The Novels of Alexander the Great: Fire From Heaven, the Persian Boy, and Funeral Games

319 B.C.

BESIDE THE GREAT PALACE of Archelaos at Pella stood Antipatros’ house. It was solid but unpretentious; scrupulously correct, he had always avoided a regal style. Its only adornments were a columned portico and a terrace.

The house was hushed and closed. Straw and rushes were laid on the terrace paving. Small groups of people stood at decent distances, to watch the comings and goings of the doctors and the kin: townspeople drawn by curiosity and the sense of drama; guest-friends awaiting the signal for condolence and funeral plans; dealers in mourning-wreaths and grave-goods. Hovering more discreetly, or represented by spies, were the consuls of client cities, who had the most at stake.

Nobody knew who would inherit power when the old man unclenched at last his grasp of life, or whether his policies would be continued. His last action, before he took to his bed, had been to hang two envoys bringing a petition from Athens, a father and son who he found had corresponded with Perdikkas. Neither age nor his wasting sickness had softened Antipatros. Now the watchers scanned, whenever it appeared, the set frowning face of his son Kassandros, trying to read the omens.

Near by in the palace, that famous wonder of the north, where both the Kings maintained their separate households, the tension was like the string of a drawn bow.

Roxane stood in her window, looking from behind a curtain at the silent crowd. She had never felt at home in Macedon. The mother of Alexander had not been there to receive her or admire her son, having vowed, it seemed, never to set foot in Macedon while Antipatros lived. She was still in Dodona. To Roxane the Regent had behaved with formal courtesy; but before they had crossed the Hellespont he had sent her eunuchs home. They would cause her, he told her, to be taken for a barbarian, and people would ill-use them. She was now fluent in Greek, and could be attended by Macedonian ladies. The ladies had instructed her, politely, in the local customs. Politely, they had dressed her suitably; and, very politely, made it clear that she spoiled her son. In Macedon, boys were made ready to be men.

He was now four, and in this foreign place inclined to cling to her; she in her loneliness could hardly bear him out of her sight. Soon Antipatros had reappeared—no doubt the women were his spies—and declared himself amazed that Alexander’s son should have only a few words of Greek. It was time that he had a pedagogue. This person arrived next day.

The customary sober slave, Antipatros had decided, was not enough. He had chosen a vigorous young patrician, already at twenty-five a veteran of the Greek rebellion. Antipatros had noticed the strictness of his army discipline. He had had no occasion to notice that he was fond of children.

It had been the dream of Kebes’ life to fight under Alexander; he had been drafted to go with the contingent Antipatros would have brought to Babylon, He had borne in silence his shattered hopes, and performed his distasteful duty of fighting fellow-Greeks instead, though his men thought him rather dour. From habit rather than intent he had accepted his appointment dourly, betraying nothing to the Regent of the elation within.

The first sight of the dark-haired, soft-skinned, plump child had disappointed him; but he had not expected an Alexander in little. For the mother he had been prepared. She clearly supposed that once out of her care her son would be bullied and beaten; the child, seeing he was expected to be frightened, struggled and whined. Taken out firmly without fuss, he displayed a lively curiosity and swiftly forgot his tears.

Kebes knew the maxim of the famous Spartan nurses: never expose a small child to fear, let him enter confidently on boyhood. By small safe stages, he introduced his charge to horses, to large dogs, to the noise of soldiers drilling. Roxane, waiting at home to comfort her ill-used child, found him full of himself, trying to describe the delights of his morning, for which he knew only Greek.

He picked up the language quickly. Soon he was talking incessantly of his father. Roxane had told him he was the son of the world’s most powerful king; Kebes related the legendary exploits. He himself had been a boy of ten when Alexander crossed to Asia; he had seen him in the height of his glowing youth, and imagined the rest. If the child was still too small to emulate, he could already learn to aspire.

Kebes had been happy in his work. Now, waiting with the rest before the straw-strewn terrace, he felt the uncertain future shadowing his achievement. Had the child, after all, any more in him than boys at home whom he had known at the same age? Had the great days gone forever? What world would he and his like inherit?

He was brooding on this when the ritual wails began.

Roxane heard them from her window, saw the waiting people turning to one another, and went in to pace her room, pausing sometimes to clutch the child to her breast. Alarmed, he asked what was the matter, getting no answer but, “What will become of us now?”

Five years before, in the summer palace of Ekbatana, Alexander had told her of Kassandros, the Regent’s heir, whom he had left behind in Macedon from fear of treachery. When Alexander died he had been in Babylon; very likely he had had him poisoned. In Pella he had come to pay his respects to her, professedly on behalf of his sick father; really, no doubt, to look at Alexander’s son. He had been civil, but unmeaningly, merely accounting for his presence; she had hated and feared his reddish freckled face, his harsh pale eyes, his look of undisclosed purpose. Today she was more frightened than during the mutiny in Syria. If only she could have stayed in Babylon, in a world she knew, among people she could understand!

Kassandros in the death-chamber stared with embittered anger at his father’s shrunken corpse. He could not bring himself to lean and close his eyes; an old aunt, looking reproach, pressed down the withered lids and pulled up the blanket.

Across the bed from him stood stolid, fifty-year-old Polyperchon, his grey stubbled chin unshaven from the night-watch; making a matter-of-fact gesture of respectful grief, his mind already on his new responsibilities. To him, not to Kassandros, Antipatros had bequeathed the guardianship of the Kings. Thorough to the last, before he drifted into coma he had sent for all the chief noblemen to witness his intent, and elicited their oath to vote for it at Assembly.

He had been senseless since yesterday; the ceasing of the breath was a mere formality. Polyperchon, who had respected him, was glad to end the tiring vigil and get to business, which was in arrears. He had not sought his new charge; Antipatros had had to plead with him. It had been shocking and terrible, like seeing his own stern father groveling at his feet.

“Do this for me,” he had wheezed. “Old friend, I beg you.” Polyperchon was not even an old friend; he had been in Asia with Alexander until he rode back with Krateros. He had been in Macedon when Alexander died, and made himself useful in the southern rebellion. While the Regent had been away in nearer Asia fetching home the Kings, Polyperchon had been left as deputy. That had been the start of it.

“I took my oath to Philip.” The dying man had cleared his throat, even that an effort. His voice rustled like dry reeds. “And to his heirs. I will not”—he choked, and paused—“be forsworn by my son. I know him. I know what … Promise me, friend. Swear by the Styx. I beg you, Polyperchon.” In the end he had sworn, only to stop it and escape. Now he was bound.

As Antipatros’ last gasps tainted the air, he could feel Kassandros’ hatred flowing out at him across the body. Well, he had faced hard men under Philip at Chaironeia, under Alexander at Issos and Gaugamela. He had not risen above brigade commander, yet Alexander had picked him for the Bodyguard, and trust went no higher than that. Polyperchon, he had said, holds on.

Soon he must make himself known to the royal households, taking his eldest son; an Alexandras, he liked to think, who would bring no discredit on the name. Kassandros, who cared greatly what people thought of him, could at least be trusted to put on a handsome funeral.

Eurydike had been out riding when the Regent died. She had known the news was near; when she had had it, she would be pent in the dreary, stifling rites of mourning, which it would be indecent to neglect.

For company on her ride she had a couple of grooms, and a strapping young lady of her household, chosen only because she was a hill-woman and rode well. The days of her cavalry escorts were over; Antipatros had had her vigilantly watched for conspiracy with soldiers. Only Philip himself, by bursting into tears, had persuaded him to leave old Konon. Even so, she sometimes got salutes, and still acknowledged them.

Turning back towards Pella with a westering sun behind her, the hill-shadows creeping out over the lagoon, she felt a stirring of destiny, a change of pace in the wheel of fortune. It was not without hope that she had awaited the cries of mourning.

To her, as well as to Roxane, Kassandros had paid his respects during his father’s illness. Formally speaking, he had paid them to the King her husband; but with some finesse had conversed respectfully with Philip, while making it clear that his words were meant for her. The looks which, to Roxane, had seemed fierce and savage, were to Eurydike those of a fellow-countryman; not notable for beauty, but engraved with resolution and strength. He would have, no doubt, his father’s hardness; but also his father’s competence.

She had assumed, since he clearly did so, that he would succeed his father. She had known what he meant when he said that the Macedonians were fortunate in having one king of the true blood, and a queen who was no less so. He had hated Alexander, he would never allow the barbarian’s child to rule. It had seemed to her that they understood each other.

The news of Polyperchon’s election had disconcerted her. She had never met him, barely knew him by sight. Now, when she came back from her ride, she found him in the royal rooms, talking with Philip.

He must have been there some time. Philip seemed quite at ease with him, and was telling him a rambling story about snakes in India. “Konon found it under my bath. He killed it with a stick. He said the little ones were the worst.”

“Quite right, sir. They could get into a boot, a man of mine died of it.” He turned to Eurydike, complimented her on her husband’s health, begged her to call on him if he could be of service, and took his leave. Clearly it was too soon, with the Regent still unburied, to ask him about his plans; but she was angry that he had told her nothing, and presented himself to Philip without regard for her absence.

All through the long pompous funeral rites, walking in the procession with shorn hair and ash on her black dress, adding her wail to the chant of lamentation, she scanned Kassandros’ face, whenever he came in sight, for some hint of purpose. It was only solid, correct, shaped for the occasion.

Later, when the men went to the pyre to burn the body, and she stood apart with the women, she heard a loud cry, and saw some kind of stir beside the fire. Then Konon was running through all the men of rank towards it. Soon he came out, with a couple of the guard of honor, carrying Philip, with flaccid limbs and open mouth. Lagging, ashamed, she went over and walked with them towards the palace.

“Madam,” Konon muttered, “if you could speak to the General. He’s not used to the King, he doesn’t know what upsets him. I had a word with him, but he told me to remember my place.”

“I will tell him.” With the back of her head, she could feel scornful Roxane looking after her. One day, she thought, you will not make light of me.

In the palace, Konon undressed Philip, washed him—in the fit he had wetted his robe—and put him to bed. Eurydike in her room took off her mourning dress and combed the soft wood-ash from her ritually disheveled hair. She thought, He is my husband. I knew what he was before I took him. I did it from free choice; so I am bound to him in honor. My mother would tell me so.

She called for a warm egg posset with a splash of wine, and took it in to him. Konon had gone off with the dirty clothes. He looked up at her pleading, like a sick dog at a hard master. “See,” she said, “I have brought you something nice. Never mind that you were taken ill, you couldn’t help it. Many people don’t like to watch a funeral pyre.”

He looked at her thankfully and put his face to the bowl. He was glad that she asked no questions. The last thing he remembered, before the drumbeat in his head and the terrible white light, was the beard of the corpse blackening and stinking in the fire. It had brought back to him a day a long time ago, before he went journeying with Alexander. That had been the funeral of the King, so they had told him, but he had not known whom they meant. They had cut short his hair and put a black robe on him and dirtied his face, and made him walk with a lot of people crying. And there was his frightening father, whom he had not seen for years, lying on a bed of logs and brushwood, with a grand bedspread, grim-faced and dead. He had never seen a dead man before. Alexander was there. He too had had a haircut, the fair crop shone in the sun. He had made a speech, quite a long one, about what the King had done for the Macedonians; then, suddenly, he had taken a torch from someone who had been holding it, and stuck it in among the brushwood. Horrified, Philip had watched as the flames rushed up, roaring and crackling, running along the edges of the embroidered pall, then bursting through it; then the hair and the beard … For a long time afterwards, he would wake with a scream in the night, and could tell no one that he had dreamed of his burning father.

The polished marble doors closed on Antipatros’ tomb, and an uneasy calm fell upon Macedon.

Polyperchon gave out that he had no wish for arbitrary powers. Antipatros had governed for an absent ruler. It was now proper that the chief men should share his counsels. Many Macedonians approved this sign of antique virtue. Some others said that Polyperchon was incapable of decision and wished to avoid too much responsibility.

The calm became easier. Every eye was upon Kassandros.

His father had not wholly passed him over. He had been appointed Chiliarch, Polyperchon’s second in command, a rank to which Alexander had given high prestige. Would he be content with it? Men watched his rufous impassive face as he came and went in Pella, and said to each other that he had never been a man to swallow slights.

However, having buried his father he went quietly about his business through the mourning month. When it was up, he paid his respects to Philip and Eurydike.

“Greet him,” she said to her husband when he was announced, “and then don’t talk. It may be important.”

Kassandros’ greetings to the King were brief. He addressed himself to the Queen. “I shall be gone for a time; I am going to our country place. I have had a good deal to try me; now I mean to make up a hunting party of old friends, and forget public affairs.”

She wished him well with it. He did not miss the questioning in her eyes.

“Your goodwill,” he said, “has been a solace and support to me. You and the King may count on me in these troubled times. You, sir”—he turned to Philip—“are your father’s undoubted son. Your mother’s life was never a public scandal.” To Eurydike he said, “As no doubt you know, there have always been doubts about the birth of Alexander.”

When he had gone, Philip said, “What did he mean about Alexander?”

“Never mind. I am not sure what he meant. We shall find out later.”

Antipatros’ country place was an old run-down hill-fort, overlooking a well-managed rich estate. He had lived at Pella, and run the land with a bailiff. His sons had used the place for hunting parties, such as this one had, till now, appeared to be.

In the upper room of the rude keep a fire was burning on the round hearth under the smoke-hole; autumn nights were sharp in the hills. Around it, on old benches or sheepskin-covered stools, sat a dozen or so of youngish men, dressed in the day’s leather and tough-woven wool, smelling of the horses which could be heard stirring and champing on the floor below, where grooms speaking Thracian were mending and waxing tack.

Kassandros, a red man in the red firelight, sat by his brother Nikanor. Iollas had died soon after he got home from Asia, of a quartan fever picked up in the Babylonian swamps; he had gone down quickly, showing little fight. The fourth brother, Alexarchos, had not been invited. He was learned, slightly mad, and mainly employed in inventing a new language for a Utopian state he had seen in visions. Besides his uselessness, he could not be trusted to hold his tongue.

Kassandros said, “We’ve been here three days and no one’s come spying. We can begin to move. Derdas, Atheas, can you start early tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said the two men across the hearth.

“Get fresh horses at Abdera, Ainos; Amphipolis if you must. Take care at Amphipolis, keep away from the garrison, someone might know you. Simas and Antiphon can start next day. Keep a day between you on the road. Two men aren’t noticed, four make people look.”

Derdas said, “And the message for Antigonos?”

“I’ll give you a letter. You’ll be safe enough if you don’t draw notice. Polyperchon’s a blockhead. I’m hunting, good, he can go to sleep again. When Antigonos reads the letter, tell him anything he wants to know.”

They had been hunting boar in the woods all day, to keep up appearances; soon afterwards the party went off to bed, at the far end of the big room behind a dressed hide curtain. Kassandros and Nikanor lingered by the hearth, their soft voices muted by the stable sounds below.

Nikanor was a tall, lean, sandy-colored man; a capable soldier, who stood by the family loyalties and feuds and looked no further. He said, “Are you sure you can trust Antigonos? He wants more than he has, that’s plain.”

“That’s why I can trust him. While he’s stretching out in Asia, he’ll be glad to have Polyperchon kept busy in Greece. He’ll leave me Macedon; he knows Asia will take him all his time.”

Nikanor scratched at his head; one seemed always to pick up lice on a hunting party. He caught one and dropped it in the fire. “Are you sure of the girl? She’d be as dangerous as Antigonos, if she knew how. She made trouble enough for Father, and for Perdikkas before that. But for her, Philip would be a nothing.”

“M-m,” said Kassandros reflectively. “That’s why I asked you to watch her while I’m gone. I told her nothing, of course. She’ll take our side, to keep out the barbarian’s child. She showed me that.”

“Good so far. But she’s the King’s wife and she means to be reigning Queen.”

“Yes. With her descent, I daresay I shall need to marry her.”

Nikanoi’s pale eyebrows rose. “And Philip?”

Kassandros made a simple gesture.

“I wonder,” said Nikanor thoughtfully, “if she’d consent to that.”

“Oh, I daresay not. But when it’s done, she won’t settle down with the loom and the needle, it’s not in her. She’ll marry me sure enough. Then she can behave herself. Or …” He made the gesture again.

Nikanor shrugged. “Then what about Thessalonike? I thought you’d settled for her. She’s Philip’s daughter, not his granddaughter.”

“Yes, but the blood’s only on the father’s side. Eurydike first. When I’m King I can marry both. Old Philip would have made nothing of that.”

“You’re sure of your luck,” Nikanor said uneasily.

“Yes. Ever since Babylon, I’ve known that my time has come.”

A half-month later, towards evening on a day of mist and rain, Polyperchon came to the palace, urgently demanding to see the King.

He barely waited to be announced. Philip, with Konon’s help, was still gathering up an arrangement of his stones which he had been elaborating all day. Eurydike, who had been waxing the leather of her cuirass, had no time to hide that either. She looked resentfully at Polyperchon, who bowed formally, having first saluted the King.

“I’ve nearly put it away,” said Philip apologetically. “It was a Persian paradise.”

“Sir. I must ask your presence at a council of state tomorrow.”

Philip looked at him in horror. “I won’t make a speech. I don’t want to make a speech.”

“You need not, sir; only assent when the rest have voted.”

“On what?” asked Eurydike sharply.

Polyperchon, a Macedonian in the old tradition, thought, A pity Amyntas lived long enough to beget this meddlesome bitch. “Madam. We have news that Kassandros has crossed to Asia, and that Antigonos has welcomed him.”

“What?” she said, startled. “I understood he was hunting on his estate.”

“That,” said Polyperchon grimly, “is what he wished us to understand. We may now understand that we are at war. Sir, please be ready at sunup; I will come and escort you. Madam.” He bowed, about to depart.

“Wait!” she said angrily. “With whom is Kassandros at war?”

He turned on the threshold. “With the Macedonians. They voted to obey his father, who had thought him unfit to govern them.”

“I wish to attend the council.”

Polyperchon jutted at her his grizzled beard. “I regret, madam. That is not the custom of the Macedonians. I wish you good night.” He strode out. He was furious with himself for not having had Kassandros watched; but at least he need not put up with insolence from a woman.

The council of state considered the country’s dangers and found them grave. Kassandros, it was clear, would only stay in Asia to get the forces he needed. Then he would make for Greece.

Since the last years of Philip’s reign, and all through Alexander’s, the Greek states had been governed as Macedon ordained. Democrat leaders had been exiled, the franchise confined to men of property, whose oligarch leaders had to be pro-Macedonian. Alexander had been a long way off, and Antipatros had had a free hand. Since his supporters had enriched themselves at the expense of the many exiles, there had been violent consternation when Alexander, returning from the wilderness, had ordered them brought home and their lands restored. He had summoned the Regent to report to him in Babylon; Kassandros had gone instead. When Alexander died, the Greeks had risen, but Antipatros had crushed them. The cities, therefore, were still governed by his satellites, whose support for his son would be a matter of course.

All this time, the Greek envoys were hanging about in Pella, waiting, as they had done since the funeral, to learn the policy of the new regime towards their various states. They were now hastily summoned, and handed a royal proclamation. Much had been done in Greece, it said, which Alexander had never sanctioned. They could now with the goodwill of the Kings, his heirs, restore their democratic constitutions, expel their oligarchs, or execute them if desired. All their citizen rights would be defended, in return for loyalty to the Kings.

Polyperchon, escorting Philip from the council chamber, explained these decisions to Eurydike with punctilious care. Like Nikanor, he had reflected that she had a great capacity for mischief. She should not be idly provoked.

She listened without much comment. While the council deliberated, she too had had time for thought.

“A dog came in,” said Philip as soon as his mentor had gone. “He had a great bone, a raw one. I said to them, he must have stolen it from the kitchen.”

“Yes, Philip. Quiet now, I must think.”

She had guessed right, then; when Kassandros came to see her, he had been offering her alliance. If he won this war, he would depose the child of the barbarian, assume the guardianship, enthrone Philip and herself. He had spoken to her as an equal. He would make her a queen.

“Why,” asked Philip plaintively, “do you keep walking about?”

“You must change your good robe, you will get it dirty. Konon, are you there? Please help the King.”

She paced the room with its carved windows and great painted inner wall, covered with a life-sized mural of the sack, of Troy. Agamemnon was carrying off Kassandra, shrieking, from the sanctuary; the wooden horse loomed between the gate-towers; in the foreground, at the household altar, Priam was lying in his blood; Andromache clasped to her bosom her dead child. All the background was fighting, flames and blood. It was an antique piece, the work of Zeuxis, commissioned by Archelaos when he built the palace.

About the hearth with its worn old stones clung faded aromatic odors, a fume of ancient burnings, and curious stains. It had been, for many years, the room of Queen Olympias. Much magic, people used to say, had been worked in it. Her sacred snakes had had their basket by this hearth, her spells their hiding-places. One or two were indeed still where she had left them, for she meant to return. Eurydike only knew that the room had a presence of its own.

Striding about it, she pondered her unspoken bargain with Kassandros, and for the first time thought, What then?

Only the child of the barbarian could beget a new generation. When he had been driven out, she and Philip would reign alone. Who would succeed them?

Who fitter than the grandchild of Philip and Perdikkas to carry on their line? To do that, she could put up with childbirth. For a moment she thought shrinkingly of teaching Philip; after all, there were women in every city who for a drachma put up with worse. But no, she could not. Besides, what if he should sire a fool?

If I were a man! she thought. On the hearth a bright fire of dry lichened apple-wood was burning, for winter was drawing on. The blackened stones under the fire-basket released drifts of old tainted incense in the heat. If I were a king, I could marry twice if I chose, our kings have often done so. A vivid recollection came to her of Kassandros’ powerful presence. He had offered to be her friend … But then, there was Philip.

For a moment, recalling that moment of silent speech, she was on the edge of comprehension. To the last tenant of this room it would have been a simple thing, a matter of ways and means. Eurydike felt it loom, and flinched away from it. To see it must be to choose, yes or no, and she would not. She only said to herself that she must be able to depend upon Kassandros, and it was useless to think too far ahead. But the smell of the old myrrh in the stones was like the smoke of the hidden thought, buried under the smoldering embers, waiting its time.