This was a very poor decision. Darius had employed numerous Greek mercenaries. After the Battle of Issus, many of them had reluctantly signed up as soldiers in Alexander’s army. Not entirely trustworthy in the front line of battle, they were often deposited as garrisons and as guards battalions who were tasked with protecting satraps in their provincial capitals.
Now large numbers of unemployed Greek soldiers roamed the empire and brigandage was rife. Something drastic had to be done to restore the rule of law. As usual, Alexander acted decisively and rapidly. His solution was to send the mercenaries home to their native cities. At the Olympic games for 324 he had a decree read out by a herald:
King Alexander to the exiles from the Greek cities. We have not been the cause of your exile, but, save for those of you who are under a curse [i.e. guilty of murder and other serious crimes], we shall be the cause of your return to your own native cities. We have written to Antipater about this to the end that if any cities are not willing to restore you, he may constrain them.
The decree referred to all Greek exiles, not only mercenaries but also men who had fallen foul of their domestic authorities for political reasons. Greek public life was bitter and quarrelsome. Losers were seldom allowed to form a loyal opposition but were expelled or put to death.
The decree killed two problems with one stone. The troublesome mercenaries would be cleared from the empire and no longer cause him and respectable citizens trouble. But also Alexander was aware that, despite the defeat of the Spartan king Agis and his allies at Megalopolis in 331, opposition to his rule was rising. The injection of political enemies into the anti-Macedonian city-states of Hellas would preoccupy their governments and discourage foreign adventures.
This was a thoughtless and malevolent policy, which in the long run was bound to backfire. A general restlessness would convert itself sooner or later into a new insurgency. It is as well not to poke a stick into a nest of hornets.
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THE KING’S PERSONALITY WAS changing for the worse. He was acting more and more despotically, or so say the literary sources. Arrian writes that by this time he had
become more inclined to accept as wholly reliable any accusation made to him against officials, and ready to inflict severe punishment on those found guilty of even minor offenses, in the belief that the character of a petty offender was equally capable of more serious crimes.
Curtius, who had no patience with Bagoas, put the matter more strongly, observing that “his degeneration from his former self was so complete that, though earlier possessed of unassailable self-control, he followed a male whore’s judgment to give some men kingdoms and deprive others of their lives.” Some modern scholars have taken the hint and conjured up a reign of terror. The disciplining of the satraps has been presented as a paranoid clearout comparable to the totalitarian show trials of the modern age.
A fair reading, though, of the surviving accounts suggests that Bagoas was innocent and that the purge was in the main a reaction to real cases of misgovernment, corruption, and political unrest. The satraps’ failure to respond to his urgent requests for food when he and his army were in desperate straits strongly suggests malice aforethought, or at best criminal incompetence. The crackdown was ruthless but rational. The guilty men seem to have faced some sort of trial. We are told that Alexander had public support for the severe measures taken.
The signs of instability the king found on his return from India threatened to undermine his achievements and justified a firm and rapid response.
That said, it hardly comes as a surprise that a ruler with an unblemished record of military and political success over many years began to govern autocratically. One certainly senses a coarsening and a growing impatience with opposition. The king’s lifestyle had become more and more formal, elaborate, and, in a word, Persian. When Macedonian traditionalists spoke of degeneration it may be this ceremonial grandeur to which they were objecting as much as to a psychological or moral decline.
An account of Alexander’s receptions by the historian Phylarchus may have exaggerated the numbers of officials and soldiers involved, but it gives a flavor of the occasion. The king had a tent large enough to contain a hundred couches, and supported by fifty golden pillars; no doubt it had once been used by Darius. Embroidered golden canopies provided shade. Persian royal bodyguards lined the interior, dressed in purple and apple green. Also on parade were one thousand bowmen, some in fiery red uniforms and others in purple; many wore blue cloaks. And in pride of place stood five hundred Macedonian elite infantry.
In the middle of the tent was placed a golden chair, on which Alexander used to sit and conduct business, the bodyguards standing all around. Around the tent on the outside, was a troop of elephants regularly equipped, together with one thousand Macedonians in Macedonian uniform; and then ten thousand Persians, five hundred of whom wore purple fabric provided by Alexander. And though he had such a numerous entourage of friends and servants, not a single one dared to approach the king of his own accord; so great was his charisma and the awe with which they regarded him.
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THAT MYSTERIOUS FINANCIER AND boyhood friend, Harpalus, put in an unexpected reappearance at this point. He had run away before Issus, been forgiven, and was now based in Babylon where he was responsible for the empire’s finances. Alexander used his services to purchase high-quality goods. When wintering in Bactriana and Sogdiana, he asked for a shipment of books; Harpalus knew his taste and sent him copies of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, some choral hymns, and a history of Sicily. Later, as we have seen, he supplied the king, when campaigning in India, with 25,000 suits of armor finely wrought with gold and silver.
As soon as Alexander had disappeared to the ends of the earth and his back was turned, Harpalus embarked on a fantastically expensive lifestyle. He sexually abused many local women. With exchequer funds he bought a celebrated courtesan from Athens to live with him. She was the slave of a female flute player who in turn was owned by the madam of a brothel. The contemporary historian Theopompus called her “trebly a slave and trebly a prostitute.” Harpalus pampered her with luxury gifts and when she died built a temple in her honor in Babylon and an impressive and costly tomb outside Athens. He then acquired a replacement bedfellow, whom he installed as a queen in Tarsus. He also had a brass statue of her erected in Syria.
The return of the king, victorious and vengeful, was terrible news. The conviction of Cleander and his fellow officers was even worse. Harpalus had spent time in Ecbatana and knew them well. They had committed crimes similar to his own, and perhaps he had collaborated with them. He feared for his own head and took the fateful decision to flee to Greece for a second time. He did not travel alone. He brought with him six thousand mercenaries and five thousand talents from the Babylonian exchequer, which made him a power to be reckoned with among the hard-pressed city-states.
The treasurer’s fondness for the ladies was a running joke at court and Alexander allowed the production of a farce that mocked his friend’s obsession with sex. But when messengers told the king of Harpalus’s desertion, he had them arrested for spreading false information.
The fugitive knew that the only way he could escape punishment was to foment a general uprising led by Greece’s greatest naval power, Athens. However, the city was embarrassed when he arrived on its shores and asked for asylum. Not wishing to get into trouble with Alexander, it turned him away.
So Harpalus deposited most of his force at Taenarum, Sparta’s port in southern Greece, which had become a center for unemployed and disgruntled mercenaries. He returned to Athens as a suppliant, with seven hundred talents. According to Plutarch,
Harpalus was exceptionally shrewd at assessing the character of a man who had a passion for gold. He recognized it from the expression which crossed his face and the gleam that lit up his eyes. In this
case he was not deceived, for Demosthenes could not resist the bait.
Harpalus was allowed in after Demosthenes, who fell for a beautiful and fabulously expensive gold cup, went over to his side. Demosthenes was not alone, for other leading politicians also accepted hefty bribes. This soon became the talk of the town and later the guilty men were indicted for corruption and sent into exile. In the meantime, Harpalus was locked up and his money confiscated. Antipater and Olympias demanded his extradition, but, ever a slippery customer, he soon escaped to Taenarum, picked up his fleet, and sailed it to Crete.
Here the story of Harpalus came to an abrupt end. In 323 his deputy assassinated him, and took charge of his money and his mercenaries.
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WHEN IN INDIA, ALEXANDER had encountered Brahmins, a priestly aristocratic class, and been impressed by them. They wore very few clothes and led ascetic and contemplative lives. Their opposition to the Macedonians was fierce, spiritual, and absolute, and they pressed the local rajahs to resist the invader. The king’s only riposte was to hang any of them who fell into his hands.
In fact, he admired them for the purity of their motives. They were free spirits and had no desire for anything in Alexander’s power to give. Their estrangement from the day-to-day compromises of life, their indifference to captains and kings, recalled Diogenes, the philosopher in a barrel, for whom Alexander had a wary respect.
The king of Taxila introduced him to a Brahmin called Calanus, who refused to speak to him unless he first took off his clothes and listened naked. We are not told in so many words whether the king did strip, but in light of their later friendship we must assume that he did.
Calanus joined the Macedonians and traveled with them, much to the disapproval of his fellow Brahmins, who believed he had exchanged a divine for a human master. His motive was unclear, but he never hesitated to criticize the king when the mood took him. Probably before the Gedrosia tragedy, the sage told him a parable. He threw on the ground a dry and shrunken leather hide. When he put his foot down here or there on its outer edge, the leather would rise up elsewhere, but when he trod on the center the entire hide lay flat. Calanus’s point was that Alexander should focus his authority on the heartland of his domains instead of wandering around the periphery.
At Pasargadae in Persis, Calanus, who was seventy-three years old, had suffered from a disease of the intestine for some time. He did not want to carry on as an invalid and decided that it was time to end his life. He asked for a funeral pyre to be built for him on which he intended to immolate himself. According to Plutarch, death by fire was acceptable in “Indian” (Hindu) religion. Alexander did his best to dissuade Calanus, but the Brahmin made it clear that he would find some other way of killing himself if his request was denied. So the king gave way and had Ptolemy build a pyre according to Calanus’s instructions.
Apparently, the army laid on a military cortege. Incense was placed on the pyre along with gold and silver cups and embroidered clothes. The Brahmin was too ill to walk and a horse was made ready for him, but he was incapable of riding it and was carried in a litter instead. He managed to clamber onto the pyre and gave the horse, the cups, and the costumes to members of his circle.
He addressed those present, urging them to make this a day of joy and revelry. He concluded mysteriously: “Drink deep with the king, whom I shall soon see in Babylon.”
Then he solemnly lay down and covered his head. Trumpets sounded when the pyre was lit. He stayed absolutely still as the fire enveloped and consumed him.
The king decided to take Calanus’s advice and give him a festive send-off: he invited friends and officers to a banquet, at which he proposed a drinking contest. Whoever downed the most neat wine would receive a crown worth a talent. The consequences were calamitous. The winner downed the equivalent of thirteen liters—and three days later died from the aftereffects. It is said that many other competitors also succumbed.
He believed that he came as a heaven-sent governor to all, and as a mediator for the whole world. Those whom he could not persuade to unite with him, he conquered by force of arms. He brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men’s lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life….Clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children.
This assessment by Plutarch offers the unexpected portrait of Alexander as an idealist, as the fully armed secretary-general of an international peace agency. The truth is plainer. What we have here is a fine example of the work of Alexander’s propagandists.
The passage is an echo refracted from a mass wedding ceremony which the king staged on his return to Susa in the spring of 324. The Achaemenid princesses had been waiting for him there since the Battle of Issus. He had told them to learn Greek and promised that he would find suitable husbands for them. Now he was minded to honor his word.
But whom should the princesses marry? Persian aristocrats were ruled out, because their offspring might very well become pretenders to the Achaemenid throne and stimulate insurgency. The obvious answer was to find the women Macedonian spouses.
As part of his Persification policy, Alexander extended the principle of the mixed marriage to leading members of the court. He and ninety-one other Macedonians took Persian wives. A polygamist for reasons of realpolitik, as his father had been, the king married the eldest daughter of Darius and the youngest daughter of Artaxexes III. In this way he attached himself to the Achaemenid dynasty and created a veneer of continuity. Hephaestion was allocated another of Darius’s daughters, for Alexander, rather touchingly, wanted his lover’s children to be first cousins of his own.
The celebrations took place in the vast royal tent with its splendid appurtenances, specially modified for the occasion. The floor was covered with carpets of purple, scarlet, and woven gold thread. Sumptuous cloths were hung between the many golden columns, creating private spaces, inside which each bridegroom had his own couch.
A trumpet sounded to announce the official part of the ceremony. In front of 9,000 guests, chairs were set out in line for the grooms. The king took his place among them, for he had decided, in a characteristically populist touch, to take part in the mass ritual. After toasts, the brides came in and sat down beside their husbands-to-be, who took them by the hand and kissed them. After these formalities the couples withdrew to the privacy of their couches. Generous presents were given and the king paid for all the dowries.
The partying went on for five days. Both Greeks and Persians gave performances as did some Indian tribesmen. Conjurors did “wonderful” tricks; harpists played with and without voices. Flute players accompanied songs. Actors performed speeches from the tragedies, among them the famous Thessalus, now approaching the twilight of his career (he was a long-standing friend of the king and, as readers will recall, had acted for him during the Pixodarus affair).
One might suppose that a good time was had by all, but this was not the case. The Macedonians strongly objected, in private, to being forced into unwelcome unions with unknown barbarian women. This was yet another of the king’s attempts to persuade his fellow countrymen that the empire could be governed only with Persian cooperation. However hard he tried, he failed to win the argument. The fun was skin deep. (We may well wonder, although we are not told, whether the brides were any happier with their fate than their grooms.)
Alexander was well aware of his critics and sought to deflect their discontents by enriching them. He awarded golden crowns for conspicuous service in the face of the enemy (with Peucestas first in line, for saving the king at the Mallian town).
More expensively, he promised to pay off all his soldiers’ debts and invited them to register their names. Only a few complied, for there was a widespread suspicion that this was a survey to reveal who was living beyond his mea
ns or had extravagant tastes. The king denied the charge, but gave way. He had tables set up in the camp piled with gold coins and instructed his officials to pay against sight of promissory notes without taking down any names.
This gesture is said to have cost him the enormous sum of twenty thousand talents. Although the cancellation of debts was a popular gesture, it was a sign of weakness rather than strength. Morale among the troops was edgy and volatile and remained so.
Alexander’s immediate priority was to build confidence among the peoples he had defeated, preferably without losing that of his men. In the long run he expected that the sons of the mass marriages would grow up to be a new mixed-race ruling elite.
If there was to be a “unity of nations,” it was little more than a technique for governing his empire.
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THE ARMY WAS CONTINUING to change its composition, with the Macedonian component increasingly diluted with Persians. Satraps from across the empire had brought with them the thirty thousand cadets the king had ordered in 327. Now, three years later, the Successors were old enough for military service and were to form a new and separate unit. They had been issued with Macedonian uniforms and armor and been trained in Macedonian techniques of warfare. Alexander was delighted by the progress they had made.
The Companion cavalry was strengthened in part with the recruitment of “barbarians,” and senior Persians were introduced into the high-prestige Royal Squadron. In the following year twenty thousand seasoned Persian troops were to join Alexander’s army, to be incorporated into the Companion infantry.
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