The Nature of Alexander

by Mary Renault

  He prepared to set out in spring. During the winter, he was urged by all those nearest him to marry and beget an heir before he left, lest he should be killed.

  Antipater is said to have been insistent; loyal advice, for he was to be left as Regent, and if the King died childless would be well placed to seize the throne. But he had no more success than Philip and Olympias before him. Alexander impatiently replied that this was no time to sit at home “holding marriage feasts and awaiting the birth of children.” To have done the first need not have entailed the second. If offspring did not appear after his departure, he could have summoned his bride to Asia and tried again. Clearly he still found the whole idea repugnant. He may have reflected, too, that a child reared in Macedon in his absence would be wholly dominated by Olympias.

  Had he taken Antipater’s advice, he might have been survived by a successor eleven years old; had he taken his parents’, one of perhaps fourteen; and the whole course of Hellenistic history would have been altered. It is said that when asked how he had contrived to subdue Greece so swiftly, he answered, “By never putting off anything till tomorrow.” This one thing he put off; and set in train a generation of wars.

  At least it saved him expense. A much more pressing problem just then was money. It was said of Philip that at his accession his most valuable asset was a cup of thin gold, which he kept at night in the bed box under his pillow. Later he amassed much wealth, but he had also spent it: on his army, on buying support in Greece, on civilizing Macedon, and on preparing for the war. Alexander was to say later, “I inherited from my father a few gold and silver cups, less than sixty talents in the treasury; and debts of five hundred that he owed. When I had borrowed another eight hundred, I set out.” In spite of this, or because of it, he realized all his personal estate, and gave it away to friends and loyal supporters. Some would take nothing, like Perdiccas; whose inclusion suggests, in spite of Ptolemy, that he did the right thing at Thebes. “What are you keeping for yourself?” he asked. “Hope,” said Alexander, to which Perdiccas’ prophetic answer was, “That I’ll share.”

  In early spring, Alexander marched east with 30,000 infantry, partly light-armed skirmishers and archers, and about 5,000 cavalry: scarcely more than the Macedonian numbers at Chaeronea, to invade an empire which, if marshalled by an enemy of a calibre anywhere near his own, could have put a million in the field. Tarn has well said that he embarked upon the war at first because “he never thought of not doing it; it was his inheritance.” It was in what the war engendered that his unique genius appeared.

  He marched to the Hellespont alongside his fleet; but the far superior Persian navy did not attack. At the crossing of the straits he took the helm of his own flagship; probably as a boy he had sailed on the now-vanished Pella lagoon. Having sacrificed in midstream to Poseidon, on the further shore he cast his spear before him as an omen, and was the first to wade to land. He had no backward look for Europe, which he was never to see again.

  Typically, before doing anything else he made straight for Troy—ruined, but traceable on its site of natural rock—made offerings to its patroness Athene, and dedicated at her shrine his whole panoply of arms; taking for himself, as of right, his choice of her ancient, allegedly Homeric trophies, including a shield which would later save his life. Here he and Hephaestion paid their tribute to the immortal friends; Plutarch says also that Alexander and his comrades stripped and ran a ceremonial race round Achilles’ gravemound. All sources agree that he sacrificed to the hero. Some enterprising tourist tout offered him the authentic lyre of Paris (whose other name was Alexandros); he crisply rejected this relic of an effete hedonist, saying he would prefer the instrument to which Achilles sang about the deeds of heroes. The truth is perhaps that lyres and singing were still a sore subject, even after eight or ten years.

  After this romantic dedication of his adventure, he marshalled his forces for the conquest of transpontine Greece, his only present objective. He marched north, then east along the coast of the Dardanelles, where the Persian force awaited him.

  It was not yet led by Darius, who put nothing off till tomorrow if next week or next month would do. Its most expert commander was the mercenary general Memnon, leading 15,000 of his Greeks. He was, however, outranked by half a dozen aristocratic Persians. When he advised scorching the countryside and starving out the Macedonians, who could not live very long on what they brought, the local satrap indignantly refused and carried the others with him. They then decided to hold the eastern bank of the River Granicus, just inshore from its mouth; a reasonable alternative in view of their (much-disputed) numbers, which seem to have been inferior to the invaders’. Alexander would have to tackle them before he advanced inland, and the high river banks gave them a needed advantage.

  As Alexander neared the river, his scouts reported the Persians’ position. Since his landing he had been joined by Parmenion, who had replaced his son Philotas as second-in-command. If Parmenion did advise Alexander against pitched battle and propose a dawn surprise—another disputed matter in view of later events—it was probably on the assumption that the enemy would adopt the obviously sensible tactic of posting their firm-stanced infantry on the top of the bank, to prod back with their spears the insecure and slithering horsemen as they scrambled up. Instead it was held by cavalry. General Fuller is surely right in seeing here another example of aristocratic noblesse oblige and racial pride. The mere infantry were foreign hirelings—no gentleman should shelter himself behind them.

  Medieval knights, on big horses, anchored by stirrups into their massive saddles and holding their huge spears in rests, would have offered an impregnable defense line. But the Persians, with the insecure seat of the ancient horseman, were also handicapped by having not even small spears as combat hand weapons, but missile javelins, of which each man is unlikely to have carried more than two. The Macedonians had strong battle lances of cornel wood. Depending though they did on the rider’s arm movements, since using his horse’s forward impetus would have pushed him off, they were still superior armament. The armies were near enough for Alexander to be aware of this.

  Drawing up his forces to front the river, he gave the left wing to Parmenion, himself taking up the time-honoured royal station on the right; his brigade commander here was Philotas. Arrian gives the name of all section leaders; and it is interesting to see the great future generals, Craterus and Perdiccas, still only phalanx commanders. Ptolemy and Hephaestion had as yet no commands at all. A true professional, Alexander had no favourites in the field.

  The fact that he himself was so resplendently armed as to be recognizable as far as he could be seen, deplorable by modern standards, was professional too throughout all ages of war but ours. That practical soldier Xenophon relates approvingly of Cyrus that his arms shone like a mirror and his helmet had a white plume. Alexander put up two of them, one each side.

  Having launched his first shock-troops into the river, he returned to the right wing, gave his war yell, and, riding in front, drove straight into the massive formation drawn up on purpose to receive him. He directed his thrust towards the Persian high command, traditionally in the centre, rescuing some of his own centre assault troops who were hard pressed. The scrimmage on the steep churned-up bank was for some time indecisive, the Macedonians being faced with hand-to-hand combat whenever they reached the top; the Persians, their javelins expended, now using side arms. In this hacking and shoving Alexander’s spear was broken; he got another from one of his squires, a Demaratus of Corinth, probably the grandson of the Demaratus who had negotiated his return from exile. With this he dashed at a conspicuous Persian general, killed him, and was at once involved in a mêlée, getting a blow on the helmet which removed one of its plumes. While he was accounting for this assailant, another raised his scimitar to bring it down on him; the brother of his childhood nurse Hellanice, Cleitus “the Black,” was in time to cut through the second attacker’s arm.

  Resolution, discipline, and the strong
cornel-wood lances carried the day. The Persians fell into confusion, then into flight. Alexander let them go; he concentrated his assault upon the mercenaries, whom he regarded as traitors to Greece. Here there was a savage slaughter. Some must have escaped, but he only took about 2,000 prisoners, whom he did not re-employ but sent to hard labour in Macedon. Memnon himself got away to fight again. The Persian satrap Arsames, who had overruled his advice before the battle, also escaped, but killed himself.

  Macedonian casualties were light. To the twenty-five Companions who had fallen in the first assault Alexander gave special funeral honours with tax remission to their families, and had their statues cast in bronze. After the battle he went to see the wounded, Arrian says: “looking at their wounds, asking how they got them, encouraging each to tell about his deeds and even brag of them.” Glimpses like this explain the extraordinary relationship that was to evolve between him and his army in ensuing years.

  He buried the Persian generals with the honours of war, and gave the dead Greek mercenaries a proper Greek funeral. To fourth-century men there was much more in this than a gesture; it was the rite of peaceful passage to the land of shades. What to modern man may seem cynical seemed to contemporaries generous and unusual; his effect on them will be better understood if this is borne in mind. Of a piece with it is his pardoning of local people who, unlike the mercenaries, had been serving the Persians under conscription.

  He now marched south to Sardis, a formidable inland fortress on high rock, which surrendered without a fight. In Asia Minor he would be dealing mostly with cities where only the garrison and officials felt loyalty to Persia; these Lydians were the people of King Croesus, conquered in Cyrus’ day. The treasury of Sardis, if not quite up to Croesus’ legend, was well filled, and came just when he needed it. He built a temple to Olympian Zeus on the old site of the royal palace under the divine direction of a lightning bolt, garrisoned the acropolis, and allowed the people their traditional customs and laws. Olympian Zeus, the patron god of Macedon, is on the reverse of nearly all his silver coinage, enthroned, after Phidias’ famous statue at Olympia. The obverse has Heracles with his lion-mask hood. As the mints go east, the Zeus, carved by non-Greek craftsmen, grows increasingly vague, the Heracles more and more like Alexander.

  The Greek coastal city of Ephesus opened its gates to him, disclosing a society seething with hate and vendetta. Greek oligarch collaborators had ruled it for the Persians. On the news of Alexander’s victory, these people had been lynched by the democrats, or dragged from temple sanctuary and stoned to death with their children. He restored the democracy, but strictly forbade any more reprisals, “knowing that once they got leave, the people would kill some men unjustly, from mere hate, or to get hold of their wealth, along with those who deserved it.” Arrian says his popularity soared after this decree.

  He sacrificed there to Artemis (Saint Paul’s Diana of the Ephesians) and held a brilliant victory parade. Greek cities now fell to him like ripe fruit. In each he evicted pro-Persian quislings and established Greek-style democracies. This, he told them, was what he had come to do; and he may not yet have been looking further.

  Fifty miles south he was in Caria, and gazed for the first time on that state so calamitous in his past. The satrap Pixodarus had been some time dead, succeeded by a kinsman devoted to Persian interests. Had Alexander’s intrigue come off, it would probably have brought him nothing but a redundant Carian wife. He got instead a Carian mother.

  Pixodarus was a usurper. His predecessors had been a brother and sister, married (as in Egypt) by royal custom. On her husband’s death, Ada the wife had the right to rule alone, but had been expelled by Pixodarus. Retiring in good order, she had established herself in the strong harbour fortress of Alinda. This she now surrendered to Alexander, offering him allegiance if he restored her rights. Diplomatic courtesies soon turned to maternal adoration, indulgently and affectionately received. She cosseted and spoiled him; shocked by his plain diet, she plied him with cordon bleu till he was driven to polite excuses. Before long, she formally adopted him as her son. By now the irony may have amused him.

  Unlike many men whose childhood has been mother dominated, Alexander was never drawn sexually to older women. He preferred the filial role. Later he was to assume it with much deeper involvement; and to a third such bond, seemingly the most casual and incongruous, he was to owe his life.

  He marched to Miletus, a port in the usurper’s territory. Its garrison commander began to treat for surrender, got wind of seaborne reinforcements and changed his mind. Alexander’s small fleet of 160 ships slipped swiftly into the strategic harbour of Lade across the narrow strait; the Persians, forced to take second best, beached their belated 400 vessels northward up the coast.

  Parmenion is said to have urged a sea fight, presumably because of the better Macedonian position. An eagle had been propitiously seen on shore at their ships’ sterns. Alexander preferred to let the Persians alone, because, he said, their ships were crewed by more experienced seamen, and a victory would give a fillip to their morale. The eagle had perched on land, pointing out where fortune lay. Finally, “he would not risk sacrificing the skill and courage of his Macedonians.” Reckless with his own life, he was never wasteful of theirs, a fact well known to them and never undervalued.

  He breached and stormed the Miletus walls, his ships closing the harbour mouth against Persian aid. Some of the garrison escaped by sea, rafted with their wooden shields, to an offshore islet. He sailed after them, but, “seeing the men on the island would fight to the last, he pitied them as high-minded and faithful soldiers.” The Milesians he let go free; the mercenaries were Greek, but he hired them in his own service.

  The powerful Persian fleet, denied the harbour, was still beached with all its soldiers. Warships of the ancient world could never carry stores enough to feed for long their rowers, their seamen and the troops they carried. They had constantly to put in for water and supplies; hence the importance of supporting land troops. This fleet had none. Alexander sent out Philotas to occupy the surrounding coast and virtually besiege them by cutting them off from provisions. On land they were vastly outnumbered; after one vain attempt to provoke a sea fight, their stores were exhausted and they had to go. The complete success of this minor operation suggested to Alexander’s logical mind a major long-term strategy. Why not refuse to the Persian navy all its ports of call?

  “He interpreted the eagle to mean that he should conquer the ships by land.” Alexander’s impetuosity in battle went with a surprising readiness to form a long-term objective and to wait. His plan meant mastering the whole east Mediterranean seaboard before he struck inland; but it would secure both the liberated cities and his own communications. He laid a heavy stake on it by disbanding, except a couple of transports for his siege engines, all his own ships; which, despite his haul at Sardis, he could still not well afford to maintain. It would leave him cut off if he were defeated; but defeat, like fear, he presumed not to exist.

  His next objective was Halicarnassus, the late Pixodarus’ capital. A commanding fortress rebuilt in later ages by Seljuks and Crusaders, it was a tougher proposition than Miletus and needed a full-scale siege. One of its two commanders was the expert Memnon. Arrian describes in detail the filling of its great moat to bring up the siege towers, the sorties from the fort to burn them, the final breach of the wall. When the city was clearly at his mercy, Alexander broke off the action and withdrew, offering a parley to discuss terms next day. He was roused at midnight to see the town in flames; Memnon and his men had fired it and a wind was spreading the blaze. He stormed inside, ordering all fire raisers caught in the act to be killed, but citizens spared. Memnon and his staff had got away.

  Alexander was now master of Caria. He garrisoned its fortresses, and restored Queen Ada to the satrap’s throne.

  His next action was to give Parmenion his separate command. If the young King’s rejection of his advice was stressed in later chronicles for expedient r
easons, this is no proof that such incidents were fictitious. They suggest a familiar human pattern. Parmenion was now in his middle sixties. He had been Philip’s intimate friend for more than twenty years. He now found himself working with a high command mostly a full generation younger, under a leader in his early twenties. If he had adjusted with ease from Philip’s mental processes to Alexander’s, it would have been little short of a miracle. Shakespeare’s Antony complains that Octavius’ tutelary genius daunts his own, and Parmenion may have felt this perennial situation. On Alexander’s side, a man who had been so close to his father, who had married a daughter of Attalus when he was in power and Alexander in disgrace, must always have created some sense of tension. At all events, he now detached Parmenion to command the communication lines over the conquered territory. A tendency to repeat this policy was to have terrible results for both of them.

  Alexander now gave home leave to all Macedonian soldiers newly married before setting out; a wildly popular directive, and thoughtful for future Macedonian manpower. He next moved against the mountain hill tribes, everywhere in the world intractable; midwinter had driven them down into the valleys, easing the task of subjugation. During this time, Parmenion intercepted a message from Darius to Alexandros of Lyncestis—whose two brothers had been executed for complicity in Philip’s murder—offering him the throne of Macedon if he would procure Alexander’s death. This prince had now been promoted to command of the Thracian cavalry. As a possible successor should Alexander die childless, he had always been a source of danger; his survival represented a notable departure from Macedonian royal precedent. Even now, however, Alexander, lacking proof that the Persian offer had been solicited, did not charge him with treason, but kept him under precautionary arrest. It was remembered that during the recent siege, a swallow had entered the royal tent, and fluttered over its sleeping occupant. Half waking, Alexander had gently brushed it away, but it had returned and perched on his head. The seers divined that the warnings of this domestic bird meant domestic danger. However, Alexander still held his hand.