Alexander the King

by Peter Messmore

  “Get four Afghan prisoners!” the king said. “Send them in chains to my mother in Epirus. Accompanying them must be a large container of Bactrian dirt. Don’t send any written message other than the prisoners and the dirt. She will understand. I hope future conquerors never get bogged down here the way I have.”

  ≈

  “These symposia are getting out of control,” Callisthenes remarked to a young historian that he had been training since Alexander’s expedition had begun. “Alexander uses them to test the allegiance of his men while they are drunk. He thinks it brings out their real character. Philip did it too.

  “Eubulus described Dionysus’ views on wine drinking,” Callisthenes continued. “He urged that only three bowls be consumed. The first one is for health; the second should be used for love and pleasure; the third one should be taken to ensure sleep. Alexander never stops after three bowls, nor will he allow his guests to stop either.

  “Eubulus said that the fourth bowl belongs to violence and fighting. The fifth bowl gives birth to uproar. The sixth generates drunken revel. The seventh produces black eyes. The eighth produces a call for the policemen; the ninth belongs to biliousness. At last, and this is the stage where Alexander now operates, the tenth bowl generates madness and furniture hurling.”

  Callisthenes’ assistant had never heard the description of wine’s effect in such a succinct series of aphorisms and was busy writing down details that he knew he would use later.

  The admonitions about wine’s effects described perfectly what was about to happen that hot summer evening in Maracanda.

  ≈

  Black Cleitus was one of the last remaining commanders who had served Alexander’s father. Still a powerful man, even though he was twenty years older than Alexander, he was the brother of Lanice, Alexander’s wet nurse during infancy. He had also been a wrestling companion and close friend of King Philip.

  Alexander had just appointed him a satrap of Bactria and had invited him at the last moment to a royal symposium to honor his appointment.

  Cleitus was both honored and troubled. The wily officer understood that Alexander was clearing out the army’s old guard by assigning them to posts in remote provinces while the rest of his army proceeded eastward. He also knew that becoming governor of Bactria was filled with danger as well as opportunity.

  As the drunken banquet wore on, Alexander motioned for a minor poet to recite and sing verses describing the Macedonians’ near catastrophe at the hands of the Persian, Spitamenes, nearly a year ago. When the poet finished his verses, a group of Persians attending the banquet let out roars of ridicule and laughter. Cleitus and the army’s old guard did not appreciate their behavior.

  Well into stage five of wine’s drunkenness, Cleitus stood up with a deadly frown on his enormous face. “I’m offended by these insulting jibes di ... di... directed at our Macedonian fighters,” he stammered. “The weakest Macedonian is better than these wimpy Persians who find the poem so hilarious.” His face grew redder with every word that he spoke.

  Tension filled the banquet tent and an equally drunken Alexander allowed silence while he formulated his reaction. Then, with some difficulty in maintaining his balance, he rose to answer Cleitus. “You’re trying to disguise Macedonian cowardice as misfortune, Cleitus. Are you pleading your own case?”

  Cleitus, still standing, shot back an angry response. “We all know that it was my cowardice that saved your overeager ass at Granicus,” he shouted. “You, who call yourself the son of god, needed my sword then. Great shame on you for disowning our Macedonians and your father. Zeus-Ammon must be weeping!”

  Alexander was furious. “You scum,” he shouted. “Do you think you can stir up trouble among the Macedonians and continue to get away with it?”

  Cleitus wasn’t done. “Only the dead Macedonians are happy now,” he shouted back. “They never lived to see us having to beg Persians for an audience with our own king.”

  Alexander paused in the escalating exchange and muttered an insulting jibe to some of his Greek courtiers that Cleitus could not hear. The fearful confrontation might have abated at this moment, but that was not to be.

  “Speak up, so all of us can hear you,” Cleitus roared sarcastically. “Otherwise, don’t invite free men to your banquet who will not prostrate themselves before your white tunic and womanly Persian girdle.”

  Alexander quickly picked up an apple and threw it at Cleitus, hitting him in the chest. Then he reached for a dagger inside the tunic of one of his Royal Bodyguards and shouted for the emergency trumpet alarm to be sounded. Furniture, as in wine’s tenth stage, began flying around the king’s banquet table.

  Alexander’s companions, led by Ptolemy, stopped the sounding of the emergency alarm and quickly whisked Cleitus toward the tent’s exit.

  Cleitus, a crude man who nevertheless knew Euripides’ Andromache, managed one last verbal shot at his king. ‘It’s a pity that only one man wielding a sword among ten thousand others received the credit for a victory on the battlefield.’

  It was more than Alexander could take. He yanked a spear from a royal bodyguard’s hands and thrust it deep into the chest of his nursemaid’s brother. Cleitus’ death was nearly instantaneous. He could only mutter “Betraying bastard” before he died and fell into the arms of Ptolemy. Another of the Macedonian army’s old guard was gone.

  Alexander sobered immediately as he realized the gravity of his foolish action. “What atrocity have I done?” he cried. He pulled the spear from Cleitus’ chest and started to turn its point, still red with Cleitus’ lifeblood, toward his own chest. “I cannot live after this shameful act!” he shouted.

  Only Ptolemy’s quick action saved his king from suicide that day. He grasped the spear shaft with both of his strong hands, jerked it out of Alexander’s hands and broke it over his knee. “Take him to his tent,” he commanded the other bodyguards. “Great Zeus!” he uttered with exasperation. “All of this because of drunkenness.”

  ≈

  Alexander wept and sacrificed for Cleitus for a day and a half. He even prayed over his dead body in the privacy of his bedroom. None of this helped. He felt cursed by Dionysus and was resolved to die by starvation.

  Callisthenes visited Alexander’s bed and attempted a philosophical justification of the king’s murderous action. However, his actions failed in helping Alexander accept the murder. The king continued to refuse both food and drink. Finally, at the end of the second day, a developing rival to Callisthenes went to Alexander and brought him back among the living.

  “Get up and quit your whining about Cleitus,” Anaxarchus said to his king. “You are now the world’s Great King. Your actions are above all human laws. If you killed Cleitus, he deserved to die.”

  It was exactly what Alexander needed. From that day on, Callisthenes’ influence over Alexander waned and Anaxarchus’ increased. Things were done that way in Alexander’s new world order.

  ≈

  Later centuries would call it the campaign of the Soghdian Rock. The following early spring, after Spitamenes had been defeated and killed by his own men, Alexander was ready to resume his march toward India. However, one obstacle would have to be removed before he felt his already conquered lands safe enough to move still farther eastward.

  The Soghdian Rock was the last fortress of a local baron named Oxyartes. It stood high above a rugged valley and its defenders thought it impregnable. “I offered them a peaceful return to their homes if they would surrender,” Alexander said to his command staff. “Through a translator, they told me that unless our fighters could sprout wings, they would never surrender or fear us. Mountain snows last until late summer up there, and their water supply is not in question.”

  “The rock’s walls are sheer on all sides,” Craterus said. “Wings would help.”

  “I’ll show them wings,” Alexander shot back. “They’ll learn that my spirit has wings. This afternoon I want to meet with any of our men who have experience as mountain clim
bers. I’ll give the first man who climbs to the top of the rock twelve talents. The second man will get eleven and so on to the twelfth successful climber, who will get a single talent. They will climb all night; tomorrow the Soghdians will awake to find our forces standing above them. We’ll then see how brave they are.”

  ≈

  Three hundred Macedonian mountain climbers volunteered for the dangerous mission scaling the vertical Soghdian rock face. After a long night of near-impossible climbing, when more than thirty fell to their deaths in the deep snows below, dawn found over two hundred of them on a high ridge, well above the forces of Oxyartes. They signaled Alexander in the valley below and then let out the mighty Macedonian war cry. It echoed and reverberated through the rock canyons that surrounded the high Soghdian citadel.

  When the Soghdians heard the fearsome cry, they looked up and saw their enemy above them. Assuming them to represent a much larger enemy force, their collective shock caused immediate surrender. Most thought that the rumors of Alexander’s godlike persona had allowed him to equip his men with the wings.

  Captured without much bloodshed were Oxyartes’ guerrilla army and many women and children. The richest prize was Oxyartes’ daughter, Roxane. The teenage girl was said by all who saw her to be the most beautiful woman in Asia, except for the deceased wife of Darius. In time, she would become the only wife that Alexander ever took.

  CHAPTER 17

  ROXANE

  Two of Alexander’s Macedonian fighters walked outside the army’s encampment, decrying what was happening to their king. Both had signed up as mercenaries when Alexander had made the too-attractive-to-be-turned-down offer to continue eastward with his new mercenary army. One man, an aging battalion commander, had fought with King Philip when he was a young man. The other soldier, ten years younger, had never known Philip but still revered him. In recent months, they had taken to complaining to each other about what was happening to the Macedonians during long walks far from the prying eyes and ears of the camp. Open complaining there would have been suicidal.

  “If we survive the king’s excesses, we’ll be rich for the rest of our lives,” the older man said. He was a tall, burly soldier with multiple battle scars on his face, arms, and legs. “There is a fertile estate in Orestis province that I have always wanted. The coming years will earn me enough to buy me it.”

  The younger soldier smiled and gave his friend a silent nod of his head. He was fond of the old man and admitted to modeling his fighting behavior after him. He also liked him because he saw situations fully. These were valuable qualities during a time when Macedonians were gradually being replaced by Persians and foreign mercenaries in Alexander’s army. “Now that he has killed Callisthenes and the five Royal pages that were involved in the plot, few of us are safe,” the younger soldier said.

  “I’m sixty two and a half now, and I never thought Alexander would come to this,” the older soldier lamented. “Aristotle may never talk to him again now that he has eliminated his nephew. Even his choice of women has shifted since he married Roxane. Barsine has been banished from court. The king is sending her back to Pergamum in three days. A friend of mine has been commanded to lead an escort to take her back.”

  “I hear she’s pregnant with Alexander’s child,” the younger soldier said. “Is it true?”

  The older man laughed and threw both of his arms into the air. “It’s a false pregnancy,” he said sarcastically. “She so wants Alexander’s child, that her mind made her pregnant when she wasn’t. I’ll never understand how women function. A physician I know examined her yesterday in preparation for the difficult trip. He wasn’t sure she could make it without losing the baby. From the appearance of her belly, she looks as if she is more than six months pregnant. The physician told me that he is certain that she isn’t pregnant.

  “Alexander knows the truth and is encouraging the rumor that she is with child. The king even allowed Barsine to name the phantom, unborn baby. She calls it Heracles. Alexander thinks it will help the Greeks think that he has finally sired a successor.”

  The younger man knew less about women than his friend, but this news was astonishing. How could she look pregnant but not be? “Great Zeus Almighty,” he said.

  “It’s best she’s out of here,” he continued. “I saw Roxane when she was brought into camp after the capture of the Sogdain Rock. I also saw Darius’ wife when we captured his harem. Roxane is nearly as beautiful as she was. Her name means Little Star.”

  “It seems that Alexander really loves her,” the older soldier said. “When they married so quickly, I thought it was just to appease the local barbarians. We’ll see if the king has enough spunk in his organ to impregnate her and produce a real heir.”

  “I’d be willing to help him,” the younger man said. “I fathered a child when I was sixteen. Scores of my offspring are running around several villages that we conquered.”

  This talk was dangerous, even though the two men were far from camp and alone. “Let’s return,” the older soldier said with a frown. “Don’t ever make that stupid remark again. You’re not even drunk! Others would tell the king immediately. We would both be killed. I don’t intend to have my bones strewn in this forlorn desert, so far from my family.”

  The younger man realized that his remark was dangerous and regretted saying it. Everyone knew that even close friends of Philotas had testified against him at his trial. He decided to guard his words more carefully as they walked back to the camp. He also intended to sire many more children and bring his crude brand of Macedonian culture to the backward barbarians that he had been killing for so many years.

  ≈

  Alexander was now twenty-nine; Roxane was just past her sixteenth birthday. Even though the king had mastered the main Persian language, Aramaic, as a boy and parts of the provincial dialects during the long invasion, the local Afghanistan language that his new wife spoke was unintelligible to him. Therefore, the king found a Balkh woman who could translate for them. She had been married to a Greek mercenary in Darius’ army and spoke both Roxane’s dialect and average Greek. The Balkh woman’s linguistics skills were strong enough that the king could converse with his stunning bride whenever he wanted.

  “You have allowed me to love as a man at last,” Alexander said to Roxane. “I never thought this would happen. It even frightens me at times.” He waited for the Balkh translator to relate his sentiments to his wife.

  Roxane listened to the translation and smiled demurely.

  Alexander knew that she understood the effect that her charms had on him. Clearly, this knowledge pleased her. The king saw that it imbued in her a serene dignity and self-assurance that seemed to radiate from all around her.

  Speaking through the translator, she answered her husband. “I will give you a successor, Alexander. Women in my line are immensely fertile. I will be pregnant in a month. I will let you know when my body is ripe.”

  Alexander waited for the translation and was pleased. He had started consuming less of the strong Macedonian wine since his marriage, attempting to increase his sexual potency. Although Barsine had made him furious with her cutting remark about his diminished virility due to drinking, he had come to believe that she was right. Lest he fail to heed Barsine’s advice, Olympias had just written him again with the same warning.

  He looked at Roxane and used the silence to examine her qualities. His first thought was that she resembled his father’s last wife. However, she was far more exquisite and delicate than Cleopatra-Eurydice. Although not a Greek, her royal breeding was apparent to anyone seeing her. She would be perceived as a queen in any culture, in any time.

  Roxane was a little taller than the smallish Alexander. Like Philip’s last consort, she had pure-white-alabaster skin and large breasts. Her figure was womanly, with the tiniest waist that Alexander had ever seen. Her hips were full and in perfect proportion to the rest of her voluptuous body. Alexander thought about the ratio between her cinched waist and her full h
ips. He wondered if Pythagoras had ever considered this womanly physical characteristic. Without question, she was ready to grow his heir. Zeus-Ammon had chosen his true wife well, for which he was grateful.

  “I am nearly ready to invade India,” the king said changing the subject abruptly. “It is rare that I will speak to you of military or political matters. They are not the domain of women. There will be times, however, when I will want you to know what I am thinking. You may even be able to help me with matters that involve your countrymen.” He waited for the translation and watched his wife’s reaction to his words.

  Roxane simply nodded her head and remained impassive.

  “I have decided to take several thousand Afghan and Persian youths into protective custody,” Alexander continued. “It’s a common practice, both here and in Greece. My father was held in Thebes for nearly two years in his youth. There will be at least 30,000 of them. Their instruction will focus on Attic Greek, Hellenic culture, and our military tactics. When India is conquered and all of Asia is mine, they will help me rule the world. The son that you will soon produce will, in time, become their king.” Alexander waited for translation.

  Roxane, at first, showed no reaction to the king’s message. Then, when the translator conveyed the number of youths that he intended to hold, Alexander saw that it produced a reaction. His wife sighed and rolled her beautiful eyes. Clearly, she was deep in thought. Then, with deliberate and reasoned speech, she reacted to Alexander’s intentions.

  “You must ask my father, Oxyartes, to coordinate these efforts. He now supports you and understands your dreams. Your Companion, Peucestas, also knows our language. Have them work together on this project.”

  “I know you want these boys to forget their heritage and become cosmopolitan Greeks, citizens and leaders of your new world,” she continued. “However, don’t erase their pasts—that would steal their souls. They will serve you better and grow into your new world men if you allow them to remember how far they have come. If you break their spirits, you will produce human shells. The entire project will fail.”