Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great (16 page)

If you have not seen a noble woman of Persia, you cannot know that there is a kind of doleful beauty that belongs solely to them. In all the countries I have travelled, I have never seen women look so good looking so wretched. Stateira’s only imperfection, I would say, was the fact of her perfection, which left her somewhat characterless. This did not seem to be the kind of woman any mortal could love.

For her part, Stateira was entirely impassive, looking at no one and taking no notice of her surroundings except to reach the couch next to Alexander. There she sat, as straight as an infantry pike, accepting no food or drink and saying nothing. The shape of her nostrils expressed resentment of the very air she breathed. There seemed an old woman’s share of desolation hidden behind her eyes.

The mood Stateira brought with her, the lure of both her beauty and her forlornness, reduced all the men around her to stupefaction. It was Cleitus who finally broke the silence, asking how any man could abandon such a prize, or even bring her so close to the battle that her loss could be contemplated.

“I must say I am disappointed,” replied Peithon, “for I expected her to be younger.”

“In her case it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, it always matters with women! Here is the secret to escape becoming a slave to a pretty maid, boys: tell yourself that in five or ten years she’ll droop. It’s inevitable. It is the curse of the sex.”

“And boys don’t grow up? Men don’t droop?”

“Oh, who’s talking about men?”

With that, Peithon gave a glance at Alexander, and then to Hephaestion, who was unique in the group for his lack of enthusiasm for inviting Stateira, or for her presence. Cleitus had no such reticence, however:

“To me there’s no comparison. I’ve had it all, done it all from here to Kerkyra, and for my money it’s women.”

“Women have their uses,” countered Peithon, “but not for inspiring true desire. That cannot be denied.”

“I deny it—it is possible to have passion for females.”

Cleitus and Peithon went back and forth, debating the respective virtues of each sex until Perdiccas looked to the King. “And what does Alexander say of this?”

The King lowered his cup, smiled. “Diogenes recommended neither women nor boys, but masturbation. It’s like satisfying your hunger just by rubbing your stomach!”

During this exchange Stateira was there to look at, and as the looking was good, nothing more was demanded of her. But by the cracking of the fifth crater the men weren’t seeing so well, and some more lively form of entertainment seemed in order. Do you sing? they asked her. Dance? Recite the epic poems of your people? To each of these she gave a small toss of the head that we were given to understand meant “no.”

“Well then, what can you do?”

Craterus’s asked this question with the downward direction of his glance making clear his true meaning. The company, including Alexander but not Hephaestion, gave a laugh; Philotas, ever the jolly comrade, picked up the theme.

“But surely you play
the flute
? Don’t all women play
the flute
?”

More chortling, more drinks all around. And as the merriment rolled on, Stateira’s eyes began to moisten in the torchlight, until she hide her face behind her hands. Philotas slammed his cup to the table.

“Oh spare us this phony propriety, woman! Barbarian marriage isn’t like ours…you’re nothing but a fancy concubine.”

“You may count yourself lucky not be passed among the guards,” warned Cleitus.

Darius’s wife began to sob through her hennaed fingers, and with the first teardrop Alexander’s nobler instincts were aroused.

“Of course she plays the flute! That privilege, however, is for kings only. Now all of you, out!”

There was a moment of hesitation as everyone wondered if he was serious.

“OUT, I said!”

The celebrants rose as best they could, topping off their wine cups on the way. Hephaestion was in the lead until Alexander called him back.

“Not you my friend.”

“There is something I must attend. I…”

“Come here! Remember, you too are Alexander!”

Hephaestion obeyed, his face glowing red with rage and humiliation, as the rest of the party cheered and slapped him on the shoulder. From that moment it was clear to me just how unpopular Hephaestion was among his own people. His relationship with Alexander was so resented that it was a wonder that in all his battles he never ended up with a Macedonian arrow in his back. The last I saw was Hephaestion from behind, standing at awkward attention just inside the tent, as Stateira stared at him with fear rising in her eyes. The tent flap fell shut.

I am reminded here that Aristotle once told Alexander to be a leader to the Greeks, but a master to the barbarians. Of this particular incident Stateira, of course, divulged nothing. But when she died nearly two years later, it was not due to the rigors of living on the road, as Callisthenes has said. After all, the Persian court was always on the road! Instead, I have it on good authority that she died in childbirth. Of the fate of her baby I have nothing to report—not even Sisygambus knew, or if she did, she never divulged anything. So was Stateira’s honor respected? You be the judge.

I was much entertained by Aeschines’s account of the siege of Tyre. The problem, of course, was that the Persian fleet was still sailing unopposed in the Aegean, free to foment resistance and harass Macedonian garrisons. To deal with this fleet Arridaeus suggested a novel strategy: Alexander would not assault it directly, as his navy was small and the enemy employed vessels manned by seasoned Phoenician and Cypriot seamen. Instead, he would wear down the Great King’s navy by depriving it of safe harbor. This would require not only the closure of all the ports in Asia Minor, but also the subjugation of the Phoenician cities on the Levantine coast. Old Parmenion disagreed, urging a fight at sea that would, in any case, be less expensive and time-consuming than conquering every harbor. Alexander heard his advice, weighed it, and ordered his fleet disbanded. He would gamble all on Arridaeus’ land strategy.

As fast as Alexander’s army marched, news of his victories spread faster. Marathus, Byblos and Sidon opened their gates to him, and emissaries from Tyre, the richest of the ports, made pledges of neutrality. Alexander accepted the Tyrians’ goodwill gifts of provender and a golden crown, asking only that he be allowed into their city to make a sacrifice to Heracles.

“That, alas, we cannot allow,” said the head emissary, heaving a thespian sigh. “The Great King would no doubt see that as a violation of our neutrality.”

“Perhaps he would see it that way—but I will not accept a refusal. There is no neutrality possible now.” He left unsaid the obvious concern that any port not in his allegiance after he marched east could be used by the enemy’s navy to support operations against his rear.

“May we suggest an alternative for your observance, O King? The sanctuary of Heracles Palaeotyros, for instance?”

“Is it within the town?”

“Your eminence, it is within our territory, but a short distance outside the city proper.”

“I think,” said the King, “that the only alternative to a sacrifice within your gates will be an unpleasant one for you.”

At this the haughty Tyrians, whose city stood on an offshore island ringed with high walls, dropped all pretense of humility. They laughed in Alexander’s face.

“Unless you Greeks have gills, Tyre can never be taken!”

 
At that, Alexander told them to prepare to defend themselves.

IX.

The King called a war council to hear the advice of his generals. The city, he was told, stood on an island half-mile off a windswept coast. She was protected by massive fortifications 150 feet high on the landward side, only somewhat lower to seaward. As Alexander had sent away his only ships, taking the city from the water would be impossible. “Then it must be from the land,” he concluded. Constructing a mole across the strait was be likewise impractical, said his admiral Nearchus, as the channel was deep there. “How deep?” Alexander demanded. No one knew.

At this point Nearchus argued that the Persian fleet was not out of action and might appear at any moment to support the Tyrians (which was true), and that the city might be safely bypassed anyway (which was not). But his objections only confirmed Alexander in his course: he would take the impregnable island city from the land.

The Macedonians seized the mainland coast across the Tyrian strait. Battalions of Foot Companions and mercenaries were ordered to take off their armor and don workshirts. Whole forests were cut down for pilings, and all moveable boulders in the vicinity roped, dragged, and dropped into the channel to support the construction of the greatest artificial causeway ever conceived.

While these preparations were underway, the Macedonian camp was shaken by an ominous sign: as the army’s bakers removed their bread from the ovens, they found drops of human blood in the loaves. Panic spread among the Greeks in a way it had not before the battles at the Granicus or Issus. The campaign was saved by Alexander’s personal seer, the Telmissian Aristander. Instead of disaster, Aristander interpreted the bloody bread as a promising sign: since the blood flowed on the inside of the bread, it must mean that the force
within
the city was doomed, not the attackers. As this seemed reasonable to most of the Macedonians, work resumed in earnest.

Alexander searched his army for strong swimmers who might survey the underwater course of his mole. As this was dangerous work, he promised each survivor a talent for his trouble. So confident were the Tyrians that the siege would fail, however, that they declined to shoot at these scouts as they appeared under their walls. Instead they laughed, asking them whether their King thought himself Poseidon’s master.

The causeway was supposed to be wide enough for an eight-man front of Foot Companions to march across, and high enough for the top of it to be above the winter swells. Working in day and night shifts, the Macedonians quickly finished the section over the shallows. As his men worked, the enemy sent out boats with crack archers in them. Thinking perhaps that Alexander was bluffing, at first they resorted only to insults, jeering at the workmen, telling them they were a race of mules, not warriors. When this failed to stop the work, the archers brandished their bows. Finally, they commenced shooting at the workers, forcing them off the mole. Alexander brought up Cretan bowmen equipped with flaming arrows, driving the boats away. To protect his men, he altered the design of the mole, equipping it with a pair of wheeled towers, topped with rock-throwers, that could be rolled forth as the work proceeded.

Unable to approach the causeway from the water, the Tyrians sent boats filled with cutthroats down the coast to attack the work-crews inland.
A
lexander detailed his Illyrian auxiliaries to protect the workers. The enemy turned to diplomacy, paying the Arab tribes of Mt. Lebanon to harry the Illyrians. In response, Alexander launched a land campaign, bringing the Arabs to heel in just ten days.

The work proceeded into greater depths. The magnitude of the task seemed to grow more and more absurd, like burying the ocean, as we watched tons of stones and trees disappear into the water. The head of the mole, meanwhile, was now in range of archers on the city walls, which they used with telling effect. Alexander countered the Tyrian bowmen by erecting sheets of canvas around the head of the mole to conceal his men as they worked their way closer. Poseidon made his allegiance known by sending strong winds through the channel to rip away the canvas, leaving the workers exposed to enemy fire. Alexander replaced the canvas with heavy skins, weighted down at the bottom with shorn logs, which had the additional dividend of breaking the high waves. Poseidon grumbled and bided his time.

Alexander was often out on the mole himself, exposing himself to danger, always ready with words of encouragement for his men. At last his faith seemed to bear results, as the Macedonians looked down to see the mole’s foundation inch toward the surface. Morale surged; it seemed as if the task was possible after all.