The Nature of Alexander

by Mary Renault

  They came into a waste of soft, wind-piled sandhills, “letting them sink as if into wet mud or untrodden snow.” Horses and mules sank deeper than the men, and were more distressed, labouring over the ridges under burning sun. Autumn had brought no coolness. At long intervals there was water; the scouts would announce the length of the next march; though they moved by night, the sun was often up before they got there, and they had to press on or die. Mules and horses, foundering from exhaustion, were at once devoured, and soon their death was being expedited. Alexander was told, but turned a blind eye. His self-reproach is evident only from his conduct. He could not allow himself, as after Cleitus’ killing, the luxury of seclusion.

  The loss of the baggage animals and their useless carts had a grim consequence: there was no transport for the sick, or those who collapsed from sunstroke. They could not be carried by men who could barely walk. Once fallen out, they simply waited for death; “most of them sank into the sand like men lost at sea.” Many died too from immoderate drinking when they came to water; they would wallow in it, fouling it for the rest. Later Alexander camped some distance from it; though not till after the march’s worst disaster. They had found a wide stream bed with a summer trickle, and made camp on the scoured sands. Rain falling in distant hills caused a sudden flash flood. Instead of the hoped-for relief it was lethal. He had ordered a night of rest; the surviving women and children had dossed down close to the stream; without warning, the wall of water carried more than half away. Next day was spent in the gruelling heat searching for the dead, to give them some minimal rite of passage. Had Alexander not been up in spite of his own fatigue, he too might have been drowned; his tent was swept off, and he lost all he had in it, depending on his friends for a change of clothes. He must have needed the small comforts that were gone; the ordeal would long since have begun to tell on him. Though at least he could be sure of a decent horse, he cannot have been fit for an all-night ride under such conditions; and all responsibilities fell on him. He was lucky to have brought Hephaestion; if only he had lived to write his memoirs! The value of his support, never put on record by his rivals, is shown by Alexander’s marks of honour later.

  The column dragged on, the dying fell out, crying their names in case some friend might hear before the vultures settled. Despair was killing like a disease. Till now Alexander had ridden, and must have found that more than enough. Now he did what his nature compelled him to: dismounted, and began to lead the march on foot.

  He did it, Arrian says, “with great difficulty, and as best he could.” This fixes the incident to its proper place in his story, for at no earlier time is such an observation likely to have been made. Arrian adds that he did it so that the troops should bear their toil more easily from seeing it shared by all; in other words, he had dismounted all the officers and would not make an exception of himself. On one of the long marches which went on into the heat of the day, he was seen to be “much distressed with thirst,” as well he might be; a man gasping for breath cannot shut his mouth against dust. He must have been much distressed with pain too, which he did not mention. His plight was evident; for when some of the skirmishers found a tiny puddle in a stony spruit, they hurried to him at once with the contents scooped in a helmet. It was an act of self-sacrifice to which he responded in kind; he thanked them, and poured away the water. It was as good as a share, Arrian says, to every man who saw it.

  The account is detailed and factual; both Ptolemy and Aristobulus were on the expedition, and Nearchus got his information just after it. Yet there has been an odd tendency among biographers to suppose that because a slightly similar incident happened at the Oxus crossing, the story must have been transferred. It could rather be claimed that the first supports the second. The Oxus incident was largely his common form. It has been well said that when he had outdistanced other rivals he would still be the rival of himself; and in the Makran desert he was under special pressure to be so. At the Oxus the whole situation is less extreme, the hardship temporary; he does not pour away the water, for there will soon be enough for everyone, but just sends it on to the children it had been meant for; a fit young man, acting like a good officer. In Makran, he is half-dead on his feet, every breath an agony; he cannot conceal it from the onlookers. But men are dying like cattle, arguably through his misjudgment; he will not be seen taking privileges which might have saved their lives; and, even if it kills him, he will not fall below his legend. Nothing could be more typical. If one thing is certain about Alexander, it is that he valued his pride above his life.

  As well as his pride he had kept his head. Dismounting the officers, which made him feel forced to walk, was much more than a gesture. Led, not ridden, a few horses were kept fit enough for work in an emergency. To this piece of foresight, what was left of the expedition was to owe survival. The crowning misery of a violent dust storm changed the contours of the area, and wiped out all the landmarks known to the guides. They had no knowledge of steering by the stars, and owned that they were lost Alexander saw, in this despairing moment, that if they wandered about they were doomed. The sea was on their left and they could steer to it by the sun. With the last usable horses, he led the scouting party himself. Man after man fell behind as in the noon heat the horses failed; with the last five he reached the sea. There was greenery near the shore; they dug and found fresh water. The news was brought to the army, and its ordeal was over. The guides now knew the way, and they were soon in inhabited land.

  Alexander had bettered the disastrous records of Cyrus and Semiramis, whom, Nearchus’ memoirs said, it had been his ambition to outdo; but not by much. He had brought more survivors through; but it had still been a débâcle. Two factors had gone to it: the inadequate intelligence about the route which Nearchus speaks of, and the failure of supplies. The Macedonian satrap responsible for the stores was dead, as Alexander learned when he sent to have him arrested. For the rest of the disaster he sought no scapegoat; during the march and after, he took the whole burden on himself. He did not even blame the gods for it.

  At last, however, abundant supplies were coming in from the regions round; and in Carmania he saw to it that his men were feasted, rested and amused. All the sources speak of a Dionysiac progress towards the capital, with free drinks at every halt; also of Alexander travelling with friends on a purple-winged dais lashed to two chariots. Arrian adds that Ptolemy and Aristobulus omit this last; yet it would be very like Alexander thus to disguise the fact that he had barely the strength to sit a horse. If the Mallian arrow had left him with any hope of making old bones, he had poured it away, like the water, on the Makran sands.

  Any rest he got now was purely physical; he began at once to learn that while some loyal or prudent satraps had been collecting horses, camels and stores for him, others had written off his return and freely abused their powers. He heard evidence and prepared to do justice; but he kept the festival going, and found time to join in. To this we owe a remarkable testimony to the popularity which his conduct in the desert had won him, despite all that his men had suffered. Plutarch (supported by the anecdotist Athenaeus) says he watched a dancing contest in which Bagoas—who must quickly have got into shape again—carried off the prize. Still in his costume he crossed the theatre to Alexander, who kept him to sit beside him. “At which the Macedonians clapped and shouted out telling him to kiss him, till finally he took him in his arms and kissed him warmly.” This story says a good deal for Bagoas, who must have refrained from everything which gets royal favourites hated; but even more for the deep affection felt for Alexander himself, extending its indulgence to whatever he set store by, even his “barbarian” eunuch.

  At about this time, Craterus arrived with his multiracial army, the elephants, Roxane, and several rebellious or oppressive satraps arrested on the way. Alexander put to death, for gross injustice to their subjects, one Persian and one Macedonian; his equal esteem passed the acid test of an equal standard. Arrian says that the chief reason for his rule being accep
ted by the diverse peoples he had conquered was that “he would not let them be wronged by those set over them.”

  But such cares were trivial compared with his anxiety for the still missing fleet. He had marched to provision and protect it, and had done neither; the thought of all these lives, among them an old and close friend’s, being added to the toll, was preying on him. At last a local governor dashed in with the news that the fleet was beached; but in his eagerness to get in first for the reward, he had sent them no help or transport, so nobody arrived. Alexander, furious for his false hopes, had the man kept under arrest. At last Nearchus and a few friends, getting along as best they could, were passed by some of the scouts sent out to look for them, who had taken them for ragged vagrants. They made themselves known and were conveyed to Alexander, who embraced Nearchus and burst into tears, supposing them the sole survivors. When he heard the whole fleet was safe he wept still more with relief, saying that since its loss would have cancelled all his previous good fortune, this news was worth more to him than the conquest of all Asia. Few Greeks, and certainly not Alexander, cultivated a Roman gravitas; but this scene suggests the nerve storm of a debilitated system after almost unbearable strain.

  There was a thanksgiving festival with a great procession, Nearchus, kempt and garlanded, riding in front with the King. Among the prizes and promotions, Peucestas, who had held the Trojan shield over Alexander at Multan, was appointed to the small top-ranking Royal Bodyguard till he could be given his real reward—the satrapy of Persia, held by a usurper with whom Alexander had yet to deal. Hephaestion was now sent off with most of the army by the pleasant coast road to Susa, to give the men from the desert a further rest. Alexander’s rest, such as it was, was over. He rode up country to the royal heartland of Persia, Cyrus the Great’s Pasargadae, Darius the Great’s Persepolis. On whether he took Roxane, the sources are silent He did take Bagoas, and Calanus the Indian philosopher; each in his own way must have proved himself in the fiery test of the desert. At Pasargadae, the satrap of Media brought him one Baraxis, perhaps a relative of the royal house, who had proclaimed himself king in Alexander’s absence. He hanged him, and executed several governors who had outraged their vassals. His severity did him no harm in folk tradition; one of his epithets in the Persian romance is “redressor of wrongs.” But it was exploited by the Athenian propagandists; and here the credulous Curtius, checked against first-hand evidence, shows how far they were prepared to go.

  Aristobulus the architect described in his memoirs how eager Alexander had been to visit Cyrus’ tomb as soon as he had conquered Asia. Presumably he did, while near by at Persepolis, for Aristobulus was then commissioned to inventory its contents: a typical Achaemenean royal burial, with a gold sarcophagus on a dais, surrounded with rich grave goods, jewels, weapons, and sumptuous clothes. Alexander had continued the traditional sacrifice to the hero’s spirit of a horse a month. Most of the mausoleum still stands, and testifies to Aristobulus’ accurate description. Its builders, as a precaution against grave robbers, had narrowed the entrance after the sarcophagus was inside. But Alexander on his return found it broken into and plundered; chunks even hacked off the coffin to get it through the door, and Cyrus’ bones scattered about. Alexander would have honoured him even as an enemy (he would probably have preferred him to Darius); the callous insult to his (and Xenophon’s) ideal hero enraged him. The shrine’s guardian magi claimed total ignorance, and torture got nothing out of them. (Some time later the crime was traced to a Macedonian.) Aristobulus describes in detail how he was instructed to make all good exactly as he had first noted it, even to the ribbons spread upon the dais, and then to wall up the doorway. A later generation of robbers had to burrow under its threshold.

  Alexander proceeded to Persepolis, where the usurping satrap Orxines was brought before him. He had appointed himself on the lawful satrap’s death, and his subjects now accused him to Alexander of “killing many Persians without cause,” and of plundering temples and royal tombs, presumably the rock-cut tombs of Persepolis. He was convicted, hanged, and succeeded by Peucestas, who was already thoroughly Persianized, spoke fluent Persian, and became highly esteemed.

  Curtius’ version was clearly concocted a very long way from Persia. But calumny often exploits a scrap of truth, and it may be a fact that Bagoas took some part in Orxines’ trial; he had known, and could identify, Darius III’s palace treasures, some of which may have been among the looted grave goods. The Curtius story is as follows. Orxines, a noble and virtuous satrap, public-spiritedly takes charge of Persia during Alexander’s absence; and, on his return, arrives to do homage with a train of splendid gifts for him and all his retinue—except Bagoas, to whom he sends a special message that he does not honour catamites. After this typically Oriental approach to a royal favourite, the naïve and trusting Orxines awaits the reward of probity. Soon after, the tomb of Cyrus is opened (for the first time, it is here assumed); and the dead monarch, in the best traditions of Sparta or republican Rome, is found interred with only his old scimitar, bow and arrows. Alexander, utterly besotted with Bagoas, believes his lying story that Darius had told him the tomb was full of gold; this must be the source of Orxines’ wealth. On this evidence he is condemned; Bagoas approaches him as he is led away, at which he exclaims scornfully that it is a new thing in Persia for a eunuch to rule. This at a court where, not two decades back, a eunuch Grand Vizier had been supreme, and had killed two kings! It is seldom that the process of blackwashing Alexander can be traced in such close detail.

  At Persepolis, viewing the fire-blackened palace ruins, he expressed regrets. It would no longer have seemed to him the ideal climax for even the most successful party. But, as he made his way down to Susa, another burning lay before him. Calanus, who had never been ill in India, had some grave internal malady, perhaps cancer. Impatient of a long-drawn end disturbing to tranquillity, he asked of Alexander his own chosen death. Alexander pleaded with him in vain; then, knowing he would contrive it if it was refused, resolved it should be worthily done. At Susa, he commissioned Ptolemy to erect a splendid pyre. The cavalry and the royal elephants paraded. Calanus, too weak to mount the horse provided for him, was carried on a litter, singing hymns to his gods. Alexander had supplied rich funeral offerings to be burned with him, but he gave them away to friends and disciples, having no more need of possessions in death than in life. Telling them to rejoice, not mourn for him, he lay down on the pyre. When it was kindled, Alexander ordered the trumpets to sound, and the elephants to blare their royal salute; but there were no cries to drown, Calanus burned unflinching. Arrian says that Alexander was distressed because of his friendship; the rest “felt nothing but astonishment.” However, the drinking bout for the wake suggests a fairly violent reaction. Alexander as usual got himself up to bed (the most hostile sources have no instance of his ever being carried there); but thirty-odd men died “of the chill”; probably from finishing under the tables on a winter night.

  Arrian and Plutarch both refer to a story that Calanus’ friends came up to take leave of him as he approached the pyre; but he would bid no farewell to Alexander, saying that they would meet again in Babylon.

  A happier feast was the reunion with Nearchus and his fleet, which had arrived by river; the men of this much-enduring Odyssey got another festival. Awards for valour in India were given; and Hephaestion was now raised over even the highly valued Craterus to be chief Chiliarch; in Persian terms, Grand Vizier. Till now, no office had carried absolute precedence next after Alexander; he had smoothed the earlier rivalry by saying that Craterus was the King’s friend, Hephaestion was Alexander’s. But a shared ordeal leaves its mark on any human relationship; and this tribute must have expressed Alexander’s feelings after the desert march. That Craterus accepted it without pique is evident from the perfect trust in him which Alexander showed to the end.

  In Susa a few more untrustworthy satraps were deposed or, when too criminal and dangerous, killed. The replacements were, overall, mor
e often Macedonian than Persian; men proved in command under his eye. These choices turned out well; but any Greek hopes that he would now discard “barbarian ways” soon faded. Hurried along, like so many short-lived men of genius, by a kind of creative urgency, he was planning for a new generation in which such distinctions should disappear.

  Before marching east he had left in the Susa palace the Queen Mother, Sisygambis, and her grandchildren. The boy, who would now be about fourteen, does not reappear in history; he must simply have been merged in the Iranian nobility during the succession wars. Both his sisters were of marriageable age. Alexander now married the elder one, at a ceremony of such importance that she could only henceforth be regarded as his chief wife. For this was much more than a wedding; unlike the burning of Persepolis, it was a genuine manifesto. Eighty other couples shared it; chief officers and friends to whom he gave, with large dowries, girls from the highest families in Persia.

  Roxane must have been in the city. What she said is unknown; what she thought, she wrote in blood after his death. She bided her time. None of the chosen bridegrooms, nor the kin of the chosen brides, demurred; Alexander’s will sufficed. His own bride was called either Stateira (her mother’s name) or Barsine; the sources differ. Her sister, Drypetis, was given to Hephaestion; Alexander wanted them to be linked in kinship through their children. Craterus got a niece of Darius; Ptolemy a daughter of Artabazus; Nearchus a grandchild of his by the Greek general Memnon and the other Barsine, alleged (though improbably in her lifetime) to be the mother of the dubious pretender. The list reveals that all this time the children of the dead guerrilla chief, Spitamenes, had lived under Alexander’s protection; his daughter was given to Seleucus, who, unlike most of the others, did not desert her when Alexander was dead, or set her aside for a more politic marriage; she became a queen and the mother of a dynasty.