Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

by Nicholas Nicastro

  It was a big sword, and though he was short, Alexander had a strong arm. Yet it still took more than twenty blows to cut through the leather mass, and by the end the King was wide-eyed and sweaty and oblivious to the expressions of horror on the faces of the natives. With a look of accomplishment on his face that was as absurd as it was childish, he held up the two severed halves of the Knot. At that, the senior members of his staff clapped their hands, and with their glances made sure the junior officers followed, until all the Macedonians were applauding him.

  It was an anxious moment, in fact, because the attitudes of the natives and foreigners to this sad spectacle were so different. But in the end the ones with the weapons prevailed, and the King basked in an ovation that seemed to go on forever. The celebration paused as a peal of thunder was heard above the temple. All at once the nervousness returned, and some even proceeded suddenly to jeer the King, believing that the gods had expressed their disapproval of what he had done. But Perdiccas leapt on a plinth and settled the issue.

  “Zeus has thrown his thunderbolt! The new King of Asia is crowned!”

  All at once the pendulum swung from uncertainty back to servility. The soldiers ripped the ancient cart from its moorings, lifted Alexander inside, and rolled him around the sanctuary in triumph. As the temple emptied, I stayed behind to watch the head priest. The man knelt before the discarded halves of the Knot, threw the folds of his cloak over his head, and wept.

  Despite Alexander’s “triumph,” there seemed an urgency to clear out of Gordion as soon as possible. The army prepared to move on to Ancyra, about twenty parasangs to the east. As we decamped, I noticed a tiny figure atop the great mound of King Midas. Coming closer, I saw it was Alexander, sitting up there with a wine jug and his sword stuck in the mound beside him. He hailed me as I came up to join him.

  “Machon! Have you nothing better to do than climb hills?”

  “It is a remarkable hill that we both have climbed.”

  And it was. The mound, which they say is heaped atop a fabulous hoard of undiscovered treasure, commanded the plateau for miles around. Around the city stretched a patchwork of farms, split by the winding ribbon of the river Sangarius. The Macedonian camp was a constellation of torches by the river. From that distance, and as the twilight came on, no figures could be seen in the town or the camp below. We seemed to be alone—the monarch and his memoirist, or in Alexander’s mind, the hero and History herself.

  “I wonder if anyone would have done it.”

  “It?”

  “Loosened the Knot for real. And don’t look so shocked, my friend! The storyteller need not believe his own stories.”

  He held out his cup. I sat down next to him, and together we finished the jug as the sun sank into the plain. I turned east, in the direction of Ancyra; the sky there was the darkest—a soiled indigo with the dying light and the smoke of hearth-fires. Alexander climbed to his feet.

  “Tomorrow, we go there. Let’s see what it brings us!”

  As we entered the town we learned that Ptolemy and Craterus were desperate to learn where the King had gone. Soldiers filled the streets, breaking down the doors of every wine shop in the city. With a wink, the King hid his head under his cloak and disappeared into an alley. He was not seen again until late the following morning, when he was found sleeping in his bed.

  With the fall of Persian resistance throughout the western half of Asia Minor, Alexander’s promise to liberate the Ionians was accomplished. While it is true that ease of their victory tempted the Macedonians to take all of the Persian lands, it was equally true that the invasion had gathered its own momentum, and that other forces were then at work to keep it in motion. Cities in Alexander’s path insisted on surrendering before he had even arrived, forcing him to march east to preserve them from anarchy. The pattern repeated many times, until it seemed that the Macedonians were being sucked inevitably eastward, farther from their homes, their families, and in some sense, from themselves.

  So we reached Issus. Aren’t we all tired of descriptions of battles? The hero is always fearless, the enemy is always in hordes. While the Greeks do exceed all other people in the arts of war, the bravery of the Persians, as men, should never be doubted. The fact was that our enemies were indifferently led. The Great King could more easily find 100,000 foot-soldiers than one decent company commander. Darius, who showed up at last to defend his kingdom, was competent only at setting up troops for battle. The more essential skill, of leading them through the adjustments that are inevitable in any fight, was completely beyond him.

  Darius disposed his forces in a defile along the banks of the river Pinarus, from the foothills of Mt. Amanus on his left to the sea. His center was again held by his Greek hirelings, who must have burned to avenge the humiliation of the Granicus. The banks of this river were even more steep at the Persian center than at the last battle; Darius increased his odds of success by using gangs of slaves to mound up more earth there, so that his mercenaries would look down on us from a great height. On his right Darius massed a multitude of armored cavalry. Arrayed behind this narrow front was a horde of crack archers, slingers, and native infantry.

  Aeschines was most expansive on this matter so I won’t expend my time on the details. The fact is that Alexander was late showing up on the morning of the battle because he was hung over. The more he drank the previous evening, the more he became assured that he was fated to die, either at the hands of the Persians or of his own men. His drinking companions, Hephaestion, Parmenion, and Cleitus, indulged this fantasy by asking him how he would dispose of his new kingdom. He replied that he cared only of disposing of himself, for his preferences would not matter the slightest bit after he was gone.

  Of course, he didn’t die at Issus. But his words proved prophetic, as the present circumstances around the royal succession show.

  That Darius would offer battle in such a narrow valley was unexpected. The Macedonians, who had been prepared to face a large cavalry force on open ground, were confounded that the Great King would negate his own best advantage. They suspected some hidden strategy was at work.

  The armies stood staring at each other for some time until Arridaeus could be brought to the field. In a glance the fool discerned the weakness in the Persian battle-order: a body of lightly-armored infantry on the enemy left that he somehow felt to be wavering. There terror should go, he said, and with it the battle.

  So Alexander went where he was told. And just as Arridaeus had foreseen, the Persian left broke. The King exceeded his mandate, however, by wheeling to his left and charging the enemy center, where Darius’s retinue could be seen under the royal standard of the winged solar disk. From their respective places around the battlefield the Macedonian generals watched helplessly as Alexander risked turning victory into defeat.

  I try to imagine what the Great King must have seen as he stood in his garlanded chariot. Set in the center, he would have had a view of his forces breaking the advance of the vaunted phalanxes, while the very mass of his cavalry on the right promised to break Parmenion’s line. In the confusion, in the dust churned by hundreds of thousands of feet, he would scarcely have noticed a disturbance far to the north. Over the din of crashing shields before him, he might have heard a thin chorus of screams. Perhaps one of his retainers would have told him his left wing had broken; perhaps he even expected it, having planted weak troops there in order to bait Alexander away from what he expected would be the main action. He still might have looked forward to turning the Macedonian left, flanking the Foot Companions, and having his antagonist, that bald-cheeked upstart, brought to him in chains by sunset.

  He might have thought these things, and at that very moment have glimpsed the Companion cavalry through the dust, sweeping his forces aside as they headed straight for the Persian royal guard. Alexander would have been unmistakable in their van, white plumes flying on his helmet, his thrusting spear pointed right at Darius.

  There must have been very little time to t
hink as the Macedonians closed and the fate of a continent hung on an instant. The golden figure of Alexander pressed his attack, weaving his way through the flailing scimitars like a rider avoiding the overhanging branches on a trail. Darius would have seen the fear in his retainers’ eyes—those fearful, flashing whites—as they failed to stop this onslaught. The Great King would have held his breath as another figure on horseback, in the panoply of his royal house, finally intercepted Alexander. There was a brief struggle as the flanks of their horses met, a crunch of metal plates buckling under the weight as well-trained mounts turned around each other. Someone gasped as Alexander’s spear point found a gap in his opponent’s armor. Down went the Great King’s defender—but there would be little time for Darius to mourn the death of his own brother. He would have seen his tormentor turn to face him at last.

  The Persian royal guard, the Immortals, had been taken by surprise by Alexander’s lightning maneuver. As they gave ground, Darius was exposed with astonishing ease—a development no one would have expected. But the surprises did not all work to the Macedonians’ advantage: at that time no one knew that Darius was renowned for his skill in single combat. From Cleitus, I learned that Alexander made straight for the royal chariot, made a pass with his stabbing spear…and missed. Darius, who towered above the rest of the battlefield in his high-peaked leather war-bonnet, had a javelin ready. With a barbarous cry, he let loose as Alexander rode by, striking him in the leg just above the knee.

  Everything on the battlefield seemed to come to a halt when Alexander was hit. It was as if when he was wounded everyone believed the war would instantly end—that the combatants, their reason for fighting gone, would simply disengage, shake hands, and go home. Only Darius was still in a frenzy, screaming for another javelin. We did not yet know that the Great King took haoma before the battle—an extract of the ephedra plant that was taken with milk. This drug is said to instill feelings of euphoria, and in greater quantities, ecstatic awareness of the hidden secrets of the universe. It also gave great strength, though at the cost of a disordered mind. It was what the Persians used in their worship of their gods, just as the Greeks use wine in our rites of Dionysus. In this sense both Kings came to the battle in a very devout state!

  It might have been the haoma that allowed the Great King to make such a remarkable throw. However, when Alexander proved able to pull the javelin out of his leg, the drug’s disadvantage showed: all at once, without even being touched, Darius panicked. Before the Macedonians could organize themselves we were looking at the back of his chariot. The entire mass of the Persian army immediately broke in retreat. Alexander, still looking for a spectacular exit from this life, was stabbing and slashing at anyone in reach.

  The day ended much as it had at the Granicus, with the field in the hands of the Macedonians and the ground littered with the bodies of Persians and Greek mercenaries. Alexander, who regretted that his injury was superficial, was restrained by his doctors from giving chase to Darius. The fact that he was bloodied at all was judged to be a disaster by the Macedonians, particularly Ptolemy and Hephaestion; they would have preferred to lose five thousand men than brook any hint of the young conqueror’s mortality. So you can see that they were already thinking in these terms, that the legend must emerge that Alexander was unstoppable because he was a god.

  To his shame, Darius abandoned not only his troops but his household to the enemy. By now you have all heard of the luxury Alexander saw in the camp of Darius. The Great King’s field tent was more resplendent than Philip’s royal tomb in Aigai. Darius touched nothing that was not gold or silver—golden cups, golden plates, golden bathtub with working taps, a golden commode for his backside. His nostrils were caressed by golden braziers burning aromatic woods from Arabia; his feet trod on carpets spun of golden thread and as soft as a woman’s thighs. For official functions, he sat on a chryselephantine throne with as many precious gems as stars in the night sky. The Macedonians stood in quiet awe, never having imagined such splendor.

  All this gold had an effect on the Macedonians’ willingness to go all the way to Persia. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the question arose of what wonders awaited the enterprising conqueror who took the royal palaces at Susa, Persepolis, or Ecbatana, given that Darius’s field camp was so resplendent. That the Macedonians went so far east because of strategic considerations is at best only a half-truth; the simple promise of loot loomed at least as large for the mid-level officers, without whom Alexander could never had convinced his army to go anywhere.

  I cannot pass over in silence how my opponent portrays my remark upon seeing Darius’s tent, “at last we see what it means to be a king.” Again, there is an insinuation here of sinister intent that is more cynical than convincing. Those who were present took it as it was meant, as a joke. Shame on you for making it more than that, Aeschines! As far as I am aware, having a sense of humor is not yet an actionable offense in the courts of the Athenians.

  VIII.

  Among the captured treasures were the dependents of Darius’s house, including his wives, concubines, and four year-old son. The Great King’s mother, dark-eyed Sisygambis, came to make entreaties to Alexander. She was the first woman of the Persian court the Macedonians had seen—a handsome, proud figure of sixty, bejeweled and besilked in a splendor of which Olympias could only dream. She put an impassive face on the fate she expected for herself and her grandchild. She entered the bedchamber and touched her forehead to the carpet not before Alexander, who was still on the bed, but to Hephaestion.

  There was a gasp at this faux pas. Hephaestion, who was indeed the taller man, gently bid her rise and led her to Alexander, who watched her repeat her submission. Her consternation at her error must have showed on her face, because Alexander was moved to reassure her, saying “It hardly matters. Hephaestion is Alexander too.” Then he embraced her as his very own mother, pledging his full protection of her and her family; he even promised to send messengers after the fleeing Darius to tell him that his loved ones would not be insulted. It all must have seemed incomprehensible to old Sisygambis, who was expecting the ravages of a barbarian.

  Aeschines’s portrait of Sisygambus is fair—perhaps it is the actor in him that affords him such a sensitive understanding of old women. But I fear he makes too much of Alexander’s gallant treatment of Stateira, Darius’s principal wife. I ask you, why should anyone be surprised at this? Of course Alexander protected the royal household—every soul in it was his property!

  Alexander was usually abstemious in his dealings with women. Slanderers have misrepresented his gallantry as evidence of certain defects of character with respect to the pleasures taken by men with men. The presence of Hephaestion, his best companion, is offered as evidence of Alexander’s intemperance in this regard. Yet the very opposite might as well be argued, that the King kept but one true favorite through those long years. True, a man is expected to grow out of such affairs in the fullness of time. There are other attributes of seniority, such as a wife and children, that Alexander was likewise late in taking up, yet have never been the object of so much cheap gossip. By the gods, I will have many other matters on which to criticize him! On the flavor of his loves, though, I think a man like Alexander, who sacrificed more sensual pleasure than we will ever know for a short life spent in army camps, can be granted this single indulgence.

  I did witness an incident that suggests that Stateira was not so virtuously treated after all. It was some time after the initial meeting. The King and his cronies were passing the evening in their usual positions—horizontal on the wine couch. This was still early in Alexander’s campaign to change the world, before the weight of events soured the wine. Don’t revolutions always start off that way, with everyone together in a merry band of brothers—until the sport starts? And doesn’t the sport always start?

  It began this time when Craterus had the idea of inviting the most beautiful woman of Asia to their party. Alexander, having delivered himself into intoxicat
ion as fast as possible, agreed. The order went out, and the servants ran to retrieve her.

  This call was made quite late at night—she was probably roused from her bed on this whim. As you might imagine, the woman imagined the worst, and contrived to stall. But this only gave the symposiasts time to get drunker still. Their anticipation heightened, they repeated the summons, this time more insistently.

  Every pair of eyes paid her homage as she appeared at the tent flap. Stateira’s veil had been stripped away by the guard, revealing a face of such sublimity that the men were awed in the same way as they would be before eclipses, volcanoes or other wonders. Her skin was a sunny shade of golden untroubled by flaw; her hair was black and shining like the cloudless night that follows the day. She was clothed in a linen gown that revealed nothing except the shape of her limbs. This only seemed to magnify her appeal, as the Macedonians knew little of the nude female form, but instead liked to fill their houses with statues of half-draped nymphs and disheveled maenads.

  If you have not seen a noble woman of Persia, you cannot know that there is a kind of doleful beauty that belongs solely to them. In all the countries I have travelled, I have never seen women look so good looking so wretched. Stateira’s only imperfection, I would say, was the fact of her perfection, which left her somewhat characterless. This did not seem to be the kind of woman any mortal could love.

  For her part, Stateira was entirely impassive, looking at no one and taking no notice of her surroundings except to reach the couch next to Alexander. There she sat, as straight as an infantry pike, accepting no food or drink and saying nothing. The shape of her nostrils expressed resentment of the very air she breathed. There seemed an old woman’s share of desolation hidden behind her eyes.