The Nature of Alexander (12 page)

Resolution, discipline, and the strong cornel-wood lances carried the day. The Persians fell into confusion, then into flight. Alexander let them go; he concentrated his assault upon the mercenaries, whom he regarded as
traitors to Greece. Here there was a savage slaughter. Some must have escaped, but he only took about 2,000 prisoners, whom he did not re-employ but sent to hard labour in Macedon. Memnon himself got away to fight again. The Persian satrap Arsames, who had overruled his advice before the battle, also escaped, but killed himself.

Macedonian casualties were light. To the twenty-five Companions who had fallen in the first assault Alexander gave special funeral honours with tax remission to their families, and had their statues cast in bronze. After the battle he went to see the wounded, Arrian says: “looking at their wounds, asking how they got them, encouraging each to tell about his deeds and even brag of them.” Glimpses like this explain the extraordinary relationship that was to evolve between him and his army in ensuing years.

He buried the Persian generals with the honours of war, and gave the dead Greek mercenaries a proper Greek funeral. To fourth-century men there was much more in this than a gesture; it was the rite of peaceful passage to the land of shades. What to modern man may seem cynical seemed to contemporaries generous and unusual; his effect on them will be better understood if this is borne in mind. Of a piece with it is his pardoning of local people who, unlike the mercenaries, had been serving the Persians under conscription.

He now marched south to Sardis, a formidable inland fortress on high rock, which surrendered without a fight. In Asia Minor he would be dealing mostly with cities where only the garrison and officials felt loyalty to Persia; these Lydians were the people of King Croesus, conquered in Cyrus’ day. The treasury of Sardis, if not quite up to Croesus’ legend, was well filled, and came just when he needed it. He built a temple to Olympian Zeus on the old site of the royal palace under the divine direction of a
lightning bolt, garrisoned the acropolis, and allowed the people their traditional customs and laws. Olympian Zeus, the patron god of Macedon, is on the reverse of nearly all his silver coinage, enthroned, after Phidias’ famous statue at Olympia. The obverse has Heracles with his lion-mask hood. As the mints go east, the Zeus, carved by non-Greek craftsmen, grows increasingly vague, the Heracles more and more like Alexander.

The Greek coastal city of Ephesus opened its gates to him, disclosing a society seething with hate and vendetta. Greek oligarch collaborators had ruled it for the Persians. On the news of Alexander’s victory, these people had been lynched by the democrats, or dragged from temple sanctuary and stoned to death with their children. He restored the democracy, but strictly forbade any more reprisals, “knowing that once they got leave, the people would kill some men unjustly, from mere hate, or to get hold of their wealth, along with those who deserved it.” Arrian says his popularity soared after this decree.

He sacrificed there to Artemis (Saint Paul’s Diana of the Ephesians) and held a brilliant victory parade. Greek cities now fell to him like ripe fruit. In each he evicted pro-Persian quislings and established Greek-style democracies. This, he told them, was what he had come to do; and he may not yet have been looking further.

Fifty miles south he was in Caria, and gazed for the first time on that state so calamitous in his past. The satrap Pixodarus had been some time dead, succeeded by a kinsman devoted to Persian interests. Had Alexander’s intrigue come off, it would probably have brought him nothing but a redundant Carian wife. He got instead a Carian mother.

Pixodarus was a usurper. His predecessors had been a brother and sister, married (as in Egypt) by royal custom. On her husband’s death, Ada the wife had the
right to rule alone, but had been expelled by Pixodarus. Retiring in good order, she had established herself in the strong harbour fortress of Alinda. This she now surrendered to Alexander, offering him allegiance if he restored her rights. Diplomatic courtesies soon turned to maternal adoration, indulgently and affectionately received. She cosseted and spoiled him; shocked by his plain diet, she plied him with
cordon bleu
till he was driven to polite excuses. Before long, she formally adopted him as her son. By now the irony may have amused him.

Unlike many men whose childhood has been mother dominated, Alexander was never drawn sexually to older women. He preferred the filial role. Later he was to assume it with much deeper involvement; and to a third such bond, seemingly the most casual and incongruous, he was to owe his life.

He marched to Miletus, a port in the usurper’s territory. Its garrison commander began to treat for surrender, got wind of seaborne reinforcements and changed his mind. Alexander’s small fleet of 160 ships slipped swiftly into the strategic harbour of Lade across the narrow strait; the Persians, forced to take second best, beached their belated 400 vessels northward up the coast.

Parmenion is said to have urged a sea fight, presumably because of the better Macedonian position. An eagle had been propitiously seen on shore at their ships’ sterns. Alexander preferred to let the Persians alone, because, he said, their ships were crewed by more experienced seamen, and a victory would give a fillip to their morale. The eagle had perched on
land,
pointing out where fortune lay. Finally, “he would not risk sacrificing the skill and courage of his Macedonians.” Reckless with his own life, he was never wasteful of theirs, a fact well known to them and never undervalued.

He breached and stormed the Miletus walls, his ships
closing the harbour mouth against Persian aid. Some of the garrison escaped by sea, rafted with their wooden shields, to an offshore islet. He sailed after them, but, “seeing the men on the island would fight to the last, he pitied them as high-minded and faithful soldiers.” The Milesians he let go free; the mercenaries were Greek, but he hired them in his own service.

The powerful Persian fleet, denied the harbour, was still beached with all its soldiers. Warships of the ancient world could never carry stores enough to feed for long their rowers, their seamen and the troops they carried. They had constantly to put in for water and supplies; hence the importance of supporting land troops. This fleet had none. Alexander sent out Philotas to occupy the surrounding coast and virtually besiege them by cutting them off from provisions. On land they were vastly outnumbered; after one vain attempt to provoke a sea fight, their stores were exhausted and they had to go. The complete success of this minor operation suggested to Alexander’s logical mind a major long-term strategy. Why not refuse to the Persian navy
all
its ports of call?

“He interpreted the eagle to mean that he should conquer the ships by land.” Alexander’s impetuosity in battle went with a surprising readiness to form a long-term objective and to wait. His plan meant mastering the whole east Mediterranean seaboard before he struck inland; but it would secure both the liberated cities and his own communications. He laid a heavy stake on it by disbanding, except a couple of transports for his siege engines, all his own ships; which, despite his haul at Sardis, he could still not well afford to maintain. It would leave him cut off if he were defeated; but defeat, like fear, he presumed not to exist.

His next objective was Halicarnassus, the late
Pixodarus’ capital. A commanding fortress rebuilt in later ages by Seljuks and Crusaders, it was a tougher proposition than Miletus and needed a full-scale siege. One of its two commanders was the expert Memnon. Arrian describes in detail the filling of its great moat to bring up the siege towers, the sorties from the fort to burn them, the final breach of the wall. When the city was clearly at his mercy, Alexander broke off the action and withdrew, offering a parley to discuss terms next day. He was roused at midnight to see the town in flames; Memnon and his men had fired it and a wind was spreading the blaze. He stormed inside, ordering all fire raisers caught in the act to be killed, but citizens spared. Memnon and his staff had got away.

Alexander was now master of Caria. He garrisoned its fortresses, and restored Queen Ada to the satrap’s throne.

His next action was to give Parmenion his separate command. If the young King’s rejection of his advice was stressed in later chronicles for expedient reasons, this is no proof that such incidents were fictitious. They suggest a familiar human pattern. Parmenion was now in his middle sixties. He had been Philip’s intimate friend for more than twenty years. He now found himself working with a high command mostly a full generation younger, under a leader in his early twenties. If he had adjusted with ease from Philip’s mental processes to Alexander’s, it would have been little short of a miracle. Shakespeare’s Antony complains that Octavius’ tutelary genius daunts his own, and Parmenion may have felt this perennial situation. On Alexander’s side, a man who had been so close to his father, who had married a daughter of Attalus when he was in power and Alexander in disgrace, must always have created some sense of tension. At all events, he now detached Parmenion to command the
communication lines over the conquered territory. A tendency to repeat this policy was to have terrible results for both of them.

Alexander now gave home leave to all Macedonian soldiers newly married before setting out; a wildly popular directive, and thoughtful for future Macedonian manpower. He next moved against the mountain hill tribes, everywhere in the world intractable; midwinter had driven them down into the valleys, easing the task of subjugation. During this time, Parmenion intercepted a message from Darius to Alexandros of Lyncestis—whose two brothers had been executed for complicity in Philip’s murder—offering him the throne of Macedon if he would procure Alexander’s death. This prince had now been promoted to command of the Thracian cavalry. As a possible successor should Alexander die childless, he had always been a source of danger; his survival represented a notable departure from Macedonian royal precedent. Even now, however, Alexander, lacking proof that the Persian offer had been solicited, did not charge him with treason, but kept him under precautionary arrest. It was remembered that during the recent siege, a swallow had entered the royal tent, and fluttered over its sleeping occupant. Half waking, Alexander had gently brushed it away, but it had returned and perched on his head. The seers divined that the warnings of this domestic bird meant domestic danger. However, Alexander still held his hand.

The winter was spent in reducing coastal strongholds, working south and down round Asia Minor’s eastward curve. With the spring he struck inland as far as Gordium, locale of the famous knot. It was a leather thong, intricately wound about the shaft of an ancient vehicle on which their most famous king, the legendary Midas, was supposed to have arrived. Plutarch says, most probably by hindsight, that the man who could undo it was destined
to rule the world. Arrian says that by some accounts Alexander cut it with his sword in proverbial manner; by others, he tugged out the shaft it was wound round, and discovered the hidden end. “I shall not try,” writes Arrian conscientiously, “to say exactly how Alexander dealt with this knot.” It is agreed he dealt with it. There were thunderings and lightnings, to clinch the matter.

Further south, he approached the almost impregnable pass of the Cilician Gates, but had not to force it. Its holding force fled as soon as they heard he was there in person. At Tarsus, he nearly killed himself by jumping into the Cydnus (the stream that carried Cleopatra’s barge to Antony) while tired, hot and sweating. It was snow water; he got cramp and a bad chill, and his life was thought in danger. Here he made one of his impassioned testimonies to friendship. His doctor, Philip, was about to dose him, when a letter arrived from Parmenion, assuring him that Darius had bribed the man to poison him. In view of the offer to Alexandros of Lyncestis, this cannot have seemed trivial. It may even have been tried on Philip, though ignored. Alexander handed him the letter and, while he read it, tossed the medicine down. Philip, looking up in horror, saw Alexander smiling and holding the empty cup. The potion was a strong purge. He endured without loss of trust this benighted treatment, though it must have delayed his recovery, which took some weeks.

Darius meantime, stirred at last to action, had marched west from Babylon with an enormous army, and made camp on level ground where he had plenty of room to deploy it, barring the Macedonians’ southward march, somewhere near modern Aleppo. Unaware that Alexander was ill—his convalescence probably prolonged by two years’ incessant labour—Darius thought he was hanging back from fear, and was much encouraged.

The Great King, who stood six and a half feet tall, is
said by Diodorus to have won renown during Ochus’ reign by killing in single combat a Cilician champion whom no other warrior would face. He was now about fifty; the duel, if it ever took place, may have been fought a quarter century before. It may have been propaganda to support his accession, which needed support; power and luxury may have changed him; or his courage may have been, as courage can be, specific rather than general. It would seem at any rate that since the news from the Granicus he had been a frightened man. The recent death of Memnon, from illness while on campaign, had further disconcerted him.

Alexander, when on his feet again, conducted methodical mopping-up operations to safeguard his flanks and communications. Darius, much cheered by this further delay, began to think of offensive action. Arrian blames flattering courtiers for this overconfidence; it is also possible that keener soldiers simply wanted to push him into the field.

With a formidable battle now ahead, Alexander set up a field hospital by the inlet bay of Issus, left there his sick and wounded, and marched southward to meet Darius; unaware that Darius, by a different inland route, was marching north. Hidden from each other the armies passed. Darius arrived at Issus in Alexander’s rear. The only Macedonians he found were the patients in the hospital. Whether or not by his orders, they were cut up alive. This atrocity was never repaid in kind by Alexander; a restraint seldom practised in the ancient world or, indeed, in some parts of the modern one.