Alexander

by Guy Maclean Rogers

  son.”

  According to Plutarch’s sources, however, the priest made a mistake in his greeting. Though he

  wanted to be polite and address Alexander with the salutation “O paidion,” or “O son,” because of

  his poor command of Greek the priest instead greeted Alexander with the words “O pai Dios,” which

  meant “O son of Zeus.”

  Whether it was a mistake or not, Alexander immediately accepted the prophet’s greeting with

  delight, and the legend began that the priest, the human mouthpiece of the god himself, had greeted

  Alexander as the son of Zeus. Alexander’s intimations of his own divine lineage had been stunningly

  (if mistakenly) reinforced.

  Next, we are told, Alexander asked the prophet whether the god had given him the rule of the whole

  world (or mankind), and whether Alexander had punished all of those responsible for his father’s

  murder. The priest then presumably went into the inner sanctum of the shrine and put the questions to

  the god himself.

  The infallible god had the form of an omphalos, or a large, egg-shaped stone studded with

  emeralds. This stone god was carried about by eighty priests on a litter in the form of a boat. These

  priests, bearing the stone god in his boat on their shoulders, walked (or staggered) about, without

  volition, wherever the god directed them. The prophet then interpreted the movements of the litter as

  responses to the questions asked of the god. To Greeks accustomed to anthropomorphic

  representations of gods, Zeus Ammon probably seemed quite exotic and even odd-looking; that was

  undoubtedly part of his appeal.

  In answer to Alexander’s first question, the priest cried that the god had granted Alexander his

  request. To the second question, about the punishment of Philip’s murderers, Plutarch tells us that the

  priest cautioned Alexander to speak more guardedly, since his father (Alexander’s) was not mortal.

  But in answer to the question of whether Philip’s murderers had all been punished, the priest told

  Alexander that Philip had been avenged. Thus (according to this tradition) the god had pointedly

  implied that Olympias had told the truth after all: it was not Philip II of Macedon who had slithered

  into her bedroom on the night Alexander was conceived.

  The questions Alexander asked Zeus Ammon and the answers he received have always been a

  source of fascination. Unfortunately, however, there is no contemporary evidence that the two

  questions (about world rule and Philip’s assassins) were asked by Alexander or heard by anyone who

  was there at the time.

  Rather, the questions may have been invented by later writers, such as Cleitarchus, who wanted to

  explain subsequent developments, such as Alexander’s seemingly endless victories; or by

  Callisthenes, Alexander’s official historian, who wanted to make sure that everyone knew that all of

  Philip’s assassins had been punished, thereby exculpating Olympias and Alexander by infallible,

  divine pronouncement. Indeed, if we assume that Callisthenes only wrote things pleasing to

  Alexander, it is interesting that he, and implicitly Alexander, should have felt the need to have the

  king’s innocence proclaimed by none other than Zeus Ammon. Whether the story therefore reveals

  filial devotion—or a guilty conscience—is an open question.

  That the asking of the question about Philip’s murderers could be interpreted in such a way may

  also explain why Arrian (whose account of the journey to the oracle drew upon Ptolemy and

  Aristobulus, both of whom went with Alexander to Siwah) simply reports that Alexander put his

  question to the oracle and received the answer that his heart desired. According to Arrian, no one

  actually heard (or at least later reported) what Alexander asked the god. And if no one heard the

  questions, there could be no gossip about the god granting Alexander rule of the whole world or

  exculpating Olympias and Alexander. If Arrian is correct, this may be all we can know about

  Alexander’s famous consultation of Zeus Ammon.

  But there also may be some later evidence that casts light on Alexander’s consultation with the god.

  Years later, when Alexander reached what he believed were the ends of the earth, at the mouth of the

  Indus River, we are told that he made sacrifice to other gods and with a different ritual, in accordance

  with the oracle of Ammon. Thus the sacrifice to the other gods at that point must be related to what

  Alexander had been told by the god at Siwah.

  Considering the context, we might deduce that the question Alexander asked the oracle was not

  whether he would rule over all mankind, but whether he would reach the ends of the earth itself,

  possibly undefeated when he got there. Unfortunately, Arrian leaves us frustratingly ignorant of what

  precisely the oracular utterance was that Alexander thought had been fulfilled when he reached the

  Outer Ocean.

  Whatever Alexander thought about himself either before or after he consulted the oracle at Siwah,

  however, he could not have been displeased by his experience there, for he honored the god with rich

  gifts before setting back off for Egypt.

  THE FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDRIA

  After his visit to the oracle, Alexander returned to Egypt by the same route. Along the way, he

  founded Alexandria, the first and greatest of his cities. The foundation date suggested by later Roman

  tradition is April 7, 331 B.C.E.

  All the sources agree that it was Alexander who personally decided to found a great city in Egypt.

  Indeed, he designed its general layout, inspired by a dream in which a gray-haired old man of

  venerable appearance stood by his side, and recited these lines from the Odyssey:

  Out of the tossing sea where it breaks

  on the beaches of Egypt

  Rises an isle from the waters:

  the name that men give it is Pharos.

  Alexander got up the next morning and visited Pharos, then still an island near the Canopic mouth

  of the Nile, but later joined to the mainland by a causeway. Since there was no chalk, Alexander

  marked out the plan of his new city with barley meal in the shape of the Macedonian military cloak,

  the chlamys.

  Huge flocks of birds, however, descended upon the site and devoured the barley. Alexander took

  this as a distressing omen. But this seemingly ominous event was interpreted by the seers as a sign

  that the city would not only have rich resources of its own, but would be the nurse of men of every

  nation.

  This “prophecy” has been seen by some scholars as an anachronistic retrojection from

  Alexandria’s subsequent history as a polyglot city of Macedonians, Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and

  others, to the time of its foundation as a specifically Greek city. But the historian Curtius Rufus

  mentions that Alexander ordered people to migrate from neighboring cities to Alexandria to provide

  the new city with a large population. It is certain that the peoples of these neighboring cities cannot

  have been solely Greeks or Macedonians, since there were very few Greeks living in the neighboring

  areas of the Nile Delta at the time. A new city with a large population cannot have been made up of

  ethnic Greeks. The first Alexandria undoubtedly was a multi-ethnic city from its foundation, as

  Alexander intended.

  At the same time, Alexandria in Egypt was physically organized as a fundamentally Greek city:

 
; Alexander indicated the location of the marketplace ( agora), the temples to be built, what gods they

  should serve, including the gods of Greece and the Egyptian Isis, and its circuit wall. Alexandria

  therefore had the essential topographical layout and the physical structures characteristic of the Greek

  polis, as the spectacular underwater archaeological excavations increasingly have disclosed. That

  Alexander included a temple consecrated to the Egyptian Isis in his plan is, however, another

  indication of his respect for the religious traditions of a foreign people.

  Although the new foundation had a city wall (as virtually all Greek cities did), Alexandria’s

  fundamental function was not military. Nor was the city established primarily for commercial

  reasons, despite its later history. Rather, the choice of its name literally speaks for itself: with

  characteristic immodesty, the first Alexandria was founded to project the name of Alexander

  spatially, into Egypt, the fabled land of one of history’s oldest civilizations, and temporally, into

  posterity. Indeed, Alexander never named a city after himself that he did not intend to be a permanent

  establishment. According to one Byzantine-era grammarian, there were finally no fewer than eighteen

  such Alexandrias dotting the landscape of the Middle and Near East.

  THE FATHER OF ALL MANKIND

  From the site of his first eponymous city, the king returned to Memphis, where he was visited by

  deputations from Greece and was joined by a new force of 400 Greek mercenaries and 500 Thracian

  cavalry. He once again offered sacrifice to Zeus the king and held a ceremonial parade of his troops

  under arms, followed by games with athletic and musical contests. As so often, a major sacrifice

  followed recent successes.

  It was perhaps at this time that Alexander listened to the lectures of a philosopher named Psammon,

  who apparently argued that all men were ruled by Zeus, since in each case that which acquires

  mastery and rules is divine. Plutarch tells us that although Alexander approved of this argument, his

  own pronouncement on the subject was more philosophical: namely, that while Zeus was indeed the

  father of all mankind, he nevertheless made the best especially his own. Whether Alexander uttered

  these words in Egypt at this time or not, no better summation of Alexander’s understanding of Zeus’

  relationship to mankind has ever been made.

  Both clauses of Alexander’s “more philosophical” pronouncement on the subject can be traced

  back to Alexander’s favorite work of art, the Iliad, where Zeus is repeatedly referred to as the father

  of both men and gods. Moreover, in the epic world the best, the aristoi (e.g., Achilles, Hektor, and

  the other heroes), are especially dear to the gods. Achilles’ quest to prove himself the best of the

  Achaeans is a central, perhaps the central, theme of the Iliad. The ideas Alexander perhaps

  enunciated in Egypt about Zeus’ relationship to mankind and the best were thoroughly grounded in the

  theological world of the Iliad.

  Alexander obviously believed that he belonged to those “best” whom Zeus made particularly his

  own. From his earliest days, Olympias had encouraged him to believe that he was a descendant of

  heroes and gods. Nothing he had accomplished would have discouraged this belief. Against all the

  odds, a king who was not yet thirty had met and defeated in battle the Great King of Persia and taken

  half his empire away from him. No Greek mortal of any age had accomplished such feats of arms;

  Achilles, Alexander’s model and ancestor, had not even taken Troy. Alexander and his Macedonians

  had reversed the tides of history itself. By his deeds, Alexander had elevated himself not just to the

  ranks of the best: he was the best of the best. After what had happened at the Granicus and Issos, who

  could doubt that Alexander was beloved of the gods, especially of Zeus, who held sway over the

  entire world? According to the Colophonian natural philosopher Xenophanes, the Thracians, who had

  blue eyes and red hair, claimed that their gods had blue eyes and red hair. Of course Alexander’s

  Zeus made the best especially his own. He was the father of the best: Alexander!

  But Alexander’s pronouncement also implied that among the rest of mankind were other aristoi,

  who were also dear to Zeus. Zeus made the best (plural) his very own. Alexander did not say that all

  the best were Greeks or Macedonians; indeed, the logical implication of his reply to Psammon was

  that the best could come from among all mankind.

  If Plutarch has quoted Alexander accurately, what Alexander seems to have been claiming then was

  that there were men whom Zeus made his very own because they were the best, regardless of their

  ethnic background or nationality. This is important because it possibly gives us some idea of the

  theological underpinnings of Alexander’s later willingness to incorporate the best of the Persians and

  some other conquered peoples into his army and the administration of his empire. As we have seen,

  Aristotle had advised his pupil to treat the conquered peoples of his empire like plants or animals; it

  is not easy to reconcile such advice with the belief that Zeus is the father of all mankind. Alexander’s

  subsequent treatment of the “best” among the conquered peoples, on the other hand, is completely

  consistent with the beliefs he apparently expressed in Egypt.

  LEAVING THE “TWO LANDS”

  In addition to giving local philosophers lessons about Zeus’ preferences, Alexander also reorganized

  Egypt politically, leaving two Egyptians as provincial governors ( nomarchs), and installing garrisons

  at Memphis and Pelusium. Lycidas, a Greek from Aetolia, was left in charge of the mercenaries. A

  Companion was left as the secretary of foreign troops and two men of Chalcis were left to

  superintend the work of Lycidas and the Companion.

  Governors of Libya and of Arabia by Heröopolis also were appointed. Peucestas, son of

  Macartatus, and Balacrus, son of Amyntas, were put in charge of the troops in Egypt. Command of the

  fleet was given to Polemon, son of Theramenes. Various other promotions in the army also were

  made.

  Alexander was deeply impressed by Egypt and the potential strength of the country: that is why he

  divided its control among several officers. He did not believe it was safe to entrust the governance of

  such a rich and important country to one man. The Roman emperors later took a leaf from Alexander’s

  book: they never sent a senator there as proconsul, but always governors and administrators drawn

  from the class of equites, or knights. The Roman emperors feared what a Roman senator might do

  with the resources of Egypt at his disposal.

  As for Alexander, with a renewed sense of confidence in his divinely sanctioned destiny, he and

  the Macedonians marched out of Egypt in the spring of 331 beneath the shadows of the pyramids,

  determined to find Darius and his great army wherever they were and to settle the contest for Asia,

  once and for all.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Battle of Gaugamela

  FROM MEMPHIS TO TYRE

  The first order of business after Alexander left Memphis on his way to Phoenicia was a brief punitive

  campaign in Samaria, the region lying between Judaea and the Galilee. While Alexander was in

  Egypt, the Samaritans had burned alive Andromachus, whom he had put in charge of Syria. After

  p
unishing those held responsible, by summer the army reached Tyre, where the fleet was waiting.

  In Tyre, Alexander once again honored Herakles with religious celebrations and games, perhaps a

  sign that he anticipated great labors. The kings of Cyprus sponsored dithyrambic choruses and

  tragedies featuring some of the most prominent actors of the day. During the performance of one

  comedy, Lycon of Scarpheia introduced a line into his character’s speech asking Alexander for a

  present of ten talents. Alexander laughed and gave the enterprising thespian the money.

  The matter of Alexander’s Athenian prisoners then arose again. The Athenian state galley, the

  Paralus, crewed by free citizens and bearing envoys named Diophantus and Achilles, arrived. The

  purpose of the embassy was to ask for the return of the Athenians taken prisoner at the battle of the

  Granicus. Alexander had already denied a similar request two years before, but the strategic situation

  now was quite different.

  Since 332 a war between Macedonian troops and the mercenary army of the Spartan king Agis had

  been raging on the island of Crete. To deal with this dangerous situation, Alexander dispatched his

  admiral Amphoterus with the fleet to assist the Macedonians and to help support his allies in the

  Peloponnese. To keep Athens neutral in the conflict, Alexander now promised to return the Athenian

  prisoners of war.

  Amphoterus was sent with orders to support all the Greek cities that were “sound” on the Persian

  War and did not listen to the Spartans. Phoenicia and Cyprus supplied a hundred additional ships for

  the war in the Peloponnese. By the spring of 330, these forces and Antipater would combine to defeat

  the Spartan king.

  DARIUS’ SECOND OVERTURE

  The summer of 331 brought another overture from Darius as well. After praising Alexander for his

  generous treatment of his mother and the other royal captives, Darius offered him all the land west of

  the Euphrates, 30,000 talents of silver, and the hand of one of his daughters in return for a cessation of

  hostilities. If he accepted, Alexander would become Darius’ son-in-law and would share the rule of

  the whole empire. To judge by the terms of the offer, Darius made his offer to Alexander for both

  strategic and personal reasons.