The Nature of Alexander

by Mary Renault

  Little is known of the plot to kill Alexander, nothing of the means designed. Its known instigator was an obscure Dymnus, elsewhere unmentioned, apparently on the fringe of Alexander’s personal circle, who complained of some unspecified slight. He tried to recruit a youth called Nicomachus, whose lover he was but who, horrified at what he heard, at once told his elder brother. The two, impatient to discharge their perilous knowledge and clear themselves, went to Philotas as someone close to the King. All sources agree he did not report it. Diodorus, Plutarch and Curtius say he promised to do so two days running, and excused himself on the ground that Alexander had been too busy, though in fact he had talked with him freely. The brothers were growing desperate, and suspicious. The elder now went direct to the royal rooms, and informed the squire in charge of Alexander’s weapons. He, unlike Philotas, burst straight in upon Alexander during his bath. He questioned the brother, learned there had been delay, and was told the reason.

  Reacting with customary speed, before doing anything else he had the whole camp cordoned round to keep news from leaving it. Then he sent a squad to arrest Dymnus, who certified his guilt by killing himself before he could be seized. He had apparently disclosed to Nicomachus the names of some other conspirators, one of them in the Royal Bodyguard; which certainly would suggest something more than the personal anger of a private man. Philotas’ known conduct had been clearly treasonable. All sources agree that he admitted having been told of the plot; his defence was that he had not believed in it. (Some historians, in periods more peaceful than ours, have even accepted this; it can now be agreed that honest men, warned of a bomb upon a plane, do not take chances.) Though Nicomachus would not have approached him had he known him to be involved, Dymnus may only have told as much as he dared.

  Till the camp had been enclosed, Alexander was forced to keep up a normal manner with Philotas, much against his nature. He then had all the accused arrested. Arrian, citing both his sources, says Philotas had a public trial before the Macedonian Assembly, Alexander himself speaking for the prosecution—he was a material witness, as having been available when Philotas said he was not. Philotas spoke in his own defence (Curtius’ florid artifice makes his version useless). The Assembly judged him worthy of death. Arrian says nothing of his interrogation by torture, to which Diodorus, Plutarch and Curtius all refer.

  Before deciding that Ptolemy was whitewashing, we must ask as always whether he would have seen a need for it. Almost certainly not, in an ordinary treason trial, as he shows elsewhere. Torture in such cases was general throughout Greece, with one exception. The democratic Athenians, exempting their own citizens, let them offer their slaves instead: if torture produced no evidence, it was taken that they had witnessed nothing amiss; accused citizens who did not make use of this facility were highly suspect. In Philotas’ case, his high rank and his war record may have caused Ptolemy to keep quiet, and the question remains open.

  There were several more trials, some ending in acquittals. Among those condemned, “lacking words to defend himself,” was the long-suspect Alexandros of Lyncestis. Of royal descent, he had probably been chosen, whether or not he knew it, as a suitable puppet king. The Macedonians traditionally executed in public those they had condemned; in this case it was done with javelins. There was no arbitrary purge. But Alexander was now faced with a dreadful choice.

  Whether plotter or callous opportunist, Philotas had been a traitor. No army in hostile country could afford to let him live. Still less could it now afford to carry, on its lifeline of communications, a father on whom had devolved the archaic duties of the blood feud.

  Prince Oxathres had joined a foreign invader to avenge his brother; Prince Bistanes to avenge his father. There could be no surety that Parmenion, whether or not his son’s accomplice, would not change sides when his death was known. This had been Alexander’s first thought when he threw his ring round the camp. The ancient laws of Macedon provided that the close male relatives of any traitor should share his death. It was not mere frightfulness; it did not presume their collusion; it simply recognized the blood feud, which would make all who survived into enemies of the King.

  It would be strange if at this moment Alexander did not remember Attalus. A proven traitor, he had been secure from arrest among his own tribal levies. The practical problem here was just the same. Two factors only were altered: on the one hand, Parmenion’s guilt was not established; on the other, he was infinitely more dangerous.

  Till now the young conqueror had known only the rewards of power; glory, homage, splendour, limitless wealth and the pleasures of generosity; admiration, love. They had cost him only the hardships and dangers which were his pride. For the first time he learned power’s terrible necessities. He knew them when he saw them; yet it is possible he kept a last option open.

  Three agents on racing dromedaries were sent out on the guarded road. They carried such a royal warrant as had protected the slayer of Attalus. This they gave to Parmenion’s senior officers at Ecbatana. In the private park of the palace where he had his residence, one envoy whom he knew offered him first a letter from the King, then one forged in Philotas’ name. He was reading the second “joyfully, as could be seen from his countenance,” when they struck him down.

  This letter, mentioned by Curtius without comment, explanation or drama, deserves very serious attention. Why bother with either letter, when Parmenion was already defenceless among his killers? Etiquette demanded that the royal dispatch be read before anything else; it had to be there to authenticate the one that mattered, the Philotas forgery. It was when Parmenion showed evident pleasure at its contents, and not before, that he was killed. If he had shown puzzlement, irritation, vague disapproval, anger, fear, would the daggers have been drawn? Curtius in one of his unreliable purple passages states that Philotas incriminated his father. One of the conspirators may have done so, truly or falsely. It would seem that Alexander, rather than accept such testimony unsupported, took a last chance by working into the forged letter some sign, extracted during the interrogations, which would convey only to a man with guilty knowledge that the plot was going well. It would be hit and miss, open to tragic misunderstandings, but the only feasible test remaining.

  Arrian says of Alexander that, unlike other kings, he repented when he knew he had done wrong. We read of such regrets; even of bitter shame; but never of his repenting Parmenion’s death. It had been done not in passion but in considered decision; and by his decision he stood.

  The appalling risk it had involved of causing Parmenion’s troops to mutiny—a contingency he had no power whatever to prevent—could only have been run in the firm belief that a still worse danger threatened. (Only the other day, modern Europe has seen the mere dismissal of a popular general followed at once by an army revolt.) Alexander had had to stake everything on the loyalty of troops hundreds of miles away from him, whom he could neither persuade nor coerce when they were forced to choose between him and their own commander. The implications of this have been too little considered.

  There was no mutiny. His own army took it quietly; men of Macedon, their folk memory stored with grim tales of its dynastic struggles, and fully satisfied of Philotas’ guilt, they were unlikely to acquit his powerful father. A temporary, ad hoc censors’ board examined home letters for signs of disaffection. Resentful men were segregated into a special corps—receiving, apparently, no punishment but the slur of unreliability—and challenged to redeem themselves by good performance in action. This they did, even with keenness, probably after an address from Alexander himself.

  He now knew that a man who wished him dead had held command of his finest striking force, the Companion Cavalry. Hephaestion had proved himself in command, and it would probably have been Alexander’s choice to put the whole corps under a man in whom he had perfect trust. But he was identified with the new controversial policies, a tactful and well-liked diplomat among the Persians, whose customs, and probably speech, he had taken the trouble to learn. To
avoid an open snub to the conservatives at this touchy time, Alexander divided the Companions between him and Cleitus “the Black,” his nurse’s brother who had saved his life in the scrimmage at the Granicus. The family was related to the royal house, and had had no need to treat little princes with deference. Probably Alexander had known Cleitus since his infancy and through much of his stormy childhood, with subconscious associations of which he himself was unaware.

  Bessus was still in control of Bactria. The two-year resistance of this province has been described as a national rising, but this is true in no modern sense. Its bonds of unity were tribal and familial, and its ancient feuds were never laid aside.

  Alexander wintered among a peaceful tribe whom Cyrus, provisioned by them at a time of crisis, had named “The Benefactors,” and whom Alexander took to his heart. With the spring he moved on into the wilds. Through this whole phase of campaigning, rugged country meant well-defined routes however rough; and at strategic points along these ancient trails—some reaching to India, some as far as China whose existence he never guessed—he would mark his passage by founding another city. Modern archaeology is only now beginning to learn how real and solid were his efforts to implant centres of civilization in the wilderness. The garrison was there for protection as well as for control; the streets were properly laid out, there would be a public square, the focus of all Greek cities; a temple for the tutelary deity, a council chamber, sometimes even a theatre; one had a monument to Peritas, a favourite dog he had hand-reared, after whom he had named the town. Most were called Alexandria. The settlers came from the multitude that followed him: veterans who had picked up a woman on the march and bred a family; merchants and craftsmen, attracted by the trade route or the lack of rivals; disabled men ready to settle down with their bounty, their loot and their bit of land rather than face the long drag home; some travel-weary whores to serve the garrison. In later days, if discontent broke out it was in the garrisons; they had no real stake in the place, and a monotonous job while their comrades were with Alexander, getting adventure and wealth.

  The campaign against Bessus had been much hampered by the fierce and treacherous Satibarzanes, satrap of Ariana, who, after Gaugamela, had pursued Bessus’ and Nabarzanes’ original plan of first making peace and then rebelling. In the spring of 329 he was in flight, soon to be killed in hand-to-hand combat by Erigyius, one of the boyhood friends exiled by Philip for their devotion. Alexander, resolved to settle with Bessus for good, and get north into Bactriana before he was expected, early in the year led his army over the still icy heights of the Hindu Kush.

  Historians have agreed that as a feat of leadership and endurance it far surpasses Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps. Its hardships were to a great extent foreseeable; he must have felt an unshaken confidence in his men’s devotion, which events confirmed. He may not have allowed enough for altitude. Provisions ran short; wheeled transport was impossible and the ground grew only alpine herbs; dead mules were eaten raw for lack of cooking fuel; the glare caused snow blindness, and at 11,000-odd feet there must have been some mountain sickness. But Alexander was always to be seen as cold and hungry as anyone, Stopping for a joke, or to haul some numbed man out of a drift. Xenophon too had shaken listless soldiers from the drowsy hypothermia that turns to death; one had complained because his hard-tried commander hit him. No one complained of Alexander.

  He had by now taken Bessus’ measure; he could not have risked struggling down head-on into a fresh and determined enemy. He cast his spell on foes as well as friends. Lean and weary, he was forerun by a name of dread. Irresolutely, Bessus stripped the countryside into which he came; leaner, but resolute, he still came on. Bessus’ nerve broke; he fled across the Oxus, burning his boats behind him. Local resistance collapsed; Alexander rested and fed his men. As satrap of Bactria, he appointed the indestructible Artabazus.

  It was a breathing spell between a cold hell and a hot one. Alexander detached old veterans and the unfit for discharge home, before marching into the grilling desert round the Oxus. They marched by night, the day being unbearable. The men overspent their water ration in the arid air. The distress of the camp followers must have been extreme. Curtius tells how some of the carriers, who had found a little waterhole and filled a skin for their children, passed Alexander sweltering, and dutifully offered him a cupful. Having asked where they were taking it, he told them to give it to their sons; he would not drink till there was enough for everyone. This recalls a still more famous incident; both are typical, and, human nature being repetitive, no doubt both are true.

  At last they reached the river, Alexander standing unrested and unfed, after his last lap, to see everyone safe in camp. The river was wide, the ferry boats had been burned; but Xenophon had taught him on the Danube the lore of the Euphrates, and it served for the Oxus too. The tentmakers set to work stuffing the tent hides into rafts, and the crossing took five days.

  Fate treated Bessus just as he had treated Darius. His levies had been melting by desertion. Two of his chiefs decided he was hindering the war. Leaving him in a village fort, held by two servants, they sent Alexander word that he was there for the picking up.

  Not to dignify the event by his own presence, Alexander sent Ptolemy, with orders to treat Bessus like a common criminal. The point was to be made that this was not, and never had been, a Persian king. Bessus’ fatal mistake was not to have surrendered along with the realistic Nabarzanes, who had secured his amnesty before Oxathres arrived. Now the brother of Darius waited, expectant, for the vengeance that was his price of fealty. Bessus was stripped, a Persian’s greatest disgrace, and stood by the road, his hands tied to a wooden yoke. Halting his chariot, Alexander asked why he had betrayed and murdered his benefactor, his kinsman and his king. With less dignity than Darius’ when all was lost, he answered that the whole suite had agreed on it, to get safe conduct from Alexander. It was the wrong approach to a man who had pardoned, and taken into his army, a batch of rebels he saw marching to execution with conspicuous courage. He ordered Bessus a flogging, which no doubt Oxathres witnessed, and his custody in chains till a Persian court could try him.

  No other pretender appeared. Alexander marched northeast to the immemorial boundary of the Jaxartes River, where civilization ended and the steppes began. Here stood a line of ancient forts, built to keep off the Scythians, fierce nomads whom even Darius the Great could not subdue. Alexander was quick to decide that the frontier had been rightly drawn. He had the rare vision to perceive that, if prejudice were broken down, two great civilizations could cross-fertilize; but he knew barbarism when he saw it, and his concern was to keep it out. It was evident to him that at the first sign of weakness, the Scythians would be across.

  Having replaced the horses that heat or cold had killed, he marched back west towards Samarkand. In a clash with tribesmen an arrow split his leg bone. Unable to ride, he saved delay by getting into a litter. First carried by the infantry, it roused the jealousy of the cavalry, who demanded to dismount and share the privilege. He let them take it in turns.

  The Jaxartes campaign cannot here be followed in detail. Samarkand, the royal city, was occupied, the river forts were reduced and manned. The country seemed quiet, and Alexander summoned the chiefs of Sogdiana to a council. At once suspecting a treachery which to them seemed a matter of course, they rose in revolt instead, overran his new towns and laid siege to Samarkand. His relieving force was cut up, its commanders proving inadequate, and he had to raise the siege himself. During these operations, leading from the front as usual, he was knocked about. His larynx was bruised by a stone—a dangerous injury—and for a time he lost his voice. A head blow gave him a spell of clouded vision. From this may derive a curious quirk of the Alexander legends, that he had one grey eye and one black. One dilated pupil is a common feature of concussion; some local report of him, in a state when most people would have been in bed, may have lodged in folk memory.

  On the further shore of the Jaxartes a horde of
defiant Scythians appeared. He got a mixed force over, put them to rout, and chased them far across the plains. Like Darius the Great, he found them slip through his fingers. A worse mishap, because more lasting in its results, was that in the heat he drank whatever water he found, and got a crippling bout of enteritis. So no doubt did other soldiers, not without some fatalities, for Alexander was seriously ill. The army soon learned in the thirsty lowlands that the only safe drink was wine.

  Oxathres returned to Ecbatana, to preside over Bessus’ trial by a court of Persian nobles. His nose and eartips had been cut off, the Persian mark of the criminal. The execution too was traditionally barbaric, by impalement or the cross. Oxathres had the body cut in pieces and strewn for wild beasts to eat. His brother at last avenged, his loyalty rewarded, he certified by his presence the legitimacy of the new Great King, to whose court he then returned.

  The mass of administration now surrounding Alexander was as much Persian as Macedonian or Greek. Inevitably, people had to wait for audience; inevitably, Macedonians had to take their turn with Persians. Bagoas, a decorative addition to the royal household, was one not universally approved. Persian officers, satraps and envoys were increasingly in evidence, performing those deep obeisances so offensive to Greek tradition, before a King who did not discourage it.

  Alexander had had by now the experienced advice of Artabazus, survivor of four reigns, and of Bagoas, familiar with court procedure from very close to the throne. The deference accorded a foreign king would be measured by his own sense of his dignity; there could be no question of ceasing to exact from Persians so essential a token of respect as the “prostration.” But Alexander was thin-skinned; even if no one had told him, he would hardly have missed the fact that the scornful glances of unbowing Macedonians were not being lost on his newer subjects.

  Consulting with Hephaestion—whose unshakeable devotion the advent of Bagoas had not flawed—he considered how the matter could be regularized. It would be difficult, and would have to be done with tact.