Read Alexander the Great Online
Authors: Norman F. Cantor
Alexander the Great (3 page)
This was the world that Alexander inherited.
The Achaemenid Persian Empire, which became Alexander’s chief antagonist and his first conquest, had been established in 539 BC by Cyrus I—the same “king of kings” (a term used for all Persian kings) who sent the Jews, after a fifty-year exile, back to Jerusalem. During the last years of Philip’s reign the Persian Empire, ruled by King Ochus, had its problems. Diodorus Siculus, a Roman writer of the second half of the first century BC, described the bloody ascension of Darius to power.
While Philip was still on the throne [of Macedonia], Ochus was king of Persia, and his rule over his subjects was brutally harsh. Ochus was detested for his callousness, and his chiliarch [commander of a thousand men] Bagoas—he was, physically, a eunuch but had a villainous and aggressive nature—did away with him by poison, through the agency of a certain doctor. Bagoas then put the youngest of Ochus’ sons, Arses, on the throne. He also did away with the new king’s brothers, who were still at a very early age, so that the young man’s isolation would make him more compliant to him. The young man, however, was outraged by Bagoas’ lawless conduct and made it clear that he was going to punish the perpetrator of these crimes, whereupon Bagoas struck before he could implement his plans, murdering Arses, along with his children, when he had been king for two years.
The royal house was now without an heir and there was no descendant to succeed to power, and so Bagoas picked out one of the courtiers, Darius by name, and helped him gain the throne…. There was a curious incident involving Bagoas that is worth recording. With his usual bloodthirstiness he attempted to murder Darius with poison. Information concerning the plot reached the king, who issued an invitation to Bagoas on some pretext of sociability. He then gave him the cup and obliged him to drink the poison.
Darius was considered fit to rule because of his reputation for surpassing all Persians in courage. Once when King Artaxerxes [a former king and related by blood to Darius] was at war with the Cadusians, one of the Cadusians, who was noted for strength and courage, issued a challenge to single combat to any of the Persians willing to accept. Nobody dared take up the challenge apart from Darius, who alone faced the danger and killed the challenger, for which he was honoured by the king with sumptuous gifts and gained amongst the Persians unrivalled prominence for his courage. It was on account of this brave showing that he was considered worthy of the throne, and he took power about the time that Alexander succeeded to his kingdom on the death of Philip.
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He was called the “king of kings.”
The last king of the Persian Empire was Alexander the Great. Alexander regarded himself not as an interloper but as a successor of the Achaemenids, replacing Darius III. Alexander was remorseless and persistent in pursuing Darius through two fierce battles and scouring the countryside intending to capture him. Though it is just possible that Alexander would have treated Darius benignly, it is more likely that he would simply have killed and supplanted the king of kings.
The Persian Empire—an area stretching from Turkey to Tajikistan—comprised numerous highly autonomous peoples of whom it demanded only tribute, a complex system of taxes and gifts. Thus the Achaemenid rulers were very wealthy, and by capturing their treasuries, Alexander made himself the richest man in the world. Though Persian wealth had been among the reasons for Alexander’s invasion of the Persian Empire, he had no idea when he started exactly how rich the king of kings might be. A description of the wealth of Darius III is given by Quintus Curtius Rufus, a Roman writer of the first century AD, who wrote the first full-length account in Latin of Alexander:
It is a tradition among the Persians not to begin a march until after sunrise, and the day was already well advanced when the signal was given by trumpet from the king’s tent. Above the tent, so that it would be visible to all, a representation of the sun gleamed in a crystal case. The order of the line of march was as follows: in front, on silver altars, was carried the fire which the Persians called sacred and eternal. Next came the Magi, singing the traditional hymn, and they were followed by 365 young men in scarlet cloaks, their number equalling the days of the year [for in fact the Persians divide the year into as many days as we do]. Then came the chariot consecrated to Jupiter, drawn by white horses, followed by a horse of extraordinary size, which the Persians called “the Sun’s horse.” Those driving the horses were equipped with golden whips and white robes. Not far behind were ten carts amply decorated with relief carvings in gold and silver, and these were followed by the cavalry of twelve nations of different cultures, variously armed. Next in line were the soldiers whom the Persians called the “Immortals,” some 10,000 in number. No other group were as splendidly bedecked in barbarian opulence: golden necklaces, clothes interwoven with gold, long-sleeved tunics actually studded with jewels. After a short interval came the 15,000 men known as “the king’s kinsmen.” This troop was dressed almost alike, its extravagance rather than its fine arms catching the eye. The column next to these comprised the so-called
Doryphoroe
, the men who usually looked after the king’s wardrobe, and these preceded the royal chariot on which rode the king himself, towering above all others.
Both sides of the chariot were embossed with gold and silver representations of the gods; the yoke was studded with flashing gems and from it arose two golden images [each a cubit high] of Ninus and Belus respectively. Between these was a consecrated eagle made of gold and represented with wings outstretched.
The sumptuous attire of the king was especially remarkable. His tunic was purple, interwoven with white at the center, and his gold-embroidered cloak bore a gilded motif of hawks attacking each other with their beaks. From his gilded belt, which he wore in the style of a woman, he had slung his scimitar, its scabbard made of precious stone. His royal diadem, called a
cidaris
by the Persians, was encircled by a blue ribbon flecked with white. [Ten thousand] spearmen carrying lances chased with silver and tipped with gold followed the king’s chariot, and to the right and left he was attended by some 200 of his most noble relatives. At the end of the column came 30,000 foot-soldiers followed by 400 of the king’s horses.
Next, at a distance of one stade [a unit of measurement equal to some 185 feet], came Sisygambis, the mother of Darius, drawn in a carriage, and in another came his wife. A troop of women attended the queens on horseback. Then came the fifteen so-called
armamaxae
[covered wagons] in which rode the king’s children, their nurses and a herd of eunuchs (who are not at all held in contempt by these peoples). Next came the carriages of the 360 royal concubines, these also dressed in royal finery, and behind them 600 mules and 300 camels carried the king’s money, with a guard of archers in attendance. After this column rode the wives of the king’s relatives and friends, and hordes of camp-followers and servants. At the end, to close up the rear, were the light-armed troops with their respective leaders.
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The Achaemenid Empire was highly centralized in that the king of kings did whatever he wanted. The Persian ruler also had a special fondness for adding fair-skinned Greek women to his boundless harem. And was also famous for parks that contained rare trees and wild animals he could hunt and slaughter—“Versailles with Panthers,” as historian James Davidson has called it. Aside from a lavish lifestyle his wants consisted only of tribute money and adding to his vast domains, which included Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and some lands farther east. Far from enforcing Iranization in the then-thriving cities of Asia Minor, the Persian emperor allowed the beginnings of Hellenization to occur there.
The Persian Empire was largely governed by satraps, or imperial governors, who were usually Persians, and the constituent peoples were left alone to pursue their own cultures, languages, and religions. The Persian Empire falls into the category of hydraulic despotisms of antiquity. Eighty percent of the population lived on the land, drawing sustenance from rivers and irrigation systems. The empire also comprised large urban centers numbering up to a million people each. The general populace was poor and lived in mud or sun-dried brick huts. There were temples dedicated to the gods, inhabited by a priestly caste. And above all there were three huge palaces and government centers at Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis.
The Persian Empire was a “soft” empire, resembling the British Empire of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The imposition of a common English culture was far beyond the capacity or even the ambition of the British Empire’s modest-size official personnel. Rulership in the British Empire varied radically. In Africa and parts of India, the British were content with “indirect rule”—leaving government largely in the hands of native chieftains and princes. Hedonism, eroticism, and self-indulgence on the part of the elite were common characteristics of such soft empires.
The Roman Empire, in contrast, was hard-core. Only two languages—Greek in the East and Latin in the West—were recognized. Every effort was made to impose Greco-Roman culture and religion on the peoples of the Roman Empire. In spite of the failures of the communication network of the time, the Roman Empire was controlled centrally from Rome, through governors who behaved in a demanding and often rapacious manner. The imposition of the Roman lifestyle on its conquered people is why the Roman Empire has had such a far-reaching influence on the Western world until the present day.
Alexander’s empire, modeled on that of his Persian predecessor, was of the soft variety, although had he been given a few more years, it might have hardened over time.
Before Alexander invaded Persia, his route of conquest took him from Tyre in Lebanon—which he captured and leveled after a long siege—to Gaza and Egypt. Along the way he encountered Jerusalem, then a city of perhaps 15,000 people. Cyrus’s release of the Jews of Iraq to return to their homeland had been only partially successful; a third of them went home. The rest were comfortable as craftsmen and small merchants, and they remained in Iraq, where their descendants lived until about 1950.
Jerusalem surrendered peacefully to Alexander. The high priests came out of their city and brought him gifts. There is no indication that Alexander tried to visit the sanctuary of the Holy of Holies in the Second Temple, which was still in the course of being built with a subsidy offered by Cyrus I.
Jews were, however, slated to play a significant role in Alexandria. This was the great port, today partly under water, that Alexander founded, the only really successful Alexandria among the seven cities by that name that he established. By the first century AD the Egyptian Alexandria had a population of 750,000, of whom at least a third were Jews. Jewish merchants and scholars enlivened the city. They were a Greek-speaking minority; few of them could read Hebrew. Around 200 BC the Hebrew Bible was translated into a Greek version called the Septuagint, after the seventy sages who supposedly worked on it. This was the biblical text used by the Greek Jews of Alexandria.
The greatest scholar among these Jews of Alexandria was Rabbi Philo, whom the Romans called Philo Judaeus. Philo, who lived in the middle decades of the first century AD, attempted a synthesis of Judaism and Platonic philosophy. He was what we today would call a Reform Jew, preaching and writing in Hellenistic Greek. (It is not known whether he even read Hebrew.)
The Jewish community of Alexandria was originally drawn from all over the eastern Mediterranean, and in many instances those Jews were Greek-speaking when they arrived in Alexandria. Alexander would have loved the Alexandrian Jews.
Alexandria remained the great center of Reform Judaism until around AD 300, when the Jewish community there was reduced and impoverished by Christian pogroms. After that only Orthodox Talmudic Judaism prevailed in the Jewish world. Reform Judaism did not reappear in Germany and the United States until the mid-nineteenth century.
If Alexander aimed at Hellenization—and he had that vaguely in mind—it was the Jews of Alexandria who best exemplified the process. They spoke Greek as their daily language; they translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek; their leading scholar, Rabbi Philo, sought a synthesis between Judaism and Platonism.
Rabbi Philo envisaged a monotheistic God whose light shone upon mankind, God’s spirit a fountain immersing the world in light. Here is the origin of what became Jewish mysticism, the kabbalah, in Western Europe in the thirteenth century. Because of Philo’s affinity with Christian mysticism, the early church fathers preserved a dozen volumes of his works. While the writings of Saint Paul (Rabbi Saul of Tarsus), Philo’s contemporary, are known to us from only half a dozen meager letters to Christian communities, Philo’s elaborate writings are readily available today.
No similar cultural blending occurred in Persia, in spite of such far-fetched stratagems as Alexander’s marrying his generals to Persian noblewomen. When Alexander died, nearly all of them promptly abandoned their Persian wives. It was the Jews of Alexandria who flourished by engaging in long-distance trade to Asia Minor, Arabia, and as far away as India. These Jews had thoroughly absorbed Hellenistic culture. They too had their
gymnasia
, where they bathed, modestly clothed, in preparation for Philo’s Sabbath sermons.
More than anyone else, the Alexandrian Jews achieved a union of Greek language and culture and Judaism, but by AD 400 it had all vanished under Christian persecution. (The Alexandrian Jewish community partly revived in the twelfth century under Muslim rule, this time under the leadership of an Orthodox rabbi, Maimonides.)
Writing in the Roman Empire in the early second century AD, the Greek historian and biographer Plutarch, in his very popular book
Parallel Lives
, tried to compare Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, who lived three hundred years later. In the beginning of his book, Plutarch says of Alexander:
