Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  In the oppressive heat of July, Darius moved westwards to Babylon, a sweltering city with a low-lying palace which his ancestors had always tried to avoid in the height of summer. Sun and sand burnt alike but the Great King knew he had to hurry uncomfortably; already news would have arrived that Alexander had entered Cilicia, and within six weeks, he could be menacing Babylon's massive walls. There was too little time to call out the troops of the upper satrapies east and north-east of Hamadan to meet the emergency, but there was power enough within range. The two main horse-breeding grounds of the empire were still accessible, the Nisaean fields of the Medes with their famous acreage of lucerne, and the equally productive pastures of Armenia, reputed to send 20,000 horses each year as tribute. Armed riders could be sununoned from the king's colonists and local nobility; the problem was their supporting infantry, 156 for the only trained natives, apart from slingers and archers, were the famous palace guard of the 10,000 Immortals. They needed heavier allies, and there was no alternative but to weaken the sea-campaign in the Aegean by summoning most of the hired Greeks from the fleet.

  On his deathbed, Memnon had appointed his Persian nephew and his deputy as temporary admirals and the pair of them had been fighting on boldly. By August, they had finally forced Mytilcne to surrender, 'urging the Mytilenaeans to become allies of Darius according to the peace of Antalcidas made with Darius', an extraordinarily crooked settlement, as this peace of Antalcidas, which had been sworn fifty-three years before to King Artaxerxes II, had left the Aegean islands free and in no way obliged to Persia. The treaty had perhaps been infringed often enough to be forgotten by a new generation of islanders; if so, Mytilene was rewarded for its poor sense of history with a garrison, a foreign commander, the return of rich exiles to half their property, a tyrant, and a punitive fine. The capture of Lesbos opened the fleet's path to the Dardanelles, but before the two admirals could pursue this, orders arrived for the delivery of most of their hired Greek troops. So, perhaps in mid-August, nearly two hundred ships were diverted cast along their open supply points at Cos and Halicarnassus to Tripolis on the coast of Syria where they could hand over their mercenaries to another nephew of Mcm-non. The ships were to be beached there, and the mercenaries were to march inland to Darius, '30,000 Greeks' according to Alexander's staff, a number which should be reduced or even halved.

  The Persian admirals rejoined forces in the Aegean to continue their war with a mere 3,000 mercenaries and a hundred warships. Their prospects were much reduced, but Darius had not disturbed them unnecessarily, for he needed all possible infantry on land. From court, he had sent for the raw trainees of the Persians' youth-corps, boys who were conscripted in plenty for tree-cutting, hunting and wrestling as a preparation for army service. In the crisis, they were pitched into grown-up life, regardless of age or inexperience. Every ablebodied man within range was summoned, and from the land round the royal headquarters at Babylon the effects of such urgency can still be detected. By lifting the curtain on the Persians' empire, it is possible to lay bare the local problems of a call-up and see straight to the heart of an imperial soldier's life.

  When the Persians had first conquered Babylon two hundred years before, they had divided its gloriously fertile land to suit their own interests. Much of it had been allotted to their servants and soldiers as a means of maintenance; the Persians faced the need for expensive and complex weaponry and as only land grants could finance this in a rural society without cash or coinage, they had introduced a feudal system which, like much that was sophisticated in the language and methods of Persian government, can be shown to trace back to their imperial predecessors, the Medes. As in the plains of Lydia, so in the plains of Mesopotamia families of foreign troopers from far afield had been settled on land grants, some seventy acres in the few cases where their extent is known, and arranged according to cantons of class or nationality, whether Arabs, Jews, Egyptians, Syrians or Indians, each supervised by district officers who were responsible for collecting the annual taxes due from the grant-holders to their king. Unlike the foreign colonists in Lydia and elsewhere, those in Babylonia recorded their business dealings on clay tablets in the dead Akkadian language and as baked clay can survive the ages, a hoard of their tablets has been found intact near the city of Nippur. Their information relates to the activities of a sharp firm of native entrepreneurs called the Murasu, which means, appropriately, a 'wild cat', and from their detailed evidence an important pattern can be extracted.

  Three main types of land grant had been issued, horse land, bow land and chariot land; the very names are an insight into the Persian army, for the owners served as feudal archers, heavy cavalry and charioteers, complete with chariot and horse. All were liable for annual taxes, 'flour for the king', 'a soldier for the king' and 'taxes for the royal household', which were paid in weights of unminted silver. No family could sell any part of its land grant, and as many preferred to idle rather than to farm, increasingly they would strike a bargain with natives like the Murasu bank who were prepared to take a lease of their land grant, meet the yearly taxes from the proceeds and farm it for their own business profit. Unlike the colonists, the bankers were helped by a massive backing of men, silver, oxen, seeds, water rights and chain pumps. But though the taxes and the land could be leased to a wild cat entrepreneur, colonists in some, if not all, of the cantons were also liable for military service. The duty of military service was personal and had to be met from the owner's family; it could not be leased out with the land, and as the Murasu records show so neatly, ninety years before Alexander, complications were already at work within the system. They are unlikely to have changed by the time that Alexander invaded, for the system was still surviving under his Successors.

  In one remarkable document, the problems are set out in detail. In 422 King Artaxerxes had summoned his colonists to attack the city of Uruk, but the summons had caught the Jewish owner of a land grant off his guard. Probably because of financial embarrassment, the Jew's father had been forced to adopt a member of the Murasu bank as his son, so that the banker could inherit a share in the family allotment, and as the land grant could only be owned by a member of the family, adoption was the one means of evading the king's law and endowing an outsider. When the father died, the adopted banker held one part of the farm, the true male heirs the rest. In 422 they were presented with the king's demand for silver, weaponry and the personal service of one family member as a fully equipped cavalryman, complete with horse. Fortunate in his banking 'brother', the Jew had struck an advantageous bargain; the wild cat bankers would not fancy fighting and so their adopted agent would finance the armour, silver tax, horse and, very probably, the groom, while the Jew would ride out at the risk of his life.

  In the joy of his heart, Gadal-Iama the Jew has spoken thus to the son of the Murasu: the planted and ploughed fields, the horse land of my father, you now hold because my father once adopted your father. So give me a horse with a groom and harness, a caparison of iron, a helmet, a leather breastplate, a buckler, 120 arrows of two sorts, an iron attachment for my buckler, two iron spears and a mina of silver for provisions and I will fulfil the service-duties which weigh on our lands.

  As the horseman owned no bow, the arrows were presumably to be handed in to the cashier and then distributed to owners of bow and chariot land.

  But in summer 333, not every colonist would be sharing his land with a rich wild cat banker who could pay for his army outfit; the adoption of the banker is itself a sign, like the increasing number of leases and mortgages in the Murasu documents, that the colonists had found life more strenuous or awkward as the years went by. The annual tax was fixed, making no allowance for a bad harvest, and worse, the allotments remained the same size, though they had to pass to all male members of the family; even by 420, colonists were living on thirds, quarters, eighths or even fifteenths of their original grant. Their obligations remained the same, one fully turned-out soldier from the whole farm, even when the number of family mout
hs to be fed from the land had risen. Private Indians or Syrians could not meet the increase by intensive farming on the scale of the Murasu entrepreneurs, so the colonists' yearly surplus grew smaller as their home demand grew larger. They might fall into debt or adopt a banker as son; either way, they were no longer so capable of arming themselves to their king's expensive requirements. Horses and chariots need maintenance and an allotment split into fifteen parts is hardly a home for either; too much must not be built on the documents of one small area, especially as Babylonia was more urbanized than other satrapies, but it docs seem that one reason why the Great King had relied on hired Greek troops in the fourth century was the declining abilities of his own overcrowded colonists.

  Thus, as Darius awaited his feudal archers and horsemen he might be excused for the dreams which Greek historians attributed to him, the visions of the Macedonian camp aglow and of Alexander dressed in the Persian royal robe and vanishing into a Babylonian temple. Distressed feudal horsemen and a royal youth corps were hardly the ideal match for the Macedonian infantry and the Companion cavalry, but in the plains near the city, the Great King took refuge in numbers and consoled himself with counting his summoned troops. A circular enclosure was fenced off, able to hold some 10,000 men at a time. This was filled and emptied until the army had all passed through and the tens of thousands had been counted. Medes, Armenians, Hyrcanians, North Africans and Persians themselves: 'from dawn till dusk', in the exaggerated view of historians, 400,000 of these peoples filed through the stockade. Their true numbers cannot be estimated, nor do they matter for the sequel; but early one morning in late August or September, they decamped in their thousands and lumbered their way westwards among the canals of the well supplied Assyrian land.

  To the sound of the trumpet, the Sacred Fire was hoisted forwards on its silver altars: priestly Magi followed chanting their traditional hymn; 365 young Wearers of the Purple strode behind them, 'equal to the number of days in the Persian year'. White horses from the Median fields tossed and stamped before the Chariot of Ahura-Mazda, their drivers dressed in white with matching whips of gold; the largest horse of all prepared to draw the Holy Chariot of the Sun. Immortal Guards, so called by the Greeks because their numbers never fell below 10,000, marched close behind in solemn order, as Royal Relations and Spear Bearers cleared the way for the chariot of the King. Gold beyond telling gleamed on its coachwork, the yoke was aflame with varied gems; on cither side rose pictures of the gods, among whom an eagle of gold, symbol of Ahura-Mazda, benevolently stretched its painted wings. Inside stood the bearded King Darius, thin-faced and dressed in a purple-edged tunic of white: from his shoulders streamed an embroidered cloak 'on which golden hawks were fighting with their curved beaks'; from his golden belt, hung a scimitar whose scabbard was made of a single gem; round his head, ran the fluted crown of the King of Kings, bound with 160 a ribbon of blue and white cloth. Cavalry and footmen paraded in attendance, protecting the chariots of the Queen and the Queen Mother who followed behind them; farther back fifteen mule-drawn wagons bore the eunuchs, the governesses and the royal children in their charge; 365 King's Concubines kept their distance, dressed for the occasion, while 600 mules and 300 camels edged them forwards, laden with a selection of the imperial treasures.

  Back in the Macedonian camp, in the two months while Darius's army mustered, events had taken an unfortunate turn. After forcing the Cilician Gates in July, Alexander had hurried to seize Tarsus, rescuing it from burning by the Persians. He had marched fast in the heat, descending some 3,000 feet into an airless plain, and when he arrived in the city, he was understandably tired and dusty. Through Tarsus, run the yellowish waters of the Cydnus, a broad river which was said to be cool; Alexander, said Aristobulus, was already feverish. Others said that he swam, as yet in good health. But the local waters have a bad record; in 1189, the Calycadnus chilled Frederick Barbarossa, also rash enough to swim in the course of a Crusade. Within hours, Alexander developed a chill, hastened on by the cold water. His attendants laid him sleepless and shivering in his royal tent, but as he grew increasingly cramped, the doctors despaired of their treatment, until Philip the Greek stood forward, a man 'very much trusted in medical matters and not inconspicuous in the army'. He had attended Alexander as a boy and knowing his temperament, he proposed a purge with a strong medicine. Alexander was desperate to recover and gave his agreement.

  While Philip assembled the necessary drugs, a letter was said to have been handed to Alexander from Parmenion; some say, implausibly, that it had arrived two days before and that Alexander had concealed it under his pillow. According to Parmenion, Philip the doctor had been bribed by Darius to kill his royal patient, but when Philip reappeared, Alexander disregarded any such warning. Handing Philip the letter, he took his glass of medicine and drank it down at the same time as Philip read the message. At once, Philip 'made it quite clear that nothing was wrong with his medicine: he was not in the least disturbed by the letter but simply ordered Alexander to obey any other instructions he might give him. If he did so, he would recover.' The purge eventually worked and Alexander's fever eased: 'Alexander then gave proof to Philip that he trusted him, convincing his other attendants that he was loyal to his friends in defiance of suspicion and that he was brave when faced by death.' Aristobulus may have agreed, though denying the swim.

  The story of this letter has been disbelieved largely because it seems

  too dramatic. But history is not only true when dull and though interventions by Parmenion are not to be trusted lightly, there is no outside evidence with which to challenge this telling scene. In legend, certainly, Parmenion is later made into a personal enemy of the doctor, or even into a cunning poisoner, hoping to kill Alexander and clear himself of guilt by his letter of warning beforehand. But these legendary embellishments do not prove that the story first arose to discredit him. Trust and daring are virtues to be expected in any great general and even if Alexander was not so indiscriminate in his loyalties as flattery implied, he was sharp to distinguish between true friends and false, prizing the former and purging the latter. It is much in favour of the story of doctor and letter that it brings this feature to the fore.

  Alexander's sickness at Tarsus was a more serious delay than any of his historians made plain. Through the long weeks of July and August and on into mid-September, the king lay abed, apparently unaware that Darius's army had been summoned, let alone numbered and led out westwards from Babylon. Tactics, for Alexander, still centred on the coastline, and as he slowly recovered, there was enough to worry about at sea. Even without their Greek mercenaries, Memnon's successors were making themselves felt; they had sailed north to Tenedos, an island base for merchant shipping just off the Dardanelles, and they had taken it, again with a false reference to a peace of the past. Ten ships had been detached to the islands of the Cyclades off southern Greece, where they were to await overtures from Spartans and other disgruntled Greeks; Antipater was alarmed for the safety of Greece's coastline and had called out what warships he could, placing them under a Macedonian, probably the nephew of Alexander's nurse. A raid captured eight of the Persians' advance fleet and scared off the rest, but it could not be long before all hundred of the enemy ships came south. The two recruiting officers of Alexander's allied fleet were finding their business slow and difficult, perhaps because most Greeks preferred to stay neutral. Alexander could only press on with capture of Asian land bases, that desultory process which was bringing him nearer the ports of Syria and Phoenicia, although island harbours and the port at Halicarnassus were still open to the enemy behind him.

  From now on, he was without detailed maps or local contacts, and for knowledge of what lay ahead he would surely consult the narrative of Xenophon's march, neatly detailed into marching-hours and distances. From it, he could deduce that the next enemy stronghold on the coast was the pass of the Pillar of Jonah from Cilicia into Syria some seventy miles distant, and on the basis of his reading he sent Parmenion at a leisurely
pace round the coast to take it in advance, hoping that its complex of double turret walls and intervening river would not be too heavily guarded. Personally, he would march westwards in the opposite direction as soon as he felt fit.

  How ironically these careful plans now read. All the while, Darius was approaching the plains of Syria, where he would encamp and wait to attack as soon as Alexander came out through the Amanus mountains into the plains. Meantime Alexander marched and countermarched, surely ignorant of the Great King's whereabouts, let alone of his change of plans; otherwise, he would not have dared to divide his troops. To the Macedonians this routine work was to seem like one more stage in the laborious capture of the coast; they delayed till their king felt better, they watched Parmenion disappear eastwards with the cavalry, and in late September, when Alexander had finally recovered, they retraced their path towards the decaying city of Anchialus, unaware of the risk they would soon have to run. In the centre of that high-walled city stood the tomb of its founder Assurbanipal, King of Assyria in the mid-seventh century B.C., with a carving of the king clapping his hands above his head and an inscription beneath him in cuneiform script. Intrigued, Alexander made the local settlers translate it for his benefit: 'Sardanapalus son of Anakyndaraxes', it was said to run 'built Anchialus and Tarsus in a single day; stranger, eat, drink and make love, as other human things are not worth this', 'this' being a clap of the king's hands. The historian Aristobulus, writing his book in his eighties, took such exception to this blunt reference to sex that he rephrased the advice as 'eat, drink and be merry'. The inscription had anyway become unintelligible and what the locals said was only gossip. Nonetheless Callisthenes's history noted the exact impropriety for Alexander's pleasure, who then marched forwards, a living denial of any such drop-out philosophy.