Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  While Nearchus brought the fleet to the far end of the Persian Gulf, Alexander arranged supplies for him and left Persepolis to march on westwards and meet him at Susa. Arriving in late March, he again fell foul of Iranian satraps. He was greeted by the local governor and his son, both of whom had served Darius at Gaugamela and had bought their reinstatement from Alexander afterwards. The son he put to death, some said by spearing him with his own sarissa, and the father he imprisoned, complaining that he had brought bribes of money, not supplies for the army, an oversight which was serious at any time, but never more so than after Makran when orders had been issued that all supply posts on the main roads should be filled by the governors for the army's passing. This and a suspicion of insubordination led to the man's execution, and at the same time the last of the four generals from Media was found guilty, perhaps fairly, of robbing Susa's sacred treasures. He was sent to a belated death.

  With the Susa executions, the brief purge came to an end; there was nothing new about it. More officers had been sent to their death for suspected plotting in the three years before the invasion of India than were executed in the years after Makran. Since emerging from the desert, Alexander had removed four Iranian governors and four Iranian pretenders, together with their associates; he had caught up at last with a

  long-summoned Iranian offender, and disposed of four noted miscreants from Hamadan. The pattern had been important. Even before invading India, Alexander had been moving away from the use of Darius's Iranian satraps whom he had at first been pleased to receive and reinstate. But by summer 326, six had already been tried and found wanting, while another two had never established their rule in their satrapies; after his renewed executions, only four, excluding the Indian rajahs, continued to hold high provincial office. Of these, one was Roxane's father-in-law; another was Artabazus, father of Barsine, who was an old man, and confined to the command of one Sogdian fort; the third ruled the northern wilds of Media like an independent duchy and proved so memorable that his name, Atropates, passed into the province's new title of Azerbaijan; the fourth, Phrataphernes, was the conspicuous exception, the one satrap who had served Darius, yet still retained his satrapy of Parthia near the Caspian Sea, loyal enough to send cooked food and his two sons by camel to Carmania in answer to Alexander's pleas from Makran. Elsewhere, Europeans had taken the place of suspect Iranians, whose past with Darius could not be trusted when Alexander was absent. A Thracian ruled Indians; a Cypriot, most successfully, ruled the hardened tribesmen of the Arians' home province; Peucestas the Macedonian pleased the Persians by adopting their dress, their customs and language. During this time, Alexander is said to have become quicker to believe accusations and to punish even the lesser offenders heavily, because he felt that in the same state of mind, they would go on to commit more serious crimes'. In the circumstances, that was prudent and may well be true, though in the four years which followed Gaugamela, courtiers in plenty had already been put to death on mere suspicions. Twelve swift arrests sufficed to return the empire to a calm which lasted not only throughout Alexander's brief remaining lifetime but also throughout the forty selfish years of western struggle among his Macedonian Successors. The barons had had their day, and the empire thereafter behaved as if wrested from servants. In the eastern half of Asia the new appointments mostly remained in power for the next eight years and were praised as men who had governed well. The eastern purge, in short, had proved a signal success; it would be seventy years or more before Macedonian rule in Asia was shaken in so many provinces again, and then too the pattern and the provinces concerned were remarkably similar.

  But in spring 324 the fate of the west was still in the balance. From Kirman, news of the king's return had sped dramatically towards the coast and at Babylon it can still be detected in its rapid passage: the city's garrison commander had come to meet Alexander near Susa, but 'seeing 410 that he was punishing his satraps severely, sent back a letter to his brother in Babylon, who happened to be a prophet. He was frightened for his own safety and especially feared the king and Hephaistion.' The prophet, after asking for details, returned to his business and made ready a momentous answer. In the meantime, the news had passed beyond him and by early summer it had reached to the fastnesses of Cilicia and the fringe of the Aegean sea. Harpalus, a treasurer of the empire, heard it with dismay and retired to consider his own position in the private rooms of the castle at Tarsus. He had a guilty record, and he knew, as an officer in Hamadan when Parmenion was murdered, how a suspicion was treated in times of crisis.

  Among Alexander's Macedonian officers, famed for their wrestling, their drinking and their silver-studded boots, none is more congenial than Harpalus the treasurer. Alexander had always liked him; they had grown up together, but as Harpalus was lame, he could not be used on active service. Nonetheless he had followed the army and shortly before Issus, he had travelled from Asia to Greece on a mysterious mission, probably as a royal spy. After Issus, he had rejoined the troops and at a time when Alexander was striking his first coins in Asia, he had become one of the army's treasurers. His responsibilities had increased with the booty, so much so that three years later he could be left in Hamadan to centralize the bullion of the Persian Empire. While Alexander had battled into India, Harpalus had gone about his leisurely life behind the lines. He would send books east for his king's light reading; he organized the hired reinforcements and supervised the despatch of smart new suits of armour to the Punjab. Much of his time was spent in the heat of Babylon, where he improved the Persians' palace by adding a gaily-plastered Greek portico to its inner courtyard. In a strange land, he had also found solace in gardening. At Alexander's request, Greek plants were to be naturalized in the terraces of Babylon's Hanging Gardens; Harpalus saw them into place, though the hot sandy soil was not to the liking of the ivies which refused to settle down.

  A rich man, but lonely in his garden, he had felt the need for a female companion, and like Ptolemy, his tastes had inclined to the courtesans of Athens. Through friends in the city, he heard of the practised Pythionice; he sent her an invitation and, like Thais, she left the Piraeus to seek her fortune in the east. Harpalus spared nothing to impress her, he even shipped rare fish to Babylon from the distant Red Sea; and for two or three years they lived, Treasurer and slave-girl, in the Hanging Gardens until, despite his affairs with native women, Harpalus found he had fallen in love. Pythionice bore him a daughter, but at a time when Alexander was reported to be sailing on the Indus, she had died and left her lover to do justice to her memory. Harpalus was not the man to let her down, and in the process, he had involved himself in scandal.

  It was inevitable that Alexander should have friends in the Greek cities of the empire and that these friends, often restored home by his favour, should prove articulate. On the Aegean island of Chios lived Theopompus the pamphleteer, a rich man who had travelled Greece in the name of history, only to write provocative slander about most of the facts he had seen or heard. Twenty years before, he had spent some time at Philip's court and had spared no abuse in describing the king and his courtiers; times soon changed, and Philip had become master of Greece, Alexander master of Asia and the Aegean; Theopompus found himself indebted to men who had been themes for his vituperation. So he wrote a panegyric on each of them and when Alexander returned from India, he sent him a stylized letter which respectfully discussed certain topics in the west. Among them was Harpalus's behaviour: Pythionice ‘was a slave and a harlot three times over, but now that she has died, he has built two monuments for her at a cost of more than 200 talents. One stands in Babylon, the other in Athens', at the side of the Sacred Way from the city to Elcusis, framed by a distant prospect of the Acropolis: it was so much larger than any other, men said, that an innocent stranger would assume it honoured Pericles or a similar hero of the past. Her coffin had been escorted to the grave by a huge choir of famous musicians and lest she should be forgotten, 'this man, who pretended to be your friend, has dedicated a temple a
nd a sacred enclosure to Pythionice Aphrodite, goddess of love, not only despising the vengeance of the gods but also making a mockery of the similar honours bestowed on you'. Harpalus, no less, had immortalized his mistress as a goddess at a time when others were already paying divine honours to his king. He had also set a fashion, as royal mistresses of the future would frequently be named Aphrodite and worshipped insimilar style.

  Even a goddess needed to be replaced. Applying once more to Athenian brothels, Harpalus had lured the well-known prostitute Glycera eastwards and left Babylon in order to meet her on the Asian coast; they had repaired to Tarsus, where 'Glycera was hailed as queen and received proskynesis from the people; it was forbidden to pay Harpalus a crown of honour without paying her one too. In a nearby town, he set up a bronze image to her, instead of to Alexander.' Romance kept him far from the treasury of Babylon, but as Tarsus was an important monetary centre, and there was a large local storeroom nearby, he could still give an air of attending to monetary duties. Proof of his irresponsibilities can still be seen in a rare series of silver coins, issued at Tarsus, which bear none of Alexander's types but return to the old Persian designs of the days when satraps were independent; when Alexander's governors had lost the right to issue their own silver money, such defiance meant open revolt. The longer he dallied with his lady, the closer his king had come to home. He would not stand for any 'king and queen' in Tarsus.

  Whether or not Alexander received Theopompus's letter on returning to his Persian palaces is unimportant. Probably it arrived later, but even without it, Harpalus knew that such charges could be laid against him. When news of the purge in the east and the king's uncompromising mood reached Tarsus, he had every reason for alarm: he too had once been in Hamadan, where four generals and six hundred soldiers had now been executed for misconduct. He had two brothers, but one was no longer at court to plead for him, as he had been left to his death as satrap of western India; the other, leader of the archers, was either dead or busy on the borders of Makran. Worst of all, the king was approaching Babylon, where his absence, let alone his monument to Pythionicc, were proof enough of his misbehaviour. Through his mistresses, he was well connected at Athens and he had donated a token present of grain to help the city in her time of persistent famine; he had been made an honorary citizen in return and it was not surprising when he decided to take his baby daughter, save what soldiers and money he could, and make for Athens across an early summer sea.

  When the news reached Alexander, probably in May near Susa, it took him by surprise. Harpalus, said two messengers, had fled with 6,ooo mercenary soldiers and as many talents of money and was heading for Athens, presumably with the intention of bribing the citizens to defend him. Alexander thought this incredible and put the messengers in chains. But confirmation earned them their release, and this latest menace from mercenaries finally caused him to order the dismissal of his other satraps' mercenary troops. Harpalus could not be treated so lightly. He knew too many Macedonian officers and he had enough money, unlike Agis or the Persian admirals; orders for his arrest were hastened to Athens both from Olympias the queen regent in Macedonia and from the senior governor on the coast of Asia. Athens, therefore, had reason to hesitate, and Alexander by now had his reasons for a closer interest in the affairs of Greece.

  Together with news of Harpalus's flight, he happened to have received a European letter, not from the indignant Theopompus, but from the council of the allied Greek cities. In his absence, Greek politics are too obscure to be followed in detail, but Macedonian leadership had only served to aggravate the broader tendencies of their past two hundred years. Since Philip's conquest of Greece, there had been coups and counter-coups against a background of seven years' drought and famine; exiles and personal incrimination had not been stopped by Philip's allied council, least of all in the face of the revolts by Thebes and Sparta, for it suited the Macedonians to see their enemies expelled. Three years of Spartan discontent in southern Greece and the resulting battles in the year of Gaugamela had exposed the few Spartan allies to reprisals from Antipater and his generals, who had naturally tightened their hold by deposing former rebels and inserting juntas they felt they could trust. Unease, new governments and a major war had meant, as always, that the defeated parties found themselves in exile; they could expect no assistance from Antipater's generals, who had helped to drive them out, and despite the clauses of the 'common peace among allies', the delegates of Philip's Greek council either could not or would not intervene. More than 20,000 Greeks in all roamed homeless on the mainland, as so often in the past fifty years, and at a time of severe famine, their misery, though not a force for revolution, could well become a menace. The Council's letter presumably stressed the danger, and in reply Alexander intervened with the most misunderstood measure of his reign: he sent a proclamation which, among much else, ordered exiles from his allied Greek cities to be restored home.

  This sudden order caused a stir which can still be sensed in the speeches of the Greek orators; each city was affected differently, and it is tempting to take the sharpest comments as the sum of its reception. The Exiles' Decree has thus been seen as the final outrage of a despot or as the effort of a frightened tyrant to restore a balance which he himself had upset. In fact, the problem was local and the decree was within legal limits; for the most part, it was welcomed. He did not issue a direct order to each city, but a general proclamation which left the governments free to carry it out according to their local laws. In practice, the distinction between order and proclamation was academic, as the king's word was backed by the sarissa. But the theory had been agreed by the Greek allies when they swore to obey Macedonians, and Alexander's successors would revive it when they wished to please Greek liberal opinion. For in theory a city was free to refuse the announcement, just as others obeyed 'according to their own decision and law'. Technically, their right to self-government had not been infringed by a proclamation whose contents were covered by Alexander's powers as leader of the Greeks. The allied council had a duty to prevent 'illegal deaths or exiles in member cities', but this ideal had scarcely been practicable in the face of Sparta's rebellion and the security measures of a Macedonian marshal and generals who were known to favour juntas. It was left to Alexander, as the allied leader, to intervene and uphold the oaths of his covenant, just as after the Persian war in the Aegean, he had formerly intervened in unsettled member islands. The firmness of his intervention reflects not on a new tyranny of method but on the powers of the sworn constitution of his Greek alliance; these, to be sure, were extreme, but fourteen years before their constitution had been the work not of Alexander but of his father Philip.

  The decree was confined to allied dries and to exiles banished during the Greek peace's brief life: an accompanying request for the local Greek leagues to be broken up, though most advantageous to Alexander, was no less in keeping with the alliance's promise of local independence, a slogan which Philip had already used against Greece's leagues and empires.

  In most cities, the decree was welcomed, but legality, as usual, had its quirks. Alexander did not wish to restore the Thebans to the city he had ruined, and as the allied council had ratified its ruin anyway, he felt no scruples about announcing their exemptions. His purpose, however, ran deeper than such convenient niceties. Many of the families he was restoring had formerly been his enemies, but they would mostly change their opinions in return for the most effective windfall which a politician could promise: the case of Theopompus, first a slanderer, then a panegyrist, was proof enough of that. Alexander could claim, correctly, that he had not been responsible for the exiles' banishment, for their cities had mostly caused it by their own decrees. At the same time he could take credit for their return, with the help of Antipater, to whom he had written with further instructions. Exiles had been restored often enough in Greek history, but never had a man been powerful enough to restore his past enemies and know he would benefit; such a sweeping gesture was sure to win favour, espe
cially among the weaker cities. Its swift enforcement was complicated and obedience sometimes painful, but nobody could accuse Alexander of breaking his oath as allied leader: he chose an adopted son of his tutor Aristotle to take the proclamation to Greece and read it to the assembled exiles at the Olympic Games in early August. Six years as King of Asia had not made the Leader of the Greeks and the sacker of Thebes any more of a despot to his allies than before.