Virtues of War

by Steven Pressfield

When the laughter subsides, Telamon is compelled by his mates’ summons to step forward.

  “Indeed, gentlemen,” he acknowledges, “I have quizzed these yogis. I have learned that in their philosophy all of humanity is divided into three types: the man of ignorance, tamas; the man of action, rajas; and the man of wisdom, sattwa. We around this table are men of action. That is what we are. But though I have lived my own life as a man of this type, and all my previous lives—as Pythagoras would say, citing his doctrine of transmigration of the soul—I have always wished to become a man of wisdom. That is why I fight and why I have pursued the vocation of arms. Life is a battle, is it not? And how better to train for it than to be a soldier? For have you not noticed of these sages, my friends, that they are the consummate soldiers? Inured to pain, oblivious to hardship, each takes up his post at dawn and does not relinquish it for thirst, hunger, heat, cold, fatigue. He is cheerful in all weathers, self-motivated, self-governed, self-commended. Would, Alexander, that we had an army with such a will to fight! We would cross this river before the count of three hundred.”

  “Are you saying, Telamon,” I inquire, “that your training as a soldier prepares you for the vocation of sage?”

  The party responds with amusement. But I am serious. Telamon answers that he wishes he were that tough. “These men are beyond me, my friend. I must apprentice myself to them for many lifetimes.”

  The mercenary declares that I possess much of this quality as well.

  “To your credit, Alexander, you too are not attached to your comforts or even to your life. You care nothing for the lands you have conquered or their treasure, except as they serve to further your campaigns. But there is one thing to which you are indeed attached, to your soul’s detriment.”

  “And what is that, my friend?”

  “Your victories. You remain proud of them. This is not good for you.” Telamon indicates the terrace, the camp, the army. “You should be able to walk away from all this now, this night. Get up! Take nothing! Can you?”

  Laughter from all. “And you think I couldn’t?”

  “You cannot leave your victories or your great name, and you cannot leave these comrades whom you love and who love and depend upon you. Who is master of this empire? Do you rule it, or does it rule you?”

  More laughter. “You know I only endure this from you, Telamon. No one else can get away with it!”

  “But, my dear friend,” the Arcadian replies, not laughing, “you must be able to get up and walk away. Being a soldier is not enough. All answers are not contained within the warrior’s code. I know. I have lived it many lifetimes. I am tired of it. I am ready to shuck it off, like a worn-out cloak.”

  Good-humored chaffing greets this. “Don’t leave us!” Ptolemy cries. Others echo the sentiment profanely.

  Telamon has turned toward me. “I schooled you as a boy, Alexander, to be superior to fear and to anger. You learned eagerly. You vanquished hardship and hunger and cold and fatigue. But you have not learned to master your victories. These hold you. You are their slave.”

  I feel anger start. Telamon sees it. He continues.

  “The yogi’s remark that he has ‘conquered the need to conquer the world’ could not have been more apt. What the sage means is that he has mastered his daimon. For what is the daimon but that will to supremacy which resides not only in all men but in beasts and even plants and is, at its heart, the essence of all aggressive life?”

  This hits me like a blow.

  “The daimon is inhuman,” Telamon states. “The concept of limits is alien to it. Unchecked, it devours everything, including itself. Is it evil? Is the acorn, aspiring to become the oak? Is the fingerling, seeking the sea? In nature, the will to dominion is held within bounds by the limited capacity of the beast. Only in man is this instinct unrestrained and only in that man”—he addresses me with concern—“like you, my friend, whose gifts and preeminence transcend all external governance. We have all known suicides,” Telamon finishes, “whose stem was this: A man must kill himself to slay his daimon.”

  All mirth has fled. My mates hold themselves rigid, anticipating an eruption of my wrath. On the contrary, I welcome Telamon’s words. I wish to hear more, for the issues he raises are those with which I too wrestle, day and night. My mentor reads this on my face.

  “Though you chaff me, Alexander, for purposing to become one day a man of wisdom, you yourself share this ambition, and have since you were a boy. It was that which drew you to me as a child, when you used to trail me around the barrack yard, marching at my heels like a shadow.”

  Laughter greets this, to the relief of all. Telamon continues, sober.

  “Further, I declare that this quality is what makes you superior to your father. Not superior as a commander, notice I say, although you are. Or braver as a soldier, although you are. You excel your father not for these reasons, but for your moral object, because you do wish to become a man of wisdom, whereas Philip was content to fight and fuck. Your sufferings, too, are greater than his, because it pains you to fall short of that which you know yourself capable. Your father recognized this. He knew you, even as a child, as his better. This is why he both loved and feared you, Alexander. And why you, like Hephaestion and me, are drawn to these sages of India and perceive in their aspirations the sign, if not the substance, of your own.”

  Thirty- Four

  “I HAVE COME TO HATE WAR”

  AMONG THE ARMY OF THE PUNJAB, as our force now calls itself, are a number of Indian divisions, including the Royal Horse Guard of Taxiles, archers and infantry under Raj Sasigupta, and companies of other allied princes. It is the ancient custom of these warriors, up to commencement of actual hostilities, to visit in person with the foe (of whom, in this country of widespread intermarriage, many are kinsmen, mentors, and mates) and in a most fraternal spirit. Numbers of our Indian allies paddle nightly across to Porus’s lines, as no few of Porus’s men row each evening across to ours.

  The Macedonians cannot conceive of such a thing. Upon first observing combatants of the foe disembarking on our shores, they arrest them at sword point and drag them off (some not so gently) to their commanders for interrogation. Porus’s officers are outraged at this, as are our own Indian allies. When I am made to understand the custom, I respect its chivalry. I order all captives released, their arms restored; no more prisoners to be taken. In fact I entertain at my table numbers of these gentlemen, sending them back across the river with gifts of honor.

  There is a problem with this. It erodes the Macedonians’ will to fight, as they come, with acquaintance, to admire and feel affection toward these champions of the foe. One sees these slender warriors strolling amiably about the camp, bearing their parasols and their bows of horn and ivory. When they converse, they stand on one foot like cranes, with the sole of the other set against the inside of the opposite thigh. Their hair is jet and worn in a topknot; their trousers, bloused above the knee, are of the gayest oranges and magentas. They adorn their persons with earrings of gold and possess the most brilliant smiles, and the most frequently employed. It helps to hate the enemy, I have found, or at least to consider them butchers or barbarians. The ksatriyas of Porus are neither, nor have they committed any crimes against the Macedonians.

  Preparing for the assault, I have sent numerous scouting parties across the river. All reports portray Porus’s domain as an extremely well-ordered kingdom, characterized by autonomous villages of farm smallholdings, cultivated by what would in Macedon be called a yeomanry of free, independent husbandmen, devoted to their king and regarding him with a fierce loyalty and affection. Scouts describe plots tidy and flourishing, wives hardworking and devoted, children bright and happy. In other words, the Macedonians have come to feel they are bringing war to paradise, and they like this not at all.

  Worse, the monsoons approach. The river seems to toy with us maliciously. Floods surge out of the mountains without warning, the product of storms too distant to see or hear, and these carry awa
y in moments the levees of interlaced timber, wicker, and stone, which the men have toiled for weeks in raising. Any watercraft caught on the river when these surges strike finds itself swept downstream at such a clip that rescuers along shore cannot keep it in sight even at the gallop.

  Disgruntlement smolders in the faces of the army; mischief breeds in their silences. I continue preparations for the assault. Nineteen hundred boats and rafts have been constructed on-site or transported in sections from the Indus and reassembled; I have these carted under cover of the premonsoon downpours to launching points up- and downriver. Divisions drill for waterborne assault and for action against elephants. Special boots are fitted for the horses, for fighting on marshy ground. I have sent to the rear for money and arms, to pump some spirit into the army. Two convoys are en route, from Ambhi and Regala, but with the rains and the difficult river crossings, they have not reached us. I have set a date in my mind for the attack, revealing it to no one, but delays have forced me to put it back twice, and a third time after that. Inaction demoralizes any army; it is driving this one closer to revolt and insurrection.

  One evening a deputation of disaffected officers presents itself at my pavilion. Hephaestion sends the lot packing before their petition can provoke my fury. We tramp the levee afterward, Hephaestion, Craterus, and I.

  “These bastards’ balls are getting big,” Craterus says, offering his usual profane assessment. “By the gods, I know their litany of bellyaching by heart!” And he looses a trumpetlike fart.

  “Yes,” I say. “But a deputation. That’s a new one.”

  “Bung their deputation.”

  “They looked pretty grave.” I cite by name several captains—good, serious men.

  Craterus indicates the river. “Let them be good and serious about that.”

  In camp again, we put in a long, productive evening, until several hours past midnight, when only the Pages, yawning, and Hephaestion remain.

  I ask him why he has been so quiet tonight.

  “Was I? I hadn’t noticed.”

  We have known each other too long to piss about. “Say it.”

  He glances to the Pages.

  I sign to them: Leave us.

  When they have gone, Hephaestion sits. He would take wine, I see, but will not permit himself.

  “I have come,” he says, “to hate war.”

  I should check him there. I have no need to hear the rest.

  “You asked me,” he says. “Shall I stop?”

  A tent pillar ascends at my shoulder. I clasp it, hard, to keep my hand from trembling.

  “It’s not fatigue,” Hephaestion explains, “or the wish to see home. It’s war itself. What it is.” He lifts his gaze to mine. “You feel rage now,” he says. “Your daimon seizes you.”

  “No.”

  But I do. It does.

  “Keep talking,” I insist. “I want to hear it.”

  “Before, I objected to the campaign in Afghanistan but not to the wider thrust of the expedition; in fact I embraced it with a passion equal to, if not exceeding, your own. But that has changed.

  “What we do is a crime, Alexander. In the end it is but butchery. For all the poets’ anthems, war’s object is nothing nobler than the imposition of one nation’s will upon another by means of force and threat of force. The soldier’s job is to kill men. We may call them enemy, but they are men like us. They love their wives and children no less than we; they are no less brave, or virtuous, or serve their country with less devotion. As for the men and others I have killed, or who have been slain at my command, I would bring them all back to life; yes, if I could, I would reanimate every one at once, no matter what the cost to me or to this expedition. I’m sorry. . . .”

  He wants to stop; I won’t let him.

  “Till Persepolis I stood with you, Alexander. Wrongs done to Greece must be avenged. But we have slain Persia’s king. We have burned her capital; we have made ourselves masters over all her lands. Now what?” He gestures east, across the river. “Shall we conquer these honest yeomen next? Why? How have they harmed us? By what right do we bring war against them? Pursuit of glory? This army stopped being glorious a long time ago. Or shall we cite Achilles and say we emulate the ‘virtues of war’? Rubbish! Any virtue carried to its extreme becomes a vice. Conquest? No man can rule another. The most devoted subject will trade in an instant his wealth, earned beneath your rule, for poverty he can call his own. We had a cause. We have none now.”

  He rises, running his hands through his hair in distress.

  “Who can stand against you, Alexander? You have become the oak that dwarfs the forest. The corps seethes with alienation and discontent. Yet one word from you will bring it to heel. Who can say no to you? Not I. Not they.”

  My mate regards me.

  “I thought I feared the loss of your love. That’s why I’ve kept my mouth shut. Because such a thing smacked of vanity and self-concern. But that’s not what I fear. I fear the loss of you from yourself. Your daimon eats you alive! It devours this army! I love Alexander but fear ‘Alexander.’ Which are you?” He faces me with an expression of despair. “We will cross this river for you. We will get you your victory. What then?”

  He finishes. His indictment is nothing I have not voiced to myself ten thousand times. But to speak it aloud, to my face . . .

  “You are the bravest man I have ever known, Hephaestion.”

  “Only the most desperate.” And he hides his face and weeps.

  The clasp on his cloak is the gold lion of Macedon. He is my deputy, second in command of the expeditionary force.

  “If I am killed in this fight,” I ask, “will you take the army home?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “You should replace me,” he says.

  I can only smile. “With whom?”

  Next day comes the elephant turd.

  The sergeant called Gunnysack has been sent with one of the scouting parties across the river. He comes back with a great dried elephant splat—putty-colored, two feet high, big around as a bathtub. We have all seen the droppings of work elephants. But this, of a beast of war, is of another scale entirely. It creates a sensation in camp. Everyone has to see it. And all must speculate on the size of the creature that dropped it.

  “By the gods,” declares Gunnysack, “if this monster craps on you, you’re a dead onion!”

  The men have had contact with war elephants (we captured fifteen after Gaugamela, who didn’t get into the fight) but not till now have they confronted the prospect of facing them in action. They are terrified. Now more daunting intelligence comes in: Porus, whose force of behemoths was originally fifty, has sent to his eastern princes, who have brought up three times that number, along with fresh thousands of archers, chariots, and infantry. Two hundred elephants arrayed at intervals of fifty feet, with infantry in between, make a front of nearly a mile, three ranks deep. Horses cannot endure the smell or trumpeting of these beasts; our cavalry, the soldiers fear, will neither mount out of the river in the face of such creatures nor be able to sustain a charge against them in the field. The men are appalled further by reports of the types of deaths dealt by these giants—that is, being crushed beneath their tread, gored by their tusks, even being lifted bodily by their trunks, to have one’s brains dashed out upon the earth.

  I check the infirmary. The sick list has tripled, flush with “accidental” woundings. Across the camp men congregate in groups; they glance up, sullen or shamefaced, when my eye lights upon them. Craterus and Perdiccas are for making examples; Ptolemy urges me to move up the assault. I want to wait (the money and equipment I have sent for will be here soon), but the mood of the camp compels me to take action. I summon the commanders of the army.

  “Macedonians and allies, you are not the force you used to be. Before, when I charged the foe, I felt your fiery valor close at my shoulder. Now I glance back, afraid you will not even be in sight! Look at you. You sulk and grumble; a tub of elephant shit sets you muttering.
Let us then, as my father used to say, call a spade a spade.”

  I address the officers outdoors, beneath the levee, so that the whole corps can gather and hear.

  “I have called you together here, once and for all, either to convince you to go forward or be convinced by you to turn back. Do you find fault with me, brothers? Have our labors together proved short of profit? If that is what you believe, I have no answer for you. If, however, it is because of this toil that all of Europe and Asia is now in your hands—namely, Greece and the islands of the Aegean, Illyria, Thrace, Phrygia, Ionia, Lydia, Caria, Cilicia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Syria, Armenia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Babylonia, Susiana, and the whole of the Persian Empire, not to say Parthia, Bactria, Areia, Sogdiana, Hyrcania, Arachosia, Tapuria, and half of India—then what is your complaint? Have I failed of generosity? There is not one of you I haven’t made rich. Do I keep the choicest bounty to myself? There is my bed. It is two planks and a carpet. I eat half what you do and sleep a third as long. And as for wounds, let any of you strip and display his, and I will display mine in turn. There is no part of my body, or none in front where wounds of honor are received, that has been left untorn, and no weapon whose scars I do not bear, all in your service, for your glory, and toward your enrichment!”

  A shelf crosses the face of the levee, where the timbers and wickerwork conjoin. I tread this like an actor pacing a stage.

  “For my part, gentlemen, I set no limit to the aspirations of a man of noble spirit, so long as these lead to feats of prowess. Yet if anyone wants to know how much farther I intend to push, let him know that the Shore of the Eastern Ocean cannot lie many leagues beyond where we stand today. There, I will quit. But not short of there.

  “You are tired, my friends. Do you think I’m not? But privation and danger are the toll of deeds of glory. What is sweeter than to live bravely and to die leaving immortal renown? We convene this day as an army. Other armies will follow in ages to come. Who will equal our exploits? Look around you, brothers. Look into the faces of your comrades. You are the mightiest fighting force in history! The trials you have endured, the enemies you have overcome, the victories you have produced beggar the conquests of all who have gone before and all who will come after. Does fearful fancy precede you across this river, conjuring nations and enemies too numerous for us to face? I heard the same in Macedon. Men said we would never reach the Halys, that we should quit at the Euphrates. We could not take Babylon, timorous voices cried, or Persepolis, or Kabul. I said we could, and I have not been wrong! Yet still you doubt me.