Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great (26 page)

In this way, he crossed the mountains with a loss of only a twentieth of his army. Before the winter ended he descended from the highlands and, after setting beacon-fires to guide the rest of his men down from the mountains, raced to take the towns of Drapsaca and Bactra with whatever forces he had with him. Bessus, hoping to find reinforcements in the lands of the Scythians, retreated north across the Oxus River. To forestall pursuit, he burned anything within a thousand stades that would float. The Macedonians followed by resurrecting a trick Alexander had used to cross the Danube years before, rafting across the river on tents stuffed and sewn shut with grass, leaves and wood chips.

With his failure to stop Alexander at the Oxus, the Persians had seen enough of their new king. Riders delivered the message that Bessus was arrested and waiting for Alexander a short distance ahead of his army. Thus ended, as dishonorably as it had begun, the short reign of ‘Artaxerxes V.’

Alexander had definite plans for disposing of the traitor. Ptolemy was sent ahead to secure the prisoner, strip him naked, and place him at the side of the road where the Greeks marched. As the troops went by, they saw him humiliated there, a dog collar around his neck. Riding in his chariot, Alexander turned to the prisoner with a sneer, as if confronted with a pile of dung.

“Why did you betray and murder your king?” asked Alexander.

Bessus responded with equal arrogance, asking “Alexander, why did you betray and murder your father, Philip?”

“I ask you again to account for yourself.”

“What I did, I did for all the Persians, unlike the king of the Macedonians, who works only for his own glory.”

Alexander put the question a third time, and Bessus, knowing that his death was foregone, showed his contempt by indulging the part of a collared dog, growling and barking. This ended their interview, for surely any man who would bark at his conqueror was a fool. Bessus was seized and packed off to Bactra, where his treachery was dealt with in traditional Persian fashion, which I will not describe beyond saying that it involved disarticulation. That Alexander allowed such practices is perhaps not surprising, insofar that the Persians could not be expected to take up civilized ways right away. But the episode did shock a good many of the Macedonians, who would just as soon put a sword through the neck of a traitor and have done with him. To allow such a deliberately sadistic death was unseemly.

With Darius gone, and his betrayer most definitely dead, the rationale for continuing the war dwindled. Yet cities and kingdoms far ahead were sending emissaries to Alexander, capitulating in advance, promising their alliance and support against those who resisted him. With such ripe fruits demanding to be plucked, it would have been difficult for anyone to stop.

The campaign became ever more squalid and loathsome. Alexander’s awareness that much of his success was due to Arridaeus increased his hunger to show he was more than a conqueror in name. From that point, he refused to call on his brother’s help in certain minor campaigns where he believed his personal valor alone would carry him through. These wars were usually against primitive tribes short of everything but pride. Tapurians, Mardians, Ariaspians, Drangae, Gedrosians, Arachotians, Abian Scythians, Assacenians, Orietae, Memaceni—no group was too poor in means or meager in numbers to conquer. The tribes submitted under the crushing weight of Macedonian power, but only while he was in the area. Time and again, once Alexander was gone the garrisons he left behind were massacred. And on each occasion, the rest of the army was never told of these losses, but left to believe in their invincibility.

With each reduction of an independent people emerged an uncomfortable truth: the Persian Empire was not what we were told it was. For years, pamphleteers like Isocrates had described a domain that was united in lucrative subjugation to the Persian throne. Throughout Asia, men were supposed to bow to the Great King, lavishing upon him tribute that could have gone to Greeks, if we only would agree to take it. Like a monolith hewn from rotten stone, it was only a matter of giving the empire a small push to topple it into a thousand pieces. Or so the argument went.

But the empire was no monolith. As we learned marching with Alexander, only a small part of the territory said to be under the Great King’s control was actually ruled by him. These were composed of the farmlands, the habitable coastlines, and the roads that connected them. All the rest—the mountains, the deserts, the lands fit only for herding and thievery—were controlled by a myriad of petty chieftains. In many cases Darius did not even receive tribute from these chiefs, but had to pay tolls to transport his army across their territory! Alexander, as I have said, refused to do so, preferring to force them into submission. But as I have also said, the time always came with armies must move on; not even Alexander could be everywhere at once.

Please understand, I do not tell you that the empire of the Great King was poor and disunited to belittle Alexander’s achievement. All told, the resources at the command of Darius were still far greater than those of all the Greeks put together. I only tell you these things for you to know the truth, to know something of what the men who marched with Alexander were thinking. Only a fool conquers the world without learning something he doesn’t know.

Having humbled a continent, Alexander conceived a need to humble those who did all the work. Much has been said about the introduction of prostration among the Macedonians; my opponent even claims that I was truckling in my zeal to please the King. It seems there is no winning against Aeschines: either I defy Alexander, and I am called an obstruction, or I obey him, and I am accused of toadyism! The truth is that I understood the need to establish a conventional etiquette around the royal person. Since Macedonians and Persians would have to share responsibility, and the practices in their respective courts were very different, whatever custom the King demanded would necessarily offend someone. Rather than contribute to what I regarded as peevish resistance on the part of some Macedonians and Greeks, I showed a dutiful example. And that, gentlemen of the jury, is the extent of my sinister design in this matter!

In Greece monarchy is preserved only in the cities with the most ancient constitutions, such as in Sparta, or as an honorific only, such as our “king-archon” in Athens. Even in these cases the “king” is better understood as belonging to a class of administrator, occupying only one place in a larger arrangement by which free people govern themselves. The Persian, however, is not free, and his empire is not a city, but an agglomeration of towns, tribes, and smaller kingdoms aligned by force. To rule such a vast territory, filled with peoples who hardly agree on the principles of mortal governance, requires an authority that is more than a man.

It therefore comes as little surprise that the Persian takes his Great King as the very representative of divinity on earth. Only silk and precious metal ever touches the royal person. Suppliants at his court must dress in garments that are absolutely free of dirt or imperfection. Most are expected to abase themselves in the kingly presence by groveling on the ground; low-ranking persons are forbidden even look upon him, but have to avert their eyes. Those of higher rank may approach, but are obliged to cover their mouths with their hands, lest the baser spirit of their breath corrupt him. Most favored attendants are permitted to kiss the king on the mouth, but under no circumstances to exhale upon him as they do so.

To Persian eyes, the way the Macedonians treated Alexander was an offense to heaven. One does not stride up to a king in one’s filthy riding clothes and slap him on the back. Nor does one smile at a king, engage him in debate, or share his drinking cup. Seeing these things in Alexander’s court, his loyal Persians were disconcerted; Alexander, to his credit, understood that his legacy depended on cultivating the loyalty of Macedonian and Persian alike. In this way he transcended the teachings of Aristotle, who bid him to maintain a double standard in his treatment of Greek and barbarian. Alexander, being of far more practical mind, foresaw that Persian anger at what they took as disrespect would redound not on him, but on the other Macedonians, and manifest in rebellion as soon as his subjects were out of his immediate presence.

Aeschines has described how Alexander began to take on some of the trappings of Persian kingship. In consultation with Bagoas and Hephaestion, he adapted elements of the Persian court ritual to his purposes, such as accepting the prostration of his native ministers, and kissing them on the mouth. He also intended to inaugurate prostration among his officers. This practice, which would be fiercely resented by some, was to be introduced slowly, in stages, and never to the obsequious extreme typical of the Asians. At first, it was purely optional—those Macedonians and Greeks who went down and touched their foreheads to the floor were especially well received by Alexander, who was then disposed to look favorably on whatever they came to report or suggest. It is perhaps not surprising that the more junior of the officers understood right away what was expected of them, and prostrated themselves without outward reservation. Something similar was true of the more conniving politicians, who understood that prostration would be an easy way to gain an advantage over their court rivals. The men who loved Alexander most, such as Hephaestion, likewise strove to set an example for the others.

The greatest resistance, however, remained among Alexander’s senior officers. These were the men who had fought with him since he took the throne, who had helped bind up his wounds, and drank with him since he was old enough to hold a cup. For them, to risk their lives to conquer one despot, just to make another of a man they had known since he’d worn short pants, was too much. They took no notice of subtle encouragements to abase themselves. Far from understanding the sensitivities of the Persian courtiers, they were contemptuous of them.

One of these men was Cleitus son of Dropidas. Part of a family that had long served the Macedonian court, he led the very cream of the Cavalry Companions, the so-called “All Royals,” and was a formidable warrior. You recall that he saved the King’s life at the Granicus, when he struck down a Persian horseman with a bead on Alexander’s neck. More than twenty years the King’s senior, he was the sort of warhorse who was not about to grovel before anyone. His tendency to a certain brittleness of temperament, especially while drinking, had earned him the sobriquet of “Black” Cleitus.

The mutual respect Alexander and Cleitus bore for the other at first kept their disagreement over prostration from ever becoming a matter of contention. The King had more or less publicly designated him as the new governor of Bactria—a plum post that had the additional virtue of hustling Cleitus’s stiff back out of his court. But overindulgence in wine was a vice the men shared, and it nearly became the undoing of both.

The quarrel began when, at the latter reaches of a drinking party, Ptolemy suggested that Alexander should be deified because, even at a young age, he had already exceeded the achievements of his divine heroes—Achilles, the Dioscuri, and Heracles. Callisthenes begged to disagree.

“No man merits such honors while alive, when, for all his miraculous feats, Heracles was not made a god until he was dead.”

“The Pharaohs of Egypt are recognized in life as the divine sons of Zeus-Ammon, though all are clearly lesser men than Alexander,” observed Hephaestion.

Callisthenes, who had the defect of retaining far too much sophistic skill deep into his cups, replied that a distinction must be made between divinity for purely ceremonial purposes, such as for the maintenance of the Pharaohs, and deification for the feats of some individual, as was initially proposed for Alexander.

Hephaestion shook his head. “Still, it is absurd to claim that some plump Egyptian effete is entitled to divine honors, but Alexander is not.”

“And besides, I
am
Pharaoh, am I not? And I am not plump--yet!” interjected the King, making light of the dispute, so that everyone laughed with him. This seemed to close the discussion, and fortunately so, as the tender subject of prostration still hung in the air, perceived by all but unsaid.

But Ptolemy would not let the matter drop.

“At the very least, we may all agree that Alexander has far exceeded the works of his father!”

He added that it was Alexander, after all, that had broken the hitherto undefeated Theban Sacred Band at Chaeronea, so that even at Philip’s greatest victory, it was his son who merited the greater part of the glory. Alexander smiled at this, waving his hand to dismiss it, but made no clear disavowal. With that signal the more gross flatterers at the table, fearing Alexander had been insulted by arguments against his divinity, all rushed to extol the King’s feats of conquest, and to declare poor old Philip’s achievements as small change, really quite unremarkable. When I say “all,” I include myself, though by that time I was so lubricated I would have agreed to anything.