The Nature of Alexander

by Mary Renault

  What he is likely to have said to himself, as he dressed for dinner and felt the first shivers of fever, is simply that it was nothing much; like something he had picked up in Bactria and thrown off in a couple of days; nothing to make a fuss about. But it is perhaps significant that the last event of his life which Arrian records before its onset is the return of the envoys from Siwah, bringing Amnion’s oracle about Hephaestion. He did not quite qualify for a god; but he could be worshipped as a divine hero. His cult was authorized; his shade had the entry to the Elysian Fields; and the difference of rank had never mattered much. This may have been the occasion of the letter to Cleomenes in Alexandria. It was decreed also by Alexander that all business contracts, whose form invoked gods to witness them as God is invoked on the witness stand today, should be inscribed “In Hephaestion’s name.”

  Plutarch and Arrian, between them, tell the rest of the story. Plutarch says that Alexander gave a splendid entertainment in honour of Nearchus. Arrian says he had held ceremonies that day, on his soothsayers’ advice, to ward off the evil omens. Both agree that when bedtime came, Medius of Larissa invited him to a late-night party, promising it would be a good one.

  This is the first we hear in the sources of Medius, except for the fact, recorded by Nearchus, that he had enjoyed the privilege of commanding a trireme on the Indus cruise, indicating, since he held no high command, that he must have been one of Alexander’s friends. He was accused by ancient writers of flattery, perhaps in a book he wrote which has disappeared, or perhaps merely because he had won Alexander’s favour. To have become a valued companion since his bereavement must surely have needed more than flattery; some imagination and tact; even the most hostile sources make no sexual suggestions. Unlike Cassander, Medius had no known motive whatever for wishing Alexander dead, and every reason for wanting him alive; he was a generous friend. In Cassander’s record, one murder more or less can be only a matter of detail; but Medius, whether or not an admirable man, is almost certainly a gravely slandered one.

  As Alexander’s host two evenings running, he had opportunity. That he was the lover of Iollas, Alexander’s cupbearer, is most likely a canard meant to furnish him with a motive; Iollas, even if guilty, could have acted on his own at any time, nor could a festive occasion have freed him from responsibility. Both Arrian and Plutarch dismiss as absurd the tale that Alexander was poisoned at Medius’ party; as, on the medical evidence, well they may. Both therefore mention only to reject it a story that on draining a “cup of Heracles” Alexander gave a sharp cry of pain, and had to leave the feast. It may indeed be just a propaganda story concocted during the succession wars to smear Medius or Perdiccas; but it is interesting that, if true, it would fit the clinical picture very well. It goes without saying that any poison which could produce such an effect as soon as it was swallowed would have its victim dead in convulsions well within the hour. But a “cup of Heracles” was a very large beaker, drained without heeltaps. In a Babylonian summer the wine was probably well chilled from a snow pit. A draught like this, flung down on a hot night by a man with a rising temperature, could easily cause an instant, violent stomach cramp. On no other occasion is Alexander ever said to have cried out with pain; anything so uncharacteristic has a certain persuasiveness, for in such a spasm it could have been involuntary.

  If it happened, nothing much need have been thought of it at the time. Later, it would have raised dreadful doubts in the minds of Medius and his guests; mutual suspicions; personal fears. Small wonder if the incident was hushed up, and the hushing up bred sinister rumour.

  Enwrapped in much mumbo-jumbo, Plutarch has probably preserved an essential truth: “the poison was water.” Most likely it was only the water of downstream Euphrates, laden with the untreated excreta of a dozen diseases. But this, of course, is not what Plutarch meant; and Iollas, Cassander’s brother, the royal cupbearer, remains a dubious figure still. Man did not wait for Pasteur to learn that water could be lethal; he could connect cause and effect. Florence Nightingale, who to the end of a long life refused to believe in germs, was well aware that certain pumps and wells in London were dangerous. Empiric knowledge like this must go back to the dawn of civilization; it was common currency in classical times. It is an extraordinary fact that not only did the kings of Persia have their drinking water drawn from a special spring; they had it boiled. No one knows why, or whether the lost science of some earlier age had been preserved as ritual. Nor is it known whether Alexander kept it up at his Persian court; very likely it was just continued as routine. But, unless turbid, all water looks much alike. It may have been the instrument of many undiscovered murders which have passed for—as in a sense they were—natural deaths. Its disadvantage was that it was not infallible; the infection might not take, or the victim might recover. Its advantage was the enormous one of being undetectable—unless someone talked; and, according to Plutarch, someone did. That the poison was water was, he said, confided by Antigonus One-Eye to a certain Hagnothemis, of whom, unfortunately, nothing else is known.

  He claimed that the water was sent by Antipater on Aristotle’s advice, and carried by Cassander. It was alleged to have been drawn from an outlet of the Styx at Nonacris, its lethal power residing in its intense cold, which would eat through anything except an ass’s hoof, in which it was conveyed.

  Antigonus is little heard of while one of Alexander’s officers; he became a king in nearer Asia. He bears a good character, but had later contacts with Antipater and could have heard something then. The Styx is innocuous; the obscure Hagnothemis may have been a compulsive liar; but Pseudo-Callisthenes, in a fanciful account of the murder, puts in the remarkable detail that the ass-hoof container had been boiled. Just as country wise women were using substances containing penicillin long before its principles were known to science, so malevolent empiricists may have found that a boiled container would preserve a microbiotic strain from destructive contact with other organisms; while the jelly formed in the hoof would make a perfect culture. Tainted water could surely have been found within a few miles of Babylon. Many such infections produce no dysentery, only fever and increasing weakness, just as the Journal describes; without a timely antibiotic, they can still end fatally.

  After the party, Alexander slept most of the day. This statement has made the Journal suspect to some historians, who take it simply as the description of an all-day hangover. But extreme fatigue is typical at the onset of severe infections, often the first thing complained of. Feeling tired and off-colour, he spent the day in bed to be rested for the evening. Medius had asked him to dinner, and he went.

  It is this second party which brings in question his psychological state. Here is a man with a religious respect for omens. He has had several bad ones, warning him of the gravest danger. He has spent part of the previous day in solemn ceremonies to avert it. He is planning to start on a major expedition within two weeks. He has had as good a grounding in medical science as any layman of his time. He knows he is starting to run up a fever. Yet he gets up, goes off to an informal dinner party of no ceremonial importance, and sits up half the night over the wine. All in all, it seems very odd behaviour.

  Though he left late, he left before the end. Late as it was he had a bath, and for the first time felt really ill; he had a bed made up for him in the bath house by the pool, and spent the rest of the night there. In the morning he had to be carried by litter to perform the daily offering at the household altar; but he proceeded as if he had a trifling indisposition which need not impede his plans. The march was still scheduled to start in three days and the fleet to sail in four. In the sweltering heat he took another bath, after which he felt much worse; it probably brought on a rigor. He was now in high fever, but continued to organize the expedition, only postponing its departure by a few days. He began to seek in the grilling river plain the cool and shade he had known in boyhood, having himself ferried across the Euphrates to the “paradise” with its trees, and sleeping at night beside the palace bath
ing pool. By the ninth day he could scarcely make the offering when he had been carried to the shrine, but was still briefing his officers. Nothing is said of any doctor attending him; he may have lost faith in them since Hephaestion’s death. Had he had one, the man, however blameless, would surely have been named in legend as a party to his murder. The whole account presents an extraordinary picture: stubborn mistreatment of an illness he should by now have known was dangerous; and stubborn refusal to admit the danger into his conscious thought.

  Plutarch has a detail here which again casts a shadow on Iollas: “Aristobulus says that when he was lightheaded with fever, he drank wine and thereon grew violently delirious.” This certainly suggests that he had not been regularly drinking it; people with fever usually lose all craving for alcohol and reject it in favour of something more refreshing; a wise provision of nature. If it was offered him when his mind was wandering, no matter by whom, there is a strong suspicion of malice. For a man in his condition it was little short of poison, and may have had a critical effect.

  His delirium cannot have lasted long; but his sickness was advancing, and on the tenth day he could deceive himself no longer. He ordered all his chief officers to be summoned before him, and the junior ones to assemble outside the doors; and had himself carried back from the garden to address them. But before he got there, the fatal complication, whose approach he must have felt when he gave the order, had taken hold. He could not make himself heard.

  A man with lower powers of resistance would have developed pneumonia much sooner. Now it would have spread from his damaged lung into the scar tissue of his chest wound, and invaded the lung lining as pleurisy. He was probably in great pain. It is evident that though his mind was clear at the end, from this time on he could only manage a whispered word or two.

  He was now too ill to be moved from the royal bedchamber. All this time, the soldiers who had seen him carried about had been fairly optimistic; most of them must have had a bout of fever somewhere in Asia. But what the officers had seen could not be kept secret. When on the second day he did not appear, the men began to say, as they had said three years before upon the Indus, that his death was being concealed from them. They mobbed the palace gates and demanded to see him for themselves. They were just in time.

  It can only have been on his orders that they were let inside. A door was opened at the far end of the room, so that they could pass through in single file; and thus Alexander held his last parade. As the first man entered, he turned himself towards them, and held himself there till the last man had gone by. Not one of them went without acknowledgment; “he greeted them all, lifting his head though with difficulty, and signing to them with his eyes.”

  Ever ready to die in war, he must long have been prepared to die in pain, and resolved it should not diminish him. The exhaustion must have shortened his last hours, but it is unlikely that at this stage he could have recovered. The necessary suffering he accepted in return for what had been essential to him all his life: to be equal to his legend; to be beloved; and to requite it extravagantly, regardless of expense. Whether sustained by pride, by philosophy, by belief in the immortality of his fame or of his soul, he met his end with no less dignity, fortitude and consideration for others than Socrates himself. And he, till he drank the quick painless hemlock, was a healthy man with a long, fulfilled life behind him; Alexander carried it through with a great design in ruins, and in the distress of a mortal sickness.

  No pretence was now maintained that he was not near death. Peucestas and six other friends spent the night in prayer for him at the temple of Sarapis, a much-metamorphosed Egyptian Asclepius whose cult Alexander seems to have brought to Babylon, where it was merged in that of some local god. Asclepius’ patients slept in his sanctuary to have healing dreams; Sarapis was consulted by vigil, giving his oracular verdict at dawn. In unselfish concern for the friend whose life he had saved in India, Peucestas was absent from the death chamber, and from the shadowy power struggle already forming.

  Alexander is credited with remarking ironically that he foresaw a great contest at his funeral games, but it falls a little too pat; he had never been a wit and had now no breath to spare for it. He took off his royal ring and handed it to Perdiccas, which in itself did no more than appoint a temporary deputy—he did not give up easily—though it was accepted as the appointment of a Regent. But the time came, as it was bound to come, when his generals asked him, “To whom do you leave your kingdom?”

  It has been widely assumed that he was being asked to choose a successor from among his chief officers. But by now, if Barsine-Stateira was pregnant, he may have confided a secret of such dynastic importance to high-ranking friends like Perdiccas and Nearchus. If so, he had two unborn children of unknown sex; and, in case they should both be male, was being confronted by Macedonians with the age-old question of the polygamous Macedonian kings.

  Arrian gives his answer: “Hoti to kratisto”—to the strongest; words which acquired the force of prophecy during the succession wars. But it can also mean, “To the best.” He was dying; explanations were beyond him; he may have meant that when the children were of age, the Macedonian Assembly should choose between them. Superlative for comparative in colloquial speech was probably used as loosely then as now. That is, if “kratisto” was what he really said.

  Normally pronounced, “kratisto” and “Kratero” are not very much alike. But whispered by a man rattling and gasping with pneumonia they could be confused quite easily; especially if it was convenient. Craterus was the man highest in Alexander’s trust. He had already been appointed Regent of Macedon. If he was now meant to take over the Regency of the empire, on behalf of the unborn heirs, it would hardly be welcome news to Perdiccas, present holder of the royal ring. Probably Alexander’s words were barely audible, except to someone leaning over him. There may have been an expedient mistake.

  Early next morning, Peucestas and his friends returned from the healing shrine. They had asked the god whether it would help Alexander if he were carried into the sanctuary; but the oracle had replied that it would be better for him where he was.

  No doubt the deity was concerned for his professional reputation; but his advice was sound. It allowed Alexander to produce, for the last time, that basic ingredient of all the multiform legends which his death was in process of bringing to birth—his indestructible sense of style. Curtius, for once renouncing rhetoric, gives his parting words. When Perdiccas asked him at what times he wished to have his divine honours paid him, he answered, “When you are happy.”

  A dark mist crossed the sky, and a bolt of lightning was seen to fall from heaven into the sea, and with it a great eagle. And the bronze statue of Arimazd in Babylon quivered; and the lightning ascended into heaven, and the eagle went with it, taking with it a radiant star. And when the star disappeared in the sky, Alexander too had shut his eyes.

  The legend had begun.

  Postscript

  AFTER MUCH WRANGLING, INTRIGUE, and intervals of actual fighting, it was agreed among the generals that it was unthinkable the throne should pass to anyone not of Alexander’s blood. The feeble-minded Arridaeus was brought out to rule under Perdiccas’ regency, pending the birth of Roxane’s child.

  In Curtius’ account, confused references are made in the debate to a child of Barsine. That Darius’ daughter is referred to seems probable in Plutarch. The most persuasive evidence for this is the action of Roxane. Unlike Alexander when he lost Hephaestion, she proceeded at once to practical matters. She sent off by fast courier a letter to the Princess, forged in Alexander’s name, summoning her immediately to Babylon. It must have been by using the royal post relay, which raced day and night, that the news of the death was outrun. If it met her on the road, she did not turn back, still expecting to be met with honour. She arrived with Drypetis her sister, Hephaestion’s widow. Roxane had both of them killed, and their bodies thrown in a well. It was precisely what Olympias would have done in her position; when the two que
ens met, they must have found much in common.

  Plutarch says that Perdiccas was her accomplice in the deed; but this is most unlikely in view of the fact that the sex of her own child was still unknown. Faced, however, with the fait accompli, and only a single child of Alexander now in prospect, he most probably helped to cover up for her.

  The son, Alexander IV, was thirteen years old when Cassander murdered him together with Roxane. No shred of information about his character or appearance has survived.

  Olympias had been lynched four years before: Cassander’s soldiers, who had themselves voted for her death, could not bring themselves after all to kill the mother of Alexander. Cassander handed her over to the numerous relatives of those she herself had killed. She met her fate, of which the details are mercifully lacking, with unflinching courage.

  She had outlived her son seven years. Sisygambis, the Queen Mother of Persia, survived the news of his death five days. On receiving it she bade her family and friends farewell, turned her face to the wall and died by fasting.

  Ancient Sources

  IN COURTESY TO THEIR fellow scholars, classical historians naturally and properly take for granted a previous knowledge of the ancient source material. This book is meant for general readers; and the following list may serve as a guide to those wishing to make their own assessments and explorations. Almost all the works are available in translation; the relative reliability of the more important has been discussed in the text.