Alexander the King

by Peter Messmore

  He looked forward to seeing how time had treated her.

  ≈

  It took ten days for Barsine to arrive in Marathus. After she had gotten a good night’s sleep in the sumptuous guest-tent that Alexander had prepared for her, she enjoyed a morning bath in Darius’ great bathtub. It was one of the few captured Persian treasures that Alexander had decided to take with him. She then sent word through a slave that she would see King Alexander when he was available.

  Royal Bodyguards escorted Barsine into Alexander’s private quarters. The king’s first impression of her was that she was a younger version of his mother. Barsine’s clothing and hairstyle were almost identical to how Olympias had looked when Alexander had last seen her. Her lavender peplos, Greek in style, reached to the ground and surrounded her like a burst of morning sunlight. Around her neck, she wore a filigreed, golden necklace. A large lion’s head hung from the chain.

  “You have grown into a handsome man, Alexander,” Barsine said as she walked toward Alexander. “I saw that potential when you were young.”

  Alexander smiled, a little embarrassed. He was amazed at how some women could immediately make first encounters personal, almost intimate. It was as if she had forgotten that he had become king since they last saw each other. Nevertheless, her mature beauty excused her behavior. She was lovelier than he had imagined.

  Alexander’s attitude toward women was nearly always one of indifference. He treated them with politeness, but intimate relations with them rarely entered his mind. “Sleep and sexual intercourse remind me of my mortality,” he had told his male friends more than once.

  “It is good to see you again, Barsine,” Alexander said. He meant the words. Did Parmenio treat you well?”

  “He was the perfect gentleman,” Barsine answered. “I thank both of you for that.” What are your plans for me, my king?” she asked, getting right to the point.

  “I would like for you to stay with me for a time,” Alexander surprised himself by saying. “My army is going south, not eastwards toward Darius.

  Your knowledge of this fact alone means that I cannot let you leave my encampment until all is secured along the coast and in Egypt.”

  “I would never betray you, Alexander,” Barsine shot back. “I have always had a personal interest in you.”

  There she goes again, Alexander thought. Is this the beginning of her seduction attempt? Alexander decided to get to the point. “Do you know that I prefer men over women? It isn’t that I dislike women; it’s just that I’m always with men and I have grown to love them. Can you understand that?”

  “I do,” Barsine answered coyly. “Nevertheless, you may want to reconsider your sexual preferences. It will make you into a more complete monarch. Philip understood the power of uninhibited sexuality.” Barsine waited for what she knew would be a strong response from Alexander.

  “Unlike my deceased father, I never have, nor will I ever rape young boys!” he shot back. “If that is normal male sexuality, count me out!”

  “I apologize,” Barsine said lowering her head. "I had in mind something else altogether.” Then raising her head and her eyebrows a bit coyly, she ventured, “Have you ever had real, total sex with a woman? I’m talking about rich sexual experiences with a practiced, mature woman.”

  Alexander calmed himself, smiled, and answered. “Mother once arranged to have an Athenian courtesan spend the night with me. I explored the woman’s body but sexual intercourse didn’t occur. Perhaps she wasn’t as experienced as you,” he said with a wry smile.

  “I heard of that story,” Barsine answered with a knowing look on her face. “You must understand that good sex starts with a common set of personal experiences. You and Callixeina never had that. Olympias just thrust the two of you together like animals in heat.”

  Alexander reasoned that Barsine was right. Perhaps he should give her a chance with his woman-virginal body. “You come on strong with your seduction,” he said. “I will consider you as a lover. You could never have all of me, like every woman wants. Sexuality is only a small part of who Alexander is and strives to become. Do you understand that?”

  “I will take whatever part of you that you can offer,” Barsine answered. “I cherish the opportunity to be the first woman to give you a male child. Every warrior king must have a son.”

  Alexander rolled his eyes and ran his fingers through his wavy hair. Not another lecture about how I should have a son. The king walked up to Barsine, embraced her, fondled her firm backside, and then dismissed her. A military strategy session was about to begin for the attack on Byblos and Sidon. After those victories, he would invest Tyre, the impregnable fortress farther south. He would consider sex with Barsine after these more important matters were underway.

  ≈

  Byblos and Sidon surrendered without a fight to Alexander’s increasingly powerful army. One night prior to moving on to Tyre, Alexander was feeling especially pleased with himself. He sent Hephaestion ahead to scout Tyre’s defenses. Then he gave orders to have Barsine brought to his private tent.

  Barsine had prepared for this moment for weeks and was ready, but she could hardly believe her good fortune at the king’s timing. She was determined to become pregnant that night. She knew that her body was ripe for conception and that the couple could not stop with a single act of copulation.

  For the first time in his young life, Alexander experienced all-embracing coitus with a woman. He was twenty-four.

  The next morning, she awoke to watch Alexander stumble out of his tent, sleepless and exhausted. She smiled, remembering that she had ravished him four times. He had been a willing partner. She placed an ornate Persian pillow under her buttocks and pressed her legs close together to keep the king’s sperm deep inside her. Contented, she pulled Alexander’s blanket close to her nose to breathe in his scent. Slowly, she fell asleep.

  Later that morning, Barsine awakened a second time. She knew, as Olympias had known the night of her wedding intercourse with Philip, that she was pregnant. Everyone would know in nine months that Alexander had a son. Her life was back on track. Her dream of becoming queen of Alexander’s new Asian empire was beginning. She curled her body on Alexander’s large bed, continuing to hold her legs tightly together. Completely satisfied, she knew that what lay inside her was more valuable than gold.

  She waited two days before she bathed again in Darius’ tub. Alexander’s seed rested inside her; all was well.

  ≈

  Alexander stood on a rocky promontory in Old Tyre, looking down at the port of Tyre. Its citadel was located on a rocky island, just over four stadia from the shore. He had just learned that water in the channel separating the island from the mainland was over twelve cubits deep. Tyre’s fortress, easily the most important Persian-sympathetic commercial and naval port between Cilicia and Egypt, was formidable. On the land side, the city’s walls were over ninety cubits high. It would be Alexander’s greatest siege challenge to date.

  “They killed our men and dumped them into the ocean from the battlements,” Alexander shouted. He was at a staff meeting in his Old Tyre encampment. “I might have negotiated a settlement with them, but not now.”

  Every staff member shared his king’s indignation. “What is your plan?” asked Ptolemy. “Without a navy, we could spend years trying to starve them out. Already, they have received three re-supply ships on the island’s ocean side.”

  “I had a dream last night,” Alexander said. “I saw my ancestor, Heracles, standing on Tyre’s walls. He was beckoning me onward. I am being presented with a labor, just as Heracles was. There is only one way to take the city. We will build a mole, a temporary road across the channel. We will tear down Old Tyre and use the stones to fill in the channel. It will take our best effort, but it can be done.”

  His men were speechless. Was there no end to the innovative strategies that this young conqueror would devise? He was a driven genius. “Hephaestion, you are in charge of obtaining food and water,” Alexan
der continued. “I never want to stop military actions because my men are thirsty or hungry. Perdiccas, you and Craterus are in charge of overall operations here. I know that we must have a navy to conquer Tyre. When word of our Issus victory spreads throughout the Mediterranean, there will be Persian naval defections. Already, I have had contacts from Rhodes and Lycia offering ships. More vessels and their crews will be coming over to us.”

  “I will take this city; we cannot go on without it being secured. Go now to your duties.”

  ≈

  Soon, Darius sent a second, more attractive peace offer. “What does he propose now?” Alexander asked Parmenio.

  The old general, fresh from a meeting with Darius’ newest envoys, opened the scroll containing the Persian king’s translated terms. “The ransom for his family has doubled, from 10,000 to 20,000 talents,” Parmenio summarized. “Territory ceded remains as before: everything west of the Halys. He now adds that he will give you the hand of his daughter,” Parmenio said with a wry look on his face. “He warns that eventually you must emerge out onto the steppes of central Asia and that you will be vulnerable there.”

  “I have or can eventually win all that he offers me,” Alexander answered with contempt. “The Persians must understand that I will not stop until I have conquered Persepolis and all of Darius’ eastern provinces. Reject his entire offer. Tyre will be ours in a few months.”

  ≈

  Six months later, Tyre fell in a bloody, final assault. It had taken all of Alexander’s army, a newly developed navy of over 250 ships and every deadly siege machine that his engineers could devise to topple the city.

  The King of Macedon then made plans to march deeper south, where he knew that a curious group of people lived in an obscure, theocratic nation called Israel. They called themselves Jews. Their chief priest, a man named Shimon the Pious, had refused to give Alexander direct aid during Tyre’s long siege. Shimon did invite the king to come to their holy city, Jerusalem, and be honored. However, their capitol was well inland from the army’s path of travel.

  Alexander was intrigued by their odd belief in a single god, but still angry about their refusing him aid. He had already proved that cities did that at their great peril. At last, he sent a message to Jerusalem, demanding to meet Israel’s chief priest beneath a local mountain on the path of his army’s march south. The mountain was towering Mount Carmel. The rest of his army would go on to Gaza without him, where another long siege was likely. He could join them after he attended to these quaint Jews.

  Reflecting on the Jews, it was obvious to him that if they believed in one God and he was the son of that God, then they should worship and honor him. What could be more logical? He would convince them quickly of this then move on to Gaza and Egypt.

  CHAPTER 11

  JEWS, EGYPT, AND SIWAH

  “I’m going to say this again so listen to me this time,” Alexander said to Israel’s priests through a translator. He stood with a group of Israel’s religious leaders in a cool, shaded grove beneath Mount Carmel. Each of the Jews, except for the chief priest, was dressed in full religious regalia of fine, white linen. “You believe in a single god. I believe in a single, supreme god: Zeus-Ammon. They are the same god with different names. Egyptians call him Ammon-Ra. Persians call him Ahura Mazda.

  “Educated and common people throughout Greece and Ionia acknowledge me as the Son of God. Zeus’ lightning bolt impregnated my mother when she bathed in a stream. Therefore, you should worship me. What could be clearer?”

  Shimon the Pious, dressed in his chief priest’s garments of purple and scarlet, smiled and frowned simultaneously. On his head was an impressive miter with a golden plate that bore an abstract inscription referring to the Jews’ god. “We agree on just the first part of your statement, Alexander. There is but one Supreme Being. We show our highest respect to him by not saying his name. But we will forever disagree about any human being the son of the mighty one.”

  Shimon was on dangerous ground with such a remark. Others had been killed for even suggesting that Alexander was not Zeus-Ammon’s son.

  “If I weren’t in a hurry to join my army at Gaza, I would go to your holy city and reduce it to rubble with all of you inside it,” Alexander shot back. “Would your god stop me?”

  “He could, Great Alexander,” Shimon answered softly.

  Alexander was irate. His every instinct called for him to order the killing of these silly excuses for religious leaders. However, in the back of his mind he recalled a dream that he had had in the Macedonian city of Dios. An identically dressed priest had appeared in that dream and assured him that he would dominate over the Persians.

  He calmed himself, realizing that dreams were messages from Zeus-Ammon himself. At last, he regained control. He didn’t need any more hostile peoples to his rear as he moved westward into Egypt. “This is what I demand, Shimon: you must erect a statue of me in your holy Jerusalem temple. I want to see it when I come back through this miserable land.”

  Shimon looked toward the heavens, uttered a brief, untranslatable prayer to his god, and then answered Alexander.

  “Great King Alexander,” the chief priest said slowly. “Our ancient prophet, Daniel, gave us a prophecy about the one who would destroy the empire of the Persians. He wrote that it would be a Greek. Perhaps our god is using you as his instrument.”

  Alexander was pleased with Daniel’s prediction. The prophecy and his Dios dream started to soften his heart. “I am the conqueror who will destroy your ancient oppressor,” he answered emphatically. “But this changes nothing. I still demand that you place a statue of me in your holy temple.”

  Shimon lowered his head, forcing silence as he thought. Then he answered. “Great King, a statue made of metal will eventually rust; one made of wood will rot; a stone image will soon be covered with pigeon droppings. None of this would honor you. I propose a more meaningful, longer-lasting honor.”

  Alexander liked the priest’s little play on words. It reminded him of Aristotle’s word games. These Jews are no fools. He motioned for Shimon to continue.

  “Allow us to name every Jewish boy born this year to be named Alexander. Such an honor will endure for eternity, far longer than metal, wood, or stone.”

  Alexander smiled. The substitute honor appealed to his vanity. He knew that he was being duped, but he liked it. “You Jews must be known for your cleverness. I accept the honor.”

  “But I tire of this. I leave now to rejoin my army. Keep my peace here or you will see me again in your land. We will not be talking about the supreme being in this shady grove then.”

  Shimon gave the king a half-bow, bade him good-journey, and wished him success against Israel’s oppressors. As he watched the king and his entourage mount their horses and gallop off south along the coast, he gave thanks to his god. Part of the thanks was based on the knowledge that little remained of the current Jewish year. He would keep his word to Alexander, but only a limited number of Jewish boys would ever bear the Macedonian king’s name.

  ≈

  Gaza’s siege lasted two months. Like the Tyrians, the city had a nearly impregnable fortress, one that had not been conquered for centuries. Alexander’s siege towers bogged down in the vast sand dunes that surrounded Gaza’s citadel, and the fighting was furious. During the initial fighting, the king was shoulder-injured by a well-placed arrow fired by a sling device. His wound caused a considerable loss of blood but it was not life threatening.

  While he convalesced, Alexander directed that a mound should be built around Gaza’s citadel. Only then was he able to bring up his deadly catapults and launch the final attack. Gaza’s entire male population was killed when the Macedonians at last entered the city. All women and children were sold into slavery and the city was repopulated as a Macedonian garrison. The king of Macedon now could move on to fabled, ancient Egypt—a land that stirred the mystical reveries of every Greek and Macedonian in Alexander’s army.

  ≈

  “
This culture makes us look like children,” Alexander remarked to Hephaestion. He stood in the ancient Temple of Osiris, gazing in awe at the great, white-walled, old Egyptian capitol in Memphis. “A priest told me that the city is 3,000 years old. They have written records to prove it. I will write Aristotle and Olympias about this tonight.”

  Hephaestion had met Alexander at the Nile delta and together they had sailed south to Memphis on one of the great river’s many arms. The king had entered Egypt via Pelusium and Heliopolis. His army’s quick, exhausting journey through a landscape nearly devoid of water had taken just a week.

  While Hephaestion had waited for his king, the too-long Persian dominated Egyptians welcomed him enthusiastically. Especially grateful for the Persians’ ejection from their land was the Egyptian priesthood. In gratitude and religious conviction, they informed Hephaestion about an event that was to mark the beginning of a profound change in Alexander’s character. Hephaestion decided not to tell his friend about it until he reached Memphis. It would be a splendid surprise.

  But now, the time had arrived for Alexander to learn of the coming ceremony. “In two weeks you will receive your greatest honor yet,” Hephaestion announced. “In this very temple, they will install you as Egyptian Pharaoh. In their belief system, this will mean that you will become both god and king of their land. It is a fitting honor and fulfillment of what Olympias has always told you. You are in your highest glory.”

  Hephaestion saw Alexander’s face display astonishment, observing that he was nearly moved to tears. His friend and king stood in the temple, choking down emotion, staring across the broad Nile. Hephaestion knew that Alexander’s every dream had been surpassed. Philip had foolishly aspired to become the thirteenth Greek god. Now his son was soon to become god incarnate of Egypt, ruler of both the upper and lower Nile. Alexander could not speak.

  Hephaestion smiled but respected Alexander’s emotions. He knew that this was a time of greatness, and it deserved silence. Then, as Alexander regained control, he grasped both of the king’s arms and held firm the battle-hardened forearms. “More glory will come to you, Alexander. This is just the beginning.”