Alexander the Great

by Norman F. Cantor

  The flat plain of Gaugamela was much more advantageous to the Persian forces and their scythed chariots than either the riverbanks of Granicus or the hilly area of Issus had been. There were times in the course of the struggle when it appeared that Darius would win. Early in the day a fierce thunderstorm with lightning had filled Alexander’s army with fear. The lightning gave the appearance of fire, and the troops panicked. Alexander quickly ordered them to stop and rest until they had recovered their confidence.

  By the end of the day, the main bodies of both armies were close together and the two kings were urging their men on to more effort. Darius was in his chariot and Alexander was on horseback. Both of them had a small number of guards who had no regard for their own lives, but were intent only on protecting their own king. While doing this, both groups hoped for the glory of killing the opposing king.

  Darius’s charioteer was run through by a spear, and both sides believed it was the king who had been killed. His army started a mournful wailing along with wild shouts and groans, and foolishly abandoned the king’s chariot. Darius tried to avoid a cowardly flight by courting an honorable death, and he was ashamed to leave his troops. The Persian army gradually broke ranks and the battle turned into a massacre. Darius once again turned his chariot and fled the field.26

  Alexander was greeted with open arms in Babylon, and Darius was still in flight. Babylon was the first step in making Alexander the richest man in the world, because the huge Persian treasury was now open to be plundered. For his part, Alexander rewarded the Babylonians with a restoration of their temples and obeisance to their gods, which endeared him to the populace.

  Alexander relaxed in Babylon for five weeks, taking in the sights. The walls were twelve miles in circumference, and the sacred ziggurat rose 270 feet into the air. Alexander took up residence in one of the two imposing palaces, which had six hundred rooms with four main reception areas. Around the palace buildings were the famous hanging gardens. Alexander’s men took their comfort in the company of beautiful prostitutes whose ranks had been swelled by highborn women anxious to get in on the entertainment. Alexander paid his men for the first time in many months, from the Persian treasury. It was easy to forget that the war was still not over: Darius was still at large.

  From Babylon, Alexander moved on to the next royal city, Susa. This city also lacked nothing in magnificence.

  Susa had been built by the most talented craftsmen and goldsmiths who could be found in the Persian empire. The walls were covered with carvings, gold work, precious woods, and enamels. Purple embroidery, some of it 190 years old, but still fresh as new, adorned the walls and the bedchamber of the king. Next to his bed was his own personal treasury, with wealth unimagined even by Alexander—who ordered 3,000 talents, six times the annual income of Athens, to be sent back to Greece to help deal with the Spartan revolt.27

  Learning that Darius had taken refuge in Hamadan (in present-day Iran), Alexander set out in pursuit. He received word that Darius had been deposed and taken prisoner. The resistance was led by a Persian named Bessus, who went so far as to have himself declared king of kings. Darius was chained in an old covered wagon and moved along with Bessus’s men. Obviously Bessus intended to use Darius as a bargaining tool if Alexander overcame them. To head off Bessus’s troops, Alexander led a mad dash across fifty miles of desert in the middle of the night. He did get ahead of them, and they scattered in two directions. Since Alexander had no idea which group had Darius, his troops were set the task of scouring the area looking for him.

  The end of Darius was pathetic. Green describes it:

  Meanwhile the oxen pulling Darius’ now driverless waggon had wandered about half a mile off the road, down into a valley where there was water. Here they came to a standstill, bleeding from numerous wounds, and weakened by the heat. A thirsty Macedonian soldier called Polystratus, directed by peasants to the spring in the valley, saw this waggon standing there, and thought it odd that the oxen should have been stabbed rather than rounded up as booth. Then he heard the groans of a dying man. Naturally curious, he went over and drew back the hide curtains.

  There on the floor lay King Darius, still in chains, his royal mantle sodden with blood, the murderers’ javelins protruding from his breast, alone except for one faithful dog crouching beside him. He asked, weakly, for water. Polystratus fetched some in his helmet. Clasping the Macedonian’s hand, Darius gave thanks to heaven that he had not died utterly alone and abandoned. Soon after this his laboured breathing dwindled into silence, and all was over. Polystratus at once took his news to the king. When Alexander stood, at last, before the broken corpse of his adversary, and saw the sordid, agonizing circumstances in which he had died, his distress was obvious and genuine. Taking off his own royal cloak, he placed it over the body. At his express command, Darius was borne back in state to Persepolis, and given a kingly burial, beside his Achaemenid forebears.28

  Bessus had set up a rival government, and Alexander now had to act as if he were Darius’s chosen successor. He gave the impression that Darius had named him his successor before dying and had asked Alexander to avenge his death. This was the height of irony, as Alexander had hounded Darius to his death, but assuming the role of Darius’s avenger did not seem to bother him. He took the battle to Bessus, but the usurper managed to escape, and Alexander gave up pursuit for the time being.

  Meanwhile his troops heard a rumor that the campaign was finished, that the conquest was over, and that they were going home. Alexander woke up one morning to find his men packing. Since in his personal view the conquest was far from finished, this caused him some concern. He knew he had to address the troops to persuade them to stay, but the situation confronted him with a dilemma: If he came down on them too hard, they might rebel. In the end Alexander decided that the best tactic was to scare them into obedience.

  He gave an impassioned speech in which he preyed on their fears. Their conquests were not yet secure. The Persians did not like them and refused to accept their sovereignty. Only the power and might of Macedonia could stave off rebellion and treachery, particularly that of Bessus, who had to be crushed in order for victory to be ensured. Alexander’s troops responded as expected, and another crisis was averted.29

  The throne to which Alexander had aspired and which now was his was an ancient one associated with ceremony and pomp. Access to the king had always been very limited, and visitors had to go through a thorough scrutiny before they could come into the king’s presence. Even then they had to keep their hands hidden. They had to bathe and dress entirely in white. After they approached a certain distance from the throne, if the king did not beckon them on, it was a crime punishable by death to come closer.

  The king’s clothing was sewn with gold thread, and he wore only purple and white with gold embroidery. The horses pulling his chariot were white, and he was shaded constantly by a parasol held over his head by a servant. Another servant carried a fly-whisk. With jewelry of gold, padded yellow shoes, and a girdle woven of pure golden thread, the Persian king was a god among men. His position was one that inspired awe and devotion, though little friendship.30

  Alexander remained aware that living in such grandeur was not in keeping with his Macedonian roots; indeed, his men held such behavior in great disdain. It was only after Alexander was introduced to a young and extremely handsome court eunuch named Bagoas that he began to change his mind about Persian ways. It is unclear what Hephaestion thought of this new favorite, but Alexander’s staff was discreet about his alliances, and Alexander obviously found the eunuch’s companionship pleasant. In time Bagoas became a man of great influence over his patron.

  It was at Bagoas’s instigation that Alexander began to wear the purple-and-white-striped tunic, the girdle, and the head ribbon or diadem of the traditional Persian ruler. Access to him was strictly limited. These behaviors alone set him apart from the other Greeks, and emphasized his connection to Zeus, since a diadem was worn only by those who were favored b
y Zeus. In addition to wearing a diadem, he sat on an elevated throne. The wearing of the diadem and robes identified him as a king in his own right, not only as the general of invading Greek forces. Julius Caesar would don the exact costume before he invaded Parthia many years later. Alexander even took over the 365 concubines (one for each night of the year) belonging to Darius, although it is doubtful if he utilized the harem much if at all.

  Alexander also mandated the practice of proskynesis for his Persian allies and subjects. Long a Persian custom, proskynesis was a form of obeisance a lesser person gave to one of greater social status. The payer of proskynesis brought his hand, usually his right, to his lips and kissed the tips of his fingers. He then blew the kiss in the direction of the king or god. Usually the payer was upright, although if he wanted a special favor or had committed some offense, proskynesis could be done bowing or prostrate on the floor before the king. Herodotus, the great Greek historian, described the Persian custom in this way: “When the Persians meet one another in the street, in the following way, a man can tell whether they meet as social equals. If they are equal, they kiss each other on the mouth, instead of speaking a word of greeting; if one is slightly inferior to the other, he only kisses him on the cheek; if he is far less noble, he falls down and pays proskynesis to his superior.”31

  Alexander’s Macedonian companions tended to regard his adoption of Persian court rituals as decadent and loathsome, and they resented the entire experiment of combining Greek and Persian life and people. To them Alexander’s parading around in Persian robes was disgusting. They believed the war was over, and they did not share their young king’s dreams of and schemes for further eastern conquest. They wanted to go home and were saddened to see the young king they had hero-worshipped quickly turning into an eastern despot.32

  Unfortunately for them they became so disenchanted with Alexander’s “orientalizing” that a conspiracy was formed to assassinate him. The details of this plot are fuzzy, with many different versions. It seems that one of the commanders of the Companions, the cavalry of 4,000 to 5,000 armored horsemen, a man named Philotas, instigated the plot. Philotas was the only surviving son of Alexander’s chief general, Parmenion. Parmenion had been Alexander’s father’s primary general and had come with Alexander in the original army from Macedonia. He and his son were part of an undisclosed number of officers who distinctly disapproved of Alexander’s actions.

  Alexander heard of the plot from someone who told his lover who told his brother who told Alexander. This is why the information seems uncertain; however, it appeared sufficiently clear to Alexander that he held a public trial for Philotas, rather than just having him quietly poisoned. Philotas was found guilty of treason, and after a session of torture, he implicated his father in the plot. Philotas was stoned to death, and his father, Parmenion, was assassinated. Parmenion represented the conservative Macedonians at their best, and it would have been impossible for Alexander to let him live. Since he was the most powerful figure in the army, his death was certainly an object lesson to any other officers who might contemplate treasonous actions against their commander in chief.

  Treatment of the masses of soldiers was somewhat different. Alexander ordered vast drinking parties and lavish feasts for the rank and file. He encouraged them to marry the concubines they had picked up on their travels, and he gave them the equivalent of eight years’ pay in advance for their loyalty. The ranks of the army, even Alexander’s commanders, had never imagined such prosperity.

  One of the prime reasons why Alexander’s army remained with him, in spite of later agonies and privations in Central Asia, was that as an aristocrat and a prince, Alexander did not believe in hoarding wealth. The army anticipated a further sharing of Alexander’s hoard, and while he was never as wealthy again as when he expropriated the treasure of the king of kings, he continued to be generous to his troops. Alexander could be cruel and mean—at the slightest suspicion of treason, he would condemn a soldier to death—but at the same time he was a very generous patron.

  After the execution of Philotas, Alexander placed command of half of the companions in the hands of his trusted Hephaestion, and gave leadership of the other half to a seasoned veteran named Cleitus. He was now ready to march onward to India.

  To accomplish this end, Alexander relied critically on his Companions. In using this large group, Alexander was unique in the Greco-Roman world, because support for horses was a heavy burden on Alexander and his generals. It was often necessary to carry fodder for the horses along with the army. At one point Alexander was accompanied on a neighboring river by eighty lighters (storage boats) with not only food for his soldiers but also fodder for his cavalry.

  Unlike cattle, which have four-chambered stomach and can regurgitate and redigest their food—chew the cud—horses, like humans, are insatiable. Hence fodder often had to be carried with the army because the terrain they were traveling in did not sustain enough grass to feed the horses. Eventually Alexander acquired Turkestani horses, larger and hardier than his Greek ones, when battles and illness had diminished his equine army.

  By the time he got his army started, however, it was winter. There was still the unfinished business of Bessus, one of the men responsible for the death of Darius. Alexander had moved into the far reaches of the empire, into what is now Afghanistan. The winter march was extremely hard on the forces; they suffered from frostbite, snow blindness, and chronic fatigue, but they reached Kandahar in February 329. Alexander allowed his men to rest for two months, and then began his march across the Hindu Kush in April.

  Bessus had used a scorched-earth policy north of the Hindu Kush, but this did not daunt Alexander. Instead of taking the pass Bessus expected him to take, Alexander moved his men across the highest and most heavily snowbound one. In this way he got behind Bessus, who fled ignominiously. Alexander occupied the capital of Bactria, the birthplace of Zoroaster, and moved on toward the Oxus River. It was now June, and the desert was steaming hot; the men suffered from heatstroke and dehydration.

  Some of the seasoned volunteers who had been loyal to Parmenion had had enough. They mutinied and forced Alexander to give them severance pay and bonuses and allow them to return home. They were 4,000 miles away, but they left. Alexander now found himself dangerously short of troops, so he took a gamble and enlisted locals on a large scale. After he crossed the Oxus, he received word that Bessus had been captured and the barons responsible wanted to hand him over to Alexander. The Macedonian general Ptolemy went to pick him up and sent a letter back to Alexander, asking how he wanted Bessus brought to him.

  Alexander gave specific instructions, which were carried out. Bessus—naked, tied to a post with a slave collar around his neck—was placed at the side of the road where Alexander would have to pass. When Alexander confronted him with the crime of killing Darius, Bessus admitted that he had wanted to curry favor with Alexander. If Alexander had viewed himself as a usurper, this would have been fine; but instead Alexander considered himself heir to the throne of Persia, and therefore Bessus had been the usurper. Alexander had Bessus’s nose and ears cut off according to Persian custom; then he was publicly executed.

  Alexander’s army, which he sustained until he penetrated into Pakistan, consisted of about 50,000 soldiers, plus approximately 2,000 camp followers, including some wives and children. The people were followed by wagonloads of food and water, much of it for the horses. This additional burden of horses was later to prove too much even for the Romans. Consequently their armies comprised mainly infantry. In the Roman army only a handful of officers were mounted, so that they could strike heroic poses when the occasion demanded. But Alexander used his cavalry very effectively: They were his shock troops. By the time he reached India, however, a third of his cavalry Companions had been killed en route; they were replaced with Asians.

  Alexander proceeded now to march through southern Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan into Iran, on his way to the Indus Valley in northwestern Pakistan. O
n this march serious fighting occurred between his forces and local tribesmen, who did not surrender easily. He garrisoned an outpost, and laid out another city, this one called Alexandria-the-Farthest. But he also sustained injuries. His leg was shot, and bone splinters kept working out of his leg for some time; he was hit in the head and neck by a large stone, an injury that temporarily impaired his vision and vocal cords and left him with migraine headaches; and he contracted gastroenteritis from drinking tainted water.

  During the spring of 328, Alexander set about securing this wild territory so that his army could move on. Many of his men had been killed, and the enemy had a troublesome habit of vanishing into the steppes where pursuit was suicidal. The campaign continued to drag on with no end in sight. The enemy proved elusive, and each foray left more Macedonians dead.

  Anger and frustration continued to grow between the original Macedonian troops and the newer Asian recruits, drinking parties abounded, and tempers were lost nightly. One such eruption proved to be disastrous for the entire army.

  It was a particularly hot night—reminiscent of Philip’s wedding night, when he and Alexander had their angry confrontation—and Alexander had been drinking far too much, as had everyone at the party. Alexander started bragging about his exploits, seeming to forget that an entire army had helped him. Cleitus, the commander of half of the Companions, took exception to Alexander’s egotistical attitude, and told him that without his Macedonians he would have gotten nowhere. The party divided along the sharply delineated lines that had been there since the death of Parmenion—the old guard versus the new Asians and the simplicity of old soldiers versus the sophistication of the new army. Suddenly Alexander grabbed the first thing he could find, which was an apple, and lobbed it at Cleitus’s head. He looked around for his sword, at which point several courtiers restrained him while others got Cleitus out of the hall.