Alexander the Great

by Anthony Everitt

  Arrian reports that the Macedonians “deeply resented all this and thought that Alexander was now going completely native in outlook and showing no regard for the Macedonian way of life or the very Macedonians themselves.” Their suspicions soon received justification.

  In May or June 324, Alexander and his troops left Susa, ultimately for the cooler summer capital of Ecbatana. (He had caught the wandering habit of the Achaemenids.) But first the king fulfilled a pothos to see the Persian Gulf: leaving Hephaestion in charge of the infantry, he joined the fleet and sailed along the coast and up the Tigris. He removed some artificial cataracts, which the Achaemenids had installed in the river as a defense against naval attack, and founded a new Alexandria at the Tigris estuary.

  The summer heat was intense, shortening tempers. Alexander disembarked at Opis, a town alongside the river, where Hephaestion was encamped with the army. Here the king called an assembly of his Macedonian troops and announced the demobilization and repatriation of all those who were unfit for service through age or disability. He offered them generous bonuses and severance pay, promising that they would be the envy of their friends and relatives at home and inspire many of their countrymen to sign up for a life of adventure.

  Alexander expected a warm reception. After all, his soldiers had long been agitating for an end to the ceaseless campaigning. In fact, his audience was outraged. It was obvious, they felt, that they counted for nothing and were quite useless as a fighting force. Fit young men shouted that he should dismiss them as well. Sneering at his claim to be the son of Zeus Ammon, they suggested that he just take his father on his next campaign.

  What lay behind this behavior? It is hard to say, but it suggests the contradictory emotions of a lover at the end of an affair. The veterans had had enough of military service, but could not bear rejection by their charismatic leader. Perhaps an unstated grievance was the growing number of Persians in what had been a Macedonian army.

  Alexander was completely taken by surprise and lost his temper. He jumped down from the speaker’s platform, followed by his entourage, and ordered the arrest of the thirteen main troublemakers, pointing them out to the guards. He sent them off for instant execution. They were shackled and thrown into the Tigris (a traditional Persian punishment). Arrian notes: “He had become by that time quicker to take offense and the oriental obsequiousness to which he had become accustomed had greatly changed his old easy manner to his own countrymen.”

  The king mounted the platform again, and we are told he gave a long speech in which he itemized the many benefits King Philip and he had conferred on their soldiers. He concluded with wounded ferocity:

  And now it was in my mind to demobilize any of you no longer fit for service. They could return home to be envied and admired. But since you all wish to go, then go! Every single one of you!

  He jumped down from the platform once more and disappeared into the royal quarters. Thunderstruck, the men stood rooted to the spot. They had no idea what to do or where to go.

  The king sulked for three days, letting no one in to see him and taking no care of himself. It was not the first time he had applied the emotional blackmail of absence and breakdown to enforce his will and once again the trick worked.

  Alexander called in Persian aristocrats in camp and began to appoint them to military commands. He gave them the title of kinsmen and the exclusive right to greet him with a kiss of friendship. Macedonian names were given to Persian military formations. When the troops learned of these developments, they could no longer contain themselves. They rushed to the royal quarters dressed only in their tunics, laid down their weapons, and started shouting and pleading to be let in. They promised to hand over those who had started the barracking. They said they would not leave until Alexander had taken pity on them.

  This was what the king had been waiting for. He hurried out to meet the demonstrators. He saw how upset they were and his eyes filled with (surely crocodilian) tears. Before he could say a word, Callines, a squadron commander in the Companion cavalry, said that what really hurt the men was the king’s decision to call Persians his kinsmen and let them kiss him.

  Improvising with typical presence of mind, Alexander replied: “So far as I am concerned you are all my kinsmen and that is what I will call you from now on.” To prove the pudding, Callines walked up and kissed him, and anyone else who so desired kissed him too. Then they all retrieved their weapons and happily dispersed to their tents, cheering and singing the paean, the song of victory. To cite a modern scholar, they still loved their “hero, friend, soldiers’ father [and] their threatening, angry, terrorizing, melancholy king.”

  To mark the return of peace and to promote reconciliation, Alexander invited nine thousand guests to a lavish feast. After performing the usual sacrifices, he presided over the meal. He was surrounded by places reserved for Macedonians, then for Persians, and finally an outer tier for men of other nationalities.

  Greek seers and Persian magi jointly led an ecumenical ceremony of libation, the pouring out of wine as an offering. Alexander prayed for harmony and fellowship between Macedonians and Persians as they ruled the empire together.

  However, on the matter at issue, the king did not yield an inch. He now organized the discharges of some ten thousand veteran infantry and fifteen hundred cavalry. This time there were no protests. As promised, the redundancy terms were extremely generous. Salaries were extended beyond the time served to cover the homeward journey. Each man received a bonus of one talent.

  Families were to be left in Asia to avoid trouble from relatives and wives at home, but the treasury would pay for sons to receive a good Macedonian education. They would grow up to be soldiers in the royal army and only then would they be allowed to visit the home country.

  The king knew how to gild a lily: he instructed Antipater that at all cultural and athletic performances the veterans should occupy the best seats at the front and wear garlands on their heads. This was not only a highly visible compliment but also a constant reminder of Alexander’s victories.

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  ANTIPATER, WHO HAD BEEN the king’s regent in Macedonia almost from the beginning of his reign, was becoming something of a problem. This was a surprise, for he had organized a smooth transition from the assassinated Philip to the young crown prince and was utterly loyal to his new master. He had managed the quarrelsome nest of city-states in mainland Greece with tact and firmness and put down King Agis’s rebellion.

  He had been almost annoyingly competent; Alexander had even been a little put out by his victory at Megalopolis. The only real problem with Antipater was, in fact, Olympias, the king’s mother. Put simply, she refused to accept the regent’s authority and wrote endless letters to her son criticizing him. Antipater had little choice but to respond in kind. He objected to her headstrong personality, her violent temper, and her insistence on having a finger in every pie. Alexander had to admit that his mother “was charging a high rent for the nine months he lodged in her womb.” On one occasion, in an implicit allusion to her, he warned his regent to keep guards about his person, for there were many plots.

  But although he knew very well how demanding Olympias was, she was still his mother and he loved her. Once, Antipater wrote a long letter finding fault with her. Having read it, Alexander burst out: “Antipater doesn’t understand that one tear shed by my mother will wipe out 10,000 letters like this one.”

  Olympias’s case against the regent was that he had grown too powerful. Word reached the king’s ear that he had regal aspirations. When some people praised the frugality of Antipater, who, they said, lived a plain and simple life, he responded: “On the outside Antipater is plain white, but inside he is completely purple.” But ambition is an implausible charge against a man who was seventy-six years old and approaching the end of his active career. Arrian gives him a clean bill of health: “We hear of nothing Alexan
der said or did which could have invited the conclusion that his affectionate regard for Antipater had in any way diminished.”

  Nevertheless, the king decided it was time to intervene. Seeing that his best general, Craterus, was suffering from poor health, he instructed him to lead the demobilized veterans back to Macedonia, where he was to take over as regent. Antipater was instructed to gather Macedonian reinforcements and march them to Babylon.

  The king’s plans for Antipater’s future are unknown. He could have been retired or, more probably, given a new, undemanding command. The regent advised the king that Greece was too unsettled for him to leave his post at present and the stock of Macedonia’s young fighters was running dry. He dispatched his son Cassander in his place. As for Craterus, he was held up in Cilicia partly by illness and partly by local conditions there, for the satrap had been killed in battle.

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  DID ALEXANDER REALLY WORK toward the “unity of mankind”?

  Regarding the relationship between Hellenes and “barbarians,” the king was a pragmatist. So far as we can tell, he was not inspired by high-sounding ideals, apart from those hymned by Homer, but reacted to practical needs. Plutarch’s admiring judgment masks the fact that the king’s inclusive and antiracist strategies, as we would call them today, were an expression of realpolitik. In his eyes, the two “races” were not equal, or we would have heard of Macedonian females being offered as wives to Persian men, and the Macedonians would not have been given pride of place at the banquet of reconciliation. Persians may have dominated in the army, but positions of power at court remained in the hands of the victors.

  Equality of esteem was no more than a pious hope in the minds of the king’s traveling philosophers–cum–public relations officers.

  CHAPTER 15

  LAST THINGS

  It was time for a proper holiday. The last few months had been painful physically (the Gedrosian desert) and psychologically (the Opis mutiny) and a period of recovery and revelry was in order.

  The king and his army marched north across the Zagros Mountains and arrived in Ecbatana some time during the late summer or autumn of 324. He staged a massive arts and athletics festival, with many plays and spectacles. Three thousand performers were imported from Greece, presumably most of the theatrical and musical professionals of the day.

  There were also constant drinking parties. It is time to consult the Royal Journal, a day-by-day narrative of the king’s actions. Aelian cites an extract which describes Alexander’s carousing and probably dates to this stay in Ecbatana.

  On the fifth day of the month of Dius [October/November] he drank to excess at Eumenes’ [Eumenes was the king’s chief secretary or grammateus], on the sixth day he slept off the alcohol, and was sufficiently refreshed to get out of bed and give orders to his commanders for the next day’s exercises, saying that they should set out very early. On the seventh he feasted with Perdiccas, and again drank heavily. On the eighth he slept. On the fifteenth day of the same month he drank again, and slept through the next day. On the twenty-fourth he dined at Bagoas’s place about ten stades from the palace. The following day he slept.

  Although he is not mentioned, we can assume that Hephaestion attended such binges.

  One day he caught a fever and was placed on a strict dietary regime. Glaucias, his doctor, kept an eye on him to make sure he followed it to the letter. On the seventh day of his illness, the stadium was packed for boys’ sports. Alexander was there, and so was Glaucias, who had left his patient unsupervised. This was unwise, for Hephaestion enjoyed filling himself with food and drink whenever opportunity offered. He was feeling better and, in the doctor’s absence, he sat down to breakfast. He devoured a boiled fowl and washed it down with half a gallon of chilled wine. He immediately fell ill again.

  The king received a message that Hephaestion’s condition was grave and deteriorating and he hurried to his side, but by the time he reached him the young man was dead.

  The exact nature of Hephaestion’s illness was unknown at the time and is irretrievable now, but the literary sources strongly imply that it had to do with excessive drinking. Nobody at the time raised the possibility of unnatural causes. The modern doctor would observe that Hephaestion’s symptoms were consistent with a serious bowel infection (for example, typhoid). This produces a protracted bout of fever and often leads to stomach ulcerations. During recovery the sufferer should avoid doing anything that might perforate the damaged bowels—for example, eating a heavy meal. A perforation could quickly cause collapse, internal bleeding, shock, and death. For recovery to begin after seven days seems unusually early, but the fever could well have set in sometime before a busy and preoccupied patient reported it.

  None of this was known to ancient medicine. Blame was thrown on the physician, either for prescribing the wrong medication or for allowing his patient access to alcohol.

  Alexander’s grief was total, inconsolable, and uncontrollable. Arrian remarks: “I believe he would rather have been the first to go than live to suffer that pain, like Achilles, who would surely have preferred to die before Patroclus.” In imitation of the Greek warrior, Alexander sheared off his hair above his dead lover. As at other moments of crisis he withdrew into himself. He spent a night and a day lying on Hephaestion’s body, weeping, until his Companions dragged him off. He took no food and did not attend to any of his bodily needs. Plutarch writes:

  As a token of mourning, he commanded that the manes and tails of all horses should be shorn [this was a Persian and a Thessalian practice], demolished the battlements of all the neighboring cities, crucified the luckless physician and forbade the playing of flutes or any other kind of music for a long time.

  A local temple of Asclepios, the god of healing, was destroyed as his punishment for not having saved Hephaestion.

  The corpse was embalmed and Perdiccas, his successor as chiliarch, was ordered to accompany it to Babylon. Here a vast funeral pyre was to be constructed at the cost of ten thousand or more talents. Diodorus claims:

  Alexander collected artisans and an army of workmen and tore down Babylon’s wall to a distance of ten furlongs. He collected the baked tiles and levelled off the place which was to receive the pyre, and then built it in the shape of a cube, each side being a furlong in length. He divided up the area into thirty compartments and[,] laying out the roofs upon the trunks of palm trees[,] wrought the whole structure into a square shape.

  The elaborate design was to take the form of a ziggurat with gigantic sculptural displays on each floor—golden ships’ prows; statues of soldiers; torches; eagles with outstretched wings and serpents at their feet; a wild-animal hunt; golden centaurs at war; lions and bulls; and Macedonian and Persian weapons and armor. At the top of the monument would stand statues of Sirens, hollowed out to allow singers inside to chant laments.

  Mourning was decreed throughout the empire. Persians were ordered to quench temple fires until the funeral, a custom previously reserved for the death of a Great King. Hephaestion had not been universally popular, and astute courtiers with whom he had quarreled fell over themselves to display their sorrow. Many Companions dedicated themselves and their arms to his memory. Everyone of note commissioned images of him in gold and ivory. It became fashionable to swear an oath with the phrase “by Hephaestion.” Eumenes was one of those who could not stand him, and he knew that the king knew it. He was careful to propose honors that would be most likely to enhance the dead man’s memory, and he made a very generous contribution to the costs of the pyre.

  Alexander was disempowered by his grief for some time. He left Ecbatana and set out unhurriedly south toward Babylon. As a distraction, he launched a winter campaign against the Cossaei, a warlike tribe that inhabited the highlands between Susa and Media; they made a living from brigandage but had been tolerated by the Achaemenids. He massacred the entire male population from teenagers upwa
rd. According to Plutarch, this was termed “a sacrifice to the spirit of Hephaestion,” for it echoed the incident in the Iliad when a vengeful Achilles slaughtered twelve young Trojans and cremated them alongside Patroclus on his pyre.

  The king’s grief may have been excessive, but it was sincere. The ancient world was in no doubt that Alexander was “ruled by Hephaestion’s thighs.” We do not know their respective ages or even which of them was the older (Curtius observes in passing that the couple were coeval). However, as we have already discussed, it is plausible that in their teens, or at least in Alexander’s teens, they followed aristocratic Greek practice and were pederastic lovers.

  Alexander regarded Hephaestion as his alter ego. However, for many years he was careful not to promote him beyond his abilities and devoted time and energy to calming down colleagues whom he had annoyed. Hephaestion was a competent officer, but no more. He was never appointed to crucial positions, but was capable of handling complex administrative tasks. He matured and after the departure of Craterus for Arachosia and Drangiana in 325, he rose to the position of chiliarch and the king’s deputy.

  His finest quality was his adamantine devotion to his lover and friend.

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  ALEXANDER WANTED TO DO something unique for Hephaestion. An emissary was dispatched to the priests of Ammon at Siwah, where the king had learned of his “true” paternity. He asked whether divine honors could be paid to Hephaestion. The oracle said no, but prudently permitted the institution of a hero cult.

  The king was delighted by this response, when it arrived after some months, and (cheekily slipping in the word “god”) immediately arranged for Hephaestion to be worshipped as Associate God and Savior. He wrote to Cleomenes, governor of the Arabian portion of Egypt and treasurer for the entire country, and ordered the construction of hero shrines to Hephaestion in the Nile Delta city of Alexandria and on the island of Pharos. No expense was to be spared.