Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

V

Well then, what a performance! This prosecution was well worth the wait for Aeschines’ return from abroad. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m excited to vote. Let’s convict this Machon! Let’s grab the lout and string him up!

Machon paused as the jury gave him a good laugh. As much as Swallow enjoyed routine trials, he enjoyed innovative defenses even more. For the speaker was treading dangerous ground with this flip tone-if he misstepped, if he alienated enough jurymen, it could cost him dear. The last person to take such a risk was Socrates when, upon his conviction, he suggested the “penalty” of receiving free dinners from the state for the rest of his life. This piece of wit, such as it was, so irked his jury that it earned him a lopsided vote for death. This was not a promising legal precedent for Machon. Whether or not he could pull it off, no one could deny his tack was most entertaining, like an acrobat working without a net.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I can help you find Aeschines’ Machon, because I don’t know him. That Machon is a scheming scoundrel. This Machon is nothing more than a simple soldier who, like many of the men in this room-but not you, Aeschines! — fought for his country at Chaeronea. Aeschines describes a man full of hubris. This Machon lives as modestly as his weakness may allow, pays his taxes, and contributes to the governance of his city, like all of you. Aeschines invents someone who is hip-deep in political faction. This Machon belongs to no faction at all. He has no ambition to matter more than he does. True, he rarely takes the myrtle wreath in the Assembly, and only when speaking on military affairs. But it is only because this Machon restricts his public statements to things he knows something about-unlike, apparently, the celebrated Aeschines! Indeed, the orator left out what may be considered the defendant’s proudest achievement in politics: a decree of the Assembly, passed by unanimous voice vote, that all used equipment from broken-up naval vessels should be offered first to the public contractors, before it is claimed by fishermen and other private interests. This motion has saved the taxpayers thousands of drachmae in replacement costs. So while Aeschines may demand to know where my father’s money is, I remind him that I have helped keep the public’s money where it belongs!

So the first question is: why are we here, really? Why was this action brought against so insignificant a figure? There are at least two easy answers to the question. The first, I suggest, is fear. The death of Alexander has raised the hopes of those who would resist Macedonian power. Others are afraid that Athens will meet the same end as Thebes, if it comes to armed conflict. No point in Greece is more than two week’s march away for Antipater’s army. There is a need for an example to be made here, a sacrifice of someone supposed to be connected to the anti-Macedonian faction, to prove that Athens is not a threat.

The second reason is simple revenge. Of Aeschines’ antagonism toward Demosthenes, I need not elaborate. He has stooped before to attacking Demosthenes’s friends in lieu of the man himself. You may prove it to yourself: when Aeschines publishes his prosecution, as he always does, count how many times he makes reference to Demosthenes. The exercise will be very revealing. It might move you to ask who is really on trial here, though it is my neck that is in the noose!

But there is a larger, less obvious reason. It is this, O Athens: there is something wrong with our city. We can all sense it. We feel the pull of events and feel we must do something, but every way we turn raises howls of protest, or grave danger, or unpredictable consequences. It is as if we are at the top of a tall mountain, with a chasm all around us, and higher peaks beyond. We want to go higher, but we fear to take the steep path on the way. So we cling to where we are. And we admire men like Alexander, whom we, in our childish faith, believe would defy all limits.

I don’t say these things to prove I am cleverer than anyone else. I observe them as a man who has been too long away from home, and spent at least a part of everyday thinking about how he would get back. Sometimes fresh eyes give the clearest view. I wonder if my opponent agrees with me, so soon back from his own exile. Does this feel like the same city you left, Aeschines? Be honest! I understand that the hegemony of Alexander is not remembered as a time of glory here, but of hunger, of shortage. Yet how quickly some are willing to overlook the misery caused by his wars! Early in your statement, you said something about Alexander’s good looks making slaves of men. I agree with you that slaves were made in Athens-I’m just not sure it was his beauty that did the trick.

I will pass over in silence the bulk of my opponent’s calumnies, except to say that, his sensibilities notwithstanding, my mother was indeed a freedwoman, and my father’s love for her was not a farce. Of wild parties and whipping boys, he lets me off easily, as he presents not the slightest shred of evidence. Not that he has ever let that small problem get in the way of a rousing argument! Such lies are therefore nothing to me-the wise man, as they say, is content to let asses bray. I trust members of the jury have been around this barnyard enough to know where to step.

As I see it, all that matters are the charges. Aeschines and his sponsors accuse me of impiety, because they have gotten wind of some alleged acts of mine in the east that suggest that I treated Alexander like a man, not a god. They also charge me with violating my oath to the Assembly, because I pledged to help Alexander, and he ended up…well…closer to the gods than when he began. Imagine that, a soldier dying on campaign!

More laughter-and more nervous shuffling by Polycleitus and the Macedonians. Aeschines, for his part, was drawing his cloak around himself like a tortoise taking to his shell.

In any case, Aeschines says that I must either confess to malice, or to incompetence. But he forgets a third alternative-failure in good faith. Yes, I did fail to flatter Alexander’s pretensions to divinity! And yes, I did fail to save him from the consequences of his own contradictions! If these be actionable crimes, then I accept my guilt without further contest. But I would also point out that if simple failure were grounds for prosecution of our magistrates, then courts like this would never adjourn!

Now the jury was expecting Machon to be funny, erupting before he could finish his punchlines. Polycleitus made a flicking gesture at the clerk, who banged the floor with his staff until order was restored.

“The defendant is directed to refrain from mocking these proceedings. This is not a burlesque!”

My apologies. I also ask the jury to forgive me, for I get ahead of myself. My point is only that my conduct was appropriate to the circumstances of the campaign, and that I did serve the King in the best way I could. Athens need not fear for her particular honor, for in those times there was dishonor enough to go around for all. But to show this I must tell you what really happened on campaign with Alexander. Some of you will be surprised at what you will hear of this; most likely you have never heard the truth, and never will again, for my history is not as felicitous as that of poor Callisthenes, or of the other second-rate scribblers who have sprouted from the gore and ash Alexander spread from here to India. Aeschines complains that I have not published anything of my time in Asia. Far be it for me to disappoint him!

My story begins at Chaeronea. Like many of you, I travelled to the battle with all the joy of a groom about see his bride unwrapped. To have all the tension of those years, all the uncertainty in our confrontation with Macedon, suddenly cast aside, filled all of us with a love for our city that was all-sustaining. Patriotism, we believed, would be our food on the march-and for dessert, victory! Recall the sight: twenty thousand Athenians in the rusty armor of their grandfathers. Hayseeds and city boys streaming into the crossroads, greeting each other like reunited kin. The old men mustered for the last time, with steely gaze and hands trembling on the pikes, taking the kisses of young women on the roadsides. We were off to Boeotia, the theatre of so many other battles that Theban Epaminondas rightly called it the “dancing-floor of war.” Like the Thebans facing down Spartan power at Leuctra, the Athenians were coming at last to dance with King Philip and his detested Macedonians.

Our campfires spread for miles up the road by night. We bivouacked without sentries, without order, and without care. There were rumors that a man named Stratocles was in charge. He was a strategical genius, they said, and he had a plan to rout the Macedonians, who were much due for a humbling. A drink to victory! And another to Stratocles! And more after that, until the fires were superfluous, and we danced away whatever energy the march had left to us.

The joy division reached Thebes, and streamed around her walls, thinking the Theban army would come out to embrace their new allies. But the gates stayed shut, and the guards in the towers looked down on us warily. On the far side of the city we saw a neat square of armored men waiting on the road. It was not the whole Theban army, but the best part of it: we had the Theban Sacred Band on our side, three hundred strong. Since the action at Delium, 86 years before, this Band had never lost a battle. They fought as couples, each man consecrated to his lover in the ranks. It was a coup for Demosthenes, to have convinced the Thebans to plight this, their most cherished unit, in our cause. What need, then, of strategy, tactics, security? On to victory! And then on the Macedon, to smash the half-barbarian upstarts who presumed to enslave true Greeks! The only sour note was struck by the Thebans: though undefeated in more than a generation, they marched diffidently, without joy or confidence on their faces. Some thought they felt dishonored to share the road with us. We might have suspected that they had a better idea of the quality of the opposition.

Our scouts sighted the enemy in a narrow valley in the north of Boeotia. From that moment the events of the day became a blur to me. Stratocles, it turned out, had no strategy in mind. Officers from different units came scurrying up to organize us into phalanxes eight shields deep, then sixteen, then back to eight. First we stood here, then we stood there. An order went out to march forward onto the plain-but the command went to only half the army, leaving big gaps in our lines. The mood passed from happiness to frenzy, as everyone wanted something done, but no one was clearly in charge, and the gaps infuriated the officers, who yelled at the gallant but frustrated boys and old men. With these annoyances we became aware that we were footsore and, though we had feasted on patriotism, hungry. The good times on the road gave way to squabbling as men were crushed against each other. The only cool heads were on the shoulders of the Thebans, who marched in precise order to our right flank and settled there, resting their peculiar crimped shields on the ground against their legs.

The Macedonians, meanwhile, were collected in their neat ranks, watching us struggle to form our lines. Of the Companion cavalry and Philip and Alexander, there was yet no sign. Somebody in the vanguard observed that the enemy had just tiny shields hanging from the shoulders, and that they wore only leather armor. A rumor was passed back through the ranks that the Macedonians had no protection at all, and for a moment all discomfort was forgotten, for the enemy had left their shields at Pella, and it would be an easy day of killing for the Greeks!

At last they had us all organized and pointed the right direction. I was on the right, adjacent to the Sacred Band, in the sixth row of a phalanx eight shields deep. I recall it was already late in the day to begin a battle; the sun beat down so mercilessly on my helmet that I could smell the liner cooking within it. To keep their hands dry on their spears, men up and down the line were wiping their sweaty palms on their breastplates, or struggling to bend over for some dirt.

At the sounding of the pipes, we marched forward in more or less good order. We were a loud army, clanking with every step, raising the paean; the Macedonians, on the other hand, moved over the battlefield in almost complete silence. The mood became very tense as the armies closed on each other. From many yards away we could see that the Macedonian pikes, their sarissas, were at least twice as long as the ones we carried. The whooping and hollering on the Greek side subsided; our lines contracted as each soldier pressed against his comrade to the right, trying to nestle behind his shield. This forced each shield bearer to move to his right, until our whole line began to drift north, angling obliquely toward the enemy. Lacking true shields, our enemies could not hunker behind their fellows, but marched straight and true. Watching them between the shoulders of my comrades, I could see their faces: the Macedonians were serene, even bored.

The enemy halted their advance as our first three ranks leveled their spears. Our boys kept on coming, giving throat to the cry that terrified the Persians at Marathon and Plataea-eleleu eleleu! With that, the Macedonians all turned around and withdrew on the double. There didn’t seem to be any signal given for them to do this. They just did it, as calmly as if they were drilling on the parade ground.

Unlike at Marathon, our front ranks were not taken up by our toughest hoplites, but by our most enthusiastic. The Macedonian withdrawal confirmed what they had long imagined-that the barbarians had no stomach for fighting the free citizens of a civilized city! Our ranks dissolved as they pursued the retreating enemy; weighted down with their ancient panoplies, the Greeks exhausted themselves running after the lightly-clad Macedonians. Our officers were screaming at their men, trying to organize an orderly advance. Yet our glorious commander Stratocles, who was very probably drunk, was off celebrating the rout, riding with sword aloft, crying “We’ve got ‘em on the run, boys! Now on to Pella!”

With the sole exception of our Theban allies, who anchored our right with no trace of emotion, all semblance of organization among the Greeks was gone. Our army opened up like a boiled onion, the ranks peeling away from the phalanx one by one. Some of the hoplites, half-blind with sweat under ill-fitting helmets, tripped on rocks and clumps of soil; as they struggled to rise, they were trampled in the dust by their jubilant comrades. This was in chilling contrast to the Macedonians, who wheeled around in their thousands without a single man going down. Not a single one!

You know what happened next. At the sounding of a trumpet, the enemy retreat suddenly seemed to halt. What had really happened, of course, was that the Macedonians didn’t run away at all, but had only countermarched behind a new line formed by their best men. Having fooled many of the Greeks with this sham, they grasped their pikes underhand and lowered the tips. The Macedonian pike is long enough for men four and five shields deep in their phalanx to reach the enemy. Many of the Athenians were propelled by pure momentum into this swarm of spear points. Hemmed in by their comrades around them, hundreds were struck full in the face, noses or jawbones split. This was when I learned that the entrance of a metal point into the unprotected face of a man makes a peculiar noise-a certain combination of a crunch and a thud. I had much opportunity to hear it as the survivors tried to come about, colliding with the oncoming ranks, until we were all a helpless jumble of exhausted, blind men and boys, so terrified that we defecated ourselves with fear, or cried for our mothers.

It was at this point that the enemy broke their silence. They let loose an inimitable cry-made in that strange dialect of theirs-that rose over the ongoing din of shields and armor, freezing the blood of every Greek on the field. The Macedonians then started forward again, walking right over the Greek casualties, finishing off the fallen with downward thrusts of the iron points on the butts of their pikes. I remember seeing a face I recognized among the wounded: he was the teacher who taught me my letters, decades before. I had not seen him since, and never did again, but only in that instant. He lay uncomplaining at the feet of the Macedonians, the contents of his testicles spilled on his groin flaps, his gray head anointed with the dust of sacrifice.

There was at that point still some distance between the enemy and what remained of the Athenian line. To the eternal credit of my fellow citizens, most of them stood firm as the enemy approached. Others, foreseeing only their imminent death, and finding themselves hemmed in on all sides by the phalanx, gave themselves over to panic. Just a few of these cowards, flailing to free themselves, was enough to disrupt huge swaths of our formation. And all the while the Macedonians were coming on, those damnable cocksure smiles on their faces-smiles like those right there!

Machon leveled a finger at the Macedonian observers in the courtroom, who were indeed grinning as they listened to one of the storied moments in their nation’s history. Their smiles withered as five hundred pairs of resentful eyes bore down on them.

You may be thinking that I paint too dark a picture of the events that day. To those who were not there, it should be pointed out that the battle seemed far from over to us. There was still the opportunity for the Greeks to turn the tables on the enemy: to settle in, dig the butts of our spears into the earth, and impale the dogs as they charged.

We were confident we could do this, and prepared for it, for we all understood exactly what was at stake. We had already learned, after all, that there was no defensive strategy against the likes of Philip-no resort to Long Walls and hope for bad weather. Can you remember when our grandfathers told us of the war with Sparta, when those half-hick stiffs would come every year at the same time, shake their fists at our Long Walls, burn a few haystacks, and go home? Remember how formidable those Lacedaemonians sounded to us, as children? Yet we all knew we were in for much worse if Philip’s hordes poured into Attica. To Philip, walled cities were just unshucked oysters, and the war never stopped for harvest, weather or any other reason under heaven. His troops were neither part-time nor rented soldiers, but professionals who made a craft of intimidation, rape, and massacre.

There was nothing for us to do, then, but to put shoulder to shield and push hard against the line. We would accept the hours of exhaustion in our old panoplies, the heat, the terror of suffocation and the panicky spray of our neighbor’s urine. We would push, and push some more, until the Macedonians broke for their mountains at last, and we would bury our spears in the backs of many as we could.

But it was not to be. The battle was not over in hours, but minutes, as the Macedonian cavalry somehow broke into our rear. Through one of the great gaps in our line, Philip’s so-called ‘Companions’ had rode and commenced to slash at our back rank. The Greek army, it seems, had come that day without any cavalry at all, and so our flanks had no defense.

With that, the entire right wing of the Greeks crumpled. Hoplites dropped their spears, tore off their armor, and ran for their lives. The horsemen made them pay for their indiscipline: the deserters were chased down and butchered from the back by the Macedonian aristocrats. These were, incidentally, quite gaily turned out in their purple cloaks trimmed with gold. And how they seemed to enjoy the work of slaughtering fathers and grandfathers who came to fight for their children’s freedom! As fate would have it, this was not the last time I would watch the Macedonians go about this, their favorite business.

Trapped in the center of the disintegrating phalanx, I was being propelled this way and that by waves of flailing, terrified men. Those who have been there know the danger: in the crush of armored bodies, it was difficult just to get a breath. Keeping upright was also a challenge, lest I suffer the fate of those trampled under the feet of their comrades. It was at that moment, when I was thus engaged, that I first glimpsed Prince Alexander.

I’m not sure why I knew it was him, as I was too far away to see his face. I might have guessed his identity because he was riding at the head of a retinue, or because his cloak had a reversed color scheme, gold trimmed with purple, or from the fact that he alone wore the Gorgon’s head device on his breastplate. Or it might have been for the same reason that the sheep dog always stands out from the rest of the flock-the princely way he rode a horse, cantering here and there, directing his forces, pounding his fist for emphasis, gesturing his displeasure over some unfulfilled command.

I watched him until I lost sight of him behind an obstacle-an obstacle that I belatedly realized was the Sacred Band, which was surrounded. The Thebans had formed themselves into a defensive square, with their spears presented at every side. Against them the enemy pikemen were forming up in columns thirty-two shields deep. When they were ready, the Macedonians charged at a run into the Thebans, with the soldiers in their back ranks pushing the ones in front. This kind of attack generated powerful momentum-the kind that drove leveled pikes straight through the armor of stationary men. The Macedonians did this over and over, giving each fresh regiment a crack at the Thebans; the defenders, who had locked shields, were able to hold their own for a while, but they lacked the force of forward movement, and their lances were too short to strike back. Inevitably, with their armor holed or split, the Thebans began to fall. As each died, his comrade protected his body with his shield, or with his own body, as the case may be. The square gave way as the Macedonians kept up the attack; we Greeks watched with tears in our eyes as this glorious Band, its history unblemished by defeat, was ground into the dust.

At last, when there was only one stubborn pair left on what had become their funeral mound, Prince Alexander rode forward on his fabled mount, Bucephalus. Taking aim with his thrusting spear, and in a remarkable bit of horsemanship, he drove right into the morass of dead flesh and speared one of the Thebans straight through his breastplate. With the other resigned to do nothing more than watch, Alexander extracted the spearhead from the body of his companion, backed off a bit, then simply rode the last Theban down. The Macedonians roared as Bucephalus leapt free of the mound, and Alexander unfurled his tawny tresses and raised his blooded spear in triumph.

This was not the end of the day’s slaughter. In defiance of custom, Philip’s troops massacred retreating Athenians for the rest of the afternoon, chasing them into the hills, into cornfields and granaries, up roofs and down into caves. Yes, the King made a gallant gesture of burning the bodies that were left on the battlefield and delivering the collected ashes to us here. But the bodies of hundreds of others-those who fled-were never recovered or given the proper rites. They were left to rot where they fell. We Athenians, for our part, did not ask awkward questions of the victors, but merely thanked the gods for what we were given.

Like many of you, I was at Chaeronea to save my country. But at the risk of encouraging Aeschines’s bizarre speculations, I grant I did have an ulterior motive. It had always been my ambition to write a history. You may recall that Thucydides and Xenophon were soldiers, and commenced their histories because they foresaw that future generations might learn from an account of the conflicts of their time. I believed-and still do believe-that the same is true of our wars. Where Thucydides had his Pericles, Cleon, and Alcibiades, in our time we have Demosthenes, Philip, and, yes, Aeschines! So while my opponent attempts to make my ambition in this regard appear something dubious, he only shows his own contempt for the craft of history. How many of the men here would take up the pen too, if they had the means and the opportunity…? To your shame, Aeschines, see how many hands are raised!

“The defendant may not pose questions to the jury,” the judge objected.

“Your honor, would that rule apply to questions one might characterize as rhetorical?”

“You may ask rhetorical questions only if you clearly indicate that you don’t want your questions to be answered.”

“Eminence, am I to understand that if I ask a rhetorical question, and the jury elects to answer, I am to be held responsible for transgression of a rule that I myself have not committed?”

The jurymen broke into heated discussion. Polycleitus, glowing red with anger, called for order. It took several moments for the room to quiet again.

“The defendant will not ask questions, and the jury will not answer. Is that clear enough to you all?”

“Perfectly. I also request additional time due to the interruption…”

“So granted! Go on, please.”

To resume, I went to Boeotia as a soldier, but also with the eye of a chronicler, as I judged this to be a unique moment in the affairs of men. Fortunately for my project, I was not killed during the battle, but taken prisoner. Along with several thousand other Athenians and allies, I was placed in a stockade not far from the Macedonian camp. The pen was just an offhand thing, a corral built of thin sticks and brush, with ditch water to drink. Philip fed his prisoners with rotten onions collected from the haversacks of the dead-yet so famished were the Athenians that they fought over these meager rations. It is a fortunate thing for the defeated men of Asia that Alexander did not inherit his father’s cheapness.

Having foreseen the advantage of taking notes in the field, I had brought with me several lead tablets and a stylus, which I stored in the cave of my shield. It was at that point, when I had been in detention for two days without food, when the stench of the open pit toilets rose to new heights, and rumors flew that we would all be sent to short, miserable careers as slaves in the mines at Mt. Pangaeus, that I believed I was sufficiently immersed in my subject to begin composing.

I had not gotten far along, recording my impressions of the battle, when a peculiar voice addressed me, asking “Ye scribe, what dost thou?”

Perceiving that the question came from the Macedonian side of the fence, and in the archaic dialect of those backward northerners, I ignored it. A pair of booted feet came into my line of sight as I peered down at my tablet, and the voice resumed,

“Be ye poet or proseur, o son of Theseus, I will own thine answer!”

Bowing to the inevitable, I looked up, and was confronted with none other than Prince Alexander himself.