The Nature of Alexander (15 page)

On this advice he kept out of range for some time during which nothing much was happening. Then a sally in strength from the fort began to drive his men off the ring wall; on which he at once dashed to their help at the head of his troop. Soon he was nearly killed by a man who, after surrendering to him and being spared, whipped out a dagger; with his quick reflexes he dodged the blow, and struck home. Whether thinking the omen now fulfilled, or defying it, or just carried away by enthusiasm, he kept in action, till a heavy bolt from a crossbow catapult sank deep into his shoulder. His doctor pulled it out, causing a good deal of haemorrhage, and put on a field dressing which, since Alexander went straight back into the battle, soon slipped off. He fought on, pouring blood under his armour, till he fainted. The wound was serious and kept him out of action for some time, but he directed operations until the city fell.

All good historians have rejected Curtius’ story that the brave Betis was brought before him wounded, refused to bow the knee, and was thereon dragged round the city at his chariot tail. Anyone unconvinced by his
constant generosity to brave enemies, in which he took some pride, may here safely trust his vanity. Achilles, before thus mistreating Hector, had personally killed him in the climactic duel of the epic. Alexander’s wound had kept him from fighting in the final assault at all; he was the last man in the world to put on such an unpleasantly inferior display. The tale is interesting as a typical piece of Athenian propaganda, written by someone who had learned of his Homeric aspirations but knew nothing of his nature at first hand, or was too “committed” to care.

In Egypt he had no campaigning, only a triumphal progress.

Hephaestion with the fleet awaited him at the Delta. The Persian satrap Mazaces, long aware of the Issus débâcle and with no adequate Persian garrison, put a good face on necessity and welcomed Alexander in. Leaving the harbour of Pelusium manned, he marched up the Nile, alongside his fleet, to Memphis.

There can be scarcely a European today not furnished with some visual image of ancient Egypt however trite. It takes an effort of imagination to conceive the pristine impact on Alexander and his men, most of whom had never seen even Athens, of this fabled civilization, a legend since their childhood, as they followed the great river which was its sustainer, arterial road and sacred way; when they reached the towering temples of Memphis, the Pyramids with sides of geometric smoothness, the still unravaged smile of the huge Sphinx. It must have changed the whole scale of their human vision.

Hailed everywhere as deliverer by the Egyptians, he was enthroned as Pharaoh, with the double crown and uraeus, the crossed sceptres of the crook and flail, symbols of the shepherd and the judge. Cartouches survive of “Horus, the strong prince, he who laid hands on the lands
of the foreigners, beloved of Ammon and selected of Ra, son of Ra, Alexandros.” In respect of Egypt and its peoples, by immemorial tradition he was now a god.

He was also the King, by free choice of his subjects. His first action was to sacrifice to the bull god Apis, in the temple where Ochus had speared to death (and, it was said, ordered roast for dinner) the sacred beast which was the divine incarnation. Alexander reverenced all their gods; quite sincerely, for in the tolerant Hellenic way he identified each with some Greek god whose attributes seemed to fit. There was constant traffic between Greece and Egypt, and the priests could probably converse without interpreters.

He did not neglect the Greek world, but held ceremonial games, not only for athletes but—probably with more personal enjoyment—for the performing arts. Crowds of competitors flocked from the Greek cities. This was his first taste of real magnificence; he did not reach the palace of Persia as a raw provincial.

From Memphis he returned down river to the coast, where he had business to transact about his conquests in Asia Minor. Cruising across the Delta, he beached near Lake Mareotis. The spot looked to him just the place for a city; good harbourage, good land, good air, good access to the Nile. So keen was he to get the work begun that he walked over the site, trailing after him architects and engineers, pointing out positions for the marketplace, the temples of Greek and Egyptian gods, the sacred way. Being short of marker white, he accepted some meal from someone resourceful. Birds came to feed on it, from which the seers forecast that the city would prosper, and nourish many strangers; a prediction that Alexandria continues to fulfill. At some time in his eager progress, he must have crossed the site of his own tomb.

“After this,” says Arrian, “he was seized with a longing
to visit Ammon in Siwah.” Though this oracular shrine was renowned throughout the Greek world, it had neither political nor strategic value. No Pharaoh, we are told, had ever been there before. In Persia, Darius was mobilizing; and, Egypt now secure, the sooner he was met the better. Yet on this pilgrimage Alexander was determined. He may have heard things from the priests at Memphis which made it indispensable to him; it is equally likely that he had heard something at Dodona.

Various reasons are offered on his behalf; that Perseus, a maternal forebear, and Heracles, a paternal one, had both sought before great labours the advice of Zeus-Ammon. He was their common ancestor, and therefore Alexander’s. But Arrian adds that he went “hoping to know more truly about himself, or at any rate to say he did.”

He turned from the coast to the dangerous inland route, where, if a dust storm rose, it could engulf an army, and was said once to have done so. As they toiled through the sand, water ran short, but rain came to save them. Ptolemy (here proprietorial) averred that two serpents guided them, speaking with human voices. Before calling him a charlatan it should be remembered that desert sands can emit uncanny sounds. At all events, they reached the green shady oasis of Siwah. The High Priest, used to Greek pilgrims and probably speaking some Greek, hailed Alexander as “Son of Ammon.” This formal address, which by now must have been familiar to him, was noted by his friends, who were admitted to the forecourt after ritual purifications. The divine Pharaoh, whose person could bring only sanctity, went in as he was, and entered the holy of holies quite alone.

The oracle worked on a peculiar principle: that of planchette on an immensely impressive scale. Originating in the Ammon temple at Thebes, its antiquity was
immemorial. The symbol of the god, a round navel-shaped object, was carried in a kind of boat hung with precious vessels; long carrying poles rested on the shoulders of many priests. Under the god’s direction they would turn, halt or bow; from these movements the seer would read the god’s response. (A similar ritual is still carried out in Alexandria by a Muslim sect, though of course without the idol; the devotees say that divine guidance comes as pressure on their shoulders.) This strange procession may have been visible from the courtyard. Its meaning, however, was revealed to Alexander only, within the shrine. If he had indeed intended, as Arrian said, to declare what he had learned about himself, the solemn experience changed his mind. His sole comment was that he had had the answer his soul desired. He never told what the question was.

He is said to have written to Olympias that he would tell her in private when he got back to Macedon. Anything he would tell her, he probably told Hephaestion; if so, he was as silent as the grave to which he took the secret.

If the letter was written, Alexander’s main question must have concerned his origins. From this time, his sense of destiny acquired a daimonic force. Scientific rationalism is here anachronistic. Greeks (including philosophers) saw in all outstanding qualities a touch of the divine. He had excelled all other men again and again in leadership, courage, contrivance, endurance; and what he already felt in himself had been confirmed. He continued to acknowledge Philip as his human father, assuming perhaps a kind of dual fatherhood of seed and soul; a matter he must often have pondered without imparting his thoughts to anyone. But that he did henceforward regard himself as in some sort Ammon’s son is certain, and was commonly known. It was not
irreconcilable with the mortality witnessed by his battle scars; god-begotten men died, but were received into the heavens.

No one, of course, in his lifetime supposed he could have been begotten by the pharaoh Nectanebo. This freak of later legend stems solely from his high prestige in Egypt. Folklore, which can be neither enforced nor bought, should never be ignored.

Alexander returned to Memphis by the ordinary and safer pilgrim route. Here he received Greek embassies graciously, sacrificed to Zeus, held a parade, and more contests for athletes and poets, the latter being at little loss for a theme. Getting down to the business of government, he gave as usual the civil posts to native governors, the garrison commands to officers of his own, and restored all rites and customs which the Persians had suppressed.

At some time in Egypt, Philotas was accused to him, by persons unknown, of some unknown disloyalty. This may have been when his fair captive from Damascus, Antigone, began to talk. Philotas, she widely revealed, was forever bragging that he and Parmenion his father had done all the real work of conquest, though its credit went to The Boy. Such careless gossip hardly suggests devotion; and it cannot have amazed her when the loyal Craterus brought her for a private interview with Alexander. He did nothing about it—it must have struck him as just Philotas’ usual style—merely telling her to warn him of anything serious. She returned to Philotas, in whom she did not confide.

His younger brother, Hector, to whom Alexander had been much attached, had lately lost his life when a crowded ferry foundered in which he was trying to catch up the royal barge. Alexander had given him a splendid funeral. Perhaps there had been a love affair, of which
Philotas had not much approved; and after his bereavement it would be a time for tact.

From Egypt Alexander marched to Tyre, now refortified for Macedon. The Persian fleet, without a base in the Mediterranean, already mostly captured or dispersed, was no further threat. It was time to turn east. He sacrificed to Melkart-Heracles—he had Herculean labours ahead—and held more games. The theatre was splendidly represented, two of its sponsors being tributary kings. One lavish production starred the now famous Thettalus, Alexander’s devoted envoy to Caria. Keeping his eager partisanship to himself, he was bitterly disappointed when the judges, whom he had scrupulously refrained from nudging, gave someone else the award. Only later in private did he confess he would have given half he had to see Thettalus win the crown.

It was in the same spirit, and at about this time, that he made one of his few bad misjudgments of men. Among his friends exiled by Philip had been one Harpalus, a Macedonian aristocrat; whose attachment can only have been genuine, for Alexander could then offer no material return. Those days were over; Harpalus, recalled at the accession, and prevented by lameness from serving in war, was put straight into a treasury appointment. He had probably never had his hands on money before. During the Issus phase of the campaign he had got into some unspecified scrape, presumably financial, and gone off to Greece with an obscure accomplice. Alexander, loyal and grateful, apparently convinced he had been led astray, sent a “come back, all is forgiven” message. He reappeared; he must have had considerable address, was a cultivated person on whom Alexander relied to send him books, and may really have been touched and penitent. To prove that all was indeed forgiven,
Alexander returned this luxury-loving man to the temptations which had lately overset him, and put him in charge of the whole army chest. For a time he accompanied the expedition. Lack of opportunity, and the old easy charm, confirmed Alexander’s misplaced confidence. Disillusion would be long delayed.

Western Asia, Egypt, and all his communications with Macedon were now secure. He turned east to meet Darius; leaving forever the Greek world, except what he took with him.

F
ROM THIS TIME ON
, Alexander’s chroniclers record outstanding events, between which weeks will have passed, occupied in the mere conveyance of a huge court, administration and army from place to place, or planning and populating a new city, or resting his men after a hard campaign. Over the vast and varied landscapes of Asia, amid the excitements of exploration and war, he evolved a kind of daily life which he pursued when nothing interfered with it. Plutarch has most to say of it, probably drawing on the vanished memoirs of Chares, the court chamberlain.

Alexander’s day began with public prayers. His priesthood, unlike his privilege of divinity, was a function of his human kingship. His personal celebrations were for great events; but regularly as a matter of course he recommended his people to the gods. Almost to the day of his death, when so ill he had to be carried in a litter to the shrine, he made the morning libation.

After this he “took breakfast sitting” (in a chair, not on a dining couch); then spent the day in “hunting, administering justice, managing army business, or reading.” He was a keen hunter, intrigued by changes of country and its game; while the army lumbered along at foot pace he would pass his time at the chase. He lived close to the long ages of man in which wild animals
were vital sources of food, and dangerous enemies; as Xenophon recognized when he called the sport “the image of war.”

“Administering justice” was already an enormous task. First there were the affairs of Macedon. Antipater was firm and capable, but Olympias detested him; her complaints, accusations and intrigues followed Alexander everywhere. She was jealous of his friends; furiously jealous of Hephaestion. Alexander, who wrote to her faithfully and sent her a stream of lavish gifts, occasionally came to the end of his patience, and is quoted as once remarking that she charged pretty high rent for the nine months’ lodging she had given him. He even allowed himself to be seen in public sharing one of her letters with Hephaestion; which, considering how it would have enraged her, betrays some exasperation.