Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

VI

Anyone listening to Aeschines’s description of this teenager would be severely misled. He spoke of fine long hair, which was accurate enough, but neglected the stringy, oily quality of it, which gave the impression of being perpetually wet. I still hear tales of Alexander’s ‘blond’ or ‘fair’ hair when it was clearly brown and nothing more. It fell in unrestrained sweeps down around his face-a face that was not without a certain dignity, but coarse, big-boned, and full of pimples. His eyes were not blue or blue-on-one-side but again, plain brown. At that distance I assure you I smelled nothing of the natural perfume that was supposed to permeate his body. His most remarkable features were a set of full, almost feminine lips, and a pair of wide-set eyes that focused on their object with a remarkable intensity.

He was but eighteen years old that day, flush from his first victory in battle. For the first time, he was confronted with great numbers of Athenians, who despite their political rivalry with Macedon retained a certain stature in that primitive kingdom. To this day, the people of Pella still speak with pride of how Euripides spent his last days there, producing his Bacchae at the sanctuary at Dion, in the very shadow of Mt. Olympus. It was therefore with an uneasy mixture of superiority and awe that he addressed me, a bonafide Athenian sophisticate.

“Did thy mother bear ye a tongue along with thy fingers?”

“She did,” I replied. “But I cannot see how my affairs are any concern of yours, stranger.”

The pimply Prince drew himself up to his full height, all of five feet and no inches.

“Mark me as a man who bested thee in battle, friend, for you cavil with the crown prince of Macedon!”

Having rendered for you how Alexander sounded in those days, for clarity’s sake I will now translate his archaic Greek into our modern idiom. To be sure, beyond a certain awkwardness at first, communication was never a problem between us. He did come to take on a less backward mode as time passed, and my ear for his northern dialect improved. But despite the elocution lessons, despite Aristotle’s tutoring, to the sophisticated Greek there was always something of the highland yokel in him, even when he was donning the diadem of the Great King at Susa.

“Well, your highness, I will say that you ‘cavil’ with no one, for I am just plain Machon of Athens, son of Agathon.”

“And do you profess the craft of writer, Machon son of Agathon? Tell me, do you know these lines…”

The word ‘moderation’ when spoken

Is better than renown, and mortals

Who practice it find it superior.

For renown, when taken to extremes,

Is not an advantage to men…?

“You insult me, sir, for what Athenian would admit he does not recognize the words of Euripides, from the prologue of Medea?”

“I mean no insult, sir, but to my mind there too many poseurs carrying the attributes of your noble calling. If I were not Alexander, I would be a poet!”

“There are many in Athens,” I replied, “who would urge both you and your father to pursue that ambition!”

Alexander laughed with what seemed like genuine ease, without a trace of adolescent self-consciousness. On a certain level, I found myself liking him immediately, which was not an unusual reaction to him in those early years. He was not without charm.

“Did you know that your Euripides found sanctuary at the court of Macedon?”

“I have heard it said.”

“I saw you on the field. You fought well.”

“Not well enough, it seems.”

At the time I thought it impossible that the Prince could have recalled glimpsing me among thousands of others through the melee of Chaeronea. He has since gained the reputation of remembering an astonishing number of faces and names-Aeschines himself has repeated this claim. The truth is somewhat more complicated, as I will tell you presently. But again, I could not help being pleased by his flattery.

“You should know that I am not writing poetry. It is a history of this war.”

“Whose style do you favor, then-Herodotus or Thucydides?”

“Herodotus is for children.”

“Exactly right. Soon I will need men like yourself, Machon. Serious historians.”

With that, he turned and walked back to his horse, which was held by a strikingly handsome youth that I later knew to be Hephaestion. The Prince seemed to give his friend an order, and the latter shot a measuring glance at me. Then, before he rode off, Alexander shouted back in my direction.

“I can only hope that I am not a villain in your story!”

He was smiling, but there was also a dark edge in his voice that was unmistakable.

Soon I learned what Alexander had instructed Hephaestion to do for me: I was moved from the stockade to a small officer’s field tent nearby. Inside was a cot, a chair, and writing desk, and a sheath of Egyptian papyrus-truly an extravagant gift!

In truth, it was perhaps too generous. After days living outside, and having never before been confronted with such fine materials, the comfortable surroundings became a distraction. In the short time before I was sent home I got no serious writing done at all.

Contrary to what Aeschines has told you, I was not among those who attended the Prince during his peace embassy to Athens. Indeed, Aeschines’s associates Phocion and Demades were among that party, though I will not descend to my opponent’s level of scurrility in calling them “hacks.” Suffice it to say that I was too closely connected to those who opposed Macedonian power before Chaeronea to merit an invitation. I understand that he mentioned my name on several occasions, much to the embarrassment of his hosts. Attending a sacrifice at the altar of Athena Parthenos, he was heard to ask, “Is Machon in the crowd? Who will point him out to me?”

Later, on his inspection of the Painted Stoa, he said “I think the paintings very fine, though I wonder what my friend Machon would say of them!”

I understand that he referred to me so often Demades made serious inquiries on the question of whether he was simple-minded! In fact, Demades had no understanding of the Macedonian mind-Alexander asked for me not because he was simple, but out of a sense of obligation to a friend on a visit to his home. Indeed, I received a note from him communicating his disappointment that I would not be joining the festivities, and his hope that work on my history was proceeding well. These testaments to his goodwill, and of my vocation as historian, I hereby place in evidence.

“They are so accepted,” responded the clerk.

I next saw Alexander more than two years later. It was after his ascension to the throne of Macedon, following the murder of his father, and a short time after the destruction of Thebes. He was assembling his forces for his invasion of the Persian Empire; in deference to his position as the Captain of the Greeks, our Assembly resolved to send five hundred men to support his cause. Aeschines is quite correct to note that Demosthenes was the primary sponsor of my leadership of this force. He could not be more incorrect, though, in ascribing evil motives to my assignment. Rather, I was recommended by the simple fact that Alexander had shown a partiality for me, and these feelings might be of some use in persuading him to overcome his mistrust of the Athenians. That, and the fact that Phocion, who was far more qualified, didn’t want the job!

I came up to attend the King at Dion, the Macedonian sanctuary of Zeus. At the time I arrived he was feasting his officers under a great tent not far from the theatre. It was a grand affair, in the style of all his celebrations: the tent covered an area larger than this building, and was lined with row upon row of gilded couches arranged around a royal loggia, where King Alexander reclined. Surpassing all other symposiasts, he served his guests the finest Chian wine from craters lined with snow fetched down from Olympus; the toasts were made with golden cups studded with jewels. One side of the tent was given over to trophies from his recent expedition against the Danuban Triballi-heaped pelts of bears and oxen, shields hewn from single enormous logs, belts dripping with amber beads. There was no loot from the sack of Thebes, however. Nor to my knowledge was this event ever mentioned.

“Machon, my friend! Come here and embrace me!”

He greeted me like an old comrade, biding me to sit beside him. His enthusiasm was unique in that company. When they bothered to look to me at all, the rest of the Macedonians cast their eyes on me with obvious suspicion. Hephaestion regarded me unflinchingly from a nearby couch, his hostility unconcealed.

“So tell me of your book! Have you completed it?”

“Honestly, no. All I have so far is a prologue.”

“You lack a protagonist!”

He looked at me with some sort of great significance in his eyes, rolling his cup between his hands. The years since Chaeronea had improved his appearance: his face, though still beardless, had lost its adolescent softness, and the spots were gone. His waxy hair shined in the lamp-light in a way that could be taken for blond.

“Perhaps we can help each other in our projects, you and I.”

He was distracted by a servant who whispered something in his ear. I was just able to hear the message: his mother Olympias had requested to see him. With a sigh that indicated more than simple weariness, he rose to go to her.

“We’ll talk together later,” he promised.

I didn’t see him again for some time, after the third round of craters had been brought in. In the interim I sat alone, attracting stares more frigid than the ice in the wine coolers. As a precaution against the Eye, I clenched the fingers of my right hand around my thumb and spat on the ground. The Macedonians around me responded by spitting on the ground too. This set off the revelers around them, in a wide concentric ring of spitting, until men all over the great tent wet the floor.

A man, gray-haired and heavily scarred in his face, finally approached me. Without introducing himself, and listing with drink, he set his feet and pointed an accusing finger at me.

“I saw you in Boeotia! You held a line of hoplites against three wedges of horse!”

Not knowing what to say, I shrugged. The drunk then leaned forward, an expression of surprised gratification spreading over him.

“You know how to fight!”

He raised his cup, drank to me, and staggered off. Much later, I learned that I had been addressed by Cleitus son of Dropidas, so-called ‘Black Cleitus,’ and that praise from him was a rare honor.

Alexander returned. Taking his place on the couch again, he resumed our conversation as if there had been no interruption.

“I already have an historian for the trip to Asia. Have you heard of Callisthenes of Olynthus?”

“The son of Aristotle?”

“The nephew.”

“I know nothing of him except his name.”

“I will tell you that the Queen Mother doesn’t like him. I will not bore you with the reasons…except to say that he is no soldier…give it here, son!”

He intercepted a servant with a wine pitcher, taking it from him to fill his cup. As anachronistic as the Macedonian court seemed to Athenian eyes, it was informal enough to obligate the King to chase after his own drinks. By comparison, Darius of Persia probably had three flunkies dedicated to the management of his potations.

We sat together, watching his officers carouse. Here and there, cups were drained down throats or down chins, and the cithara players swayed in their pleated costumes, and the blouses of the female entertainment were peeled away in happy, innocent debauch. The King tapped my cup with his own, asking “Don’t you feel like a demigod among savages, when you sit with these Macedonians?”

How could I answer this peculiar question? It sounded like an invitation to insult him. Instead, I kept my silence.

“So tell me, Machon, if you might join our party.”

“That is why I was sent.”

“Not as a commander. I have enough of those! I need officers along who can carry a pack, but who can also marshal ranks and files of a different kind-the kind that goes on scrolls. Do you favor my metaphor?”

It took me a moment to realize that he was asking this question in all seriousness. I said I admired his metaphor very much, of course, which clearly pleased him.

“How long a campaign do you envision?”

“To free the Ionian cities for good, no more than two years. Can you ride a horse? No? Shall we make you an officer of the Shield-bearers? Ptolemy, is he tall enough for First Company?”

“No!”

“Then it’s Second Company! Fetch him a helmet!”

The order was passed from couch to couch and out the door, and drew back a peaked Phrygian helmet from the armory, which was likewise handed toward me from man to man.

“My lord Alexander, while I appreciate that you want my services, I have seen too much fighting in the ranks to be made a retainer.”

“Our Shield-bearers are not retainers,” Hephaestion said with some impatience. “In our army, they are the light infantry that keeps the cavalry in touch with the phalanx. You are being honored.”

Alexander dumped the helmet in my lap and clapped me on the back.

“Welcome to the king’s Hypaspists, Machon son of Agathon!”

I sat through the rest of the party with only the helmet for company. It was old, with enough chips and dents to tell the story of Philip’s seventeen years of unrelenting raids, battles, and sieges. And now it seemed the pattern would be repeated with the son. As to many of you, it came as a relief to me that the Macedonian juggernaut would at last be directed east, against the barbarians. Meanwhile, while the post of expedition historian was not the role I came to play, it would give me ample opportunity to observe and report to the Assembly.

My decision to accept this offer was vindicated when all the Athenians but me were sent home. While he had the greatest esteem for the artists and philosophers of Athens, he held the soldiers of our city to be in a kind of bad odor. Aeschines suggests that he feared betrayal, but I don’t agree: there were contingents from plenty of Greek allies, such as the Thessalians, whom he kept at his back without any such concern. Instead, I think he and his comrades dreaded the air of defeat they perceived around Athenian arms. The Macedonians had known nothing but victory for a good many years, and standing at the opening of a difficult campaign, and of provincial and superstitious minds, they simply wanted nothing but winners around them.

The chronicler’s post turned out to have enormous advantages. Alexander, desperate as he was for acclaim, put few limits on where I could go, or to whom I might talk. By this he did not intend that I would write embarrassing things about him. There would be an official version of every major event on the march. However, the enforcement of his legend was accomplished most through immersing the writer so completely in the affairs of the King, his trials and his joys, the day-to-day substance of his great endeavor, that the historian could not help but sympathize with his subject. There was power in being allowed within the charmed circle of Companions-a power that Alexander used well. As evidence, I point to the manuscripts of Callisthenes that had already appeared at the bookstalls. Yes, even Callisthenes, who was eventually murdered by Alexander, casts his subject as history’s finest hero.

My first sampling of this privilege came just before the army left for Asia, as I became aware of troubling reports from the inner court. Alexander had only recently finished erecting a splendid tomb for his father, which he accomplished at the cost of much time and money. Though father and son had been estranged in recent years, the young King discharged his duty with great devotion, showing the reverence for custom that marked his conduct in the years to come. I was at the royal cemetery in Aigai before the tomb’s fine painted facade was closed forever and buried under the hill. Having retrieved Philip’s bones from the pyre and bathed them in wine, Alexander installed them in their gold box and sealed the inner chamber. With his own hands, Alexander placed a pair of Philip’s greaves at the door to his resting place, leaning them there as if his father had just stepped inside for a nap.

Cynics may do their best to impugn his motives. They may say that he made such a lavish dedication to his father’s memory not out of genuine feeling, but to prove to the Macedonian nobles that the estates and privileges they gained under Philip were safe. Yet it still cannot have been easy for any son to face the premature death of his father. Add to this the suspicion that Philip was seeking by the end to delegitimize Alexander’s claim to the throne by marrying again, and we might begin to understand the welter of feelings in the young man. Yet it seems that Olympias only added to his troubles with a solemn announcement: Philip was not Alexander’s father after all!

Of this scene I have only rumors, but they have the ring of truth. The Queen, who was still beautiful, had claimed for herself a new visibility with the ascension of her son. She was no longer Olympias at all, it seems, but Athena-of-the-flashing-eyes, striding around the palace in boots, perfumed helmet, and a cuirass made of crane feathers. Alexander’s legitimacy, she declared, did not stem from her marriage to Philip, who was just a mortal after all, but from her union with the very King of the Gods. She then attempted to justify her account with inexcusable details. Zeus’s cock, she reported, was as wide around as a man’s forearm, and hung slightly sinister. With mortal women he fucked like Pan, from behind. When he came the oak trees swayed, and thunder rolled along the mountaintops, and a feeling like the touch of lightning struck deep inside her. His mother went on like this until Alexander, covering his ears, ran groaning from the room. He never saw her again, and to my knowledge he spent not a moment regretting that fact.

No doubt Olympias meant in this way to aggrandize her son on the eve of his expedition. But the woman knew more about the genitals of gods and demons than about the feelings of human beings. Certainly, in the abstract, a god’s paternity might seem flattering. Taken along with the Queen’s taste for Bacchic excess, however, her story seemed nothing more than a euphemism for Alexander’s bastardy. Just as we might soften the death of a loved one by saying “the gods took him,” some women put the best face on illegitimacy by saying “a god fathered him.” I say this without ever speaking with Alexander about it-this was never a matter he would discuss. But if you had seen his face after receiving this news, as I did, you would not say that he seemed gladdened by it.

This incident is also important because the episode at the Sanctuary of Ammon in Egypt cannot be understood without it. Having clashed with his father, as every adolescent does at some point as he attains his manhood, tales of some true, divine origin must have had some appeal to him. As a man, it is likely that Alexander knew his mother was insane. Yet as he puzzled over why he went from success to success, far exceeding Philip in the range of his conquests, her story ceased to be an embarrassment, and came to make some sense. By ‘sense’ I mean more than propaganda value-I mean relief from the questions that disturbed his sleep. When he went to Siwah, then, he was much gratified, for although the oracle told him exactly what Olympias had, it came without her excess, and her self-absorption-in short, without of the very air of her. Surely it must be more than mere propaganda value that drove him, as his final wish, to want to be buried in Egypt, next to the Oracle, and not delivered home to his mother.

At this time Alexander gave every indication to me that the war on Persia had been his own idea. But this pretense rang hollow. He had, in fact, inherited this war from Philip, who had already landed troops in Asia some time before, under the command of Attalus son of Cleochares. Attalus had lately been suffering defeats at the hands of the Great King’s Greek hireling, Memnon. The Macedonians were on the edge of being driven into the sea. Alexander’s expedition was therefore something of a rescue operation.

The Macedonians made a virtue of necessity by turning Alexander’s arrival on Asian soil into a theatrical event. While the real army crossed elsewhere under Parmenion’s command, the King sailed to the shores of Ilion in a party boat hung with garlands and groaning with the weight of officers and allied dignitaries. The historians were given a privileged place in the bows so they might witness the climax of the day’s program: Alexander’s landing. This was, incidentally, the first time I met Callisthenes. He had styled himself, it seemed, as a miniature version of his uncle, Aristotle, right down to the curly beard. I would have liked to speak with him, but the presence of what he took to be a rival historian seemed to have stopped his tongue. I will say more about him later, and about Aeschines’s accusations that I was responsible for his sad fate. For now let it be said that I had nothing but comradely feelings for him, as a devotee of our mutual muse, Clio. Any resentment between us was entirely on his side.

The plan was for the vessel to come into water shallow enough for the King to wade ashore. Just before he hit the water he would hurl his javelin onto the beach, whereupon the entire Asian landmass was supposed to become his spear-won territory. When we reached the spot that had been scouted out for the landing, Alexander stood ready with his spotless leather cuirass and his repoussed bronze greaves, hair blowing out long and thin in the spring breeze. At the captain’s nod, the King lofted his spear, which arced ashore and stood up perfectly in the sand. As he dropped into the surf, however, he stumbled, dousing his hair. As no one had imagined he would take possession of his continent wet-headed, he climbed back on the ship for another attempt.

After taking some time to dry himself, he stood at the bows as the ship came into position. The captain nodded, and Alexander threw again. This time he didn’t need to go into the water, because his spear did not stick in the sand. The collected officers and emissaries grumbled; the King gave a sharp look at the two historians, who turned away from the fallen spear as if they’d never seen it thrown. I cannot speak for Callisthenes, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that all this effort was being mounted for the benefit of the two of us, as the eyes and ears of future generations.

The third try did the trick. The javelin flew truly and stuck perfectly, and Alexander kept his balance despite the loose footing in the surf. Climbing out of the water, he strode manfully to the spear, and pulled it out with a confident, purposive expression on his face. Hephaestion shouted to him that all was well, and Alexander relaxed, sitting in the sand to wait for his crew to debark.

Ptolemy son of Lagus then appeared behind Callisthenes and me. Upon my first glimpse of this beetle-browed, block-chinned character, I didn’t trust him. Even today, as he styles himself for the throne of Egypt, he has all the charm of a jackal, and fewer manners. He seemed to have a similar effect on Callisthenes, who stood up awkwardly, then sat down, not knowing what he should do. Ptolemy smiled.

“What an event for our two little scribblers to witness! And for it to go so perfectly on the very first try!”

“Yes, remarkable,” said Callisthenes.

I said nothing. He stared at me hard, perhaps not knowing that a man who had faced enemy spears in battle would never wither at a sharp glance. Yet I also knew that my silence had already earned Ptolemy’s undying enmity-

The last drop of water ran out of the clock.

“The defendant has run out of time,” declared Polycleitus.

“So I have. According to the usual custom, I request the favor of an extension.”

“I see no reason for a substantial grant of time,” the king archon said with his eyes shut, “if you go on about matters that have little to do with your defense.”

“It was not my doing, your honor, that the entire course of my career with Alexander has been placed in evidence against me. I am obligated to refute the prosecution’s version of these events.”

“Your obligations are not material here…” said Polycleitus, his eyes again flitting toward the two Macedonian spectators. Very clearly, Swallow saw the shorter of the two give a discreet toss of his head. Polycleitus continued, “…and the court will not be bound by them. You have a single measure of time to wrap up your statement.”

“Your honor, I really must protest!”

“Fill the clock. Proceed with the defense.”

Machon was about to resume his objection when Swallow gave a single, loud clap of his hands, and then another a few seconds later. Deuteros joined in, and then all of those around them.

“Men of the jury will be silent.”

At that, all five hundred men in the jury gave the judge a slow ovation. He stared out at them all for a moment, as if thinking of some way to punish them all, but decided to scream instead.

“Stop that clapping! My decision is final! Stop that clapping!”

Finally the king archon looked back at the Macedonians. Both of them shrugged, turning their faces to the floor.

“Very well, then,” Polycleitus relented. “As it is customary to be liberal in these cases, you have the same amount of time the prosecution had…but not one second more!”

“For your fairness, I thank you,” said Machon with a tight smile. His eyes rested on Swallow, who took his meaning and waved his hand, is if to decline any credit.