The Nature of Alexander

by Mary Renault

  After this, 10,000 elderly mercenaries were affectionately seen off without trouble; paid for their travel time, with a bounty of a talent each. Alexander took into his care the children of their campaign wives; he knew what their lives would be as foreign bastards in Macedon, and promised to have the boys brought up as Macedonians and good soldiers. He would present them to their fathers when they were men. Why not? He was only thirty-two.

  Contained in the veterans’ departure was an act of great political significance. They went under the command of Craterus, allegedly in need of sick leave (perhaps really so; he was given a deputy in case of his incapacitation); but appointed, when he reached Macedon, to assume the Regency.

  Antipater had held this office ever since Alexander’s boyhood in every absence of two successive kings, except when it was held by Alexander. For ten years he had been the virtual master of Greece. He was now ordered to come out with the draft of fresh troops from Macedon. What plans Alexander had for him is uncertain, since he never came. Alexander may have merely wished to separate him from Olympias as he had once temporarily separated Craterus and Hephaestion. The constant friction between Queen and Regent was an old story; but new factors had accumulated. There was the restoration of the exiles thrown out by Antipater’s puppet regimes; there was his continued close friendship with Aristotle, from whom since the squires’ conspiracy Alexander had been estranged. Olympias, though mischievous, was not a fool, and may have sent information which her son took seriously. Arrian says that he never at any time expressed the least ill will to Antipater; who, however, was extremely perturbed when the royal courier reached him. While Craterus was crossing Asia at the easy pace his health and his veterans’ needed, the Regent sent off his son Cassander to plead his cause. The two men must have met somewhere along the road; and the encounter can hardly have been amicable.

  Meantime, Alexander was traveling on from Opis to Ecbatana; and here Arrian, nearly all of whose text has survived, has a frustrating gap in an important human story. The text reads, after the tear in it, “… Hephaestion. It is said that yielding to these words, Hephaestion was reconciled with Eumenes; unwillingly, Eumenes being willing.” It may be inferred that these words were Alexander’s. Plutarch, an inveterate muddler whose chronology hardly exists, says that during the Indian campaign Hephaestion and Craterus drew their swords upon each other and a faction fight was about to start, when Alexander rode up and stopped it, rebuking Hephaestion publicly and Craterus in private. The course of subsequent events makes it seem much more likely that this incident belongs to Hephaestion’s quarrel with Eumenes.

  Eumenes was a distinguished Greek, one of the Susa bridegrooms. He had been private secretary in turn to Philip and Alexander, and under the latter had held command in the field as well. He was a shrewd and capable man, active later in the succession wars. He had had a little brush with Alexander which has had serious consequences for history. After the desert march, Alexander’s immediate supply of money had run out, and he asked his friends for a whip-round loan. Eumenes’ contribution was very mean; and since Alexander was known to return such favours with interest, he was annoyed. With simple, not to say crude, Macedonian humour, he arranged for Eumenes’ tent to catch fire, in order to observe the salvage. It amounted to 1,000 talents in specie, an enormous fortune; but the royal archives and correspondence had gone up in smoke, a loss scholars are still lamenting. If Eumenes already disliked Hephaestion he may have blamed him for the idea. Later, when Susa was crowded out for the festival, Hephaestion, then high in power, had billeted a visiting musician in the house reserved by Eumenes; and there had been a row, in which blame cannot be apportioned since no more details survive. This feud must have smouldered on the march to Opis; and seemingly in the incident missing from Arrian it broke out in flame. Alexander may have lost his temper—especially if he thought that faction among the troops had contributed to the mutiny—or he may have acted in cool-headed judgment to prevent a dangerous brawl. Arrian’s account of his words would be worth much more than Plutarch’s, who says, in his Craterus version of the story, that Alexander reminded Hephaestion to whom he owed his position, and threatened death to whichever of the men opened the feud again. Whatever really happened would be of deep interest, especially in view of its sequel.

  Alexander with his court, including Roxane but not Barsine-Stateira (she must have remained with her grandmother in the Susa harem), rode up towards Ecbatana, viewing on the way the royal horse herds, and a parade of “Amazons” laid on by a local satrap, of whom he had once inquired about this fabled race; perhaps the idea of them appealed to his ambisexual nature. They now appeared, classically correct down to the bared right breast, and armed with the traditional small axe. Though they manoeuvred dashingly, Alexander did not think their unaccustomed weapons would avail them much against sex-starved soldiers, and had them escorted protectively out of camp.

  Ecbatana, the beautiful city romantically described by much-travelled Herodotus, must have been a cold lodging for poor Darius’ last winter; it was in summer perfection now. Alexander, though busy with future plans (he wanted the Caspian explored in the hope of a northeast passage to India), relaxed at last in this Persian paradise—the word itself is Persian, and means a beautiful park. Ever averse to doing nothing, he invited along the usual crowd of distinguished artists, and held competitions, banquets and games. No doubt drink flowed freely, though not more than often before. It is important to remember that the behaviour pattern of heavy drinkers, after the point of disinhibition has been reached, is always essentially repetitive. Had Alexander become increasingly addicted, we should certainly hear of outbreaks of violence, similar to the one which caused Cleitus’ death. It may be inferred that his penitence was more than temporary; it taught him a dreadful lesson.

  During these festivities, Hephaestion went down with a fever, but after a week was mending. Alexander left the palace to preside over an athletic contest for boys. A message reached him that Hephaestion was suddenly worse. “They say the stadium was full of people”; leaving them to stare at his abrupt departure, he hurried to the sickbed, but was still too late.

  Against danger, wounds, extremes of weather, hardship, fatigue, sickness, the pressure of responsibility, the fear of his own death, he had willed himself into invulnerable fortitude. This blow struck him where he was without defence, and his reason barely withstood it. For a day and a night he lay upon the body, till his friends dragged him off by force; for three days he could only he weeping or mute, fasting and unapproachable. The tragedy he had enacted to impress the soldiers at Opis was changed to bitter reality. When he roused himself it was to a wild extravagance of mourning. He sheared all his hair like Achilles for Patroclus (the usual tribute was a single lock, tied into a grave wreath). He had the manes and tails of all the horses clipped as well, and the ornaments removed from the city walls.

  The sources give no reason to suppose that the lovers had been still estranged when Hephaestion died. But the self-reproaches of bereavement are pitilessly retrospective; everything is remembered. Not long since, Alexander had put kingship before friendship, perhaps with good cause; but such things are re-lived with agony. Certainly for a time he was barely rational. It is, however, by no means certain that he was irrational to hang Hephaestion’s doctor.

  Plutarch says that while this doctor (a Greek called Glaucias; the trusted Philip must have been dead) was at the theatre, the patient broke his diet (unspecified) and had for breakfast a chicken and a bottle of wine. (The Greeks normally took wine at breakfast.) Arrian mentions wine alone. Whatever he had, he died very soon after, since Alexander lay on the body “the greater part of the day.” Arrian, who uses a number of sources for this event which unluckily he does not name, quotes one as saying that Alexander put the doctor to death for giving a noxious drug. Not only was this a reasonable suspicion then; it still is today.

  This sudden crisis in a young, convalescent man is very hard to account for. Peritonitis from
burst appendix is not an instant killer. Typhoid suggests itself; it causes hunger pains, solid food will perforate the ulcerated intestine and the patient can die of bleeding; but this process would be considered rapid if it took as little as six hours; and Alexander must have galloped back from the stadium in something more like minutes. Such a swift collapse could be produced by an atypical, massive haemorrhage; but it is far more consistent with poisoning, and would certainly seem so to Alexander with the medical knowledge of his day. The doctor’s position was invidious. He could have given the wrong medicine while everyone was at the festival; told the patient (afterwards denying it) that he might take a meal, which could then be blamed for the death; and then gone off where he could not be found—this was anyway reprehensible—leaving the drug to work. It was no doubt the vain search for him which caused the fatal delay in sending for Alexander. Like all powerful men Hephaestion had enemies, and this Alexander knew. Patroclus must be avenged, and Achilles was in no state to split hairs about it. But after his first frenzy he would know that Glaucias, if guilty, could only have been an agent; and with him had died the knowledge of his principal.

  Theoretically, Craterus could have planned it from a distance; but towards him Alexander never showed the least impairment of trust, which shows that any conflict between him and Hephaestion must long since have blown over. It was Eumenes who lived in terror from day to day. His feud had been recent, long and hot. Plutarch, who wrote a separate Life of him, says Alexander had quickly regretted having supported him against Hephaestion. Regret had now turned to wormwood. He was harsh to anyone who had been at odds with the dead man, but most to Eumenes, whom he suspected of rejoicing. Considering his state of mind, Eumenes must have wondered how soon he would wake up one morning convinced that he knew the murderer. The secretary, a prudent man of affairs, protected himself by instituting elaborate and costly memorial dedications. Alexander, who had known him all his life, must, as he came to himself, have abandoned his suspicions; for he relented at these tributes, and devoted himself to his own offerings. To a man of his time they were a form of communication with the departed, the only one now left him; and, in spite of Calanus’ teachings, action was the only release he knew.

  He forbade all music in court and camp; he ordered mourning in every city of the empire; he dedicated to Hephaestion his late regiment, to bear his name in perpetuity and carry his image as its standard. Architects and sculptors were set designing memorial shrines and statues for the larger cities. Alexandria’s were to be outstanding; and here the extravagant Pseudo-Callisthenes is for once of value; he can at least be listened to when describing his native town. Arrian quotes, and rightly deplores, a letter purporting to be from Alexander to Cleomenes, satrap of Egypt, the man later turned out by Ptolemy. It says that in return for the proper care of Hephaestion’s shrines, Cleomenes will be granted immunity for all offences, past or future. The document is of some importance, since if Alexander wrote it he must have been temporarily insane; but in the form here given it is certainly spurious (there is a reference to the Pharos, built eighty years later); and the nature of the immunity really granted can be guessed from Pseudo-Callisthenes. Describing Ptolemy’s foundation of a state cult temple to Sarapis and Apis, he defines the status of its High Priest, his regalia, and his stipend. “And he would be inviolate and free from every obligation.” Alexander knew as much as Ptolemy about Egyptian religious procedure; his real instruction must have been to set up such an inviolate priesthood for the cult of Hephaestion.

  Saddest and most desperate was an embassy to Amnion’s oracle at Siwah, asking for Hephaestion to be granted divine honours. (Hence of course the priesthood.) It was more than an aggrandizement of the dead. How else could the deified son of Ammon be reunited, in the world to come, with the mortal son of Amyntor of Pella?

  Concerned with all this he forgot his distraught suspicions. Among those on whom they fell, there is no word of the one with the strongest motive of all; who, comforting him in his loss, must have most rejoiced at it. He was not to know that she had resolution and ruthlessness enough to have brought it about. That was not revealed till after he was dead. Then it was clear that no one can have hated Hephaestion as bitterly as did Roxane, who murdered his young widow the moment her hands were free.

  Before leaving Ecbatana, the crowd of artists gathered for the festival was summoned from its mourning silence to compete in funeral games. The funeral itself was to be in Babylon, by Homeric fire. The embalmed body was entrusted to the convoy of Perdiccas, the new Chiliarch, a connection of the Macedonian royal house and bearing one of its traditional names. Alexander himself, restless to be gone and dull his grief with action, led an expedition against a brigand tribe, the Cossaeans, who had long plagued the road between Babylon and Susa. The Persian kings had never succeeded in subduing them, finding it cheaper to buy them off. He went after them in their winter forts—in summer they lived as nomads—and forced them to surrender. (With his usual respect for the brave, he recruited a corps of them later.) Ptolemy, his co-commander, reported it a tough mountain campaign, in which Alexander was active. His chest wound must have been relieved by the months of physical rest. Yet this war may have been his death warrant. It kept him in the hills for two months at the time when Persian kings had held court in Babylon for its mild winter season. He reached it in spring, and stayed on into its hot, unhealthy summer.

  “We defy augury,” says Hamlet just before his death; recalling Alexander, whose noble dust he mused upon in the graveyard. Alexander had had his first augury already. A certain Apollodorus, who had a bad conscience about some peccadillo of his committed in Babylon while Alexander was in India, asked his brother Peithagoras, a haruspex diviner, to read his future in the sacrificial entrails, explaining that he stood most in fear of Hephaestion and the King. The seer wrote to his brother, by then in Ecbatana (there had perhaps been a wait for an auspicious day), saying he need not fear Hephaestion; the lobeless liver of the victim foretold his death. He died the day after Apollodorus got the letter; which so impressed him that he wrote back to Babylon, asking what the omens might be for Alexander. In due course the same reply came back. Evidently in the meantime Apollodorus had got over whatever fear of the King had troubled him; he went to him in sincere concern, and begged him to beware of dangers, though without disclosing the full story of the omen, or its gravity. Alexander thanked him kindly, and rode off, taking no notice, to the Cossaean war. More auguries now awaited him.

  The first were fortunate. Coming down into the Euphrates plains, he was met by envoys from peoples beyond the frontiers of his empire: Carthaginians, Libyans and Ethiopians; Scythians, Celts, and the semi-barbarous Italian Tyrrhenians, Bruttians and Lucanians. They not only asked for treaties of friendship with him; they brought him their disputes to settle, as if he were an oracle above contention. Later, Arrian says, it was much disputed whether Rome had sent an embassy; he himself thought not. But Alexander certainly knew something of the Romans; his brother-in-law and uncle, Alexandros of Epirus, had fought for two years in Italy on the side of the Tarentine Greeks against the Bruttian and Lucanian incursions, till killed by treachery. He had been in alliance with Rome, and his dispatches must have reached both his sister Olympias and Alexander himself, who, whether the Romans sent him envoys or not, must already have had his eye on them—especially if not. Here history’s greatest If briefly appears, and vanishes.

  Men from these faraway places had never been seen by him or his people before. With new vistas, new prospects opened. But his next message from fate was personal. Nearchus, who had preceded him to Babylon, came anxiously to meet him. (Nearchus’ memoirs are a deplorable loss to history. Their surviving fragments show a vivid style, a talent for description, and a deep, perceptive affection for Alexander.) He brought a message from the priests of Bel, the great god of Assyrian Babylonia, who divided sky from earth and set the courses of the stars. His priests were astrologers; and they had descried a most adverse aspect o
f the heavens for the King’s entry into Babylon. They begged him to pass it by.

  At the Tigris crossing they met him themselves, and, says Arrian, drew him apart from his companions. Presumably through an interpreter, they warned him not to continue his westward march, but to turn east. At that time of year this would have been the normal progress of a Persian king going to Susa. This one, however, had plans which could only be carried out in Babylon. He replied with a line of Euripides which said (whatever the interpreter made of it) that the best prophecies are those that come true. A sceptic he had never been; but he liked his own way, and had survived bad omens before. He had had one at Gaza, and had not bled quite to death; he had had one at the Oxus, and recovered from his cholera or whatever he had got. Yet at Multan, where he had been a hair’s breadth from death, he had had no warning at all. And he had a present suspicion of ulterior motives. His vast gift to the temple restoration fund at his earlier visit had produced, he heard, no temple. Bel’s tithes had been coming in ever since Xerxes’ demolition; when the new structure rose, they would have to go to its upkeep instead of to the priests. After Harpalus’ defalcations, he must have wondered about the building fund itself. Babylon had no reputation for austerity.

  But even a suspect god should be given some benefit of doubt; so he decided to enter the city, at least, from the eastern side. He led his men round, but found the way barred by swamps. Floundering about in Euphrates mud, in deference to a mercenary ruse, would have been humiliating; it made up his divided mind. Arrian, perhaps here echoing Nearchus, says, “So partly from choice, and partly not, he disobeyed the god.” Not long after his entry into the city, he sent for Apollodorus’ brother, the seer Peithagoras, and asked what sign had made him send his warning. Evidently Apollodorus had been afraid to say; but one man of integrity perceived another. The omen was described; Alexander asked its real meaning, and was told, “Something very grave.” His only outward response was to express respect for the seer’s honesty. Aristobulus said in his memoirs that Peithagoras himself had told him this.