Alexander the Great

by Anthony Everitt

  Tormented by the arrows, Pharnuches formed his troops into a square and withdrew into a wood beside a river, where he hoped for some relief from the incessant cascade of missiles. The cavalry commander decided to fend for himself and tried to cross the river without orders or even consultation. He was followed by the panic-stricken infantry. The Scythians cannot have believed their luck. They shot at the enemy from the banks and went down into the water itself to take easier aim. The Macedonians took refuge on a small island in the river, but their situation was hopeless. The Scythians surrounded them and shot them down. A few were taken prisoner, but they too were put to death. No more than three hundred foot soldiers and forty cavalrymen survived.

  This was the greatest disaster to have befallen Alexander in his entire career; indeed, it was the first recorded defeat of Macedonians since the year 353. It was more than a debacle, it was a massacre. As soon as he learned what had happened, the king rapidly concluded a deal with the Scythians and marched at top speed to Maracanda, where the victorious Spitamenes had returned and resumed the siege. Alexander covered 172 miles in three days, arriving at the city just before dawn on the fourth.

  Once again, the ultra-mobile Spitamenes disappeared into the desert and lurked in small oases. If he was out of reach, the populace of Sogdiana was not. Alexander visited the scene of the catastrophe and buried the rotted corpses still lying on the ground. He determined on bloody reprisals. He systematically laid waste to the satrapy’s most fertile land along the course of the gold-bearing river Polytimetus (a Greek word meaning Very Precious; Zarafshan today), overcame enemy strongholds, and butchered the inhabitants. Constant setbacks seemed to be brutalizing the king’s nature.

  There was nothing more he could do, so he spent the winter in Bactria’s capital. Nearchus, a boyhood friend of Alexander, and Asander, probably Parmenion’s brother and (remarkably) still loyal to the king, arrived with a substantial and welcome reinforcement of Greek mercenaries, and the satrapy of Syria presented newly trained native soldiers—in total, 19,400 infantry and 2,600 cavalry. To build up his forces he also recruited Bactrians and Sogdians locally.

  A tribal chieftain from the lower Oxus paid a visit to the Macedonian court. In a friendly conversation, Alexander revealed his advance thinking. Once he had completed the conquest of the Persian empire, he intended a campaign in India. He went on to make his first recorded allusion to a plan for world dominion. According to Arrian, he replied to the chieftain’s offer of military support that

  with India subdued he would then be in possession of the whole of Asia; with Asia in his control he would return to Greece and launch from there a full-scale naval and land campaign against the Black Sea regions through the Hellespont and the Propontis; and he asked Pharasmanes to save his present offers for redemption when that time came.

  With the beginning of spring 328, the ice floes on the Oxus began to melt and Alexander crossed the river and returned to Sogdiana. Fruitless years were passing by and he resolved once and for all to put an end to the insurgency. What he had learned about asymmetric warfare he intended to practice. The king became a guerrilla.

  As soon as he had entered Sogdiana, he broke down his army into five independent divisions, one of which he commanded; the remainder were placed under the general supervision of the (by now) indispensable Craterus, whose task was to guard Bactria. Alexander divided his own share of the army into five detachments. Keeping one for himself, he gave the command of the others to Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Perdiccas, and Coenus in association with Artabazus, who was doubtless included to assist with negotiations. Arrian writes that the divisions all

  pursued their own line of invasion as and where opportunity presented itself, sometimes using force to annihilate groups concentrated in the strongholds, sometimes winning them over in voluntary surrender. Between them these divisions covered most of Sogdiana, and when his entire armament had reconvened at Maracanda Alexander sent out Hephaestion with a commission to repopulate the garrison towns already founded in Sogdiana.

  This was a project of outright colonization that was achieved through ruthless military means. Gulliver-like, the satrapy was now pinned down by a network of strongholds and garrison towns and there was less and less free space in which Spitamenes and his fighters could hide or exploit as a base for his raids.

  However, the rebel leader was still at large, bloody but unbowed. A frustrated Alexander spent the heat of the summer in the Sogdian capital. Here he accepted the resignation of Artabazus as satrap of Bactria on the grounds of age (he was in his early sixties). We know nothing of the rest of his eventful life. We may assume that his daughter, Barsine, was disappointed by the arrival of Bagoas and later by Alexander’s marriage. However, members of his family remained high in favor. Two of his sons held commands in the army, and another daughter married the king’s close associate Ptolemy. We may guess at a happy ending.

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  IN THE INTERVALS OF relaxation between campaigning, the king and his Companions loved nothing better than hunting. If they could not fight human beings, they would take on animals. In Greece the sport was largely utilitarian—for the pot and the table. Men with spears or bows and arrows hunted game such as hares and, more dangerously, wild boars.

  In the Persian empire the Great King and his nobles built walled game parks or estates, inside which they pursued large game—deer, for example, and according to ancient sources the lion, king of beasts. Sometimes they were on horseback, sometimes on foot. Hounds and nets were used.

  A finely carved marble sarcophagus dating from the end of the fourth century B.C. shows along one of its sides the king on a rearing horse as he spears a Persian at the Battle of Issus. On the opposite side he is seen hunting down a lion, as if the two encounters were of equal value.

  Bravery at a hunt was a kingly virtue; Alexander was always out in front endangering his life. He strongly objected to other huntsmen getting in his way. Curtius describes a hunt on foot in Sogdiana when the king

  issued orders for the animals to be beaten from their coverts throughout its length. Among these animals was a lion of unusual size which came charging forward to pounce on the king himself. Lysimachus [a somatophylax, or bodyguard] happened to be standing next to Alexander, and had started to aim his hunting spear at the beast when the king pushed him aside, told him to get out of the way, and added that he was as capable as Lysimachus of killing a lion single-handed.

  This was an unkind reminder of a hunt some time before in Syria, when Lysimachus had killed a lion of extraordinary size on his own. However, his left shoulder had been lacerated right down to the bone and he had come within an inch of losing his life. Alexander backed up his taunt with action, for he went on to dispatch the animal with a single stroke—and without injury to himself.

  Despite this victory, the army was displeased to see the king taking unnecessary risks away from the battlefield. A general Macedonian assembly decreed that in future he should not hunt on foot or unaccompanied by a select group of officers or Companions—a rare example of anyone telling Alexander what to do.

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  AFTER ITS LONG JOURNEY from the Mediterranean, a consignment of Greek fruit was delivered to the king at Maracanda. He was delighted by the fruit’s beauty and freshness and decided to share it with the man he had just appointed to replace Artabazus in Bactria.

  This was Cleitus, a grizzled warrior and a Macedonian of the old school. He spoke his mind as if doing so were a civic duty. Brave and loyal, he had thrived under Philip, and in the thick of the fray at the Granicus he had saved Alexander’s life, lopping off the arm of a Persian nobleman who was on the point of striking Alexander with his sword. He liked to call the king by his given name rather than his title and he thoroughly disapproved of the policy to conciliate Persians. He was a conservative egalitarian, out of tune with the times, bitter as only a be
trayed loyalist can be.

  The new satrap of Bactria was ordered to prepare for a march on the following day. This, together with the opportune arrival of the fruit, was a good enough excuse for one of the king’s early-starting banquets the previous afternoon.

  Wine flowed and Alexander, a little tipsy, began to boast at length about his achievements, to the irritation of many guests. It was he, not King Philip, who had won the Battle of Chaeronea. Flatterers expressed their considered opinion that Philip had done nothing remarkable or great. Someone began to sing satirical verses about the Macedonian commanders who had been defeated by Spitamenes. Older members of the party took offense and booed. But Alexander and those sitting near him were obviously amused and asked the singer to carry on.

  For true Macedonians, a party was not a party unless everyone got drunk as quickly as possible. The rules of polite behavior were suspended. This could be dangerous and few will have forgotten the disastrous banquet when Philip tried to kill Alexander in an alcohol-fueled rage.

  Cleitus, who by now was not altogether sober, shouted that it was wrong for Macedonians to be insulted in front of barbarians and enemies, even if they had had some bad luck. Alexander retorted that by disguising cowardice as bad luck, Cleitus was pleading his own case. Cleitus jumped up and bellowed back sarcastically: “Yes, of course, it was my cowardice that saved your life at the Granicus.” He went on to criticize the king for disowning his father Philip and claiming to be the son of Ammon.

  “You scum,” the king cried out. “Do you imagine you can go on saying things like this, stirring up trouble among the Macedonians—and not pay for it.”

  “But we do pay for it,” replied Cleitus and blurted out his resentment against all the Persians at court. “We have to beg Persians for an audience with our own king.”

  Alexander’s friends jumped up, while more responsible guests tried to calm both sides down. Now violently drunk, Cleitus refused to take back a single word and challenged the king to say in public whatever was on his mind, or else not invite to his table freeborn men who said whatever was on theirs. Otherwise Alexander ought to go and live among barbarians and slaves who were willing to throw themselves flat on the ground in front of his white tunic and belt, the insignia of a Persian monarch.

  It looked as if the king would be able to manage his temper, but unhappily Cleitus had not finished. Some slurred praise of Parmenion and Attalus, both of them victims of the king, was the last straw.

  At this point Alexander lost control of himself. He hurled one of the apples lying on his table at his tormentor and then looked round for his dagger. One of his personal guards had already taken the precaution of moving it out of harm’s way. Companions crowded round and begged him to be quiet.

  He leaped to his feet and screamed in Macedonian for the corps of guards, the signal for an extreme emergency, and ordered his trumpeter to sound the alarm. When the man courageously refused to obey he struck him with his fist. Afterward the trumpeter was warmly complimented for his conduct, for it was mainly due to him that the army was not thrown into an uproar.

  Cleitus refused to shut up, but eventually his friends succeeded in pushing him out of the banqueting room and beyond the wall and ditch of the citadel where these events were unfolding. However, a little later he came back in by another door and quoted in a loud, insolent voice a line from Euripides: “There is a bad custom which now obtains in Hellas.”

  Euripides was the prolific Athenian author of more than ninety tragedies, of which nineteen have survived to the present day. He was very popular and many in the Greek world learned passages from his works by heart. Among the library of books Alexander took with him to Asia, Euripides held an honored place.

  The sentence that Cleitus cited comes from the Andromache, a drama that addresses the demoralization and dehumanization of war. It does not seem at first sight to be especially offensive, but in truth it delivered a wounding blow. Cleitus did not quote the lines that followed, but the king and many others at the feast will have known them very well. The passage continued:

  When an army wins a victory over the enemy,

  No one gives credit to the men who sweat and fight;

  The general reaps the glory. Yet he, after all,

  Wields only one sword.

  This was exactly Cleitus’s argument: the army had dwindled into a one-man band.

  Guests, embarrassed or alarmed or both, began to make their excuses and leave. Alexander grabbed a lance from one of the duty guards and tried but failed to wound Cleitus. Leonnatus wrenched the lance from his hand, while Ptolemy and Perdiccas held him by the waist. Alexander may have feared he was the victim of an assassination plot. In any case, he now broke free. He seized another spear, stood at the exit door leading to the vestibule, and watched those queuing to depart. Cleitus was last. The king challenged him and Cleitus answered: “Here I am, here is your Cleitus.” As he spoke, Alexander plunged the spear into his side, saying (so we are told): “Now go and join Philip, Parmenion and Attalus!”

  The vestibule was drenched in blood. Shocked and looking dazed, guards and Companions kept their distance from the king. He realized that he had done something terrible. His mood switched instantly to suicidal misery. He pulled the spear from the body and turned it on himself. Guards rushed at him and pulled away the weapon. They picked him up and carried him to his bed. He broke down in tears and wept noisily all night long, tearing at his cheeks with his nails as if he were a mourner at a funeral. He looked at his friends’ grim faces and wondered whether they would ever speak to him again.

  The inconsolable king had the corpse brought to his tent, but after a time his friends arranged for its removal. He grieved not only for the dead man, but also for Lanice, Cleitus’s sister: she had been Alexander’s nanny when he was an infant. She had already lost two of her three sons at the siege of Miletus and now, thanks to him, her brother was gone too. Alexander shut himself away for three days and refused to eat or drink. He also “neglected all other bodily needs.” Gradually the people around him came to suspect that he really was set on dying and begged him to take nourishment. Eventually he agreed to do so, and the crisis eased.

  Callisthenes, the expedition’s chief philosopher, historian, and public relations officer, paid the king a visit, but to little effect, for he adopted a gentle bedside manner and failed to raise the subject of Cleitus’s murder because he wanted to spare Alexander’s feelings. Practical advice was required, not soft words. However, another philosopher friend did better. This was Anaxarchus, whose blunt manner hid a flattering heart. He criticized the king for “lying on the floor weeping like a slave, terrified of the law and of what men will say of him. And yet all the time it should be he who represents the law and sets up the criterion of justice.” In other words, by virtue of his kingship, Alexander was unable to break the law. He was clear of guilt. This was a convenient and comforting doctrine indeed, which Alexander did not forget. It would have its uses in later times.

  To add belt to braces, the Macedonian general assembly, distraught at the prospect of losing its leader in a remote and friendless part of the world, discussed the killing and formally declared that Cleitus’s death was justified.

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  WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE of this unedifying episode? First of all, beneath the Hellenic high-cultural veneer, Alexander showed himself to be a typical Macedonian monarch in that he ran an alcoholic court. Its members played and drank hard. According to a contemporary historian, Ephippus the Olynthian, who joined the Asian expedition, they “had no notion of moderation in drinking, but started off at once with enormous drafts before eating, so as to be drunk before the first course was off the table, and to be unable to enjoy the rest of the banquet.”

  Alexander was a citizen-king, who by convention was obliged to tolerate the appearance of equality with the plain-speaking noblemen who se
rved under him. He was expected to endure gracefully the odd hot-tempered remark when they were in their cups. It was a pity he had not done so on this occasion. The consequence of the death of Cleitus, following on as it did from the Philotas “conspiracy,” was that respect among his subordinates began to be replaced by fear.

  More significantly, it underscored the fierce opposition among some of the king’s commanders not only to his slow transformation into an honorary Persian, but also to his increasingly autocratic manner. According to Arrian, he became quicker to anger; the obsequiousness in which he was now enveloped cost him the “old, easy relationship” with his Macedonians.

  The disastrous evening at Maracanda brought out into the open three broadly defined groups: friends of the king (in particular, Asians of various national or ethnic types, and Greek mercenaries); Macedonians; and experienced soldiers of no fixed political views.

  These divisions were replicated in his inner circle. Hephaestion supported the king’s strategic approach to running the empire, while Craterus, by far the ablest of his commanders, was a Macedonian conservative.

  As for ordinary soldiers, there is little firm information. We have seen that the king paid close attention to their interests. He gave them their regular holidays and entertainments, encouraged marriage and family life, kept casualties to a minimum, and set a personal example of endurance and valor. They followed willingly where he led, although the time might come when they lost patience. So long as the connection between him and his men remained secure, he could safely ignore his disputatious officers.

  The king drew an important conclusion from the Cleitus episode. It did not persuade him to return to the old Macedonian ways, as one might have expected. Rather, by temporarily abdicating in a hysterical sulk as he had done on more than one occasion, he saw he could bully, even blackmail, those around him into accepting whatever he did, even committing murder. Despite the long history of assassinations in the Macedonian royal family, he did not listen to his critics. Although he still behaved, more or less, as a first among equals during drinking sessions, he continued to transform himself for the world at large into a Great King, an imperial despot.