Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

by Nicholas Nicastro

  The real dying began when the guides lost the trail again. With hopelessness spreading through the ranks, men straggled, fell behind the pace, and disappeared into the night. They went by twos and threes, until Alexander had lost more men than to any human enemy. There was a look of despair on his face, they say, that had never been seen there before; no doubt he took pity on the faithful Macedonians who had followed him, and received only death for their trouble. This expression worried his men as much as the desert, for if the indomitable Alexander lost heart they were certainly doomed.

  That Alexander understood this is clear from a famous story most of you already know. Some of his men had dug a deep pit and managed to collect a helmet-full of fresh water from the bottom of it. When they brought the water to their King, he was tempted, but in the end refused to drink, pouring it on the ground. His men were comforted by this, knowing that Alexander expected no more of them than he was willing to suffer himself. Many of the survivors attest that this gesture gave them the will to go on. Alexander had therefore worked a kind of miracle: he had made a single helmet-full of water enough to satisfy an entire army.

  At length Craterus, who was waiting for them on the borders of Carmania, saw a party of burnt skeletons emerge from the desert. When Alexander joined him, he had the appearance of a dust-covered reptile, but a smiling one: the Persians had lost all but seven men, and the Babylonian queen Semiramis all but twenty, but Alexander saved more than three thousand, or about half his force. Thus the King triumphed over his rivals in history, if not over the desert itself.

  Thanks to Peithon’s example no one was willing to assume Alexander was dead until they laid eyes on his corpse. Craterus, instead of taking the diadem for himself when the King was overdue, just followed orders. Indeed, he led the army more sensibly than Alexander himself, for in his lack of imagination he simply led us from point A to point B, without turning aside every few miles to overawe every feathered native he saw.

  Harpalus was unique in failing to share in this good sense. As Aeschines has said, he was a personal friend of the King’s, his treasurer at Ecbatana. In a fit of what may have been grief at Alexander’s death in the desert, but was probably just greed, Harpalus abandoned his post and fled to this city with a fortune of 6000 talents. My opponent misleads you, however, when he makes wild accusations based on some moneylender’s records of 1000 gold darics due for my collection. That money was not a bribe from Harpalus, but Alexander’s reward to me for saving his life in the Mallian raid.

  Nor is there much significance to the fact that the payment was made in darics: a great deal of the Great King’s fortune, out of which Alexander issued all his rewards, was minted in that coin. This is not a secret. If Aeschines had bothered to check with any of the other Greeks who have come home with money from Alexander, he would have found many of them were paid in darics. Aeschines furthermore neglects to mention that Harpalus was expelled from the city on the order of the Assembly, and then murdered at the instigation of his own bodyguard, Thibron the Lacedaemonian. Yet wasn’t Harpalus supposed to be allied with…dare I say his name…Demosthenes? So much for the vaunted influence of Aeschines’ personal bugaboo!

  XX.

  When I saw the King again he posed a question to me that had preoccupied him during long night-marches in Gedrosia: what does it mean to be Persian? When he first asked this I thought it was a joke. But he was serious, and by asking it he meant more than simply the fact that a man was born in Persian territory.

  “Are you asking about the customs of the Persians?”

  “I’m asking about customs,” he replied, “and clothing, and the way they think, and everything in their history that makes them what they are.”

  What reply to make? As Greeks, we have insults for the Persians like “carpet-munchers,” “runaways,” and “spear-droppers.” And we have words to describe the Persians that flatter us more than they describe them: words like arrogance, decadence, slavishness, obsequiousness, cowardliness. These are venerable notions, handed down to us from the men who fought at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. But no one who saw the Persians take the field against the Macedonians, pitting their leather armor against the sarissa, could say they were cowardly. No one who has seen the splendor of their architecture, art, or gardens can doubt their ingenuity. And no one who has worked beside Persian administrators or fought beside their nobles, as we came to do, has any grounds to doubt their basic decency.

  What is a Persian? It was easier to speak of individual Persians, and the qualities that blighted or recommended them. Pressed by the King, I suggested he look to the beliefs that most of the Persians had accepted—that is, the odd philosophy of Zoroaster, who taught that our sins each have cosmic consequences, that judgment awaits us all, and that all life is worthy of reverence. Yet how can a soldier believe such a thing, objected Alexander, if it is his duty to destroy life? They may believe it, I replied, but at the cost of fearing death, which as every Greek knows makes a man useless in the phalanx.

  “So the Persians run from the field,” he asked, “because Zoroaster teaches that life is superior to victory?”

  “One might suppose so; in any case, no philosophy can be entirely bad that holds the dog in such high esteem!”

  We posed our questions to Gobares, who said the following: “A Persian is not a Greek in pantaloons. He remains a creature of the open steppe, taking the sky as the roof of his lawful abode. He cares less for abstractions than you Greeks, and for that he belongs to a far, far happier race. You would all do well to give back the lands you took, for the Persian wears the responsibility more lightly than you. Mark my words—in Greek hands, this monstrosity of an empire you’ve built will not survive. Indeed, you all should have let yourselves be conquered by Xerxes. A distant, contented overlord would have been a far better neighbor to you than you have been to each other!”

  This reply was not satisfying, and it did not settle the issue. For Alexander, resolving this question promised a way to square the political circle: to escape the squalid end of every Macedonian king, it would be necessary for him to become something else. Yet at no point did his exact goal seem clear in his mind—he didn’t want to become Persian, nor did he wish to remain no more than the semi-Greek monarch his father had been. Could he, by some contortion of his character, make himself the measure of all the people he undertook to rule? Or were the Persian and Greeks fated to lack a common factor, but forever remain, like the side and diagonal of the square, incommensurable? On this proof more than geometry was at stake.

  Gods and children demand that the world reflect their preferences. Alexander, who was both, attempted to force the fusion he couldn’t realize in himself by mongrelizing his army. For some years he had financed the training of 30,000 Persian boys in Macedonian customs and tactics. As these recruits came of age, he marched these “Inheritors” out in front of his troops with a conspicuous and tenderly paternal smile on his face. What good he was expecting from this display was difficult to understand, but among the Macedonians it produced nothing but hard feelings.

  Their resentment was aggravated further when his “inheritors” began to take positions in the phalanx vacated by his aging veterans. Watching the Persians ape the ways of their betters on the parade-ground is one thing, but having a barbarian recruit behind you in the ranks holding a sharp pike at your back is quite another. Exactly how Alexander expected his men to trust these newcomers, when the Macedonians’ entire experience consisted of watching Persians run from the battlefield, was beyond my understanding. And I keep hearing that Alexander always had a deft way of handling his troops!

  The King also invited many of his officers to take Persian wives. These sorts of “invitations” were, of course, not meant to be declined. Hephaestion therefore took Drypetis, a daughter of Darius; Craterus drew Amastrine, Darius’ niece, and Ptolemy a girl of noble birth named Artacama. Nearchus, newly returned from his explorations at sea, got a new wife, as did Perdiccas and Seleucus and
Peucestas. Alexander himself added two wives to the one he already had: Barsine, Darius’ eldest daughter, and Parysatis, daughter of Artaxerxes III. The king’s double nuptials were meant to legitimize his sons through both Darius’ line and that of Artaxerxes, whom Darius had overthrown.

  The banquet was held at the palace in Susa. In the forecourt he built a gilded loggia draped with garland and perfumed by aromatic woods, lined with ninety-two nuptial couches each carved from single trunks of Lebanese cedar. The loggia surrounded a tented close centered on the golden couch of the royal couple. Pennants trimmed with tiny bells tinkled in the breeze as peacocks strutted across the great orchestra, each one followed by an attendant to assure no bird would soil the blessed event. The brides, who were delivered from the hands of their fathers according to their ranks, presented themselves in veiled finery to the reclining grooms. Each was married as she was pulled to a sitting position on the cushions.

  For this event Alexander costumed himself as Dionysus triumphant, complete with leopard skin, golden fillet, and thrysus of cornel wood and ivy arranged in the shape of a pine cone. Like the god, Alexander had invaded India, and was not a stranger to wine. We may imagine the ivy leaves also concealed an iron spear-point, as the stories tell of Dionysus in his warrior aspect. The god’s theatrical patronage was honored by troupes of actors, dancers and musicians who had come out from Ionia and Athens to liven the proceedings.

  The splendor of these ceremonies notwithstanding, I don’t think many of the Macedonians took these marriages to heart. Many of them already had wives back home that they never renounced. Ptolemy’s marriage to Artacama, for instance, did not compel him to turn Thais out of his tent. In fact, the practice of taking native women was a common practice on long campaigns—wives, concubines, or other varieties of female companionship could be obtained in the camp market like any other commodity.

  I say ‘I believe’ the banquets went splendidly because I was not there. Instead, I drew the task of handling Rohjane. The Queen was—no surprise—not invited. I had had some success in getting her to change her wardrobe and habits, but the insult of Alexander’s betrayal undid all the progress I had made. Now everything Macedonian was shameful, odious. This reversal was ill-timed because by some perversity of the Fates she was at last pregnant with Alexander’s child.

  Rohjane herself would not speak to me, preferring to lie on her couch and nurse her injury in silence. Youtab presented herself as an intermediary.

  “Do you Greeks know anything about women? Do your queens suffer themselves to be made foolish in your country?”

  “The Macedonians are not Greeks,” I said, changing the subject. “And very few kings or queens rule over us.”

  “You’re all fools, whatever you are! Does your King, who barely serves my lady as a man, imagine that his acts have no consequences? Don’t insult us by pretending you don’t know what we mean!”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The Queen carries his heir,” Youtab pointed. “Don’t doubt it is a boy.”

  “She is only two months pregnant.”

  “It is a boy,” Rohjane interjected from the other room.

  “If you were not all fools, you would know that the sex can be told from the way the child lies within!” Youtab hectored me. “But as easily as that may be told, there may be problems…”

  I shook my head at this impossible woman.

  “Yes, you know what I am saying,” she said. “It took that kinglet four years to do his duty by the Queen. Perhaps we should let him try again with that chubby Barsine. If he is lucky he may get a son in ten years!”

  I stuck my finger in Youtab’s face. “That kind of talk should not be idly made, for as you say, there may be consequences.”

  “Don’t show me your cock’s comb, Machon! It is far too late for that!”

  “Youtab, that’s enough,” commanded Rohjane. She was suddenly standing at the door, wearing the woolen peplos I had forbidden her. Her hair had escaped its clasps, and there was a puffiness around her eyes that showed she had been crying. This was the first evidence I’d had that she possessed any sort of feeling regarding Alexander. Whether her tears were out of jealousy or damaged pride or both was impossible to say.

  Youtab shot to her feet, and Rohjane took her place opposite me. The Queen’s manner was calm, even sage, as she began to speak.

  “You must excuse Youtab, for she is upset. She does not understand the matters that oblige kings to do what they must. Honestly, I expected something like this, though I confess my guard went down when our son was conceived. I therefore have one question for you, as our friend, which I hope you might answer the best you can…”

  She proceeded to ask about the history of the Macedonian throne, and specifically the fates of those mothers and children who ended up on the losing side of succession disputes. As the daughter of a king, she must have suspected that the picture was a grim one. I was therefore in no way free to make up any story I wished, as Aeschines claims. What would have been the point, when she could have gotten the truth from any number of other sources? Perdiccas and Ptolemy, to take just two, would not have hesitated to describe in detail what end awaited her and her son! If I had lied, all I would have accomplished would have been to discredit myself.

  “I thank you for your honesty, Machon,” she finally said. “And for that, we will not speak of this matter again…”

  The speaker was interrupted by a noise from the floor. It was Swallow, scratching one of his uncut toenails against the planks. When Machon looked at him, Swallow pointed at the water clock. The flow from the reservoir had slowed to a trickle.

  Yes, I see that my time is almost up. I suppose I had flattered myself to think I had the same skill as Aeschines in sensing when his water has run low. And to think I haven’t even killed Alexander yet—so to speak! Relax, Aeschines…that was a joke, not a confession! So I must conclude:

  As he alienated his wife, Alexander made additional trouble for himself with his veteran soldiers. It had now been ten years since the Greeks had crossed into Asia. Since many of Alexander’s men were then too old or too weak to serve him further, he ordered ten thousand Greeks cashiered from the army, albeit with a fortune of one talent each as a bonus for their service. Craterus was given the task of leading these veterans home.

  The veterans, having already seen their commanders take Persian wives, and their positions taken by barbarian levies, were in no mood to accept dismissal. As Alexander took the rostrum to praise them, the men responded with jeers, performing mock prostrations, asking him if he would prefer an army full of Persians and, yes, calling him ‘Darius Alexander.’ The King did not perceive these things at first, speaking as if in a dream from which he was reluctant to awake. When he did notice them, however, his face flashed a deep red, and he looked directly at those who insulted him.

  “What injustice have I done you,” he asked, “that you dishonor this leave-taking? Speak out like men, not children, for after our service together you owe me as much!”

  “The dishonor is done upon us,” said a voice from the crowd. “For Alexander has forgotten the men who gave him the land of Asia, and thinks they may be bought off for mere gold.”

  “Maybe he thinks he will invade Africa by himself!” cried another.

  This remark made the rest of the men laugh. Alexander did not laugh, however, but instead called his Agrianian guards. The instigators were arrested in a dead silence, as King and army eyed each other. Their mutual hostility was strange in light of all they had accomplished together. It was as if the mortal body resented its divine head, and the divine head spurned its body. Alexander moved to speak, but was seized by a violent coughing that lasted a while; as he convulsed, he grasped his side, over the place where the Mallian spear had punctured his lung.

  “This is a fine day, my companions. For this is the day I found out your true estimation of me. You gave me Asia, you say? I gave you respect! I took a race of cowardly, dung-smear
ed vagabonds and forged an army! I gave you lifetimes of memories to grace the heritage of your families. For you will return to Macedonia with much more than a talent of gold in your hands. You return with the kind of esteem that is unassailable for the rest of your days! And for what have I asked in return? A bit of purple to wear, and the kisses of my dear companions! Beyond these, I have demanded no special privileges—I have known the rigors of the camp and the march as well as any of you. In the Gedrosian desert, I could have taken water, but did not, because there was not enough for us to share—can any of you deny it? So what will you say now, when people remind you that you consigned me to our enemies? How will you explain the end of Alexander? Go then! Go back to your small lives, your ordinariness! Sustain yourselves with wisecracks instead of honor! I have nothing more to say to you.”

  Thereupon he spat on the ground and retreated to his tent. As he had done before, on the death of Cleitus and when he was forced back from India, he took no food and saw no visitors for the next day. For a good number of the men this temper had a too-familiar ring, and they did not respond to it. Yet for others, particularly those of weak or compliant minds, the King’s upset was intolerable. Alexander increased their discomfort by issuing new commissions for officers: most of the names on the list were Persian ones, and some of the nicknames of the regiments had been transferred to their Persian counterparts.

  Again, for those who had set their hearts against him, who considered their divorce to be final, the commissions only confirmed their suspicions. But for some this estrangement had gone too far—abandoning their pride, they surrounded Alexander’s tent and called for his forgiveness. When he did not answer, they broke down entirely, making such a riot of pitiful wailing that the King’s heart softened. Appearing before them, he honored all by receiving their kisses, and wept tears of good fellowship with them, saying—without irony this time—that it was indeed a good day.