Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

XX

When I saw the King again he posed a question to me that had preoccupied him during long night-marches in Gedrosia: what does it mean to be Persian? When he first asked this I thought it was a joke. But he was serious, and by asking it he meant more than simply the fact that a man was born in Persian territory.

“Are you asking about the customs of the Persians?”

“I’m asking about customs,” he replied, “and clothing, and the way they think, and everything in their history that makes them what they are.”

What reply to make? As Greeks, we have insults for the Persians like “carpet-munchers,” “runaways,” and “spear-droppers.” And we have words to describe the Persians that flatter us more than they describe them: words like arrogance, decadence, slavishness, obsequiousness, cowardliness. These are venerable notions, handed down to us from the men who fought at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. But no one who saw the Persians take the field against the Macedonians, pitting their leather armor against the sarissa, could say they were cowardly. No one who has seen the splendor of their architecture, art, or gardens can doubt their ingenuity. And no one who has worked beside Persian administrators or fought beside their nobles, as we came to do, has any grounds to doubt their basic decency.

What is a Persian? It was easier to speak of individual Persians, and the qualities that blighted or recommended them. Pressed by the King, I suggested he look to the beliefs that most of the Persians had accepted-that is, the odd philosophy of Zoroaster, who taught that our sins each have cosmic consequences, that judgment awaits us all, and that all life is worthy of reverence. Yet how can a soldier believe such a thing, objected Alexander, if it is his duty to destroy life? They may believe it, I replied, but at the cost of fearing death, which as every Greek knows makes a man useless in the phalanx.

“So the Persians run from the field,” he asked, “because Zoroaster teaches that life is superior to victory?”

“One might suppose so; in any case, no philosophy can be entirely bad that holds the dog in such high esteem!”

We posed our questions to Gobares, who said the following: “A Persian is not a Greek in pantaloons. He remains a creature of the open steppe, taking the sky as the roof of his lawful abode. He cares less for abstractions than you Greeks, and for that he belongs to a far, far happier race. You would all do well to give back the lands you took, for the Persian wears the responsibility more lightly than you. Mark my words-in Greek hands, this monstrosity of an empire you’ve built will not survive. Indeed, you all should have let yourselves be conquered by Xerxes. A distant, contented overlord would have been a far better neighbor to you than you have been to each other!”

This reply was not satisfying, and it did not settle the issue. For Alexander, resolving this question promised a way to square the political circle: to escape the squalid end of every Macedonian king, it would be necessary for him to become something else. Yet at no point did his exact goal seem clear in his mind-he didn’t want to become Persian, nor did he wish to remain no more than the semi-Greek monarch his father had been. Could he, by some contortion of his character, make himself the measure of all the people he undertook to rule? Or were the Persian and Greeks fated to lack a common factor, but forever remain, like the side and diagonal of the square, incommensurable? On this proof more than geometry was at stake.

Gods and children demand that the world reflect their preferences. Alexander, who was both, attempted to force the fusion he couldn’t realize in himself by mongrelizing his army. For some years he had financed the training of 30,000 Persian boys in Macedonian customs and tactics. As these recruits came of age, he marched these “Inheritors” out in front of his troops with a conspicuous and tenderly paternal smile on his face. What good he was expecting from this display was difficult to understand, but among the Macedonians it produced nothing but hard feelings.

Their resentment was aggravated further when his “inheritors” began to take positions in the phalanx vacated by his aging veterans. Watching the Persians ape the ways of their betters on the parade-ground is one thing, but having a barbarian recruit behind you in the ranks holding a sharp pike at your back is quite another. Exactly how Alexander expected his men to trust these newcomers, when the Macedonians’ entire experience consisted of watching Persians run from the battlefield, was beyond my understanding. And I keep hearing that Alexander always had a deft way of handling his troops!

The King also invited many of his officers to take Persian wives. These sorts of “invitations” were, of course, not meant to be declined. Hephaestion therefore took Drypetis, a daughter of Darius; Craterus drew Amastrine, Darius’ niece, and Ptolemy a girl of noble birth named Artacama. Nearchus, newly returned from his explorations at sea, got a new wife, as did Perdiccas and Seleucus and Peucestas. Alexander himself added two wives to the one he already had: Barsine, Darius’ eldest daughter, and Parysatis, daughter of Artaxerxes III. The king’s double nuptials were meant to legitimize his sons through both Darius’ line and that of Artaxerxes, whom Darius had overthrown.

The banquet was held at the palace in Susa. In the forecourt he built a gilded loggia draped with garland and perfumed by aromatic woods, lined with ninety-two nuptial couches each carved from single trunks of Lebanese cedar. The loggia surrounded a tented close centered on the golden couch of the royal couple. Pennants trimmed with tiny bells tinkled in the breeze as peacocks strutted across the great orchestra, each one followed by an attendant to assure no bird would soil the blessed event. The brides, who were delivered from the hands of their fathers according to their ranks, presented themselves in veiled finery to the reclining grooms. Each was married as she was pulled to a sitting position on the cushions.

For this event Alexander costumed himself as Dionysus triumphant, complete with leopard skin, golden fillet, and thrysus of cornel wood and ivy arranged in the shape of a pine cone. Like the god, Alexander had invaded India, and was not a stranger to wine. We may imagine the ivy leaves also concealed an iron spear-point, as the stories tell of Dionysus in his warrior aspect. The god’s theatrical patronage was honored by troupes of actors, dancers and musicians who had come out from Ionia and Athens to liven the proceedings.

The splendor of these ceremonies notwithstanding, I don’t think many of the Macedonians took these marriages to heart. Many of them already had wives back home that they never renounced. Ptolemy’s marriage to Artacama, for instance, did not compel him to turn Thais out of his tent. In fact, the practice of taking native women was a common practice on long campaigns-wives, concubines, or other varieties of female companionship could be obtained in the camp market like any other commodity.

I say ‘I believe’ the banquets went splendidly because I was not there. Instead, I drew the task of handling Rohjane. The Queen was-no surprise-not invited. I had had some success in getting her to change her wardrobe and habits, but the insult of Alexander’s betrayal undid all the progress I had made. Now everything Macedonian was shameful, odious. This reversal was ill-timed because by some perversity of the Fates she was at last pregnant with Alexander’s child.

Rohjane herself would not speak to me, preferring to lie on her couch and nurse her injury in silence. Youtab presented herself as an intermediary.

“Do you Greeks know anything about women? Do your queens suffer themselves to be made foolish in your country?”

“The Macedonians are not Greeks,” I said, changing the subject. “And very few kings or queens rule over us.”

“You’re all fools, whatever you are! Does your King, who barely serves my lady as a man, imagine that his acts have no consequences? Don’t insult us by pretending you don’t know what we mean!”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The Queen carries his heir,” Youtab pointed. “Don’t doubt it is a boy.”

“She is only two months pregnant.”

“It is a boy,” Rohjane interjected from the other room.

“If you were not all fools, you would know that the sex can be told from the way the child lies within!” Youtab hectored me. “But as easily as that may be told, there may be problems…”

I shook my head at this impossible woman.

“Yes, you know what I am saying,” she said. “It took that kinglet four years to do his duty by the Queen. Perhaps we should let him try again with that chubby Barsine. If he is lucky he may get a son in ten years!”

I stuck my finger in Youtab’s face. “That kind of talk should not be idly made, for as you say, there may be consequences.”

“Don’t show me your cock’s comb, Machon! It is far too late for that!”

“Youtab, that’s enough,” commanded Rohjane. She was suddenly standing at the door, wearing the woolen peplos I had forbidden her. Her hair had escaped its clasps, and there was a puffiness around her eyes that showed she had been crying. This was the first evidence I’d had that she possessed any sort of feeling regarding Alexander. Whether her tears were out of jealousy or damaged pride or both was impossible to say.

Youtab shot to her feet, and Rohjane took her place opposite me. The Queen’s manner was calm, even sage, as she began to speak.

“You must excuse Youtab, for she is upset. She does not understand the matters that oblige kings to do what they must. Honestly, I expected something like this, though I confess my guard went down when our son was conceived. I therefore have one question for you, as our friend, which I hope you might answer the best you can…”

She proceeded to ask about the history of the Macedonian throne, and specifically the fates of those mothers and children who ended up on the losing side of succession disputes. As the daughter of a king, she must have suspected that the picture was a grim one. I was therefore in no way free to make up any story I wished, as Aeschines claims. What would have been the point, when she could have gotten the truth from any number of other sources? Perdiccas and Ptolemy, to take just two, would not have hesitated to describe in detail what end awaited her and her son! If I had lied, all I would have accomplished would have been to discredit myself.

“I thank you for your honesty, Machon,” she finally said. “And for that, we will not speak of this matter again…”

The speaker was interrupted by a noise from the floor. It was Swallow, scratching one of his uncut toenails against the planks. When Machon looked at him, Swallow pointed at the water clock. The flow from the reservoir had slowed to a trickle.

Yes, I see that my time is almost up. I suppose I had flattered myself to think I had the same skill as Aeschines in sensing when his water has run low. And to think I haven’t even killed Alexander yet-so to speak! Relax, Aeschines…that was a joke, not a confession! So I must conclude:

As he alienated his wife, Alexander made additional trouble for himself with his veteran soldiers. It had now been ten years since the Greeks had crossed into Asia. Since many of Alexander’s men were then too old or too weak to serve him further, he ordered ten thousand Greeks cashiered from the army, albeit with a fortune of one talent each as a bonus for their service. Craterus was given the task of leading these veterans home.

The veterans, having already seen their commanders take Persian wives, and their positions taken by barbarian levies, were in no mood to accept dismissal. As Alexander took the rostrum to praise them, the men responded with jeers, performing mock prostrations, asking him if he would prefer an army full of Persians and, yes, calling him ‘Darius Alexander.’ The King did not perceive these things at first, speaking as if in a dream from which he was reluctant to awake. When he did notice them, however, his face flashed a deep red, and he looked directly at those who insulted him.

“What injustice have I done you,” he asked, “that you dishonor this leave-taking? Speak out like men, not children, for after our service together you owe me as much!”

“The dishonor is done upon us,” said a voice from the crowd. “For Alexander has forgotten the men who gave him the land of Asia, and thinks they may be bought off for mere gold.”

“Maybe he thinks he will invade Africa by himself!” cried another.

This remark made the rest of the men laugh. Alexander did not laugh, however, but instead called his Agrianian guards. The instigators were arrested in a dead silence, as King and army eyed each other. Their mutual hostility was strange in light of all they had accomplished together. It was as if the mortal body resented its divine head, and the divine head spurned its body. Alexander moved to speak, but was seized by a violent coughing that lasted a while; as he convulsed, he grasped his side, over the place where the Mallian spear had punctured his lung.

“This is a fine day, my companions. For this is the day I found out your true estimation of me. You gave me Asia, you say? I gave you respect! I took a race of cowardly, dung-smeared vagabonds and forged an army! I gave you lifetimes of memories to grace the heritage of your families. For you will return to Macedonia with much more than a talent of gold in your hands. You return with the kind of esteem that is unassailable for the rest of your days! And for what have I asked in return? A bit of purple to wear, and the kisses of my dear companions! Beyond these, I have demanded no special privileges-I have known the rigors of the camp and the march as well as any of you. In the Gedrosian desert, I could have taken water, but did not, because there was not enough for us to share-can any of you deny it? So what will you say now, when people remind you that you consigned me to our enemies? How will you explain the end of Alexander? Go then! Go back to your small lives, your ordinariness! Sustain yourselves with wisecracks instead of honor! I have nothing more to say to you.”

Thereupon he spat on the ground and retreated to his tent. As he had done before, on the death of Cleitus and when he was forced back from India, he took no food and saw no visitors for the next day. For a good number of the men this temper had a too-familiar ring, and they did not respond to it. Yet for others, particularly those of weak or compliant minds, the King’s upset was intolerable. Alexander increased their discomfort by issuing new commissions for officers: most of the names on the list were Persian ones, and some of the nicknames of the regiments had been transferred to their Persian counterparts.

Again, for those who had set their hearts against him, who considered their divorce to be final, the commissions only confirmed their suspicions. But for some this estrangement had gone too far-abandoning their pride, they surrounded Alexander’s tent and called for his forgiveness. When he did not answer, they broke down entirely, making such a riot of pitiful wailing that the King’s heart softened. Appearing before them, he honored all by receiving their kisses, and wept tears of good fellowship with them, saying-without irony this time-that it was indeed a good day.

Of course, not all the ten thousand veterans came to Alexander’s tent that night, or even most of them. But instead of dwelling on the absence of their comrades, the King chose to recognize the humility of the few hundred who did come, and in so doing to excuse the lot. The incident perfectly typifies the dilemma of his leadership. Among his veterans, as in this city, his hegemony did provoke bitter and, in some respects, unjustified hostility. To both challenges Alexander responded wisely, choosing not to force his will when a simple declaration of victory would do.

The other important part of this incident was that Perdiccas and Ptolemy managed to maneuver Craterus into leading the veterans home. Alexander presented it as an honor to his old comrade, and under other circumstances it would have been. I am suspicious, though, that this honor absented Craterus from the scene just as Alexander fell sick at Babylon. When the veterans marched at last, I saw Craterus embrace Alexander for what seemed like a long time. Then the King kissed him, and brushing away a tear, Craterus barked an order to the men, who also had tears flowing down their cheeks. And so the weeping army departed for Cilicia, where they would construct a fleet to sail home. None of them would see Alexander alive again.

But it is late in our story. After years on campaign, Alexander’s exhaustion manifested at every level a man may show it-physical, intellectual, emotional. Since his latest injury, he leaned on suppliants who came to receive the royal kiss, and seemed to cling to his horse instead of ride it. For those with eyes to see them, the signs of his end were increasingly at hand.

At that time the King, who was on his way to Ecbatana, paused in Media to inspect the stock of wild horses in that country. He was entertained there by the governor, Atropates son of Attalus, in an unusual way: into his camp, they say, marched ten files of armored, spear-bearing Amazons. Their leader, who called herself Queen Hyster, was presented to Alexander. After the obligatory prostration, she thereafter addressed him as an equal, declaring that those in her faraway country had heard something of his prowess, and that she wished to take her pleasure with him. If their joining produced a daughter, she would be fit to rule her tribe; if a son, he would be delivered to his father to be raised, for-as we all know-the Amazons do not nurture their sons but expose them.

By all accounts this Queen Hyster was most beautiful, her charms revealed by her short tunic and the tightness of her leather girdle, which showed to best advantage the surprising prodigiousness of Amazon breasts. These were exposed and utterly complete, in contradiction of the legends that one breast was always removed. This fact, along with the high heels on their boots, suggested to some that Hyster’s company were not real Amazons at all, but devised as a joke by Atropates. Yet Alexander, for his part, accepted Hyster as a genuine Queen. He acceded to a political alliance with her, but declined any further entanglement, noting that he was already married more than once. This excuse was received with regret by Hyster, who led her pendulous sisters away from the baying worship of the Macedonian soldiers. It seemed clear to other witnesses, however, that the tired, wheezing Alexander refused her invitation because he was simply unfit to take it up. And indeed, hers was the only challenge from which the conqueror of Tyre and the Rock of Sogdia had ever shrunk.

It is a truism that men enjoying good luck turn skeptical of prophecies. Tyche’s graces are understood as the fruits of hard work, wise planning, or whatever virtues men like to attribute to themselves, and not the whims of the gods. Since the news for Alexander had been very good for a long time, he lately had little use for the services of the soothsayer Aristander. The King attended the regular morning sacrifices as a duty, though his face showed his mind was elsewhere, and the seer seemed to take the hint, producing auguries that provoked little comment one way or the other. It was therefore something of a surprise when, during the reading of a ram’s entrails at the palace at Ecbatana, Aristander paused over the liver. The King asked what troubled him.

“This liver has but two lobes-and look here, how the vein is distended.”

Alexander looked. He was no judge of such things, but knew very well that it portended an event of significance. Euripides wrote of a similar sign in Electra, when Aegisthus sacrificed a calf with a lobeless liver just before Orestes killed him with an ax.

“It could be an ill-omen, or just as well not,” said Aristander, evidently not sure what the King wanted to hear. “It suggests a disappearance of some kind. But what shall disappear is not evident.”

Alexander was preoccupied with the planning of a sea expedition on the Caspian. That his whole fleet might disappear was worrisome, but Aristander found nothing inauspicious about the King’s relations with Poseidon. For lack of a specific sign, Alexander contented himself with the usual precautions-extra dedications to all the gods-and instructed Aristander to sacrifice again. When the second try showed nothing amiss, Alexander seemed to put the incident out of his mind.

At this time his relations with Hephaestion had lapsed into a kind of tense formality. With the arrival of Bagoas, then Rohjane, then Barsine, the King’s intimacies became increasingly subordinate to the rule of his empire. His old companion was assigned a series of important but distant tasks-to build a bridge here, to settle some provincial dispute there-which kept him away from the Greek court for longer and longer periods. To be sure, Hephaestion relished these opportunities to show his competence: no doubt he was sensitive to insinuations that he was little more than Alexander’s bedfellow. In any other army, beside a leader of merely human brilliance, Hephaestion would have been a formidable presence. However, on campaign with Alexander, whom he never ceased to love, this uncommon man understood the greater virtue of serving the throne before himself.

Nevertheless, what mortal would not resent being supplanted in the familiarity of a god by eunuchs and barbarians? When he did come to attend the court, Hephaestion said little, and when he did speak his voice was laced with sarcasm. Perceiving his jealousy, Alexander would spare his feelings by sending him away again, until the next time he would come, and his hostility was still deeper. Witnesses say that even strangers became uncomfortable around them, so palpable was the strain.

Alexander’s continued affection was clear when his old companion was suddenly taken ill at Ecbatana. When his fever stretched into a second and then a third day, the King sent his own personal doctor to tend to him. Hephaestion rallied, his appetite returning. Alexander, meanwhile, was obliged to attend athletic games he had organized for Persian boys, whom he had observed lacked civilized pursuits. It was while he presided over these games that word came that Hephaestion had relapsed.

Abandoning the event he had worked so hard to organize, Alexander rushed back to his friend’s side, but he was too late. Hephaestion was gone, the dregs of a pitcher of wine he had ill-advisedly taken with lunch still at his side.

Alexander behaved at first as if he would not believe it. He carried on with talking to the dead man, breaking his monologue only to snarl at anyone who approached the body. After some hours this banter lapsed into inconsolable despair. Casting himself on the corpse, Alexander wept without shame, crying out his regret at this or that disagreement going back to their boyhood. At length he bellowed for a knife, and those around him became genuinely fearful that he would do harm to himself. But instead Alexander sliced off all the hair on his head, including his eyebrows, and retreated, crazed and bloody, to his bedchamber.

Alexander and Hephaestion had not be been close in their final years. It took all of us by surprise, then, that the King went so entirely to pieces over his loss. He ceased to wash. His skin again became covered with the spots I had first seen on him years before, at Chaeronea. In that time he passed just two orders: first, the doctor who tended Hephaestion, Glaucias, was to be executed. This suggests that the King at best suspected incompetence in the manner of his lover’s death, and at the worst actual malice. For all were agreed that despite his illness the victim was sound of body, very much in his prime, and for such a man to descend so acutely was most suspicious. The dregs of the wine pitcher were examined with no conclusion reached one way or the other. Yet there are many poisons known that would leave no obvious trace.

His second order was for all the fires in Babylon’s temples to be snuffed out in Hephaestion’s honor. Despite invasions, earthquakes, and every other kind of disaster, many of these fires had not been allowed to go out in a thousand years. This decree, which was made with no apparent concern for the Babylonians, was alone enough to put the natives in a deadly mood.

When he emerged at last Alexander seemed to have aged ten years. His cheeks were sunken, and he held his side as if his Mallian wound was not months old, but fresh. Resuming something of his old decisiveness, he ordered the court moved back to Babylon, where he intended the funeral to be held. He also sent messengers to the sanctuary of Ammon at Siwah, with the request that Hephaestion be deified in death. The King did not wait for the god’s answer, however, offering immediate sacrifice to the memory of his departed friend, and speaking to him in the old, easy style they had known in happier times together.

It is some three hundred miles as the crow flies between Ecbatana and Babylon. Alexander walked the entire distance in his bare feet, with just an old cloak over his head to protect him from the late spring sun. For the journey, Alexander had, according to the advice of his Egyptian ambassadors, placed his companion in a series of five nested sarcophagi, with a golden one closest to the body and a lead vessel outermost.

The Egyptians are known masters of the embalmer’s art. When the sarcophagi were cracked open some weeks later all were amazed to see that Hephaestion’s body was utterly free of corruption. This preservation did not mean that Alexander had abandoned the rites we recognize as Greeks-Hephaestion would have his cremation. The pyre Alexander had in mind, however, would be unique in the history of the world.

But before the King reached the gates of the city another portent darkened his path. A party of Babylonian magi-priests of the Temple-of-the-High-Head, whose reconstruction had not yet begun in the seven-and-a-half years since Alexander promised to restore it-approached him with a warning. Their god Bel had revealed to them that Alexander would meet his death if he entered their city. Instead of marching west, they said, the great Alexander should go to the east, where nothing but victory and good health would be his for the rest of his days.

Still in the depth of his grief, the King had little patience for diversions of any kind. He understood that the Babylonians whom he had freed would prefer to enjoy their autonomy without their liberator’s actual presence. Yet the lands through which his army had marched were already stripped of useable stores-gods notwithstanding, he could not turn east. Hephaestion’s spirit, moreover, was destined to depart this earth from its very capital. No other place would do.

Alexander did his best to accommodate Bel by marching around the city and entering through the Adad gate. In this way it could not be exactly said that he entered Babylon by marching west. The magi seemed unmoved by this logic, until the King facilitated the release of funds for work on their temple, after which they endorsed his acts without reservation. We might even suspect that this was the object of their embassy to him all along-if subsequent events did not prove the worth of their original warning after all.

Other than assuring Hephaestion’s commemoration, few other matters preoccupied the King’s attention in his last days at Babylon. The only blemish on what he considered his ideal capital was her dilapidation under Persian rule; where the Great Kings kept the city a backwater, Alexander planned to bind it to his empire with a massive dredging and enlargement of her harbor. The new facilities would be filled with warships that would carry his rule to Africa and, ultimately, to Carthage, and Italy. To these ends he ordered further explorations of the lower reaches of the Euphrates river and beyond, to the coast of Arabia.

The dredging and the shipbuilding paled in comparison to the titanic construction underway near the west sector of the city’s ring wall. There, Alexander ordered the erection of a pyre as massive as a Gizan pyramid, consisting entirely of the most precious offerings imaginable. Troops swept through the city to accept-or in some cases to compel-donations of rare furniture, statues, vehicles. These were assembled on a series of platforms increasingly set-back as they soared to the summit, where Hephaestion would lie on a gilded couch set inside a gilded room within an entire gilded house.

When it was completed the pyre was more than 200 feet tall; the commissioned elements alone, including the wood and the gilded giants and faux ship’s rams and centauromachies, cost 10,000 talents. This figure does not include the value of all the private donations, or the cost of the funerary games the King held, which included thousands of athletes from as far as Sicily. All these together made Hephaestion’s funeral the most lavish dedication to fraternity in the history of the world.

The time finally came when Hephaestion, dressed in his armor and still as beautiful as the day he died, was borne up to his bier. Four regiments of “inheritors” armed with bows were arrayed opposite each face of the pyramid. At a signal, the archers loosed flaming arrows; the sight of the blazing bolts simultaneously rising to ignite the pyre was unforgettable. The mass of wood, ivory, silver and gold erupted from all sides like a volcano, with a heat so intense it melted the bronze bosses on the wheels of the chariots parked a hundred feet away. The flames reached high enough to daub passing clouds the color of blood.

The historians will forever report that Alexander constructed a pyre the size of Cheop’s pyramid to honor his dead friend, but that is only half the truth. The King made the pyre to honor himself too. Recall that he was fond of saying that “Hephaestion is also Alexander”; the vast, burning museum of treasure that he made for his friend was, in some sense, a way for him to stage-manage his own funeral.

The manner of Hephaestion’s death called for an investigation. Alas, there were as many suspects as grains of sand on the beach. The nature of Hephaestion’s relationship with Alexander, which by its nature was difficult to rival, made him many enemies. That Alexander insisted on placing older, more capable men under the command of his lover built up resentment against him. Hephaestion’s personal qualities, his loyalty, his good-looks, had always attracted envious eyes.

Gossips spoke of a feud between him and Eumenes, Alexander’s personal secretary. But would even a secretary be foolish enough to take action for such a public spat? Others said that Bagoas wanted him dead. Yet Bagoas had long before stolen Alexander’s intimacy, so what more did he have to gain by murder? I would have suspected Perdiccas and Ptolemy had a hand in it, to further assure the succession of either one of them to power. Which is to say, I would have suspected those two, if an incident had not occurred that convinced me, in this case, of their innocence.

On the night the great pyre burned I was standing next to Rohjane. Her mood was as buoyant as I’d seen it in months. With the rest of us, she watched as the lights were extinguished in the temples, and the stars appeared with a brilliance rarely glimpsed by the citified Babylonians. I heard her gasp with delight as the conflagration wafted Hephaestion’s spirit to Heaven. But just as the athletic games were about to begin, the Queen excused herself. She complained of a headache. Yet after spending more hours with the woman than her husband, I could sense her insincerity.

“Yes, you should retire,” the King told her with fraternal warmth. “I will come and see you after.”

“Yes, you will,” she replied, the tartness in her voice entirely escaping him.

I followed an hour later. Her apartment was in a remote wing of the palace, as far as possible from the nuptial beds of Barsine and Parysatis. When I found Rohjane, she was lying on a drinking couch opposite Youtab. There was an open brazier beside them, bread and eel on a table between them, and drinking cups in their hands.

“Is this some barbarian custom, to make a celebration at the time of a funeral?” I asked.

“Pah! Who invited sourpuss?” cried Youtab.

The Queen laughed, stretched her arms. “We are having a symposium! Or haven’t you ever seen a drinking party just for women?”

“The premise, milady, is absurd.”

“Oh, stop being the tutor! Yes, there is a funeral on, and yes, Hephaestion was a fine fellow. But the innocent suffer all the time, don’t they Youtab?”

“They suffer particularly.”

“Yes, particle…partickle…particularey…by the gods, what is in these cups!”

Then the women laughed in that way I had seen so often among Alexander and his companions, when the craters were running low and there was nothing very funny to laugh at. I crossed my arms and waited for their attention.

“It has always been my intent to help the Queen understand her responsibilities in the Greek style,” I said. “And so I must tell you now that this behavior is entirely inappropriate. To retire to your tent is perhaps understandable…but to carouse in this way? I think not.”

“Isn’t it funny how he speaks of what a wife should do, but never the responsibilities of the husband?” Rohjane asked Youtab, as if I was not standing there.

“Maybe he means that you should consider yourself lucky to be dishonored by a husband like the great Alexander,” answered Youtab.

“You mean, dishonored by a god?”

“Reduced to an ass!”

“Ravished by a swan!”

“Seduced and abandoned!”

“On a beach on Naxos!”

“The very son of Zeus!”

“Lord of the mountaintops!”

“Master of the backcountry!”

They leaned into their pillows in their hysterics, until Youtab raised her head and cried through her laughter, “Oh, that’s too much. Too much! I’ve wet myself!”

I turned to leave them. Rohjane called after me.

“Machon, only friend, come drink with us!”

“Yes, come back! Just watch what you drink from around here!”

I again call your attention to Youtab’s words: “watch what you drink from.” This seemed rather a morbid thing to say, given the circumstances of Hephaestion’s death. Of course, it doesn’t constitute evidence that Rohjane or her servant was responsible. It may have just been a bad joke. Nor was any poison ever found, in the dead man or anywhere in the palace. But I can tell you that Rohjane was not over the insult of Alexander’s other marriages, which occurred just a few months before Hephaestion’s death. Youtab’s choice of humor-and the poor timing of their “women’s symposium”-were suspicious.

It is true that Alexander sent a request to the Ammon temple in Siwah that Hephaestion be accepted as a god in his own right. All of us-his advisors, his family, the priests of Ammon-indulged him this, taking it as a harmless, if somewhat indiscreet, testament to his love. What was not so easy to excuse, though, is a letter the King sent to Cleomenes, his governor in Egypt. Remember that this was the same Cleomenes who, upon taking control of Egypt in Alexander’s name, cornered the grain market in that country. I am told this raised the price of bread tenfold here in Athens. I submit a copy of this letter into evidence, with the magistrate’s permission.

“The clerk will read the letter,” said Polycleitus. When the recitation was done, Swallow, Deuteros and the rest of the jury were stunned.

This is the exact text of Alexander’s letter. I was there when he dictated it, and obtained my copy from Eumenes. Yes, Alexander orders Cleomenes to construct a marble monument to Hephaestion in Alexandria, and promises that if the construction pleases him, he will pardon all of the governor’s past malfeasance-his expropriation from the temples, his looting of the public treasury…and the famine he caused here and elsewhere in Greece. What is more, Alexander also promises to ignore any future crimes.

You heard that right. Can you imagine such a promise coming from a man you all agreed to take as a god? Indeed, that it could be bestowed on a creature so villainous, so reprobate, that not even Ptolemy could stand him? The latter, as you recall, had him killed soon after he arrived in Egypt. Yet it seems that a pardon was exactly what Alexander gave to Cleomenes.

I will say no more about Alexander’s letter. There is no need to gild that lily-memories of the pain of your empty stomachs, and the cries of your underfed children-shall be emphasis enough. But out of curiosity, how high did the price of wheat go in the market just a few feet from where we sit here, Aeschines? Three drachmas for a capithe? Four?

“Higher!” someone cried from the back of the room.

Higher still! But we must forgive Aeschines his ignorance, for he was not here to suffer with you. Nor was I, for that matter. The difference, I submit to you, is that I am not here extolling the virtues of the man-I mean, the god-who offered pardon to a man who brought famine to this city, or promised to look the other way when a villain like Cleomenes committed any other crimes that might have entered his head.

As deep as his grief was for Hephaestion, there should be no doubt that Alexander did recover from it. At last he resumed work on his many projects; it was at this time, for instance, that he undertook a detailed examination of the shipping channels downstream from Babylon, thinking he would instruct the engineers on the best route by which deep-draught vessels might enter his harbor.

As he often did, the King took the helm of his boat himself, showing as much skill afloat as he did directing armies on land. It so happened, however, that he rode up on an obstruction in the shallows, which knocked everyone on the deck to their knees. After his sojourn in the Gedrosian desert, Alexander had taken to wearing a hat to protect his neck and shoulders from the sun. With the shock of running aground this hat flew off his head and landed in the water some distance away. Before the current carried the hat too far, a slave on board took it upon himself to swim after it.

This man’s initiative was especially welcome, as the hat was fixed with a royal coronet of gold. Allowing this emblem of universal kingship to wash up on some dung-strewn shore would have been awkward indeed. Yet all were equally appalled when the slave plucked the hat from the water and, perhaps thinking he would keep it from further damage, put it on his own head for the swim back. The Macedonians were murmuring, and the Persians gesticulating at him to remove it, but he came on and climbed up anyway, conscious of nothing but his pride. He was oblivious, that is, until he saw the circle of frowning faces around him.

Now I know that it has been a long time since we Athenians have had kings. It has not been too long, however, for you all to imagine the magnitude of this disaster: for this slave to put the royal device on his head was just as ominous a sign as a servant taking the throne, or walking on the royal carpet. Nor was Alexander immune from such concerns, for it was now obvious in his mind that Hephaestion’s death was connected to the discovery of the ram with the deformed liver. So where before he would have forbidden the presumptuous slave to be punished, this time he allowed him to be severely beaten; the hat was then tossed back into the water, where it was retrieved properly by a sailor with a better grasp of the side-stroke. Later Alexander regretted the beating, and rewarded the slave’s good intentions with a fortune of thirty minas in silver. That particular coronet, however, was locked away, never to be worn again.

As I have spoken to you here, friends, I realize I have asked much of your credulity. You have all heard what you believe to be the truth about Alexander, have sat your sons upon your knees and told them these same stories to fill their hearts with pride at the exploits of the Greeks. So it is with some trepidation that I speak to you now of the death of Alexander. Though you may find what I say difficult to believe, I assure you it is what Perdiccas in Babylon knows, and Ptolemy in Alexandria, and the handful of others who witnessed the events I am about to describe. By the gods, I swear it.

Alexander, believing himself abandoned by both friends and fortune, sought comfort in wine and conversation, as his sociable nature had always been accustomed. He was sharing the cup with Peucestas, Ptolemy, and myself when the first signs of fever came over him. Thinking perhaps that he would nip his sickness in the bud, the King took a last drink from a great Spartan canteen before going to bed. As he downed the wine, we saw a strange expression come over his face-an expression that did not necessarily imply pain, but a kind of dejection, as if he was reminded of some inescapably dispiriting thought. Then, in a voice so small none of us could recognize it, he bid us a good night.

The testimonies of his servants give us some hint of what happened next. Alexander spent the next hours in fitful sleep, and rose with his fever worse than before. Unwilling to skip his obligations, the King presided over the morning sacrifice, then reviewed two regiments of troops newly arrived from Macedon. He then bathed and withdrew early, perhaps still convinced that his illness would pass. When he awoke the following morning his fever was worse; though his chamberlain had ordered all the windows in his chamber to be left open, so the breeze would sweep over him, his bedclothes were soaked. Nevertheless, he insisted on presiding over the morning sacrifice, and then met with Nearchus about his plans for the exploration of the Caspian. And again, he bathed and retired before sunset.

There began to be real concern in court for Alexander’s health. In fact, the execution of Glaucias had left him without a regular doctor, and the death of Hephaestion had left him suspicious of the care of anyone unfamiliar. By the third day he failed to rise for the sacrifice and was not seen at all. On the fourth the servants were barred from the royal chamber.

The King began to drift in and out of consciousness, at times barking out bizarre commands, or violently stripping his bedclothes from his body, then lapsing into a trembling stupor. The foremost Babylonian physicians were brought in to attend him; his bedroom was transformed as they forbade certain fabrics and substances from his proximity, brought in braziers burning medicinal incense, and applied ointments to him that no Greek doctor could recognize. His officers, meanwhile, gathered in the forecourt of the palace, each insisting he had some essential business to discuss with the King, but-we may assume-wishing really to have a last look at Alexander before he was gone.

The next day, to the surprise of everyone except perhaps the Babylonians, the patient rallied. The fever broke at last, and Alexander was able to sit up and take food. As he did during his recovery from the fight with the Mallians, his thoughts turned to settling the apprehensions of his men by making an appearance before them. With servants supporting both shoulders (for he was still quite weak) he came out on the balcony of the palace and looked down on a sea of faces. Upon seeing Alexander, the troops erupted in joy, begging him to lead them again, and promising that they would follow him to the shores of the great Ocean if he so wished it. The King raised his hand to acknowledge them all, and opened his mouth to speak, but could produce only a whisper. In their thousands the soldiers all leaned forward, as if they might discern the invalid’s faint words from hundreds of feet away. Of what Alexander actually said, none could be sure, except that his statement twice included the word “duty”. Exhausted, he then had to be carried back to his room.

It was at this point that a peculiar thing happened. Rohjane, who had been standing behind the King as he appeared on the balcony, attended him as he settled back on his bed. It was the first time she had stood at his side since the illness had struck. She then insisted on helping her husband drink some water, which she professed to have fetched herself from the cistern. The Babylonians, who were not unfamiliar with the art of poisoning, examined the contents of the cup and could find nothing suspicious about it. Nevertheless, they brought in a taster. Rohjane professed great annoyance at the doctors’ impertinence, demanding by what power they could so insult their Queen. When the taster did not drop dead, they begged her forgiveness, and thereupon left the patient to his wife’s tender ministrations.

Alexander took the water and sleep peacefully. The next morning Rohjane was gone, and the doctor were confounded to find the King in the grip of a fever and new symptoms. These included sharp pains in his abdomen, and a fierce thirst that propelled him into a frenzy. The latter would not let him rest, so that Alexander could not conserve his strength at all. By the evening both his heartbeat and his breathing were faint. The doctors, perhaps with Glaucias’s example in their minds, brought to bear every art at their disposal to save him. By early the next morning, they managed to wake him for what all expected would be the last time. His generals were brought in, and he was asked if there was anything he wished to tell them. Perdiccas leaned down to hear his answer, which was but a single word: ‘water’.

Hours later, the messengers to Ammon in Egypt returned with an answer to Alexander’s request for Hephaestion to receive divine honors. The god said that all such men, including Heracles and Achilles, merit worship as demi-gods. It was an answer that would have pleased Alexander very much.