Fire From Heaven (36 page)

Demosthenes went back home, and drafted a diplomatic note to Thebes, heaping scorn on Philip. ‘É acting as might be looked for in one of his race and nature; insolently using his present fortune, forgetful of his unforeseen rise to power from small mean originsÉ.’ Thoughtfully he chewed his pen; the stylos moved on over the wax.

Outside his window, young men still new to war, on the way to report to their tribal officers, were shouting to each other; the jok?es of the young, whose meaning he no longer knew. A woman was crying somewhere. Surely, it was in the house. It must be his daughter. If she had anyone to weep over, it was the first he knew of it. Angrily he closed his door; the noise was ill-omened, and disturbed his thoughts.

When the Assembly met at Thebes, no man who could stand on his feet was absent. The Macedonians, being formal allies, had first hearing.

They recalled Philip’s good offices to Thebes; his help in the Phokian War, his support for her hegemony over Boeotia; rehearsed her ancient injuries from the Athenians, their efforts to weaken her, their alliance with the impious Phokians, paying their troops with Apollo’s gold. (With this too, no doubt, they had gilded the Theban shields they had set up, in blasphemous affront to Thebes and to the god.) Philip did not ask that Thebes should take up arms against Athens; Thebans might do so if they chose, and share the fruits of victory; but he would still count them as friends, if they gave him only right of passage.

The Assembly turned it over. They had been angered by Philip’s surprise of Elatia; if he was an ally, he was a high-handed one, it was late to consult them now. For the rest, it was true enough. The great issues of power remained unspoken. Once Athens had fallen, what would they be worth to him? And yet, he had power in Thessaly and had done no harm there. They had fought the long Phokian war; Thebes was full of dead men’s sons with a family on their shoulders, the widowed mother and the younger ones. Was it not enough?

Antipatros ceased, and sat down. A not unfriendly murmur, almost applause, was heard. The marshal called the Athenian envoys. Demosthenes climbed the rostrum, in a hush of expectation, mostly hostile. Not Macedon, but Athens, had been the threat here for generations. There was no house without a blood-debt from the endless border wars.

He could strike one answering nerve; the common hate for Sparta. He recalled how after the Great War, when Sparta had imposed on Athens the Thirty Tyrants (traitors like those who wanted peace with Philip now) Thebes had given harbour to the Liberators. Beside Philip, the Thirty were mere schoolboy bullies; let the past be forgotten, only that noble act remembered. With skilled timing, he brought out the Athenian offers. Theban rights over Boeotia should be undisputed; if the Boeotians should rebel, Athens would even send troops to put them down. Plateia too, that old bone of contention. He did not remind his hearers that Plateia, in return for Athens’ protection against Thebes, had joined in the stand at Marathon, and been granted Athenian citizenship for ever. It was no time for hair-splitting; Plateia should be conceded. Also, if there was war with Philip, Thebes should command all land-forces, while Athens would meet two-thirds of the expense.

The burst of applause was missing. Thebans in doubt were looking at other Thebans they knew and trusted, not at him. They were slipping his grip.

Striding forward, lifting his arm, he invoked the heroic dead, Epaminondas and Pelopidas; the glorious fields of Leuktra and Mantinea; the record of the Sacred Band. His ringing voice dropped to a note of silken irony. If these things were no longer of account to them, he had only one request to make on behalf of Athens; right of passage, to oppose the tyrant alone.

He had caught them now. That nip of the old rivalry had done it.

They were shamed, he could hear it in the deep muted sound. Here and there two voices called together for the voting to begin; the men of the Sacred Band were considering their honour. The pebbles rattled into the urns; tally-clerks under close scrutiny flicked their abacuses; a long tedious business, after the efficient slot-counters at home. The Thebans had voted to tear up the treaty with Macedon, and ally with Athens.

He walked back to his lodging, hardly feeling his feet touch ground. Like Zeus with his scales, he had held and tilted the destiny of Greece. If ordeal lay ahead, what new life cam?e forth without birth-pangs? They would say of him now, for ever, that the hour had found the man.

They brought Philip the news next day, as he ate his noon meal with Alexander. The King sent his squires out, before even opening the dispatch; like most men of the time, he had not mastered the knack of reading with the eye alone, he needed to hear himself. Alexander, taut with suspense, wondered why his father could not have trained himself, as he had done, to read in silence; it was only a matter of practice; though his lips still moved with the words, Hephaistion had assured him that no sound at all came out.

Philip read levelly, without anger; the lines of his face only deepened into seams. He laid down the scroll by his dish, and said, ‘Well, if they will have it, they will have it.’

‘I’m sorry, Father; I suppose it had to be.’ Could he not see that however the Thebans had voted, Athens would still have hated him? That there was no way he could have entered her gates, but as a victor? How had he nursed so long this insubstantial dream? Better leave him in peace, and think about realities. It would be the second war-plan, now.

Athens and Thebes made ready at fever-heat to meet Philip’s southward march. Instead he went west, into the mountain ribs and gorges that fringed the Parnassos massif. He had been commissioned to drive the Amphissians from the sacred plain; this he would do. As for Thebes, let it be said he had only tested a doubtful ally’s loyalty, and knew the answer.

The young men of Athens, roused for war, prepared to go north to Thebes. The omens were taken; the fires smouldered, the diviners misliked the entrails. Demosthenes, finding the dead hand of superstition raised against him, declared these portents were meant to reveal the traitors in their midst, paid by Philip to stop the war. When Phokion, back from a mission too late to change events, urged that the city should get an oracle from Delphi, Demosthenes laughed, and said that all the world knew Philip had bought the Pythia.

The Thebans received the Athenians as the Lynkestids had welcomed Alexander, with careful courtesy. The Theban general disposed his joint force to guard the southern passes, and to block Philip from Amphissa. All over the wild stony uplands of Parnassos, and in the gorges of Phokis, the armies scouted and manoeuvred. Trees turned brown, then bare; on the tops the first snows fell. Philip took his time. He was busy rebuilding the forts of the impious Phokians, who gratefully leased them to his men, in exchange for a cut in their fines to the plundered god.

He would not be tempted into a major battle. There was a skirmish in a river-gorge, another in an upland pass, both broken off when he saw his troops being drawn into awkward country. Athens hailed them as victories, and thanksgiving feasts were held.

One winter night, Philip’s tent was pitched out of the wind against a cliff-face, above a river in snow-spate churning its stony gorge. On the slopes between, a pine-wood had been felled for cook-fires. Dusk was falling; eddies of pure mountain air pierced through the heavy mingled smells of wood-smoke, porridge, bean broth, horses, crudely-cured tent hides, and many thousand unwashed men. On leather camp-chairs, Philip and Alexander sat warming their wet boots at the glowing crumble of their fire. The steamy reek of his father’s feet blended for Alexander with the other homely and familiar scents of war. He himself was no more than fairly dirty; when streams were hard to come at, he would rub himself down with snow. His attention to these things had created a legend, of which he was still unaware, that he was endowed with a natural fragrance. Most of the men had not bathed for months. Their wives would scrub them, when they returned to the marriage bed.

‘Well,’ said Philip, ‘didn’t I tell you Demosthenes’ patience would wear out before mine? I heard just now. He’s sent them.’

‘What? How many?’

‘The whole ten thousand.’

‘Is the man mad?’

‘No, he’s a party politician. The voters ?didn’t like to see paid troops drawing pay and rations in Attica, while citizens went to war. They’ve been on my mind; trained men, and too mobile where they were, too mobile by far. At the clinch, ten thousand extra men is a good many. Now we can deal with them first; they’re being sent direct to Amphissa.’

‘So we wait till they’re there. Then what?’

Philip’s yellow teeth grinned in the firelight. ‘You know how I slipped away at Byzantion? We’ll try that again. We’ll have bad news, very bad news from Thrace. Revolt, Amphipolis threatened, every man needed to hold the frontier. I shall reply, in good clear writing, that we are marching north with all our forces. My courier will be captured, or maybe sell the letter. The enemy’s scouts will see us starting northward. At Kytinion we’ll go to ground, lie low, and wait.’

‘Then over the Grabian Pass, and attack at dawn?’

‘A stolen march, as your friend Xenophon says.’

They stole it, before spring thaw had drowned the river-crossings. The mercenaries of Athens did their duty, as long as there was hope in it; after that, being professionals, they either got away to the coast, or asked for terms. Most of these last ended by enlisting with Philip, had their wounds dressed, and sat down to a good hot meal.

The Amphissians surrendered without condition. Their government was exiled as the Sacred League had decreed. The holy plain was stripped of their impious husbandry, and left fallow for the god.

In the first warmth of spring, at the theatre of Delphi, the steep pale eagle-cliffs of the Phaidriades behind them, the great temple of Apollo before, and the vast gulf beyond, King Philip was crowned by the League with a golden laurel crown. He and his son were eulogized in long speeches and choric odes; a sculptor sketched them, for statues to adorn the temple.

Afterwards, Alexander walked with his friends on the jostling terrace. It hummed and stank with the throng from all over Greece, and as far as Sicily, Italy and Egypt. Rich votaries marched with their offerings displayed on the heads of slaves, goats bleated, doves moaned in wicker cages; faces eager, devout, relieved, drawn with anxiety, came and went. It was one of the days for the oracle.

Under the noise, Hephaistion said in Alexander’s ear, ‘Why don’t you, while you’re here?’

‘Not now.’

‘It would set your mind at rest.’

‘No, the time’s not right. One should take the seer by surprise, I think, in a place like this.’

A sumptuous performance was put on in the theatre; the protagonist was Thettalos, renowned for his heroic roles. He was a handsome ardent young man, whose Thessalian blood was mixed with some Celtic strain; his training in Athens had contained his fire in good technique, and his natural rashness in good manners. He had often played in Pella, and was a favourite with Alexander, for whom he conjured some special vision of the hero’s soul. Now in Sophokles’ Ajax, doubling Ajax and Teukros, he made it unthinkable the one should outlive his honour, the other fail in loyalty to the dead. Alexander went round afterwards with Hephaistion to the skene-room. Thettalos had pulled off the mask of Teukros, and was towelling the sweat from his strongly-carved face and short curly chestnut hair. At the sound of Alexander’s voice he emerged and glowed at him with large hazel eyes, saying, ‘I am glad if you were pleased. I was playing it all to you.’

They talked awhile about his recent travels. At the end he said, ‘I get about a good deal. If ever you have any business, never mind what, and need someone you can trust, you know it would be a privilege.’

He was understood. Actors, the servants of Dionysos, were protected persons; often used as envoys, as secret agents even oftener. Alexander said, ‘Thank you, Thettalos. There is no one I would sooner ask.’

When they were walking away towards the Stadium, Hephaistion said, ‘You know that man’s still in love with you?’

‘Well, one can at least be civil. He’s sensible, he doesn’t misunderstand. Some day I might need to? trust him, one never knows.’

With good spring weather, Philip moved down to the Gulf of Corinth, and took Naupaktis, which commanded its outer strait. In summer, he moved about in the country behind Parnassos, strengthening strongpoints, keeping alliances warm, making roads, feeding-up his cavalry mounts. Now and again he would make feints to the east, where Athenians and Thebans tensely manned the passes. Then he would march away, leaving them flat and stale, and would hold manoeuvres or games, to make sure his own men were neither.

Even now, he sent once more envoys to Thebes and Athens, offering to discuss terms for a peace. Demosthenes proclaimed that Philip, twice repulsed by their arms, must be growing desperate; these offers proved it. One good push would finish him in the south.

In late summer, when the barley between the trees in the olive-orchards of Attica and Boeotia was yellowing in the ear, he went back to his base at Elatia, but left his strongpoints manned. The forward outposts of Thebes and Athens were at a pass about ten miles south. Till his offers were thrown back, he had done no more than tease them. Now he displayed his strength; they were outflanked, and could be cut off when he chose. Next day his scouts found them gone; he took and manned the pass.

The men of the cavalry looked happy, polished their gear and made much of their horses. Now, the coming battle would be in the plains.

The barley whitened, the olives ripened. By the calendar of Macedon, it was the month of the Lion. King Philip gave a birthday feast in the fort for Alexander. He was eighteen.

Elatia had been made snug; woven hangings on the wall of the royal quarters, tiles on the floor. While the guests were singing, Philip said to his son, ‘You’ve not named your gift yet. What would you like?’

Alexander smiled. ‘You know that, Father.’

‘You’ve earned it; it’s yours. It won’t be long now. I shall take the right wing, that goes back time out of mind. You will command the cavalry.’