Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

VII

As the Macedonian army formed up and began the march upcountry, I was puzzled by the lack of organized resistance to the invasion. The Persian navy, after all, was made up of very capable Phoenician and Sidonese levies, at twice the numbers Alexander could gather. It should have been a straightforward matter for this force to bottle up the Hellespont, intercept the Macedonian troop carriers, or execute whatever plan the enemy would have conceived. Or at least that’s how it seemed to an Athenian used to thinking in terms of sea power.

No satrap was waiting on the shore for us with his hooded troops and mailed cavalry. Nor were the farms and towns of this rich country burned in our path, to prevent stores from falling into our hands; the granaries, instead, were bursting with last year’s harvest. To the young Macedonian grunts, the invasion went as easily as their childish dreams made it. But to anybody who knew anything, the stillness suggested there was something very deeply wrong.

It was only much later, upon speaking with Persian courtiers who had been at Susa at that time, that I learned the truth: though the Persian Empire was vast, it was riddled with problems. The Great King, Artashata, otherwise known as Daryavaush III, or ‘Darius,’ was a weakling who had alienated most of the nobility by poisoning his competitors for the throne. Egypt was in the midst of a revolt that had only just been put down by the Persian fleet when Alexander tossed his spear on the beach at Ilion. We might therefore say that Alexander had been lucky to arrive when he did, or cunning, in that he landed with most of Persia looking the other way. We cannot say, however, that his mere arrival represented much of a victory.

I might as well take the opportunity now, as I have Alexander on his way toward the Granicus, to correct an impression you might have gotten from our friend Aeschines. Judging from his account, only Alexander, along with a few other minor players and a faceless army, were present at his battles. But it takes more than one extraordinary man to make an army. Some of the others who went with Alexander had a lot to do with his victories.

I’m thinking of Parmenion, the old stalwart who served Philip too. True, he was not the kind of flashy performer who plays to the gallery by taking foolish risks. He was, in fact, too fat to mount a horse. But he knew how to hold a line against superior foe, which is something Alexander never had to accomplish. I’ve already mentioned Ptolemy, and Cleitus. These are unsavory characters, thugs really, but they were loyal and ruthless, and such men can accomplish a lot. I would count in their company Peithon son of Crateuas, though to look at him you would say he seemed more scholar than warrior. His area of knowledge, I came to learn, was the infliction of lethal force on those too weak to defend themselves. I will describe some of his notable works as the occasion arises.

To my recollection Aeschines mentions Perdiccas son of Orestes only once, which is strange because he now sits on Alexander’s throne in Babylon! In most ways he was cut from the same cloth as Alexander: face full of curl-lipped arrogance, born to make war, hunt frequently, and drink his wine neat. He even took care to cut his hair just like Alexander. To his credit, he was a decent phalanx commander in the early years, and scaled the ladder of influence with hardly a misstep. Perdiccas never seemed ambitious, but events always seemed to go his way. For all his resemblance to the King, however, he lacked one important element: Alexander’s impulse to understand the world he was destroying.

There were many others who had their moments on the stage over the next twelve years-Peucestas, Coenus, Nearchus, Craterus, Aristander the soothsayer…and Philotas, whom Aeschines mentions only in relation to the ridiculous charges that led to his death! If you and I were sharing a drink, I would tell you about them all-from their best moments to their worst, and how they shaped the success that has come to compose the legend of Alexander. But we have time today to speak only of Machon-a minor figure indeed! If I say to you, though, that Alexander was more a corporation than a man, and his myth a work of many authors, it is because I was there. Let only those who marched with me dispute my words!

Hephaestion is another bit player in Aeschines’s story. Alexander would never have countenanced this. They were friends since boyhood, and lovers for almost as long. Alexander was the ‘bottom,’ and Hephaestion, who was bigger and stronger, the ‘top.’

Olympias begged her son to produce an heir before he left for Asia, but he was too much in love with Hephaestion even to function as a man. Of the pair, Hephaestion was the more ambitious. It was he who encouraged Alexander to march on after Issus, to take on the entire Persian Empire, and it was he who argued the strongest for an invasion of India, though no one else would agree with him. So great was his influence with the King, he almost succeeded in cajoling him onto the Gangetic plain.

But foremost among the forgotten characters is Arridaeus, Alexander’s half-brother. I see your faces-you don’t believe it! Bear with me, then, and you will see.

You have been given a rousing account of the battle at the Granicus. I congratulate my opponent on his powers of description. Listening to him evoke the scene, it was as if I was there-until I realized I had been there, and it was nothing like he described!

Imagine this: the Macedonians on one side of a river swollen with spring melt, the mounted Persians high on the other, backed up by a Greek army. Alexander, after a spirited invocation of Homer, single-handedly charges the entire Persian line-and lives! The Macedonians follow, and striking ‘like Hephaestus’s hammer,’ they smash the enemy. Thousands of Persians die, and the Greek mercenaries, astounded by this wonder, stand around and wait for the Macedonians to cross the river in force, organize themselves, and surround them. Thousands of the mercenaries are slaughtered too. And the toll for Alexander’s army? Just twenty-five dead, writes Callisthenes.

Most of us are veterans of war here…do we not smell a rat? Do single riders charge entire armies and survive? How could it be that the Macedonians could cross a torrent, proceed uphill against their enemy, slash their way through the Persian lines, and lose only twenty-five men? Having seen cavalry cross muddy, miserable spring rivers, I would expect more than twenty-five to die just falling off their horses! To doubt this is not to engage in what Aeschines calls ‘sophistication.’ It is to use common sense.

What really happened was this: our scouts reported that the Persians were gathered at the Granicus River, and Alexander proceeded with his officers to inspect their position. They observed that the enemy was blocking the only fording place, and that the manner of their deployment, on a bluff above the far bank, would result in horrific casualties among the Macedonians. Parmenion therefore recommended a subtler strategy. The Persians, the old general explained, were anxious to secure their horses against theft at night, and so made a practice of tethering them by both bridle and the feet. As these precautions made it hard for them to saddle and mount in an emergency, they were obligated to make their camps far away from their enemies. In this case the Persians would bivouac overnight well out of touch with their scouts on the river. Why not wait until before dawn the next morning, asked Parmenion, cross the river in secret, and take them all by surprise?

Alexander carped, complaining that he hadn’t crossed the mighty Hellespont just to be stopped at a mere trickle. Hephaestion declared that strategizing was for weaklings, and that the barbarians would scatter at the first flash of steel. But there was no denying that the river flowed fast and deep, the Persian armor was blindingly numerous, and that the Macedonian infantrymen were spooked. Even if they managed to break through the horses, at least twenty thousand Greek mercenary pikemen waited behind them, each one no doubt desperate to redeem the reputation of Greek arms against Macedon. Perhaps most important, a defeat or a costly victory there, at the very outset of the invasion, would doom the entire enterprise.

The King took Parmenion’s advice. Overnight, swimmers were sent across to silence the Persian watchmen. And as the first blush of dawn appeared in the sky behind the enemy camp, Alexander got his Cavalry Companions across the river, and most of the pikemen, before they were observed by the Persians. A confused melee ensued in the twilight; Alexander led his horsemen forward to meet the enemy, who had been roused before their time and wore only half their armor. Marching with the hypaspists, I reached the enemy camp in time to see Alexander sitting on the ground, ministered by a doctor after he was struck in the helmet with an axe. Cleitus, who had saved Alexander at the last second, crouched with his hands on his knees, looking down at the King.

That was when I noticed something curious. Alexander was out of the action, barely conscious, but someone very much like him, with the same build, same stature, and virtually the same voice, was still directing the attack on the Persian camp. With unerring perception of the flow of forces around the battlefield, he directed cavalry and footmen into flying columns that cut the disorganized enemy to pieces. As the sun broke over the horizon, we could see scattered remnants of the Persian cavalry fleeing, and much of Darius’ Greek hirelings still in their camp clothes, surrounded.

Who was the commander who accomplished all this? Sighting him again, I followed some distance behind. His resemblance to Alexander in both movement and voice was striking, yet he wore far more armor than the King, including a muscle cuirass and greaves. Coming closer, I could see that he wore a lot of metal, but nothing else-no cloak, no tunic, no groin-flaps. His ass was bare for the world to see!

This spectacle intrigued me, to say the least, for this half-naked apparition was directing the relentless slaughter of virtually all the Greek mercenaries. By midday more than fifteen thousand bodies formed an enormous mountain of fly-strewn flesh. But in the time it took me to glance at the dead and then look back, the mysterious commander was gone. In his place was Alexander, discussing with his officers the enormity of incinerating such a mass.

To be sure, I made many inquiries into what I had seen. The Macedonians were aggressively reluctant to discuss it; Callisthenes acknowledged that he had seen the figure I described, but would not elaborate. In the months to come, using every method I could think of, including bribery, I was finally able to learn the truth.

We know of him now as Philip Arridaeus. He was Alexander’s half-brother-a bastard produced by the union of Philip and a Thessalian concubine. The official historians are loathe to speak of him, because from a young age he was an idiot, barely able to speak or take care of himself. He had other odd problems, such as an inability to tolerate the touch of other people, and a deep aversion to the wearing of clothes. Instead, he preferred the feel of metal against his skin. For this reason he wore either armor or nothing for his entire life.

Yet he did have certain talents. His memory, for instance, was prodigious. By the age of three he could recognize and name all the different units of Philip’s army. By eight he memorized the entire text of the Iliad. He knew thousands of men by name, and the names of their fathers, and could recount their deeds in battle with precise detail. Alexander, on the other hand, was a charmer, but had no head for the common man. When he was forced to interact with them, he never knew their names. Arridaeus remembered everything.

The man was in every way fascinated by war. From a young age he liked nothing better than to pore over maps, planning for his fanciful campaigns. As I will recount, he was also invincible on the battlefield, and his talents as a general turned out to be more than imaginary. But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Suffice it to say that you will never read of Arridaeus in any official history, because the combination of martial virtue and complete idiocy was incomprehensible to the Macedonians. They were, and are, deeply embarrassed by what they owe to him.

The origins of his illness are obscure. Some say he was born that way, others that Olympias, fearing competition for Alexander’s future throne, had the infant Arridaeus fed poison with his breast milk. Her intent was not to kill him, which would have been too obvious a crime, but to destroy his mind. I am told that there are preparations of mercury or arsenic that might have such effects if used in small quantities. But bear in mind that I have no proof that he was poisoned. I know only that, wherever he came from, and however he did it, he became the secret weapon of the Macedonians.

Arridaeus’s skills were discovered by accident during the assault on Thebes. Alexander didn’t expect to take the city, but instead wished no more than to teach the Thebans a lesson. Arridaeus, who was dressed in his usual armor when he appeared on the field, was mistaken for Alexander when he began to issue commands. Sizing up the situation in an instant, he dispatched troops to the weakest part of the Theban wall. The city fell.

This victory caught Alexander by surprise. In his confusion, he didn’t know what he wanted to do with the prize, so instead turned the decision over to Thebes’s petty and resentful neighbors. They, of course, wanted the city razed to the ground. Alexander acceded to their selfishness-a decision he regretted for the rest of his life.

For later battles, Arridaeus was brought out on a horse, with an escort of mounted Companions around him to conceal his presence from the rest of the army. From this cocoon the simpleton sent orders around the battlefield. With each victory of Arridaeus, Alexander’s reputation for invincibility grew. Ever resourceful, Arridaeus added his brother’s renown to his arsenal, deploying Alexander like a psychological weapon. “Send Panic over there,” he would say, or “More Terror on the right.” The only thing that was more remarkable than his generalship was the Macedonians’ refusal to acknowledge it.

Machon paused as the jury turned in a body to the Macedonian spectators. They just stood, shaking their heads in vaguely menacing way, as if the defendant had sealed his fate with this testimony.

In any case, the Macedonians had their victory at the Granicus, and also managed to kill most of the Greeks fighting in the service of the Great King. Notice that, unlike Aeschines, I make a distinction between the two peoples. We kept hearing from him about the Greeks at Issus, the Greeks at Gaugamela. I assure you there were very few Greeks on campaign with Alexander in Asia, except for myself, and some Thessalian cavalry, who were held mostly in reserve anyway. The Macedonians have little use for Greeks except to kill them. Outrageous, you say? You would agree if you count the Greek casualties among the enemy at the Granicus and Issus. It is a fact that Alexander’s army killed more Greeks than anyone in history. By that I include Xerxes, Darius, or any other foreign king!

Now I know the Macedonians like to argue that the Greeks they slaughtered were all mercenaries, in the employ of the barbarian, and therefore traitors to their nation. But I ask you, who declared them criminals? They are our fellow citizens in exile, our luckless brothers, cousins, and sons. Who declared them expendable, when we still justly celebrate the exploits of the glorious Ten Thousand? Xenophon’s men were every one employed by Persian paymasters, all dirt-poor Peloponnesian riff-raff. Yet without the example of their survival in Asia, though grossly outnumbered, neither Philip nor Alexander would have dared invade the lands of the Great King. So I ask again, who declared their lives forfeit, and on what pretext? Spare me the sanctimony of this contempt for mere mercenaries!

As I have said, I will not revisit every word Aeschines has said, except to note that he has flattened the character of Alexander, who was a man in full, into something close to bas relief. Because he admired Athens and history so much, the King accepted me into his company as if I had always been there with him, in the opulent but cold palace in which he was born. His candor was astonishing. For example, when I asked him privately about the serious manner in which he drank, he told me it didn’t matter, since he expected to be dead by the age of thirty. Pressing him further on this, I learned that assassination was the acknowledged lot of Macedonian kings, with not a single one of his predecessors having died of old age. When he was somewhat deeper in his cups, I asked him why he bothered to go on campaign, if his future was so clouded.

“But that is exactly why I do go, my dear Machon! If I am killed in battle, I will deprive them of a king to murder!”

His replies on these matters were not always consistent. Sometimes he expressed the outright desire to die; others he aspired only to deprive his officers of the pleasure of killing him. Still others he showed an overwhelming sense of grief for the destruction of Thebes, which he believed was a sin that the gods would never forgive. He carried this fatalism to the battlefield with him, letting it drive him to acts of reckless valor. His enemies perceived this desperation in him, this assurance of his own death, and stepped aside. It was the unique combination of Arridaeus’s madness and Alexander’s despair that drove the success of the Macedonians. No army could cope with them both.

What I learned about him gives a different meaning to the old story about Alexander and his doctor. According to the legend, Alexander was suffering from sickness when he received a written warning from Parmenion that the royal doctor, Lycius, had been bribed by Darius to kill him. At the same moment Alexander read the letter Lycius was handing him an emetic to drink. The King, they say, cheerfully handed Parmenion’s warning to the doctor. Lycius read the accusation, and was preparing to deny it, when he saw that Alexander had already swallowed the drug! And although the stuff was foul, and was meant to sicken him to his stomach, the King did nothing more than soothe Lycius’s consternation, so sure was this innocent fellow that he would be executed.

This tale, which I have no idea is true, is supposed to show Alexander’s implicit trust in his men. What it may show instead is his faith in his own destruction. Recall these lines from Alcestis: “My mother was accursed the night she bore me, and I am faint with envy of all the dead.” Euripides, by the way, was always Alexander’s favorite poet; that he favored Homer is an outright lie perpetuated by Ptolemy.

Aeschines makes much of some documents found in the royal archives at Sardis. Please note that he presents none of the original records in evidence, but only letters from his dubious witnesses about what the records showed. Let the jury know that I deny knowledge of any payments to Demosthenes. They should also know that I have nothing to report about the records of the Great King at Sardis, because although I glimpsed them, I don’t read Akkadian or Elamite!

Alexander approached the unraveling of the Gordian knot as something of a stunt. The episode ended up as a fiasco that has somehow has been transformed into a triumph. Aeschines says that I encouraged him to attempt the puzzle in order to see him fail. The truth is that I argued with him not to offend the gods by presuming he could solve it. He replied that the challenge would teach him something about himself. We argued in his tent as he prepared to go, and our quarrel continued outside in front of witnesses, where I could not speak freely. At last I threw up my hands.

“Go ahead then! Bring the fury of heaven down on our heads!”

He posed with one hand behind the crown of his head, fingers wagging, like the wavering aura of some divinity.

“You forget who I am, my friend!”

Then he laughed, and was off to make a fool of himself. I anticipated disaster, but somehow couldn’t stay away from the spectacle.

The wagon of Gordion was kept in the shadow of Midas’s great funeral mound, in the Temple of Zeus: an ox cart of very common appearance, it was very much like the rude wains Alexander must have seen on his youthful maneuvers in the fields around Pella. Legend held that this was the very vehicle that had carried Midas’s father from his farmhouse in Macedonia to the throne of Phrygia. The Knot, a great ball of stripped bark, fastened the heavy double-yoke to the shaft. The man who untied it was destined to seize the throne of the Great King.

Standing in the back, I watched as Alexander circled the cart, quite possibly realizing the magnitude of the trouble he had taken upon himself. Generations of adventurers had tried and failed to untie the Knot. The entire population of Gordion seemed to be waiting outside the temple; the Macedonian officers were there too, their childish faith in their King yet unspoiled.

The Knot was so long untouched that spider webs hung from it. Alexander began to pick at it, as if trying to find some loose end to work free. But public challenges go unmet for centuries for a reason: in this case, the Knot was as tight as a drumhead, and seemed held together by some kind of glue. He tried to get a fingertip under one of the leather strands but slipped, ripping off part of a nail. He cursed. The priests sucked in their breaths at this blasphemy in their sanctuary. Alexander ignored them, taking out his sword. Working the tip between two strands, he struggled to widen the opening, but the Knot moved too much, and he could not grip the blade tightly enough. The King became frustrated, stabbing at the wobbly thing until he went red in the face and everyone became embarrassed for him. The nervous whispers of the onlookers became louder, and Hephaestion looked as if he was ready to intercede. That was when Alexander raised his sword and commenced hacking at the Knot as if he were chopping wood.

It was a big sword, and though he was short, Alexander had a strong arm. Yet it still took more than twenty blows to cut through the leather mass, and by the end the King was wide-eyed and sweaty and oblivious to the expressions of horror on the faces of the natives. With a look of accomplishment on his face that was as absurd as it was childish, he held up the two severed halves of the Knot. At that, the senior members of his staff clapped their hands, and with their glances made sure the junior officers followed, until all the Macedonians were applauding him.

It was an anxious moment, in fact, because the attitudes of the natives and foreigners to this sad spectacle were so different. But in the end the ones with the weapons prevailed, and the King basked in an ovation that seemed to go on forever. The celebration paused as a peal of thunder was heard above the temple. All at once the nervousness returned, and some even proceeded suddenly to jeer the King, believing that the gods had expressed their disapproval of what he had done. But Perdiccas leapt on a plinth and settled the issue.

“Zeus has thrown his thunderbolt! The new King of Asia is crowned!”

All at once the pendulum swung from uncertainty back to servility. The soldiers ripped the ancient cart from its moorings, lifted Alexander inside, and rolled him around the sanctuary in triumph. As the temple emptied, I stayed behind to watch the head priest. The man knelt before the discarded halves of the Knot, threw the folds of his cloak over his head, and wept.

Despite Alexander’s “triumph,” there seemed an urgency to clear out of Gordion as soon as possible. The army prepared to move on to Ancyra, about twenty parasangs to the east. As we decamped, I noticed a tiny figure atop the great mound of King Midas. Coming closer, I saw it was Alexander, sitting up there with a wine jug and his sword stuck in the mound beside him. He hailed me as I came up to join him.

“Machon! Have you nothing better to do than climb hills?”

“It is a remarkable hill that we both have climbed.”

And it was. The mound, which they say is heaped atop a fabulous hoard of undiscovered treasure, commanded the plateau for miles around. Around the city stretched a patchwork of farms, split by the winding ribbon of the river Sangarius. The Macedonian camp was a constellation of torches by the river. From that distance, and as the twilight came on, no figures could be seen in the town or the camp below. We seemed to be alone-the monarch and his memoirist, or in Alexander’s mind, the hero and History herself.

“I wonder if anyone would have done it.”

“It?”

“Loosened the Knot for real. And don’t look so shocked, my friend! The storyteller need not believe his own stories.”

He held out his cup. I sat down next to him, and together we finished the jug as the sun sank into the plain. I turned east, in the direction of Ancyra; the sky there was the darkest-a soiled indigo with the dying light and the smoke of hearth-fires. Alexander climbed to his feet.

“Tomorrow, we go there. Let’s see what it brings us!”

As we entered the town we learned that Ptolemy and Craterus were desperate to learn where the King had gone. Soldiers filled the streets, breaking down the doors of every wine shop in the city. With a wink, the King hid his head under his cloak and disappeared into an alley. He was not seen again until late the following morning, when he was found sleeping in his bed.

With the fall of Persian resistance throughout the western half of Asia Minor, Alexander’s promise to liberate the Ionians was accomplished. While it is true that ease of their victory tempted the Macedonians to take all of the Persian lands, it was equally true that the invasion had gathered its own momentum, and that other forces were then at work to keep it in motion. Cities in Alexander’s path insisted on surrendering before he had even arrived, forcing him to march east to preserve them from anarchy. The pattern repeated many times, until it seemed that the Macedonians were being sucked inevitably eastward, farther from their homes, their families, and in some sense, from themselves.

So we reached Issus. Aren’t we all tired of descriptions of battles? The hero is always fearless, the enemy is always in hordes. While the Greeks do exceed all other people in the arts of war, the bravery of the Persians, as men, should never be doubted. The fact was that our enemies were indifferently led. The Great King could more easily find 100,000 foot-soldiers than one decent company commander. Darius, who showed up at last to defend his kingdom, was competent only at setting up troops for battle. The more essential skill, of leading them through the adjustments that are inevitable in any fight, was completely beyond him.

Darius disposed his forces in a defile along the banks of the river Pinarus, from the foothills of Mt. Amanus on his left to the sea. His center was again held by his Greek hirelings, who must have burned to avenge the humiliation of the Granicus. The banks of this river were even more steep at the Persian center than at the last battle; Darius increased his odds of success by using gangs of slaves to mound up more earth there, so that his mercenaries would look down on us from a great height. On his right Darius massed a multitude of armored cavalry. Arrayed behind this narrow front was a horde of crack archers, slingers, and native infantry.

Aeschines was most expansive on this matter so I won’t expend my time on the details. The fact is that Alexander was late showing up on the morning of the battle because he was hung over. The more he drank the previous evening, the more he became assured that he was fated to die, either at the hands of the Persians or of his own men. His drinking companions, Hephaestion, Parmenion, and Cleitus, indulged this fantasy by asking him how he would dispose of his new kingdom. He replied that he cared only of disposing of himself, for his preferences would not matter the slightest bit after he was gone.

Of course, he didn’t die at Issus. But his words proved prophetic, as the present circumstances around the royal succession show.

That Darius would offer battle in such a narrow valley was unexpected. The Macedonians, who had been prepared to face a large cavalry force on open ground, were confounded that the Great King would negate his own best advantage. They suspected some hidden strategy was at work.

The armies stood staring at each other for some time until Arridaeus could be brought to the field. In a glance the fool discerned the weakness in the Persian battle-order: a body of lightly-armored infantry on the enemy left that he somehow felt to be wavering. There terror should go, he said, and with it the battle.

So Alexander went where he was told. And just as Arridaeus had foreseen, the Persian left broke. The King exceeded his mandate, however, by wheeling to his left and charging the enemy center, where Darius’s retinue could be seen under the royal standard of the winged solar disk. From their respective places around the battlefield the Macedonian generals watched helplessly as Alexander risked turning victory into defeat.

I try to imagine what the Great King must have seen as he stood in his garlanded chariot. Set in the center, he would have had a view of his forces breaking the advance of the vaunted phalanxes, while the very mass of his cavalry on the right promised to break Parmenion’s line. In the confusion, in the dust churned by hundreds of thousands of feet, he would scarcely have noticed a disturbance far to the north. Over the din of crashing shields before him, he might have heard a thin chorus of screams. Perhaps one of his retainers would have told him his left wing had broken; perhaps he even expected it, having planted weak troops there in order to bait Alexander away from what he expected would be the main action. He still might have looked forward to turning the Macedonian left, flanking the Foot Companions, and having his antagonist, that bald-cheeked upstart, brought to him in chains by sunset.

He might have thought these things, and at that very moment have glimpsed the Companion cavalry through the dust, sweeping his forces aside as they headed straight for the Persian royal guard. Alexander would have been unmistakable in their van, white plumes flying on his helmet, his thrusting spear pointed right at Darius.

There must have been very little time to think as the Macedonians closed and the fate of a continent hung on an instant. The golden figure of Alexander pressed his attack, weaving his way through the flailing scimitars like a rider avoiding the overhanging branches on a trail. Darius would have seen the fear in his retainers’ eyes-those fearful, flashing whites-as they failed to stop this onslaught. The Great King would have held his breath as another figure on horseback, in the panoply of his royal house, finally intercepted Alexander. There was a brief struggle as the flanks of their horses met, a crunch of metal plates buckling under the weight as well-trained mounts turned around each other. Someone gasped as Alexander’s spear point found a gap in his opponent’s armor. Down went the Great King’s defender-but there would be little time for Darius to mourn the death of his own brother. He would have seen his tormentor turn to face him at last.

The Persian royal guard, the Immortals, had been taken by surprise by Alexander’s lightning maneuver. As they gave ground, Darius was exposed with astonishing ease-a development no one would have expected. But the surprises did not all work to the Macedonians’ advantage: at that time no one knew that Darius was renowned for his skill in single combat. From Cleitus, I learned that Alexander made straight for the royal chariot, made a pass with his stabbing spear…and missed. Darius, who towered above the rest of the battlefield in his high-peaked leather war-bonnet, had a javelin ready. With a barbarous cry, he let loose as Alexander rode by, striking him in the leg just above the knee.

Everything on the battlefield seemed to come to a halt when Alexander was hit. It was as if when he was wounded everyone believed the war would instantly end-that the combatants, their reason for fighting gone, would simply disengage, shake hands, and go home. Only Darius was still in a frenzy, screaming for another javelin. We did not yet know that the Great King took haoma before the battle-an extract of the ephedra plant that was taken with milk. This drug is said to instill feelings of euphoria, and in greater quantities, ecstatic awareness of the hidden secrets of the universe. It also gave great strength, though at the cost of a disordered mind. It was what the Persians used in their worship of their gods, just as the Greeks use wine in our rites of Dionysus. In this sense both Kings came to the battle in a very devout state!

It might have been the haoma that allowed the Great King to make such a remarkable throw. However, when Alexander proved able to pull the javelin out of his leg, the drug’s disadvantage showed: all at once, without even being touched, Darius panicked. Before the Macedonians could organize themselves we were looking at the back of his chariot. The entire mass of the Persian army immediately broke in retreat. Alexander, still looking for a spectacular exit from this life, was stabbing and slashing at anyone in reach.

The day ended much as it had at the Granicus, with the field in the hands of the Macedonians and the ground littered with the bodies of Persians and Greek mercenaries. Alexander, who regretted that his injury was superficial, was restrained by his doctors from giving chase to Darius. The fact that he was bloodied at all was judged to be a disaster by the Macedonians, particularly Ptolemy and Hephaestion; they would have preferred to lose five thousand men than brook any hint of the young conqueror’s mortality. So you can see that they were already thinking in these terms, that the legend must emerge that Alexander was unstoppable because he was a god.

To his shame, Darius abandoned not only his troops but his household to the enemy. By now you have all heard of the luxury Alexander saw in the camp of Darius. The Great King’s field tent was more resplendent than Philip’s royal tomb in Aigai. Darius touched nothing that was not gold or silver-golden cups, golden plates, golden bathtub with working taps, a golden commode for his backside. His nostrils were caressed by golden braziers burning aromatic woods from Arabia; his feet trod on carpets spun of golden thread and as soft as a woman’s thighs. For official functions, he sat on a chryselephantine throne with as many precious gems as stars in the night sky. The Macedonians stood in quiet awe, never having imagined such splendor.

All this gold had an effect on the Macedonians’ willingness to go all the way to Persia. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the question arose of what wonders awaited the enterprising conqueror who took the royal palaces at Susa, Persepolis, or Ecbatana, given that Darius’s field camp was so resplendent. That the Macedonians went so far east because of strategic considerations is at best only a half-truth; the simple promise of loot loomed at least as large for the mid-level officers, without whom Alexander could never had convinced his army to go anywhere.

I cannot pass over in silence how my opponent portrays my remark upon seeing Darius’s tent, “at last we see what it means to be a king.” Again, there is an insinuation here of sinister intent that is more cynical than convincing. Those who were present took it as it was meant, as a joke. Shame on you for making it more than that, Aeschines! As far as I am aware, having a sense of humor is not yet an actionable offense in the courts of the Athenians.