by David Grant
But what immediately became of the precious Tyrean murex purple dye trade that fetched its weight in silver, giving us the Byzantine honorific porphyrogennetos, ‘born in the purple’, is unreported.200 The murex divers reappeared some years later when transferred to fleet maintenance in the planned dockyards at Babylon, but neither recorded is the lingering hatred engendered by the sale of a reported 15,000 to 30,000 survivors (7,500 may be more plausible) into slavery with additional refugees flooding the Mediterranean.201 The enigmatic Phoenician ships of Tarshish, a fleet that once defied the summer sailing season the Greeks adhered to, were never mentioned again and with them surely disappeared some of the closely guarded knowledge of safe anchorages, freshwater sources, trading outposts and the mineral deposits of Northern Europe and the tin islands of Britain, now accessed by sea since the Etruscans took control of the overland routes through France.202 The Phoenician-exploited silver deposits at Tartessus (possibly Tarshish) had been known to the Greeks and coveted since Colaeus the Samian explorer and merchant was reportedly blown off course when voyaging to Egypt ca. 638 BCE.203
Alexander’s (alleged) simultaneous declaration of war on the 500-year-old Carthage merited a few words from Curtius and does not feature in any other extant account.204 Carthaginian envoys were present in Tyre (though Alexander gave them safe passage, according to Arrian) and Justin curiously recorded the presence of a Hamilcar Rhodanus in the campaign entourage; he had been sent by Carthage to gather information about Alexander’s intentions, probably before the Macedonian king entered Mesopotamia. This detail does not appear elsewhere either, and was perhaps scooped up by Trogus at Gallia Narbonensis.205 Carthage, by now more famous for its export of carpets and pillows to Greece according to the comedian Hermippus, was obviously expecting the worst after the Tyrian sun god was renamed Apollo Philalexander; the unfortunate Hamilcar was executed upon his return to Carthage for allegedly plotting against the city.206
‘THOU WILT NOT BE ZEUS MERELY BECAUSE THOU GRASPEST THE THUNDERBOLT.’207
Although Aristotle’s influential writings had cautioned that ‘a youth is an unsuitable student of civil philosophy’, his most famous pupil was setting out to change the world.208 Alexander did not wish to simply conquer, he wanted to seduce, and whether vainglorious, visceral, or carefully calculated propaganda, this is where the thaumaturge, Callisthenes, did come in, for a while. After the sieging and storming of Gaza, the route was now clear for the invasion of Egypt where Alexander’s legend could truly be developed.
Amongst the thaumata that must have proliferated Callisthenes’ account, we hear of sacred springs coming to life and the Pamphylian Sea parting to allow the Macedones to navigate a narrow rocky coastal track; presumably this report was compiled with Alexander’s blessing and it was later swept up by the poet Menander (ca. 342-290 BCE), an associate of Theophrastus and Demetrius of Phalerum, his once pupil:209
How Alexander-like, indeed, this is; and if I seek some one, Spontaneous he’ll present himself; and if I clearly must Pass through some place by sea, this will lie open to my steps.210
Arrian explained the Pamphylian phenomenon in less divine terms; the coastal road could only be negotiated when a north wind blew, otherwise the route would be submerged. But aquatic feats were far from original, and miraculous water-crossings were a symbol of legitimacy when attached to campaigning kings. Xenophon’s Anabasis credited the Euphrates with yielding to Cyrus the Younger who waded across its span, and Cyrus the Great enjoyed a notable revenge when diverting the River Gyndes for the impiety of swallowing his warhorse. More pertinent to Alexander’s cause we have Xerxes’ triumphant bridge across the Hellespont and which briefly joined Europe and Asia in a hubristic defiance of prevailing doctrine, though combining the empires was Xerxes’ destiny claimed the banished Athenian, Onomacritus.211 Inevitably, the Romance gave Alexander power over dangerous water when he crossed the River Stranga when it froze every night, enabling him to meet, and then make good an escape from, Darius at Persepolis.212
Alexander was establishing his own romance, even in his life. Callisthenes, along with Anaxarchus (ca. 380-320 BCE), had annotated Aristotle’s copy of Homer’s Iliad (the ‘Recension of the Casket’), an editing possibly spurred on by Aristotle’s (now-lost) Homeric Problems, which had highlighted the epic’s inconsistences; Alexander is said to have kept the edited scrolls close.213 Reliving the epic Iliad, in which the ‘temporal boundary between the ages of myth and history is in fact a fuzzier, less distinct line than appears at first glance’, was a role that suited Alexander, who took a firmly euhemeristic stance when tracking down his heroes.214 He believed he was following in the footsteps of Heracles and Dionysus the conqueror of the Orient, and with a sense of the arete and aidos, the honour and duty, that the homage would have bestowed; ominously Aidos, the goddess of reverence and respect, was the companion goddess of Nemesis, who stood for indignation and retribution. Euripides’ description of Dionysus, with his juxtaposed qualities and polysemousness, was peculiarly relevant to Alexander: he was both the ‘most terrible’ and ‘most gentle’, crossing male and female as well as things Greek with foreign.
Euripides’ Bacchae, written at Pella ca. 407 BCE (posthumously premiered in Athens in 405 BCE) and possibly inspired by Macedonian court behaviour (or from the legacy of the Phrygian occupation of Macedonia), claimed Dionysus had travelled through Bactria, the likely home of Alexander’s wife, Roxane. When we consider that Alexander had named his first son Heracles, we might wonder if he would have named his second son Dionysus had he recovered at Babylon.215 Euripides’ tragedy also portrayed the god of wine and ritual madness (whose divinity was here being rejected) as bringing destruction upon the ancient city of Thebes, and this could help explain why Euripides remained in the Macedonian king’s favour.
Alexander’s appointment of Antipater’s son, Iolaos, as his chief cupbearer (archioinochooi) perhaps recalled Euripides’ lines in the Herakleidai: ‘You have heard of me, I think. I am Iolaos, known as the right hand man of Heracles.’216 Of course, on campaign Iolaos served as an informal hostage to ensure the regent’s loyalty back home. But this hypostatic union of the present and the past would have proven more politically useful than Aristotle’s Peripatetic penchant for rational classifications, or Thucydides’ subordination of the past to the present that had eliminated the fingers of the divine,217 for where Herodotus’ scrolls gave Alexander the glories of Greece, Thucydides’ had captured only the misfortunes of the day.218
The Macedonian king paid homage to the gods – ‘an immortal aristocracy’ – and in return they were expected to accept his notion of isotheos, his equality to them. But Alexander also knew ‘the gods helped those who helped themselves’,219 for the adage syn Athena kai kheira kinei, ‘Athena is with you, but you too need to move your hands’, made it clear the deities favoured men of action.220 And so Alexander sacrificed to the River Danube before negotiating its crossing, and to Protesilaus whose tomb at Elaios had been plundered by Xerxes. He may have even once (earlier) sacrificed at Aulis near Thebes as Agamemnon had done on the way to the Trojan War; the Spartan Agesilaus was once denied the privilege, so pushing Greece towards the Peloponnesian War.221
Alexander observed the rites to Poseidon and the Nereids before sailing the narrows of the Hellespont and he made oblations to Priam and Athena when arriving at the ‘small cheap’ temple of Athena on the alleged ruins of Troy; the ceremonies reminded everyone why Philip had declared war on Persia – to exact retribution for her profanation of Greek temples.222 Alexander had adopted the role of a new Protesilaus, the hero from the Iliad, and he was the first of the coalition army to set foot on Asian soil after hurling his spear to it to denote chora doryktetos, a spear-won prize. He was duly crowned by his sailing master and enthusiastic entourage.223 If, as it was claimed, he had learned the Iliad scrolls apo narthekos, by heart, it would have required the memorising of 15,693 standardised lines of dactylic hexameter. Alexander is said to have kept the epi
c under his pillow along with a dagger, and if this might have been Onesicritus’ own rendering of an ‘armed philosopher king’, it nevertheless appears symbolic of the mindset of the man.224
When seeking the blessing of Artemis in her sanctuary at Ephesus, propitious-looking entrails were even paraded around Alexander’s camp in hepatoscopic triumph; the superstitious troops were unlikely to complain at ceremonies of sphagia (signs derived from bloodletting, usually by cutting the throat), for all received a share of the sacrificial meat.225 Before battle at Issus, Alexander offered to Thetis and once again he followed Achilles’ own pre-battle ritual; in Egypt, Apis was honoured and in Babylon, Bel, as well as those deities suggested by the Chaldean priests.226 Alexander was clearly hedging his polytheistic bets and courting gods linked to both ancestral friend and enemy, besides those Ammon had chosen for him. He was now undermining both Aristotle and Euripides, for both had espoused the superiority of the Greeks and their gods over barbarians in no uncertain terms.
Hesiod had summed-up his Works and Days with: ‘Well with god and fortune is he who works knowledge of all this, giving the immortals no cause for offence, judging the bird-omens and avoiding transgressions.’227 And yet Alexander’s rant at his seer, Demophon, whether historic or allegorical, captured something of the contradiction within his piety: ‘when I have before my eyes such important matters and not the entrails of animals, what could be a greater hindrance to me than a superstitious seer?’ In this particular instance, in Mallia in India, his ignoring the signs was ill advised; Demophon cautioned him against battle and Alexander almost lost his life.228 Yet even the revered Chaldeans were not above reproach: ‘the best of prophets is the one who guesses right’, Alexander reminded them, alluding to another line from a now lost Euripides tragedy.229 Prediction was a dangerous business with the Macedonian king, and the seers would have recalled that Alexander ordered the crucifixion of the diviner who presided over the ‘favourable’ entrails on the day his father was stabbed to death at Aegae, though this would have been the perfect veneer of outrage from an only superficially grieving son.230
Philip had himself once sought oracular advice and he received a typically cryptic response: ‘Wreathed is the bull. All is done. There is also the one who will smite him.’231 He and any reader of Herodotus should have been aware of the misadventure of Croesus (reigned ca. 560-546 BCE) when interpreting his favourable-looking answer: the Delphic Oracle had told the Lydian king that if he invaded Cappadocia a mighty empire would fall; the already-prosperous Croesus never considered that it might be his own.232 Wealth, as Aristophanes portrayed it, is blind; an avowed acquaintance of Aesop, Croesus nevertheless failed to heed his Fable of the Mule: every truth has two sides.
The oracles of Delphi, Dodona and Didyma did not disappoint with their ambiguous predictions given, according to Theopompus, in verse.233 The priestess Pythia who Alexander himself dragged by force from the adyton, the inaccessible temple chamber, to extricate the reply he coveted on an ‘inauspicious day’, learned of his particular brand of piety the hard way.234 Alexander should have known that the god of Delphi neither revealed, nor concealed, but just ‘hinted’ the truth.235 The Pythia is said to have spoken only in a frenzied gibberish caused by the vapours arising from the Kerna below; in hindsight, it would have been more profitable to have assaulted the prophetai, the temple priests employed to interpret her responses.236
Less ambiguous was the result of the encounter with the Gordian Knot, ‘Fate’s silent riddle’ that vexed all-comers in Phrygia. A famed waggon stood on the acropolis of the palace of Gordius and Midas and had been dedicated to Sabazios, a god the Greeks associated with Zeus. Midas tied it to a post with an impossibly intricate knot; oracular prediction held that whoever unravelled it would become the king of Asia.237 Eyewitnesses variously reported that Alexander, driven by his pothos, yearning, either impetuously sliced through the ancient rope in frustration, or, as Aristobulus claimed, he cunningly unyoked the pin of the cart to which it was bound. This appears to be face-saving propaganda to hide an embarrassing performance – what Justin described as ‘a false interpretation of the oracle’– even though thunder is said to have followed signifying the approval of the gods.238
‘How is it to be decided whether the more dramatic or the more prosaic version of a story is the original one? The question of historical probability may be irrelevant: no one can really hope to know what actually happened at Gordium any more than one can say what song the Sirens sang.’239 But as Robert Graves noted, Alexander’s brutal cutting of the knot ultimately ‘… ended an ancient dispensation by placing the power of the sword above that of religious mystery.’240 Any priestesses attending the oracle obviously knew nothing of the dangers of toying with Alexander’s piety.
Alexander and the riddle of the Gordian Knot. A line engraving from 1899 after a drawing by André Castaigne.
If Alexander was an acolyte to divine and heroic doctrine, he was no hollow dreamer, and in him legend was bound up in practical military method; so Homer sat beside Xenophon in the campaign tent. Alexander sought bodily protection from what had been presented to him as the ‘shield of Achilles’ at Troy, and he would have absorbed lessons on cavalry command from Xenophon’s Hipparchicus.241 To lead his men Alexander would have learned from Jason of Pherae whose exemplary behaviour Xenophon portrayed as unswerving self-restraint.242 The lessons of fighting in Asia could already be learned from Xenophon’s Anabasis (in particular the need for a sizeable cavalry force, which Xenophon and Cyrus lacked), and in his father’s day stories and advice stemming from Spartan-led forays into Asia were surely absorbed by Philip as he planned his own campaign. So Alexander was no trailblazing ‘Columbus’, even if much geographical knowledge of the East remained shrouded in uncertainty; he was, as Bosworth proposed, more a ‘Hernán Cortéz’, the conquistador who brought down a civilisation and changed a newly opened old world forever.243
Neither was Alexander short on irony in victory, it seems. Following the battle at Issus, the Macedonians had received envoys from the freshly defeated Darius III, the ‘antagonist to Alexander’s genius’ who reportedly spoke some Greek; with them came, reportedly, the offer of a huge ransom for the return of the Great King’s captured family and possibly a concession to divide the Persian Empire at the Halys River (or Euphrates – sources conflict: there may have been as many as three separate offers).244 What appear monochrome correspondences between the kings in the campaign accounts were reborn with much colour in the Romance.245
According to Diodorus, Alexander hid the Great King’s olive branch and replaced it with a fabricated letter containing far less benign terms so his generals would reject them.246 Certainly, if left to his Companions and the veteran Parmenio, ‘the best tactician of his generals’, the Macedonian war machine would have settled for a truce, for under the terms of Darius III’s alleged peace offer, Alexander could have shared Asia with the Great King as his son-in-law.247 Here the fate of the world turned on a singular response dictated in a campaign tent in Cilicia (or northern Mesopotamia), proving the course of history can indeed turn on the toss of a tetradrachm.
This particular episode does not appear in the texts of Arrian or Plutarch; if it was genuine, perhaps their ‘court’ sources have felt the charade was best hushed-up. But according to Curtius, Alexander chose an envoy curiously named Thersippus to carry his terse rejection back to the Persian king.248 We know from Plutarch, who in turn took it from Heracleides, that it was a certain Thersippus who ran to Athens after the defeat of Darius I at Marathon some 160 years before.249 Having just defeated his namesake (Darius III), and now encamped at Marathus, Alexander appears to have chosen a high-ranking man of exactly the same name to deliver his reply.250
Anyone sceptical of the associations that Alexander or his press corps were attempting to make, should recall that the previous battle at the River Granicus in May 334 BCE had been fought (it was claimed) on the anniversary of the fall of Troy;251 Duris reckoned
that took place exactly 1,000 years (to the month, Thargelion) before in 1,334 BCE.252 The Granicus bordered the Anatolian Troad: the messages being sent out were clear. Although the Macedonian kings never campaigned in the Macedonian May-moon month of Daisios (traditionally a month of harvest-gathering), Alexander inserted a second month of Artemisius in the calendar, corresponding to the moon of April, to pull it off.253 He was by then aged twenty-one and perhaps ten months.
Just a year earlier, the house of Pindar had remained untouched when Alexander flattened Thebes when it revolted upon receiving false reports of his death; the city’s downfall was apparently heralded in by portents including a fountain running with blood. He released the relatives of those who had once hosted his own father (as a hostage) but some 6,000 Thebans were reportedly executed and 30,000 prisoners were sold into slavery to fund the cost of the campaign.254 Although the andrapodismos (deportation and enslavement) ended 800 years of continuous occupation at Thebes, Alexander, nevertheless, paid homage to a fifty-two-year career that saw Pindar’s epinikia, his victory odes, honour winners at the Olympic, Isthmian, Nemean and Pythian Games.
