Darius’s successors on the throne further developed the site, commissioning their own palaces and halls. His son Xerxes was an energetic builder and boasted in an inscription:
I am Xerxes, the great king, the king of all countries and all languages, king of this great and wide world….When I became king, I did much that was excellent. What had been built by my father, I protected, and I added other buildings. What I built, and what my father built, all that by the grace of Ahuramazda [the creator and sole god of Zoroastrianism, the official religion of the Achaemenids] we built.
Alexander sent advance guards to take possession of the city, after which he climbed up onto the high terrace. According to Plutarch, he came across a statue of Xerxes that had been toppled from its pedestal and was lying on the ground.
He stopped and spoke to it as though it were alive. “Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of your invasion of Greece, or shall I set you up again?” For a long while he gazed at the statue and reflected in silence. Then finally he walked on.
The treasury was found to contain the phenomenal sum of 120,000 talents in gold and silver coin and bullion. A further six thousand talents was removed from the vaults of Pasargadae, the empire’s original capital some fifty miles from Persepolis where the tomb of Cyrus its first ruler was (and is still) to be found.
Once the entire army had come up, Alexander gave his men permission to loot the city for twenty-four hours, but not to touch the royal precinct, which was his share of the spoils. He authorized them to kill any adult males they met, and all prisoners were slaughtered on his orders, according to Plutarch, “because he thought that would help his cause.” The Persians of Persis were bitterly hostile to their new master and no doubt would rise up against him if given the chance. Devastating their sacred city would, the king felt, show them that their days of grandeur were over and that resistance was futile. The rape of Thebes had aroused as much disgust as fear, but Alexander knew that terror would enforce submission.
Pillage was a military perk and the soldiers had not been allowed a good sack since the fall of Gaza. They seem to have gone berserk. The city was emptied of valuables and inhabitants. Those who had not escaped into the countryside were dead.
Once the bloodletting was done, the king held games in honor of his victories, as was his custom. He performed costly sacrifices to the gods and staged lavish entertainments.
What happened to the palaces is not so clear. According to one story, shortly before the army’s departure from Persepolis in April, Alexander and his intimates were holding a party in one of the staterooms. Drink flowed. Some young men “giddy with wine” persuaded a reluctant Alexander to let them stage a komos. This was a ritual drunken procession, celebrating a wedding, athletic success, or, no doubt as now, victory in war. A chorus of men would sing rousing victory hymns (epinikia).
The constituents of a komos were quickly assembled—torches for all the guests and musicians (the female players who had been performing for the king’s party). Unusually some other women were present as guests, along with their patrons or lovers. One of these was Thais, a hetaira (a female companion or courtesan) from Athens. She was to become the mistress, and later the wife, of Ptolemy.
The tipsy king led them all from room to room to the sound of singing and flutes and pipes. Thais organized the procession and was the first, after Alexander, to fling her blazing torch into one of the buildings. Everyone else followed suit. The wooden roofs caught fire and soon a large part of the complex was in flames.
The army was encamped outside the city. It was evening and when a brightening of the sky was noticed, soldiers ran to help put out the flames. Once they saw that in fact the king was directing the conflagration, they dropped the water they had brought and began throwing dry wood onto the blaze themselves.
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THERE IS ANOTHER VERSION of what took place. This makes the arson an act of policy rather than an accident of alcohol. Immediately on arrival in the city, the king convened a meeting of his generals and set out his position. Curtius writes that he restated the obsolete war aim of retribution for the Persian invasion. He wanted to punish the Persians for wrecking Athens and its temples. No city was more hateful to the Greeks than Persepolis, he said. To appease the spirits of their forefathers they should wipe it out.
This not only gave his troops permission to pillage, as we have seen, but also announced his own decision to demolish Persepolis, just as he had Thebes. Parmenion urged him to change his mind. There could be little point in destroying what was now his own property. He added an argument close to the king’s heart. The peoples of the empire would be less inclined to accept him as their ruler if they thought he had no plan to govern them, but, in Arrian’s phrase, was simply there for “a tour of conquest.”
The king had maneuvered himself into an impossible position by running two contradictory strategies at the same time—revenge and reconciliation. On the one hand he continued giving jobs to the Achaemenid elite and appointed a Persian as satrap of Persis. He very probably agreed with his wise old general. On the other hand, he had an acute sense of symbolism. In his eyes, east and west had fought one another tit for tat down the ages, and now a new Achilles had retaken Troy. He convinced himself that the Hellenic world would be dismayed if the leader of the League of Corinth failed to deliver a coup de théâtre that would bring the millennial drama to a conclusion. And such a gesture might remind any remaining Greek rebels of what had happened to Thebes; some were still sore and resentful after Antipater’s victory at Megalopolis and would profit from a fiery assertion of who was master.
Even if the destruction was ill-advised in the medium to long term, we should note that Darius’s personal authority was damaged by the surrender of the empire’s four great cities without a fight and by the flames of Persepolis. It must have been about now that some high officials decided to switch sides to Alexander and that others began to consider secretly the deposition of the Great King.
The hypothesis that the fire was the outcome of policy is borne out by evidence on the ground. It is telling that many structures on the raised platform were left intact. The fire-raisers focused their attention on Darius’s great audience hall, the palace of Xerxes, and the treasury. These were the two guilty men, and the buildings they created were compelled to pay postmortem for their crimes.
The ashes of the Acropolis were matched by the ashes of Persepolis, as modern archaeologists can confirm, for they have found scorch marks on columns and layers of charred detritus at both sites. The flames rhymed.
The two versions of the sack of Persepolis turn out not to be mutually exclusive. In its essentials Alexander’s komos is best regarded as a historical event, but not so much an improvisation as a carefully staged performance.
And what was more natural than to dance around a bonfire?
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ON THE MORNING AFTER the party, though, the king is reported to have had second thoughts. He came to regret what he had done. This is the last time we hear him talk of his crusade against barbarians. He was learning that if he was to be the Great King he had to behave like a great king. To ensure his power, military force was not enough. He would have to win the consent of those he ruled.
Burning down palaces was not the way.
CHAPTER 11
TREASON!
Alexander did not have a moment to lose.
In two battles he had tried his hardest to kill or capture Darius, but each time the man had slipped through his fingers. It was obvious that the war was won, and should be over and done with. Instead, he was obliged to chase after the Great King wherever he was. The Macedonian army needed to move fast if it was to catch him. If too much time passed, Darius might be able to raise a third army from the eastern satrapies, which so far had made only a minor contribution in the field.
&nbs
p; Why, then, did Alexander linger so long in Persepolis? He had arrived in January and did not leave until late May or June.
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THE ANSWER TO THE PUZZLE lies in the terrain the Macedonians would have to cross before reaching their next destination. That was Ecbatana (today’s Hamadan), capital of the northern province of Media and the empire’s fourth great city, where the imperial family spent their summers. The route lay through a high pass in the Zagros range, snowbound and all but impassable in winter months.
Obtaining supplies in this desolate landscape, much of which was uninhabited in ancient times, was another challenge. In March 330, Alexander led a small exploratory force of a thousand cavalry and a few light infantry to face down a hostile tribe, the Mardi, and almost certainly to arrange food depots.
They had a terrible time of it. The rank-and-file soldiers clamored to go back to the comforts of Persepolis. Curtius, always well informed on geographical matters, writes that the king, leading from the front as usual,
jumped from his horse and proceeded to make his way on foot through the snow and hard-packed ice. His friends were ashamed not to follow him and the feeling spread to his officers, and, finally, the men. The king was the first to clear a way for himself, using an axe to break the ice, and then the others followed his example.
Once they had defeated the Mardi, the Macedonians returned to base after a month’s absence. The five-hundred-mile journey to Ecbatana lay across a rocky solitude of ice and snow, in many places three or four feet deep. Alexander accepted that he would be stuck at Persepolis until spring or the early summer. The only consolation was that Darius, reported to be at Ecbatana, would also be immobilized by winter.
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DURING THE EMPTY MONTHS at Persepolis, Alexander had time to catch up on his correspondence. In the ancient western world, letters were scratched onto soft metal, such as lead, or onto wax-coated wooden boards. Papyrus was also available in quantity, presumably manufactured in Egypt and expensive. Trusted messengers would travel along the well-maintained highway that ran from the Persian capitals to the provinces of the west.
According to Plutarch, “It is astonishing that Alexander could find time to write so many letters to his friends.” Everyone of any importance in Greece and the former Persian empire will have had reason to communicate with the world conqueror, and he was snowed under by official inquiries, to which he would be obliged to reply when decisions were required. A secretary, an intelligent young Greek called Eumenes, managed the king’s correspondence. He had worked for Philip and had the rare virtue of being popular with Olympias.
The complicated issues Alexander had to adjudicate by long distance are well exemplified by the crisis at Eresos, a hill town by the sea on the island of Lesbos. It was a place of no importance, but its politics were savage. Alexander never went there, but found himself having to intervene by letter in its affairs more than once. During the 350s, three brothers seized power as joint tyrants (the word signified an authoritarian ruler but did not have pejorative connotations). At some point the brothers were expelled, and early in Alexander’s reign two new tyrants emerged who were pro-Persian.
After Granicus, Alexander had these men removed from office and (presumably) a democracy installed, but during Memnon’s brief but effective maritime campaign they were reinstated. Then the town was liberated again and the ci-devant tyrants were sent to Alexander, then in Egypt, for judgment. He sent them back, accompanied by a letter telling the people of Eresos to set up a court to decide themselves what should be done with them. This was arranged, the men were condemned to death and, it would appear, executed.
The family of the tyrant brothers now sent a delegation to ask the king to reinstate them. So Alexander wrote to Eresos about this. According to fragments of a marble inscription, the king ruled that
the people should decide whether or not they should be allowed to return; the people hearing the edict set up a court for them, in accordance with the law and the edict of king Alexander, and when speeches had been made on both sides decided that the law against the tyrants should be valid and that they should be exiled from the city.
Plutarch reports an instructive comment of the Roman emperor Augustus, who expressed his surprise that Alexander did not regard it as a greater task to set in order the empire he had won than to win it. The criticism does not appear to be well-founded. Although our sources pay scant attention to matters of governance, inscriptions found at the site of ancient cities, such as those from Eresos, suggest that the king took an active interest in administration. Either he personally, or his staff, kept a close eye on the political activity and legislation of local communities.
What is more, the attention the king gave to the logistics of a military campaign and his careful management of his soldiers’ welfare are evidence that he was a human-resources manager of the first order. We know too little of that aspect of his leadership skills to say much more.
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ALEXANDER OFTEN CORRESPONDED WITH his mother, usually to fend off her many complaints. But she did also interest herself in his creature comforts: we are told that she urged her son to buy a slave of hers who was highly skilled at ritual cooking.
Like many of the king’s inner circle, Olympias could not stand Hephaestion, rival as he was for her son’s undivided love and attention. However, Hephaestion gave as good as he got. When she sent him threatening letters, he responded in high dudgeon: “Stop quarrelling with us and do not be angry or menacing. If you keep on, we won’t pay much attention. You know that Alexander means more to us than anything.” We can imagine the fury he aroused in Olympias by his use of the royal “we” with reference to himself. He surely meant to tease. He was certain of his place in his lover’s heart and could risk goading his impossible “mother-in-law.”
But the king did not allow him a completely free hand, for as a rule he kept Olympias’s letters to himself. Otherwise, they regularly went through the post together. On one occasion, though, Hephaestion’s eye fell on a missive from Olympias that had already been opened. Alexander let him read it, but took off his ring and pressed the seal to Hephaestion’s lips, “so much as to tell him not to say a word.”
Alexander liked to keep in touch with his friends and share the ups and downs of everyday life. He wrote to them fondly when they were away. They were all keen hunters, for whom any animal with legs was a fair target. He wrote to a Companion who had been bitten by a bear, complaining that everyone else had heard of the incident except for himself. “Now,” he went on, “you must write to tell me how you are, and whether you were let down by any of your fellow-huntsmen, so that I can punish them.” The sting in the tail was meant as a joke rather than a serious threat. The king had a heavy-handed sense of humor.
Another day he was out hunting a mongoose when Craterus accidentally wounded another general, Perdiccas, in the thigh. Alexander wrote to inform Hephaestion, who happened to be absent on a mission. Hephaestion was not well liked by his colleagues, but he and Perdiccas got on and the news must have worried him. The injured man survived.
Slavery was endemic in Mediterranean societies and domestic slaves were numberless. To be useful, they had to be allowed freedom of movement and, understandably, some took the opportunity to run away. The king somehow found time to help retrieve friends’ slaves. He ordered a search to be made for one runaway and sent a letter of congratulation on the discovery and arrest of another. In the case of a third, who had sought sanctuary in a temple, the king advised caution. The man should be lured out and not taken by force from a sacred precinct. The son of Zeus always respected the gods.
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THE GREAT KING, WHILING AWAY the winter in Ecbatana, had no intention of giving up the struggle.
He had with him a substantial force (if much reduc
ed from the usual multitude) of thirty thousand infantry. They included a fiercely loyal regiment of mercenary Greeks under the command of Patron, a man from the home of the Delphic oracle, Phocis. Alexander saw them as traitors, for they had fought against his Hellenic crusade. They would never be allowed home, and if captured they faced a bleak fate. They had no choice but to be steadfast.
Bessus, the able and energetic satrap of Bactria, led a formidable troop of 3,300 horse. Four thousand slingers and archers completed the complement.
This was not a large enough army to defeat the Macedonians in a third trial of arms, and the Great King sent round to the eastern satrapies calling for soldiers. He was awaiting the requested reinforcements.
But spring had arrived and with it reports that his nemesis was closing in. There was no alternative but to hurry off to the increasingly remote provinces of Hyrcania, Parthia, Bactriana, and Sogdiana. Space would buy time, and time would buy soldiers. But time would lose him soldiers, too, for withdrawal from Ecbatana opened important allies, the Cadusii and the Scythians, to Macedonian attack
At one point Darius ordered his army to veer off the military road a little, telling the camp followers and the men guarding the baggage to go on ahead. He then called a meeting of his council. Among its members were his chief executive officer or chiliarch, Nabarzanes, and Artabazus, who was the father of Alexander’s mistress Barsine but nevertheless a faithful servant of the Great King. Satraps from the east were also present.
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