Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  According to Ptolemy, a plot was revealed to Philotas, Parmenion's son, who failed to pass the report to Alexander even though he visited the king's tent twice every day. A second version fills in the details, and in the absence of anything more convincing it has to be believed. The affair was said to have begun when a Macedonian called Dimnus told his boy-lover that a plot was afoot to kill the king. He gave the names of the conspirators and he revealed in extreme secrecy that their attempt was to be made in three days' time. But his lover was young and indiscreet. He told the secret to his brother Cebalinus and like all young men who give away secrets, asked him to do what he had not: keep the plot to himself. But Cebalinus lost his nerve. He was shocked and he did not wish to be an accessary to murder, so he went to the highest officer he knew and told him all his brother had let slip. The officer was Philotas, son of Parmenion.

  Twice daily, Philotas would go to Alexander's tent but for two days he put off Cebalinus's inquiries, saying that the king had been busy and there had been no chance to raise the matter in his presence. Cebalinus became suspicious. Time was running short, so he turned to one of the royal pages whom he found on guard in the armoury. The page had intimate access to the king and at once he made for the royal bathroom where he found Alexander having his bath. The plot was reported and those concerned were ordered to be arrested. Cebalinus told his story, excusing himself as a loyal informer; Dimnus was summoned as the source of the evidence, but killed himself, probably before he could be questioned. The king had lost his prime witness and was left with a garbled list of names, passed by Dimnus to his boyfriend and by the boyfriend to his brother. Only one clear fact had emerged: Philotas had been told of a plot, but had suppressed the news for the past two days. That needed rapid investigation.

  It is here, probably wrongly, that the drama is made to gather pace by its Roman historian, elaborating the original histories four hundred years after the event. First, Alexander is said to have received Philotas alone and when Philotas begged forgiveness, Alexander gave him his right hand as a sign that his negligence was not to be punished. Philotas left the tent and Alexander promptly called his closest friends to ask for their opinions. They had no fondness for Philotas, and were led by the loyal Craterus to take the opportunity and turn the king against him. It was this encouragement which proved decisive.

  That evening Philotas was due to dine in the royal tent. He arrived punctually, was received without comment by friends who hated him and took his place near Alexander. No change of mood was betrayed. As one course followed another, the guests talked of their orders for the morrow; the army was to leave the camp at daybreak and in expectation of a hard day's march the party broke up at a reasonable hour. Philotas retired to his tent, but at midnight he awoke to the tramp of the royal Shield Bearers: they had come to put him in chains. All the roads out of camp had already been blocked against his escape.

  This setting, though vivid, is more than likely to have been invented for a Roman readership, well used to such dissimulation from their emperors. Alexander could afford to act bluntly, and Ptolemy, the only eyewitness, says no more than that Philotas was arrested and brought before the Macedonians where Alexander accused him 'vigorously'; Philotas defended himself, but 'the informers came forward and convicted him and his associates on several obvious charges', conspiracy no doubt among them, 'and especially for the fact that Philotas himself had learnt of a plot, as he admitted, but had suppressed any mention of it'. Philotas and 'those who helped him conspire' were speared by the Macedonians. Others said, probably wrongly, that after his trial Philotas was tortured until he confessed, and only then put to death by stoning. His confession, if true, would say more for the torture than for his guilt: Ptolemy, it seems, added no such 'proof of the victim's complicity, nor even the stoning which suggested Philotas's guilt. It is the one death penalty which is communal, involving a crowd who must therefore believe in their victim's crime.

  Not satisfied with seven culprits, Alexander extended his inquiry. Among his officers, diere were four brothers of highland Tymphiot family and dangerous because of their friendships with Philotas. One of them had long ranked high as leader of a phalanx battalion; another had fled as soon as Philotas was known to be arrested and his flight was so suspicious that the other three were hauled before the soldiery and tried for their lives. But their defence was spirited and they managed to acquit themselves; at once they asked leave to fetch their other brother back, a request which seemed to guarantee their innocence, and so with a clear name, they retained their positions of trust. Amyntas died from an arrow wound two months later; Attalus took over his dead brother's brigade and eventually married a daughter of Perdiccas, a well-judged alliance] Polemon made progress from his brother's marriage and reappeared after Alexander's death as an admiral in Perdiccas's fleet. They are a rare example of a family who survived a crisis and backed a rising star.

  Once again, there was more to the story than Ptolemy implied. It was three years since Alexander of Lyncestis had been put in custody as a possible traitor, and in the meantime he had been kept with the king as a prisoner too dangerous to be abandoned. Now was the moment to remove him in public; perhaps he had been involved in the plot, perhaps he was no more than a plausible suspect, but Alexander arranged that the leader of the Shield Bearers should begin the prosecution before an army who were ready to expect treason from any quarter. Alexander of Lyncestis heard the case, faltered and found nothing to say in reply, perhaps because the charges went beyond the truth, perhaps because he was involved with the plot of an obscure Oriental called Sisines of whom he remembered nothing. Bystanders speared him to death; the incident was too unsavoury for the histories of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, a sign of the feelings it could have aroused.

  The sequel was too infamous to be suppressed. In a crisis Alexander turned his thoughts to the most dangerous suspect of them all. Philotas was son of Parmenion; Parmenion was miles away in Hamadan, commanding the treasuries, the crossroads of the empire and up to 20,000 troops. There was also the danger of Cleitus and the 6,000 Macedonians; they had not yet rejoined the army and at best they were a few miles down the road from Hamadan. Parmenion could recall them and tip the balance between the two halves of the army if it came to an open fight. It was a month's march back to Hamadan down a road still threatened by Satibarzanes.

  As usual, Alexander knew the means and the man for the job. He sent for Polydamas a friend of Parmenion, who arrived in trepidation, fearing that his friendship was now to cost him his life. Alexander played on his anxieties and only told him as much as was good for him to know; when Polydamas heard what was required, he obeyed, thankful that the past was not to be held against him. He was to take letters to Parmenion, one from Alexander, one signed with Philotas's seal; he was to give written orders to the generals under Parmenion's command. The journey was urgent, the main road was neither direct nor secure; he was to dress like a native and travel by racing camel directly through the intervening Dasht-i-lut desert. Two guides would show him the way, while his younger brothers were detained as hostages.

  Polydamas hurried about his innocent business. The camels were made ready; the desert caused them no distress. On the eleventh day they reached Hamadan, having reduced the journey by three weeks and shown that remarkable speed over waste land which was later to make them the spearhead of Arab armies. Parmenion's generals were sought out, as ordered, and given their written message; their leader, a Macedonian noble, said that Parmenion would best be approached on the following morning. The generals conferred while the messenger retired.

  Soon after dawn, Parmenion was ready to receive his visitor. He was taking a walk, it was said, in the palace gardens of Hamadan with the generals at his side; his friend's appearance pleased him and after an embrace, he began to undo his letters. First, a note from Alexander with news of a further expedition; then, the communication sealed as if from his son Philotas. He began to read it 'with an expression of evident pleasure', when
his generals drew their daggers and stabbed him repeatedly. Only then would Polydamas realize the horror of his mission; he had been sent, not with a tactical message but with orders for the murder of his friend. Being well known to Parmenion, he had not aroused his suspicions.

  The news caused a commotion in Hamadan. The soldiers threatened to mutiny unless the murderers surrendered, and they were not pacified until Alexander's letters had been read aloud, explaining that Parmenion and Philotas had conspired disgracefully against the king's life. That was enough to satisfy humble men, and within five weeks, some of them had joined Alexander's main troops in Seistan. But what was good enough for the army is not good enough for history. The deaths of Philotas and Parmenion were moments of high crisis whose effects were felt throughout the high command. They need a delicate investigation.

  There can be no doubt that a plot had indeed been formed against the king. Dimnus, the first to reveal this information, had killed himself when summoned; such a prompt suicide can only have been due to a guilty conscience, for he knew he was certain to die and he did not intend to talk first. As for the names he had already revealed to his lover, all are otherwise unknown, though men of a certain rank, and they contain no clue to a motive. But their ambitions are less arguable. They were a group of six and they must have discussed the future before they acted. They were proposing to kill the most remarkable king and general in all ancient history and leave the army divided and leaderless in the wastes of Seistan with a rebel raising troops beyond them and the lands behind them far from peaceful. One man, slighted personally, might have struck irresponsibly co satisfy a passion. But a group of six would have had plans for a replacement, especially in the face of Alexander's intimate bodyguards, not the men to sit idle after a murder. It is here that Philotas, son of Parmenion, comes into question.

  Philotas, though powerful, had long been the subject of gossip and suspicion. He had served the king as a friend since boyhood, but the past suggests they had never been very close. When Alexander's young circle of friends had been exiled by Philip seven years before, Philotas had stood on the edge of the group, perhaps as informant against others. Then, in the intrigues of Alexander's first months, he had nearly chosen the wrong side; he had been a friend of Amyntas, the former king whom Philip had supplanted and Alexander put to death, and he had married his sister to Attalus, Alexander's bitterest enemy. But unlike others, he had put his misjudgements behind him: within months, he had been invited to command the Companion Cavalry, a remarkable honour for a young man and no doubt due to his father's influence. It was a demanding job and in all the pitched battles, he had fought under Alexander's own command. Presumably they would argue about their respective heroics. Neither was the man to belittle his own abilities, and soon their relationship had come under strain.

  Among the spoils taken after Issus, Parmenion had found a noble Macedonian lady called Antigone, whom the Persian fleet had captured during the summer before the battle. She had been sailing from home to take part in the mystery religion on the Aegean island of Samothrace. Philotas had fancied her and taken her on as his mistress; in bed of an evening, they would tease and tell tall stories with all the silliness of perfect intimacy. Philotas would drink and brag of his own incomparable prowess: he and Parmenion, to be quite honest, had done all the work, while Alexander was only a little boy who ruled in their name. Antigone thought him bold and amusing, and she told her friends. The friends told one another until word came to Craterus, the king's devoted general. Antigone was summoned and bidden to continue her affair. But all such boasting and scraps of insolence were now to be passed to Alexander.

  It was a year later, in Egypt, said Ptolemy, that Philotas was first reported for plotting, but Alexander had disbelieved the rumour 'because of their long friendship and his own esteem for Parmenion'. It is hard to know how to treat this. Possibly the rumour was invented to make the eventual conspiracy seem more plausible; possibly, but Philotas's youngest brother had recently been drowned in the river Nile, an accident which may have embittered the family and caused Philotas to voice his annoyance again to his mistress. And yet, since Egypt, these vague suspicions had not brought him down. He was boastful and rich; his hunting nets were rumoured to stretch for more than twelve miles, and even Parmenion had warned him 'to be less of a person'. But the advice was painful when the family's power was beginning to ebb away.

  When Seistan was reached, Parmenion was past seventy and Philotas his only son left alive. A month before, his second son, who commanded the Shield Bearers, had died in Aria's desert and Alexander had been too short of supplies to stop and honour him. Philotas had been left to attend to his funeral and, as in Egypt, he may have reflected with distaste on a family bereavement. Two other associates had recently died or been sent away to the provinces and Parmenion himself was far removed in Hama-dan, where he might soon be retired. Briefly, he controlled the roads, the treasure and 20,000 foreign troops, enough to be dangerous, even under four independent commanders; there were also Cleitus's 6,000 veterans, out of Alexander's reach for the first and last time. Alexander had at most 32,000 men with him, but in another two months, the main army might be reunited with Cleitus and the others and Parmenion might be dead. It was a last chance. If Alexander was removed, father and son could combine to create a new king, none more plausible than Alexander of Lyncestis, son-in-law of the viceroy Antipater and himself of princely blood. Returning from his brother's funeral, Philotas would have the chance to plan and involve the six accomplices who finally let him down.

  The conspirators still had to be persuaded, and here there were principles which might be invoked. Only six weeks before, Alexander had worn Persian dress for the first time, having ended his Greek expedition and dismissed the Greek allies who had fought so often under Parmenion. The new dress and court life were a symbol of new ambitions which would not be satisfied until all Asia had been overrun; meanwhile, the Persians would be respected rather than punished, perhaps to the disgust of that same Philotas who at Susa had urged Alexander to use the Persian king's table as a mere footstool beneath his feet. In the course of the trial a detail is said to have been mentioned, too unusual perhaps to be only a history's fiction; Alexander denounced Philotas for speaking in Greek and disdaining the Macedonian dialect of the listening soldiery. Alexander may have seized on a charge which could otherwise have been turned against himself. If any soldier thought that his Persian customs betrayed Macedonian traditions, let him first consider the case of Philotas, too haughty even to use the native dialect. The king's prosecution may have been more than vigorous, for it may have played on the prejudice, of ordinary men. But similar prejudice may first have encouraged the conspirators; they may have wanted a Macedonian monarchy, no dalliance

  1. Alexander wearing the diadem and horn of Zeus Ammon. The idealized

  features suggest his divinity. Silver coin of his successor Lysimachus, c. 290 BC.

  2. Gold coin of Philip's reign, showing the god Apollo; the features strongly suggest Alexander's own. Comparisons with the god were frequently used afterwards for young and talented princes.

  3. Pebble mosaic from Pella c. 300 BC. Alexander, on the left, is being rescued from a lion by Craterus in their famous lion hunt at Sidon in 333.

  4. The 'Alexander Sarcophagus', probably made for Alexander's host, the King of Sidon, c. 320 BC. Alexander, wearing the lion's head helmet of Heracles, attacks Persian horsemen at Issus. The style is very exact, even showing the harness of Bucephalas.

  5. Door relief from the Hundred Columned Hall at Persepolis. At the top is the symbol of the protecting god Ahura Mazda, bordered by royal lions. Below sits Darius I (522-486) attended by the Royal Fly-swatter, an ancient and enduring minister of oriental kings. The enlarged throne which frames the lower panel is supported by subject peoples of tbe empire, among them the Macedonians. Its design of lion's paw feet is seen on the right above characteristic bell capitals used in Persian palaces, and remained a dominant style f
or thrones in Iran even after Alexander's conquest

  6. Relief from Persepolis of Indian envoy bringing tribute to the Persian New Year Festival. He wears the turban, sandals and cotton robe of his people and leads a wild ass. The baskets before him may carry pearls or perhaps gold dust, tribute of the province.

  Road to Herat followed by Alexander. Such heavy laden mules would have served as his main baggage train in increasingly rough country where wheeled transport was impossible.

  11. The inner section of a silver plate from Greek Bactria, possibly late third century BC, to be worn on a bridle. The howdah's towers match possible Greek city walls in the area and may have been a Greek invention. The mahout's goad, the elephant's bell and the griffin on his saddle were all used in the East before Alexander. A similar plate was found in the eighteenth century in the Channel Islands: the widest known spread of a Hellenistic elephant and as yet unexplained.

  12. Wooden coffin still used by the Kafirs in Nuristan, alone among Afghan

  tribesmen. The coffins mistaken by Alexander's men for firewood in this area were presumably the ancestors of this distinctive style. Greek influence, perhaps from later Greek kingdoms in Bactria, has also been noted in the carved pillars of Kafir buildings.

  13. Modern raft of goat skin for use near the Oxus. These rafts are sewn and stuffed with chaff, one of Asia's oldest skills. The Assyrian armies used them in the seventh century BC; Alexander crossed the Danube and Oxus by the same method; Roman armies kept a unit of 'bladder bearers' for the purpose. A man can float on one skin only, but this large raft could carry up to 400 lbs.