself with Achilles, and never more so than now. His father stood for Agamemnon, the Greek commander-in-chief, with whom Homer has Achilles quarrel over a pretty young female captive. Metaphorically, the Macedonian prince now sulked in his tent much as his Homeric hero had done long ago, and literally, outside the walls of Troy.

  Philip recognized that he was at a dead end. Obviously he could not launch his Persian expedition with so much confusion and hostility at home. He can have had little doubt that his son was inflaming the surprised and delighted Illyrians.

  He did not know how to fill the breach. Fortunately, a man trusted on both sides made an appearance and tendered his good offices. This was Demaratus, the wealthy Corinthian who had bought Bucephalas for Alexander. It was the best present the boy had ever received in his childhood, and years later horse and owner were still inseparable.

  Demaratus was pro-Macedonian and an old friend of the king. According to the Athenian orator Demosthenes, he was among those leading Greeks who sold their native cities for Philip’s money. Demosthenes said: “These men flung away national prosperity for private and selfish gain; they cajoled and corrupted all the citizens within their grasp, until they had reduced them to slavery.” Demaratus would doubtless have responded, not without reason, that he was a political realist who had to make the best of the Macedonian hegemony.

  He paid a visit to Pella, and after formal greetings had been exchanged the king asked him whether the Greek states were in harmony with one another. The Corinthian was privileged to speak freely, and took the opportunity do so. He replied, with heavy sarcasm: “Good for you to ask how well the Greeks are getting on together, Ph
ilip, when you are getting on so well with your close relatives.”

  This sobered the king. He understood that he would have to make peace with his son—and Demaratus was the obvious go-between. Alexander was as difficult to tame as his horse and it took some time to persuade him to come back home. We do not know the terms the two men agreed upon, but his position as Philip’s heir was confirmed. Presumably he was given guarantees of his personal safety. He gathered round him a number of trusty friends.

  Olympias was very probably reluctant to move back to Pella and remained in Epirus. But therein lay a danger. Who knew what mischief she would get up to if unsupervised? The ever creative mind of the king devised a plan that would control his wife (or former wife) on the one hand, and on the other create the opportunity for a magnificent ceremony that would embody and dramatize the triumphant unity of the Macedonian state and its royal family.

  He gave his daughter by Olympias, called Cleopatra (not to be confused with the king’s new wife), in marriage to the king of Epirus, Alexander. Personal relations in Philip’s vicinity were complicated. This was the handsome Alexander who himself had had an affair with Philip and was Olympias’s brother; so Cleopatra was his niece. Consanguinity was no bar when political necessity called, and the wedding was fixed for October 336 in the old capital and religious center of Aegae.

  The only disadvantage was that it would be difficult to avoid inviting the mother of the bride.

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