Elephants and Castles

by Alfred Duggan

  ‘I can’t answer the last question,’ Aristodemus said crossly. ‘You know more about it than I do. As to my religious beliefs - there must be powers in existence greater than man, and if you choose to call one of them Zeus and another Apollo I shall not contradict you. There are gods, and we know nothing about them, especially we don’t know how to win their favour. No one is wise enough to tell you more. Do you feel your legs turning into serpents?’

  ‘Like the images of Aegistheus? I suppose you are proud to have thought of another man who became a god. But he was made a god after he was dead, not when he was twenty-nine years old. I tell you I am encouraged by it. Telesphorus, it’s not fitting that a god should be held up by a wretched little fort like Munychia. When do you expect the place to yield?’

  ‘Not for a month, sir, at the earliest. As yet our engines have barely scratched the walls, and crowded as we are among the houses of the port we haven’t room to build them bigger. Would it be any use offering to bribe the commander?’

  ‘Perhaps he could be bought, but I don’t want to get in by bribery. That’s not how a Saviour God brings Liberty. We must show that our arms are invincible. Since the Corinthians have a citadel that we can’t take by siege-craft we shall have to frighten them into surrender. No bribery, if we can manage any other way. But I have promised not to enter Athens until all Attica is free, and I don’t want to hang round Piraeus for a month. Cousin, you don’t need the whole army to shut in that little place. Let’s go off and free somewhere else while Munychia is battered.’

  After a discussion which shocked Aristodemus by its casual informality the commanders decided to march against Megara as a first step to opening the way into the Peloponnese.

  3. LOVE AND WAR

  The fleet took most of the army westward towards the Isthmus, leaving a sufficient detachment to continue the siege of Munychia. Archelaus commanded the troops in all Attica, with Telesphorus to conduct the siege. While Ptolemy was busy in Cyprus there was no fleet that would dare to face them; and without incident they landed at Nisae, the harbour of Megara.

  Here the situation was more complicated than in Attica. Like Athens, Megara had been garrisoned by Cassander, and was ruled by oligarchs. Like Athens, Megara stood some distance from the sea, joined to its port by Long Walls. But in Megara there was a genuine pro-Cassander party, and the garrison was not isolated as in Attica; Cassander had troops in Pagae, only eleven miles away, and these were linked to the strong garrison in Corinth. It was just possible that Cassander’s men would concentrate forward to fight a battle for Megara; though more likely that they would fall back, after imposing the maximum delay, on their impregnable base of Acrocorinth.

  The landing went off as well as could be expected. The harbour was too wide to be closed by a chain, and the inhabitants of any port tend to be democratic. Cassander’s men abandoned the walls of Nisae and retired to the citadel. But the long Walls, and the fortifications of Megara, were stoutly held. Demetrius sent back to Attica for siege engines while waiting for the democrats of Megara to declare themselves.

  When the engines arrived Demetrius placed them himself. He enjoyed managing the technicalities of a siege, and this task was some consolation for leaving to Telesphorus all the interesting problems of the battering of Munychia. But battering at town walls defended by their own citizens could not be described as bringing Liberty to Hellas, and he was not sure that his father would approve. It was a great relief when three citizens slipped out of the town with news that the democrats had risen, occupied the market-place, and overthrown the oligarchic government. Unfortunately they could not throw open the gates of their city; for the oligarchs, more numerous than the democrats, still controlled the walls after they had been driven from the centre of the town.

  This further evidence that most Megarans were opposed to him decided Demetrius to consult Aristodemus. That sage always had an answer to any problem of conduct, and it was usually the answer that his patron wanted to hear. Demetrius did not respect him, but he knew that his arguments usually sounded convincing to the general public.

  ‘I suppose that in Megara, as in other cities, the oligarchs make up less than half the citizens,’ he began. ‘But here most of the citizens wish to live under their government, to the point of being willing to fight for them. Is it my duty to fight against them, and indeed kill some of them, to force on the survivors a liberty they don’t want?’

  ‘That is your duty, as a fighter for democracy,’ Aristodemus answered without hesitation. ‘Without doubt democracy is the best form of government, and therefore you must compel these idle citizens to take up the burden of administration, whether they like it or not.’

  ‘Duty, must you speak in imperatives. Who laid this duty on me? Which god has proclaimed that democracy is best? Or can you prove it by reasoning?’

  ‘I expect I could prove it, although it would take a long time. Shall we postpone the exposition until after this campaign? As to the gods, why, you are a god yourself. If you favour democracy that gives it the required divine sanction. Of course this particular concrete situation can be simply explained. The Megarans are a weak people, living on the main road near Athens. For generations the Athenians have bullied them. You are the friend and Saviour God of the Athenians, and therefore they resist you. With them it’s a point of honour. For the same point of honour you must fight them. Your noble father sent you to fight Cassander. These men are the allies of Cassander. It’s as simple as that,’

  ‘Oh, if it’s my duty as a soldier there’s no more to be said. I like fighting, and I may as well fight the Megarans as anyone else. But I admire them for standing up for their own side, and after I have taken their city I shall be merciful. I wish I could find more Hellenes who want the liberty I bring to them.’

  Within a day or two he was consoled. All over Hellas the democrats were stirring, and there seemed to be plenty of them. From Boeotia came a considerable force of volunteers; though it turned out on further examination that these untrained volunteers, of the purest democratic principles, expected to be paid at the standard rate for veteran mercenaries. Aristodemus suggested sourly that, just as the Megarans resisted more from hatred of Athens than for love of oligarchy, so these men from Orchomenus had taken up arms more from hatred of Thebes than for love of democracy. But they were eager to fight, the first reinforcements of any value Demetrius had received since he came to land in Hellas. It was curious to reflect that in the east a Hellenic soldier was considered nearly as good as a Macedonian; perhaps all the warlike Hellenes had already gone east as mercenaries.

  The arrival from Athens of another sacred embassy gave Demetrius an even lower opinion of the honour and self-respect of these strange citizens, so unlike their mighty ancestors. The embassy was led by one Stratocles, a politician of base origin and vulgar manners who now led the Athenian Assembly. With all reverence he announced to the Saviour God the latest laws of Athene’s own city: that a well-endowed priesthood should be set up to serve the Saviour Gods, that these Gods should be honoured with temples, that their life-size statues should be made from the most costly materials - gold and ivory, and that another embassy should journey to Asia to thank the Saviour God Antigonus for his generous gift of ship-timber.

  ‘Father is backing me, and being prompt about it,’ he reflected more cheerfully. ‘If he can’t spare reinforcements ship- timber is the most useful thing he could send. Piraeus is still the best shipyard in the world.’ He even forced himself to be polite to Stratocles; though at supper the man drank great gulps of wine until he shouted, instead of sipping wine and water by the hour while talking witty nonsense as Athenians were supposed to do. When shown round the siege-works he showed himself brave (but no coward would put himself forward as leader of an Athenian faction); yet his offer to lead an immediate assault, while the defences stood intact, showed that he was no soldier.

  Demetrius was beginning to admire the enemy and despise his allies, as happens so often in war. Thes
e Hellenes were eager to cut the throats of their fellow-citizens, and not unwilling to risk their own necks in the bloody game of politics; they were not cowards, exactly. But they were reluctant to campaign like real soldiers. They would not endure the hard lying, early rising, coarse food and long marches of the military life; they were lazy, unreliable, and not so clean in their persons as they might be. He recalled with regret the companions of his adolescence, the handsome, upstanding, plain-spoken Persian troopers who changed sides on every battlefield of Asia.

  But he wanted to capture Megara, especially because there was living in the city a famous philosopher, a man who had retired from public life to do nothing but think. Demetrius wished to talk with him, and since this Stilpon notoriously refused all invitations, to take his city seemed to be the easiest way to meet him.

  Meanwhile the oligarchs had retired from the walls of Megara to join Cassander’s soldiers in the citadel. The blockade of the two forts in Megara and Nisae could not occupy many men, and Demetrius had troops to spare. He decided to lay siege to Pagae, eleven miles away, while still keeping up the pressure on the Megarid.

  To divide his forces while a considerable army concentrated in Corinth was asking for trouble. But Demetrius, bored, rather hoped to meet trouble and overcome it, just to break the monotony of campaigning without a battle.

  Besides, this advance brought him nearer to a private objective which had been in his mind ever since he left Piraeus. He hoped to meet a lady who lived far behind the enemy lines.

  He had never seen Cratesipolis, the widow of Alexander the son of Polyperchon; but she was said to be the most beautiful woman in Hellas. She also was eager to meet the famous young soldier, the only man of his generation who dared to make war on the companions of the mighty Alexander. She lived in the safety of Patras, far from the fighting; but she had managed to send a message to Demetrius while he lay in Piraeus. That the whole strategy of a campaign should be changed to further a furtive love-affair tickled his fancy. That was how a god should behave when he wished to toy with a mortal woman.

  The enemy made no move to advance from Corinth, and presently Demetrius had his engines well placed to batter the gates of Pagae. He turned over the conduct of the siege to a captain and set off, with a small escort of light horse, to dodge through the Isthmus to the rendezvous far off in Achaea.

  He did it in two days of hard riding, climbing along ridges and creeping up steep valleys. By the evening of the second day he was hidden in a wood near Patras. He sent a peasant into the town with a message and himself waited in his tent, set up some distance from the bivouac of his escort. It would be discourteous to expose this enterprising lady to the boisterous welcome of his troopers.

  This was a pointless escapade, as Demetrius knew very well. His wife was the lady Phila, whom he could not put away without a political upheaval; in the field there were usually a few dancing girls at headquarters, but the widow of a prominent Macedonian officer could not be herded in with them. No matter how much he liked Cratesipolis he must part from her after this brief meeting. On the other hand, when he saw her he might dislike her. She had the reputation of a famous beauty, but the reputation might have lingered after her looks were gone; perhaps her conversation would be tedious. But to conquer a great lady by his fame alone, before she had seen him, was not a thing that came to ordinary men. He might be in for a tiresome evening, but in old age he would look back on this exploit with pride.

  Cratesipolis, an experienced campaigner, was punctual at the rendezvous. Demetrius was aware of a tall, red-haired woman standing in the doorway of his tent. She was older than he; her waist had thickened, though her shoulders and arms were still very fine. She held herself proudly, but she was eager to greet him.

  “So this is the famous boy-general,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Older than I had expected, though perhaps it’s not for me to say that. Has divinity aged you? Isn’t it true that you are a god in Athens? Though not here in Achaea, where Cassander rules. There’s nothing strange in your godhead, soberly considered. To these puny Hellenes all Macedonians are gods.’

  ‘I’m a little bit tired of theological speculation, madam,’ he replied. ‘My staff never stop joking about it, as though they feared I might take it seriously if they don’t make fun of me.

  The decree was a political move by a nasty little demagogue, one Stratocles, who expects to get money by it I suppose. All the same, it is rather wonderful to be a Macedonian among Hellenes. When my grandfather was young we were reckoned almost barbarians, grateful if we were allowed to enter for the Games. Now leaders of the greatest cities in Hellas hang round our tents, anxious to do whatever we command, repulsively thankful when we help them to get rid of their rivals. I like the feeling, don’t you? As though we were above Hellenes, as Hellenes are above barbarians.’

  ‘Yes, it’s fun. I know what you mean. In Patras I walk through the market whenever I feel like it; and the citizens make way for me, though they lock up their own wives. But I didn’t come here to talk politics, I came in search of a lover. Yes, you’ll do. I like those swordsman’s wrists of yours. Look, I’ve brought wine. Only a small jar, but it’s strong. Shall we begin by drinking it, and afterwards do whatever comes into our heads?’

  She sat beside him on the truss of hay that was the only furniture of his tent; until presently they lay back side by side.

  The brief July night was nearly over when Cratesipolis woke him. She was squatting on her heels as she fastened her shift. ‘Well, here,’ she said when she saw he was awake, ‘you have acquitted yourself nobly. It’s grand to be with a real Macedonian again, after these finicking Hellenes. But now comes the next race in these Games I have arranged for you. About midnight my maid will have raised the alarm in Patras; she was to insist on seeing the garrison-commander himself, to tell him that the famous Demetrius son of Antigonus was in his territory with only a small escort. By now the soldiers will be getting near. What will you do next?’

  ‘Yes, but why did you tell?’ Demetrius answered coolly. ‘Do you make a practice of killing your lovers in the morning, like a witch in a fairy tale? Or is it that you learned so much treachery from your late husband that now treason is second nature to you? Here’s my sword,’ he added, springing to his feet. ‘Give me one reason, quickly, why I shouldn’t cut your throat before the soldiers catch me.’

  ‘That’s no way for a lover to speak to his mistress.’ Cratesipolis twisted her hair into a knot. ‘I haven’t betrayed you, young man. On the contrary, I have given you a fair start. The soldiers won’t find us for half an hour at least, ample time for you to get away. I don’t know why I sent that message. It just seemed a good idea when I thought of it - perhaps I do know. I like lusty young men, but I don’t like to mastered by them. I guessed you would be rough with me - and you have been rough, you know. My bruised pride will be restored when I see you run like a hare on the hillside, with the soldiers of Cassander whooping after you. I forgot that you might kill me first. If you want to, here I am. My husband started blood-feuds in plenty, and I don’t expect to die in my bed. But aren’t you being rather heavy-handed over a simple practical joke?’

  Demetrius saw she was unafraid. A woman famous for her beauty which now was waning, a rootless widow without children or home, she did not greatly care whether she died today or in thirty years’ time. Besides, she was endowed with the courage and fortitude of the Macedonians. While he fastened his boots he turned his back on her. As he straightened up he spoke to her for the last time.

  ‘Good-bye, my sweet, I shan’t harm you. You will have the pleasure of seeing me run from my enemies. When the soldiers find me gone I hope they work off their annoyance by raping you one after the other. On second thoughts I don’t hope so. Probably you would enjoy it.’

  The oligarchs of all Hellas mocked this light-minded general who led an invasion so as to snatch a single night with a promiscuous woman. The soldiers of Cassander had chased him over the hills in a most humiliat
ing fashion. He reached his camp at Pagae wearing the sheepskin jacket of a peasant. To publish his disgrace to the whole world the tunic he had left in his tent was brought back to Patras and hung up as a trophy in the market-place. All right-thinking men could see what a scoundrel was this chosen champion of the democrats.

  But the soldiers of Antigonus, even the light horse who had ridden so hard to flee with their scapegrace leader, thought all the better of him. Cratesipolis was famous for her beauty; every man of them would have done the same if the chance had come to him. Democratic volunteers and unemployed mercenaries continued to arrive in the camps before Megara and Pagea, so that the army of liberty grew stronger every day. In Athens they thought no worse of a Saviour God who took his pleasure where he found it, especially under the noses of baffled oligarchs.

  Throughout the Megarid the oligarchs were ready to give up the struggle; Cassander’s troops were more anxious to find a safe way back to the Peloponnese than to drive out the invaders.

  It was known that even beyond the Isthmus Cassander’s hold was weakening. The army gathering in Corinth would have to stay there to hold down the local democrats; the besieged garrisons could not look for speedy relief.

  But it was hard for the young Demetrius to control troops scattered in three separate sieges. While he lay before Pagae some of his soldiers who had forced their way into Megara dispersed to plunder, as though they had won a hostile city by storm. Yet Megara was in theory governed by their democratic allies, and Demetrius had promised that the place should not be sacked. He sent orders that the plunder must cease, and dismissed some subordinate commanders; but he could not give back the stolen property. There were limits to the obedience a leader could exact from the hard-bitten veterans who fought up and down the dying Empire of Alexander.