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by Strauss, Barry

  Then there were the objections that we earlier imagined Parmenio holding. Alexander could be king of Macedon or king of Asia but not both. As king of Asia, Alexander would force the freewheeling Macedonian nobility to bow down to tyranny.

  Parmenio’s voice would no longer be heard: Alexander had left him behind. The grand old man of the Macedonian army was now seventy years old; the young king now felt confident enough to go into battle without him. He left Parmenio in the rear, in Ecbatana. Armed with a division, Parmenio’s job was to guard communications and to protect the treasury. Parmenio didn’t pull the purse strings, however: those belonged to Harpalus. Like Parmenio, Harpalus was a Macedonian noble, but he was much younger. And he was Alexander’s man—one of the king’s boyhood friends. Harpalus was now imperial treasurer. Parmenio had been shut out of the eastern campaign. Only his sons took part, Philotas, commander of the Companion Cavalry, and Nicanor, commander of the elite infantry corps known as the hypaspists. But they were weak reeds.

  Cleaning House with Blood and Iron

  Alexander and his army plunged eastward, in pursuit of Bessus. For the next three years, Alexander would be fighting on two fronts, against rebels both without and within. Being king of Asia was no longer just a title—it was the experience that Alexander lived every day. Just what the title meant would have to be worked out. Alexander had no intention of being a Persian king, but he had to be more than a Macedonian king. He had millions of new subjects, after all, and he had to offer them something more than a conqueror’s spear.

  What Alexander came up with was a compromise between the freewheeling ways of the Macedonian court and the pomp of the Persian autocracy. He also tried to widen his court circle markedly. But Alexander was too Persian for the Macedonians and too Macedonian for the Persians. The Macedonians resented his decision to wear Persian dress, such as the diadem and the girdle, and to adopt Persian court ceremony, including proskynesis, that is, throwing oneself flat on the ground before the king in a gesture of submission. They bristled at Alexander’s order that his closest advisors wear Persian scarlet robes. They disapproved of the admission of Persian nobles into his retinue, including Darius’s brother Oxyathres. They despised the introduction of eunuchs and the royal harem and they felt threatened by Alexander’s new Persian royal guard.

  The Persians, for their part, were not fooled by the title “king of Asia,” which they rightly saw as a far cry from their royal title of “great king, king of kings, king of lands”; it was, in fact, a Greek invention, signaling a new kind of royal absolutism. From the defeat of Darius to the burning of Persepolis to the new Macedonian military governors in every province, the Persian elite resented the conquest.

  Unhappy Persians continued to fight—for four more long years of war. As for Alexander’s own men, Macedonians and Greeks in his entourage responded to the compromise with rage, grumbling, and conspiracy. Alexander responded too—with murder.

  It would be easy to accuse him of unique savagery, but bloodshed was as Macedonian as hunting, the national sport. Every Macedonian king had secured his royal title by having other claimants to the throne murdered—at least, every successful Macedonian king. Alexander went further than most in the sheer number of alleged plotters, conspirators, and grumblers that he had executed. Then again, none of his predecessors had ever done anything as radical as Alexander. When a king changes his policies as dramatically as Alexander did, he fires those who refuse to support him. In this case, these “firings” proved fatal.

  Macedonian kings also had reason to worry about assassination. Alexander’s father, Philip II, was murdered in office, as had been Philip’s older brother, Alexander II (r. 369–366). No wonder Alexander was nervous about plots and conspiracies. Between 330 and 327, Alexander executed a dozen generals, courtiers, and advisors, including one he killed with his own hands.

  Rebellion beset Alexander from both sides. In 330 he faced a near mutiny by his own army, which did not want to continue eastward. Then his discovery of a plot ended with the execution of two of his chief generals: the great Parmenio and his son Philotas (a convenient excuse for Alexander to rid himself of rivals; neither played an active role in the conspiracy). In 328 Alexander murdered the general Cleitus “the Black” after a drunken quarrel that included Cleitus’s angry condemnation of Alexander’s Persian habits. It happened at a party in the palace at Maracanda (modern Samarkand). Macedonians had a reputation as hard drinkers and on this occasion, they consumed herculean amounts—enough for Alexander to grab a spear and run Cleitus through.

  In 327 a group of royal pages was tried and executed for conspiring to kill Alexander. Their tutor, Callisthenes, a Greek philosopher and Alexander’s court historian, was also tried and probably killed. Earlier, he had publicly refused to engage in proskynesis.

  Although Alexander appointed many Persians as satraps, they had to turn real power over to Macedonian commanders and treasurers. Many of the Persian satraps rose in revolt. Few of them lasted in office.

  Alexander never found his balance between Macedonians and Persians. No wonder, because integrating a conquering elite with a defeated but still proud aristocracy is monumentally difficult. Success would have required every ounce of a master statesman’s skill, but Alexander rarely focused his attention on domestic politics. His passions were war and conquest; everything else was a distraction.

  In one area alone did Alexander show the political touch of a master—in the politics of the army. Over the ten years of his expedition, he transformed the Macedonian army into a personal possession. He purged his rivals ruthlessly in the officer corps and replaced them with his friends and comrades. They included talented soldiers, like Craterus and Perdiccas, and less talented ones, like Hephaestion. Alexander had an intimate friendship with Hephaestion that might have included a physical element. Meanwhile, Alexander reorganized units to weaken private and regional ties. He wanted only one focus of loyalty—himself.

  The Macedonians never formed a majority in Alexander’s army, but for a long time they were a military and political elite. Although Alexander had other excellent troops, the Macedonians were the army’s two fists and its backbone. In 334, they made up around 17,000 out of a total of more than 40,000 troops. Between 333 and 330, another 15,000 Macedonian reinforcements came from the homeland to join Alexander, for a total of more than 30,000 Macedonians. But Macedon had no more manpower to spare, and attrition began to reduce the number of Macedonians. By 324 there were only 18,000 Macedonians in Alexander’s army.

  The character of their comrades changed radically as well, from allies to mercenaries and from European to Asian. In 334, the rest of Alexander’s army consisted of allies from Greece and from Macedon’s Balkan neighbors such as Thrace. After the Greek allies returned home, Alexander replaced them with two groups of soldiers: mercenaries—mostly Greeks—and Easterners. The latter were a mixed group of Iranians and Central and South Asians. No longer did a majority of Alexander’s troops speak Greek.

  Meanwhile, Alexander moved shrewdly and sharply to weaken the Macedonians’ power in the military. They had always been a minority in the army, but now they lost their privileges. They stood on an equal footing with new Iranian heavy infantrymen and cavalrymen, who were trained to fight in the Macedonian style or at least an approximation of it.

  Blood and Snow

  It was “mission creep” on a monumental scale. Alexander stayed in the East for five years, until summer 325. What began as a hunt for Bessus turned into the conquest of the Persian Far East: Aria, Arachosia, Bactria, Sogdiana (modern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), and northwestern India. It was a region of about one million square miles, roughly 40 percent of the Persian empire. It included desert, steppe, and some of the world’s toughest mountain terrain. Its extremes of climate ranged from snow to heat to monsoon rains.

  The war against Bessus quickly became a tale of three rebels, as first Satibarzanes, satrap of Aria, and then Spitamenes, warlord of Sogdiana, either joined o
r replaced Bessus as military opponents.

  Satibarzanes specialized in treachery. He fought for Darius at Gaugamela and then, less than a year later, joined Bessus in assassinating him. He surrendered to Alexander when the Macedonians reached Aria and then rebelled once they moved east on the way to fight Bessus in Bactria. Alexander turned back and forced Satibarzanes to decamp with two thousand cavalry for Bactria.

  But in spring 329 Satibarzanes went back to Aria with more troops and raised the flag of rebellion again. This time, Alexander sent his lieutenants to polish him off. For once, the backstabbing satrap took on a fair fight. In fact, he opted for the manliest form of warfare, hand-to-hand combat. Satibarzanes challenged Erigyius of Mytilene, one of Alexander’s most loyal Greek commanders. Erigyius killed the insurgent leader and sent his head to Alexander, who was several hundred miles to the east.

  Meanwhile, Bessus proved no match for Alexander’s audacity. Unable to organize a large army in Bactria, Bessus retreated northward, hoping first that the spring snows in the mountains, then the desert, and finally a hard-to-cross river—he had burned all the boats—would stop Alexander from following him. But Bessus was wrong. Alexander pushed his men over the passes of the Hindu Kush mountains and across the desert to the Oxus River (modern Amu Dar’ya), where he had his men build rafts to cross into Sogdiana. That did it for the followers of Bessus.

  Spitamenes and another Sogdian noble arrested Bessus and handed him over to Alexander. To emphasize his position as king of Asia, Alexander punished Bessus for murdering Darius, and he imposed the penalty that Persians thought fit for a regicide—first Bessus had his ears and nose cut off, then he was crucified.

  But Spitamenes turned on Alexander, and he proved the toughest opponent of all. Alexander drove northward to Maracanda and the river Jaxartes (in Tajikistan), which ancient geographers considered the northern boundary of Asia. Meanwhile Spitamenes and his followers launched a general rebellion in Alexander’s rear, in hopes of driving out the invader. They put up such a fight that it took Alexander two years to beat them—and at a huge cost.

  The war brought out the best and worst in Alexander. The terrain was difficult, the climate hostile, the allies not to be trusted; every victory seemed to be followed by a defeat. The enemy employed unconventional tactics that shocked and bloodied the Macedonians but Alexander responded masterfully.

  Spitamenes’s best troops were archers on horseback, and at first they wreaked havoc with Alexander’s forces, penning in and slaughtering his heavy-armed troops. But Alexander adapted with javelin-men on horseback and archers on foot. By late 328, the Macedonians had crushed the enemies’ forces, and Spitamenes’s head too was delivered to Alexander. Unrepentant Sogdian barons took refuge in impregnable-looking rock fortresses, but in spring 327 Alexander’s men found a way to climb them and force surrender.

  The cost of victory was high. The toll of dead and wounded soldiers climbed well past anything that Alexander’s men had seen before, perhaps seven thousand dead. On just one day at the Polytimetus River (in modern Uzbekistan), a force of about 2,500 men was massacred by Spitamenes; supposedly only 350 survived. Luckily for Alexander, the overwhelming majority of the soldiers were mercenaries and not Macedonians. Still, it was the bloodiest day of his reign for his army; he lost almost as many troops on that one day as in all the fighting against Darius. The campaign was hard on Alexander too—he was wounded twice, suffering a concussion and a minor fracture of the tibia.

  But the biggest losers were civilians. The Macedonians massacred and enslaved them by the thousands. It was part revenge, part deterrent, and part recreation—a gruesome but effective way for the tired and frustrated troops to blow off steam.

  Monsoon and Mutiny

  India was wealthy but hard to conquer, much less hold. Some Indian rulers invited Alexander in, hoping to use him against their enemies, but those enemies could fight. The strategic balance sheet argued against invasion. But perhaps Alexander was thinking only of the mythical balance sheet: he wanted to invade India because that’s what heroes of legend did. Since he had executed most of his officers who weren’t yes-men, there was hardly anyone to stop him. So in spring 327, Alexander invaded India.

  He followed the Kabul River Valley and the Khyber Pass into what is today Pakistan, unleashing terror and massacres against centers of resistance in the hills. In spring 326, when the Macedonians reached the Indus River, their local allies helped them build a bridge. King Ambhi welcomed Alexander into the great city of Taxila (near modern Islamabad). All the other local rulers bowed to Alexander except for Porus. He controlled a rich kingdom to the east and he refused to submit. The stage was set for battle.

  The battle of the Hydaspes (Jhelum) River in May 326 was Alexander’s last pitched battle. Compared with earlier fights, Alexander’s numbers were small, but there wasn’t an ounce less drama.

  Greatly outnumbered in cavalry by Alexander and outclassed in infantry by the Macedonian phalanx, Porus pinned his hopes on two weapons—his elephants and the river. The Macedonians had never fought large numbers of elephants before, and Porus had eighty-five of them if not more (the sources disagree). But if Porus had his way, he wouldn’t have to put the animals to the test. He planned to make a stand on the Hydaspes and keep Alexander from crossing it.

  The Hydaspes was a wide river in ancient times, although changes in the landscape keep us from knowing just how wide. In May, it overflows with melting snow from the Himalayas, and in 326 an early rainy season added to the river’s width. So Porus could hope for success.

  But Alexander was wily. After he moved up to the riverbank, he kept Porus guessing by constantly moving units of his army from place to place. He brought up huge supplies of grain, to give the impression that he was prepared to wait until the river dropped in September. He had boats transported from the Indus River, nearly two hundred miles away, to threaten a crossing sooner. Meanwhile, Porus lined the opposite shore with his elephants to intimidate Alexander, while his scouts scoured the enemy’s camp to guess his intentions. Porus marched his men here and there to stop possible crossings.

  In this atmosphere of suspense and frustration, Alexander made his move. He took a small part of his forces—six thousand infantrymen and five thousand cavalry—and snuck upstream one rainy night. He had already chosen his crossing point, which had a convenient, midstream island, and had hidden a small fleet of boats there. Meanwhile, he ordered the main Macedonian army to stay in its camp and distract Porus. Alexander’s men crossed safely.

  Word quickly reached Porus that an enemy force was over the river, but he didn’t know who they were or how many. So he sent a cavalry unit under his son to challenge them, but the Macedonians were ready. They stunned the Indians and killed large numbers, including Porus’s son. The survivors reported to Porus that Alexander himself had crossed the river. Clearly, Porus had to stop him, so he moved against Alexander with the bulk of his army. The Indian chose a sandy plain for the battlefield.

  And so, for Porus it all came down to his elephants. He lined the beasts up at regular intervals in front of his phalanx. His cavalry protected the two flanks. But Alexander and the Companion Cavalry launched a devastating charge against the cavalry on Porus’s left flank and wheeled into the flank of his infantry. Porus tried to transfer cavalry from his right wing as reinforcements but a detachment of Macedonian cavalrymen under Coenus rode them down.

  Now came the turn of the Macedonian phalanx. The men marched relentlessly forward against the enemy’s soldiers—and his elephants. The Macedonians attacked the great beasts with their sarissas and drove them into a rampage. The pachyderms turned both on the Macedonians and on their own men. The key to survival against elephants was to stay disciplined. It took steady nerves and drill-ground precision to open up spaces in the lines to let the beasts pass through. The Macedonians were masters of self-control and made way for the elephants, but the Indians got stuck and were trampled on. Once the elephants were gone, the phalanx regai
ned its momentum against the Indians’ front lines. Meanwhile the Macedonian cavalry rode around to the enemy’s rear. Squeezed on both sides, the Indians were slaughtered.

  Their king survived. Porus was a tall man and he rode on a large elephant, which made him a target. In fact, he suffered multiple wounds, but Porus lived—and kept his dignity. When taken prisoner and brought to Alexander, he was asked how he wished to be treated. “Like a king,” Porus replied. Alexander granted his wish. Strong men always recognize each other. No doubt realizing that it was better to have Porus guarding the empire’s Indian flank than to leave a power vacuum in his place, Alexander spared his life and his kingdom. He made Porus swear allegiance and even increased the territory under Porus’s control.

  Victory at the Hydaspes marked the high point of Alexander’s Indian campaign. He marched about one hundred miles further eastward, to the Hyphasis (Beas) River, conquering as he went, but traveled no farther. From summer 326 until he reached southeastern Iran in December 325, Alexander undertook a long and very violent march home—much against his will.

  After defeating Porus, Alexander set his sights on the Ganges River Valley. This was the heartland of the Nanda dynasty, a large and wealthy state that covered most of northern India. It had a lot more military manpower—and elephants—than Porus did. That shouldn’t have bothered Alexander’s army, not after its record of victory, but the men were in no mood for new adventures. After seventy days of monsoon rains, after Porus’s elephants, after the horrors of Bactria and Sogdiana—indeed, after everything that had followed the death of Darius in 330—the Macedonians had had enough. The Ganges was just two hundred miles away, but they were done advancing—and they told Alexander so. In late July 326, the Macedonians mutinied.

  By this point, the Macedonians no longer made up the majority of his troops, but Alexander had no intention of relying on an assortment of mercenaries and Iranians, Bactrians, Sogdianans, and Indians. He didn’t trust them without having Macedonian soldiers to keep them in line. Alexander tried to pressure the Macedonians by taking to his tent until they gave in. It was the tactic used by Achilles in Homer’s Iliad. But Alexander’s troops wouldn’t budge. Coenus, hero of the Hydaspes, spoke to Alexander on their behalf.