This massive decree was not connected with the dismissal of the satraps' mercenaries; many of them were not Greeks, very few were exiles, and none who ran free ever tried to return home on the strength of it. It belongs,
rather, with the news of Harpalus. Some 20,000 vagrant Greeks, many exiled by Antipater's agents, were indeed better sent home before Harpalus could bribe them; the Decree, too, would scare Athens, his destination. For forty-one years, Athenians had enjoyed land and houses on Samos whose owners had been exiled from the island. Now, Alexander was talking openly of 'giving Samos to the Samians', and only diplomacy would deter him. The exiles had left the island before Philip's reign, so the Athenians could plead a special case. However, any support for Harpalus would ruin it. They might of course try to fight for the island, but most of Greece welcomed the new Decree and Alexander reasoned that Athens would not risk or afford a war alone. Events would prove he had judged the risk acutely. So, as he approached the palace of Susa in early summer, he felt safe enough to consider the harmony of his own ruling class, and after the confusion give scope to a creative design. Before he could reveal his plans, India, for the last time in his life, drew attention to herself.
Calanus, the Hindu Gymnosophist, had followed the army the whole way from the Punjab. He had never felt ill before, but the Persian climate had weakened him, and at the age of seventy-three he told Alexander that he preferred to die rather than be an invalid. Alexander argued with him, but the fakir insisted on a funeral pyre being built, a job which was entrusted to Ptolemy. At the head of a long procession, Calanus was borne in a litter to his deathbed, 'crowned with garlands in the Indian style and singing hymns in the Indian language'. Gold cups and blankets were strewn on the pyre to welcome him, but he gave them away to his followers: he climbed on to the pyre and reclined in full view of the army. Alexander 'did not like to see this happening to a friend', and the rest of the audience 'were amazed that he did not flinch at all in the flames'. Bugles sounded, as the pyre began to blaze; the army raised their war-cry and the elephants trumpeted shrilly as if for battle. 'Bodies you can move from one place to another,' Calanus was said to have written to Alexander, 'but souls you cannot compel, any more than you can force bricks and stones to talk.'
The sequel was conveniently forgotten: in Calanus's honour, Alexander held games and a musical festival and a 'drinking match in unmixed wine', said his master of ceremonies. because the Indians were so fond of it. The money prizes were huge, but of the drinkers, thirty-five died immediately from a chill, while another six lingered briefly on in their tents. The winner downed three gallons, but even he died after four days.
This monstrous debauch, willingly supported by the drinkers, is a valuable reminder of life in Alexander's entourage: it was almost a prefiguration of the tragedies of the coming year.
One unfortunate festival did not deter Alexander from an even grander sequel. Since the desert, the amusements of court life had been rightly and properly increased; on entering Susa, word went round that there were to be midsummer weddings. In the absence of Macedonian noblewomen, the officers had not enjoyed such a family occasion for the past ten years, and details of the brides must have been eagerly awaited. When the announcement was made, there was cause for astonishment: the bridegrooms were Alexander himself and the Macedonian court Companions and the brides were well-born Iranian ladies.
Of all Alexander's many festivals, this was to be far the most remarkable. The man who had finally removed most of the Iranian males in his government was now to marry the females to more than ninety of his officers; the pomp would befit the palatial setting of Susa,
Ninety two bridal suites [wrote his master of ceremonies] were made ready in one and the same place; a hall was built with a hundred bedrooms and in each of them, the bed was decorated with wedding finery, to the cost of half a talent of silver: Alexander's own bed had legs of gold. All his personal friends were invited to the wedding reception and seated opposite himself and the other bridegrooms; the rest of the soldiers and sailors and foreign ambassadors were entertained in the courtyard outside. The hall was done up regardless of expense and equipped with sumptuous drapes and linen sheets and purple and scarlet rugs embroidered with gold. To hold up the tent, columns were built to a height of thirty feet, gilded and silvered and spangled with precious stones. Round the circuit of the whole hall, nearly half a mile in circumference, expensive curtains were hung, on gilt and silver curtain-rods; their material was woven with animal figures and gold thread. The banquets, as usual, were announced by the sound of the trumpet: the wedding was celebrated for five successive days. Entertainers, both foreign and Greek, gave of their services; conspicuous among them were the conjurers from India and celebrities from Syracuse, Tarentum and Lesbos. There were songs and recitations, and players of the lute, the flute and lyre; actors of Dionysus's company pleased the king with lavish presents, while tragedies and comedies were performed by his favourite Greek stars.
The bill for the wedding would not have disgraced a Shah, but flattery helped the accounts to balance, for 'the crowns which envoys sent him were worth some 15,000 talents'. The weddings themselves were well considered, and were celebrated in the Persian fashion: 'Chairs were set out for the bridegrooms and after the drinking, the brides came in and each sat down next to their husbands, who took them by the hand and kissed them, Alexander being the first to do so. Never did he show more courtesy and consideration to his subjects and companions.' The matches had been arranged in proper precedence. Alexander took two new wives besides Roxane, the first the elder daughter of Darius, the second the youngest daughter of the previous king Artaxerxes III; Darius's daughter was made to change her maiden name, a common Macedonian practice, and take that of Stateira, the same as Darius's wife whom Alexander had respected as his captive until her death in childbirth. Politically, it was a sound decision to marry into the two royal houses of Persia at once and to continue a family name, but politics was also combined with sentiment; Hephaistion was married to Darius's younger daughter, sister of Alexander's new wife, 'because Alexander wanted Hephaistion's children to be his own nephews and nieces'. It is one rare and timely insight into the bond between the two men.
Other relationships were no less paradoxical. Many brides were probably mere girls, in accordance with Greek and Iranian practice, but they served a most intricate design. Ptolemy became brother-in-law of Eumenes, the Greek secretary whom he was soon to detest; both Eumenes and Nearchus, by marrying daughters of Alexander's first mistress Barsine, became the king's step-sons-in-law; these daughters were themselves half Greek and thus very suited to the purpose. Seleucus, commander of the Shield Bearers, married the daughter of Spitamenes, Alexander's rebel enemy, a union with far-reaching consequences. But these marital ironies did nothing to detract from Alexander's intention. After a time of grave uncertainty in his empire, he wished to attach the Greeks and the Macedonian nobility, from whom his governors were now mostly drawn, to the children of the native aristocracy they had finally supplanted. Just as the Persian courtiers had once married the Medes and Babylonians, so too the Macedonians would marry the daughters of loyal Persians for the sake of politics; it was at Susa that he had left Darius's family to learn Greek while he marched to Iran and India and his return visit satisfied him that they were fit to be married into his future. After two centuries of discord between Persia and Greece, this deliberate fusion was unprecedented. The weddings were celebrated publicly and arranged with Alexander's typical mixture of forethought and showmanship, and were also extended to the common soldiery. In the absence of Macedonian women, the troops had taken Asian mistresses during the campaign, and inquiry revealed that even after the march through Makran, these numbered 10,000.
Each of them, like the noble bridegrooms, now received a royal dowry in return for enrolling their names and having their Asian mistresses officially recognized as wives.
There were several consequences to such an order. The women would benefit
most, for once they were full wives, their children would have to be recognized and their husbands could not so easily desert them or replace them with a woman of higher status. But Alexander did not spend an enormous sum in dowries simply to make his soldiers' children legitimate; it would have suited him more, as he soon showed, if the next generation were bastard children, with nobody to look to except their king. What mattered was that these were Asian women, just as his Companions' brides were Iranians: the weddings were an attempt to include his subjects in an empire whose satrapal offices had mostly been taken from them. Asians had been taken on as mistresses because there were no alternatives, but he was raising them to a status which Greek populations abroad had always resisted strenuously. In Greek cities in a foreign land, the children of barbarian mothers had not, in the only known cases, been recognized as citizens: after Alexander, in the military colonics where families held land from the king in return for service, Greeks and Macedonians can be shown to have married their sisters and granddaughters rather than share their property with a native wife. Only in the Asian countryside, where there was no alternative and less at stake, were mixed marriages common in the next generations of Alexander's successors. The point at issue was more one of status than racial prejudice, but it was none the less a strong one; Alexander knew he had to offer the bribe of the dowry in order to legitimize mixed marriages on a scale that was never attempted again. Among the officers, all were pleased at the honour, though a few were resentful that their brides were to be oriental. None of them dared to refuse.
It was a splendid moment of chivalry, but behind it lurked an awkwardness that might still break out to spoil it all. Ever since the previous summer, Alexander had decided to send his Macedonian veterans home and he had segregated them for that very purpose; they had returned from India by the Helmand valley and because they had avoided Makran, all 10,000 had survived to outnumber the Macedonian survivors by almost two to one. Age and fitness still advised they should be sent away, but at a moment when Alexander was marrying Iranians to Companions and approving the troops' mixed marriages, the dismissal of veterans would take on a new and painful air. But they must be coaxed to go home, for the years ahead no longer lay with sixty-year-old men who often resented the oriental policies of their king; there is nothing more dangerous than
the frankness of old friends, especially when status is at issue. Only the next few weeks would show whether frankness would lead to conflicts, and whether Alexander's veteran troopers would succeed, where satraps, exiles and mercenaries had already failed to bring him down.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Fearing his veterans, Alexander once more prepared his way with generosity. It was his oldest tactic, and one which had nearly saved him on the river Beas. The Susa weddings had been the most prodigal display of his career and none of the guests could have failed to enjoy it, but the common soldiers still needed more reward than the dowries for their mistresses. As a balance to his officers' festivities Alexander announced that he was willing to pay off the debts of the entire army. Presumably, the soldiers were owed arrears of pay, as sufficient treasure could never have been carried in coin to keep them up to date in India, but it was not just the arrears that Alexander had in mind; they would also have lived on credit with the camp-traders, women and such quartermasters as were not paid in kind, and these debts remained to be paid to as many camp followers as survived to collect them. At first, the men suspected this astonishing offer as a means of prying into their debts, but when they were reassured that their names would not be taken, they presented themselves before the army accountants. 'A king,' Alexander is reported as saying, 'must never do otherwise than speak the truth to his subjects, and a subject must never suppose that a king docs otherwise than tell the truth.' It was a revealing, but not a tactful, remark. Only one ancient monarchy ever stressed the virtues of telling the truth, and that was the Persians' own. Besides the dress of Cyrus's heirs, Alexander had openly picked up their ideals, and at a time when the Orient was too much in evidence, his veterans would not be pleased to hear his words.
The result of his promise was an enormous write-off of some 10,000 talents, or two-thirds of the annual treasure-income of the Persian empire in its prime. This largesse was accompanied by the usual rewards for competitive merit, for the value of medals was not lost on Alexander. Nearchus, now returned from the ocean, Peucestas and other bodyguards who had saved the king at Multan, Leonnatus who had routed the Oreitans, each were crowned with gold crowns as a public honour. The king was showing off his magnanimity; but then there arrived in camp a new crowd who at once undid his measured attempt at harmony.
From the Alexandrias and tribal villages of Iran, 30,000 young Iranians appeared at Susa, dressed in Macedonian clothes and trained in the Macedonian style of warfare. It was more than three years since Alexander, near Balkh, had ordered them to be selected and trained, and they could not have arrived at a more explosive moment. When they began to show off their military drill outside the city, word quickly spread that Alexander had named them his Successors, and there were facts to support camp gossip. The Companion Cavalry had marched through Makran in near entirety and had suffered the loss of almost half its horsemen. No new Macedonians were yet available, so Alexander had filled up the ranks with picked Iranians who had hitherto been serving in separate units. After the disaster the Companions' newly mixed squadrons numbered four, and a fifth was now added, conspicuously oriental in its membership. Not even the king's own Battalion was exempted. The most esteemed Asiatics, men like Roxane's brother or Mazaeus's and Artabazus's sons, were enlisted into its exclusive ranks and equipped with Macedonian spears instead of their native javelins. Militarily, Iranian cavalry were more than equal to their king's demands, but it was not their competence which was at stake. They had been given a place in the most Macedonian clique of all; it was as if a British general had opened the ranks of the Grenadier Guards to Indian sepoys, and like most high-minded changes, it was unpopular from the start.
The ordinary soldier hated what he saw. He had lived with hints of it for a long while: Alexander's Persian dress, however moderate; his ushers; his Persian Companions and his proskynesis, at least from orientals, but as long as his own rank was assured, he did not mind these mild innovations enough to rebel against them; he enjoyed his Asian mistress, and whatever else, the East was a fabulous source of riches. But once he felt that he was being supplanted, all that the Orient stood for seemed dangerous and disgusting. His concubine had now become his legal wife; he did not like the look of the king's Persian marriages; he forgot all logic and resented Peucestas for pandering to Persian ways in Persia's home province as if they were something privileged. He began to grumble, fearing the Successors for the implications of their name; what did they know of starvation in the Hindu Kush, elephants in the Punjab or the sand-dunes of Makran?
For the moment, Alexander could escape a confrontation by moving westwards; his road, like the veterans', still led in the general direction of home, and reports from the last stage of Nearchus's voyage up the Persian Gulf, had aroused his interest in the river routes from Susa. He learnt he could sail down the river Pasitigris, venture on to the sea or a linking canal, and return up the mouth of the Tigris until he rejoined the Royal Road; the idea appealed to him, so he detailed his new brother-in-law Hephaistion to bring the troops in attendance by land, and he embarked on the fleet to carry it out. The Pasitigris was pleasantly navigable and allowed him to inspect the irrigation methods of the area, but the Tigris had been blocked by weirs 'because the Persians, themselves poor sailors, had built them at regular intervals to prevent any ships sailing upstream and seizing their country'. Alexander 'said that such devices did not befit a victorious army and he proved them to be worthless by easily cutting through what the Persians had been so keen to preserve'.
At the mouth of the Tigris, he was able to lighten his load. Where the Dur-Ellil canal meets the eastern edge of the river estuary, the Persian kings
had founded a royal garrison two hundred years before and stocked it with Carian settlers, fellow countrymen of Scylax the sea captain and thus well suited to naval work on the Persian Gulf. The garrison had fallen into disrepair and Alexander felt inclined to replace it; now that Nearchus had explored the Persian Gulf, a city at the mouth of the Tigris could resume the Carian sailors' duties and serve as the port for India's shipping and traders. The descendants of the Carians' garrison were recruited as settlers and combined with as many army veterans as could decently be shed. Once again, an Alexandria took its cue from an ancient oriental outpost, and again it would live up to its founder's hopes. The new Alexandria lasted barely a hundred years before being ruined by floods, but the site was twice restored by Greek and Parthian kings and became the main port for near-Asian trade with India, visited by the Roman Emperor Trajan and still maintained by the Arabs a thousand years after Alexander's foundation. Its neat parallelogram of streets and houses, designed as if it were a military camp, has recently been found by an English air survey. Alexandrias, as their founder recognized, were his surest claim on posterity.
Rid, therefore, of a few hundred veterans, Alexander left his new city to be built and sailed up the Tigris, removing weirs and allowing his surveyors to measure the length of the river. At Opis, on the river bend south of modem Baghdad, he paused to meet Hephaistion and the land army. He knew now that there was no escaping his problem. From this point onwards, his route and the veterans' would have to diverge, for it was impossible for boats to sail up the Tigris any further, and at Opis the road system offered an alternative; he could either strike west for Babylon or else follow the great eastern highway into Media and Hamadan. The late summer weather would make Babylon intolerably hot, so like the Persian kings, Alexander opted for a visit to Media and the cool of the hunting-lodges of Hulwan. But if the veterans followed him, they would be doubling back and veering away from home. They had to go west, and at Opis the issue was brought out publicly.
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