Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great (27 page)

At this point Black Cleitus slammed his drinking cup to the table. Looking first to me, he declared that foreigners who had tasted defeat at Philip’s hand should be the last to belittle him. The same applied to the son who owed his very throne to his father.

“I have served with both,” Cleitus went on, with stunning indiscretion, “and I can tell you that there is no comparison. Philip waged war and won against free Greeks who fought for their very homes, gods, families. Not mercenaries in the pay of painted, perfumed, pantaloon-wearing orientals!

“Alexander, besides, owes the core of his army, his tactics in melee and in siegecraft, entirely to Philip. Without the fall of Methone, there would have been no Tyre!” Indeed, Cleitus went on, such a superb army would conquer no matter who was in charge. The proof was Antipater’s recent battle against the Spartan rebels at Megalopolis, which was fought around the time of Gaugamela. “Imagine that!” mocked Cleitus. “A victory that the Macedonians managed to scrape together without the divine Alexander!”

Now all understood that Black Cleitus, who favored one of those deep Spartan canteens, had drunk more than anybody. He had fallen silent, and though nobody yet dared speak, there was still time for him to make light of it all, as if his insults were mere campfire humor, or at least to dismiss himself for sickness, and have everything forgotten. Alexander, tight-lipped, did not reply to any of it, but governed his outrage, merely summoning his servant to freshen his cup. But Ptolemy opened his baleful mouth again, and the moment for a reprieve was lost.

“Philip was no great individual warrior, while Alexander exceeds us all in his zeal for battle. Surely our friend will admit as much, will he not?”

Cleitus admitted nothing. “On the contrary,” he declared, “if it had not been for this very hand—the one at the end of my arm—the great Alexander would have been dead at the Granicus, and Darius still on his throne at Susa!”

With that, Alexander leapt from his cushion to throttle Cleitus. Hephaestion, Craterus and Ptolemy held him back, which unfortunately left the drunk to continue his tirade, boasting that perhaps Alexander should prostrate himself to him, given that he owed Cleitus his very life. Alexander was so vexed that he was literally sputtering with rage, begging for a sword to kill the man. Cleitus was rushed out of the room before he could say anything more.

But as it is so common in these kinds of confrontations, the alcoholic kind, one of the parties could not let a bad situation rest. The remaining symposiasts had managed to calm Alexander down, edging him away from the table to bed, when Craterus and Ptolemy returned, thinking they had delivered Cleitus to his valet. There was a commotion outside the tent, and Cleitus burst in again—this time without his tunic. Tearing off his undergarments, he commenced to show everyone his gray and sagging testicles.

“Since you prefer men without nuts, Alexander, take those of a true patriot of Macedon!”

This insult rooted everyone to their spots. Unrestrained, Alexander leapt up and snatched a javelin from a guard. His throw was dead on, piercing his future governor of Bactria through the chest; Cleitus collapsed with his hands still grasping his balls.

So much for the story you all know. What you may not have heard about, however, is the trouble Alexander endured from the other side—from Persians and Medes who objected violently to what they saw as the rank disrespect of their King by wine-soaked brutes like Cleitus. I am thinking in particular of a Persian noble named Rathaeshtar, who had estates in Pisidia and fought with distinction on behalf of the Great King at the Granicus. Before Issus, he switched allegiance to Alexander, albeit at great personal risk to himself. Rathaeshtar was invaluable in providing information about Persian tactics, and about the lay of the country around the Cilician Gates. At Issus, he led his armored cavalry beside Alexander’s, and proved his valor by coming away with a shoulder wound. The King was very pleased with this Persian, for he had exactly the skills and the spirit Alexander would need to help his kingdom endure. That he would receive a choice governorship was a certainty.

All that ended when Rathaeshtar saw something he didn’t like at court. Before witnesses, old Cleitus not only failed to prostrate himself before the Lord of Asia, but, in a fatherly but ill-timed gesture,
patted Alexander’s back
. The Persian bidded his time while in the King’s tent, though no doubt seething within, and confronted Cleitus when he left. Though I did not see it, I am told that Cleitus laughed and waved Rathaeshtar aside. When the Persian pressed his complaint, Cleitus shoved the man and drew his sword. At this point a fight was inevitable: the honor of Persian nobility, which was their greatest possession, could permit no other end. Rathaeshtar held his scimitar, but as his shoulder was not healed from the wound he got defending Alexander at Issus, he could not lift it. That their duel was not a fair match did not restrain Cleitus. With his opponent standing defenseless, the old general cut him down without a second thought. He then wiped his sword on the clothes of the dead man, spat on the body, and went off for a good meal in the officer’s mess. At the table, he boasted and mocked the funeral rites of the Persians.

“He’s as dead as Cyrus the Great! Better fetch the dog food!”

Alexander was furious when he heard the news. But since Rathaeshtar met his end on a dispute of honor between two officers, he could do nothing then to punish Cleitus. I leave it to you to decide whether this incident has any bearing on what occurred later.

XIII.

Alexander was as sentimental a drunk as Cleitus was an angry one. Blaming himself for his quarrel with his old companion, he wept openly as they led him to his bed. Nor did his dejection lift when his head cleared: his army was unnerved to hear the bitter sobs of the King of Asia through the tent fabric for three whole days, bewailing the loss of his faithful right arm, begging the forgiveness of Cleitus’s sister Lanice, who was once Alexander’s wet nurse. “You lent me your sweet breast, and see how I’ve repaid you, with the death of your very own brother!” he cried. When gently reminded of the public duties of his kingship, he refused to appear before anyone, saying that a murderer of his friends deserved no crown.

He ate and drank nothing. Most worrying, the local tribes between the Oxus and the Jaxartes rivers were in open revolt, using raiding tactics to harass Macedonian garrisons. Informed of these attacks, which usually provoked him to immediate action, Alexander only sank into a deeper state of immobility.

Aeschines is correct to say that we all feared for his sanity. It is also true that Hephaestion was beside himself with worry, and that Bagoas attempted, but failed, to lift the king out of his funk. It was interesting to me that another person who might have helped, the divine Thais, did not make an appearance at this desperate hour. By that time she was already adorning the tent of Ptolemy, who came to me for the first time as a supplicant.

“We want you to go to him, because he has an affinity for scribblers.”

“Thais might do better.”

Ptolemy ignored this suggestion, but went on somewhat darkly:

“We still need him. Go now.”

Of the precise identity of ‘we’, and the nature of their need, I chose not to ask, but did what I was told.

For my part, I truly believed Alexander would harm himself. For the first time, then, I built up in his mind the idea that he was not only a god, but that he partook of the prerogatives of Zeus himself. Maybe this is what Aeschines is basing his story upon—he gets it so wrong it is hard to tell. For we did not speak throughout the day, but for less than an hour, and I did not meet with him before Sisygambus did, but after.

I began by alluding to Hesiod, who describes the goddess of justice—Dike—as the companion of Alexander’s divine father, Zeus. Where justice points out the crookedness in a man’s heart, the Father deals out retribution. But would it not be implausible, I suggested, if the king of heaven merely did what Dike told him to do, without expecting any service rendered to him in return? Clearly, Dike sits at Zeus’s right hand not only to dictate, but to watch and heed the acts of the god. Those acts are the very standards by which justice is measured. It can only be agreed, then, that a king’s acts must be just, simply because he has done them.

Alexander looked askance at me.

“Tell me plainly what you are saying, Machon. Do you think me entitled to murder my friends?”

“I suggest that is not the way to think of it.”

“The murder?”

“Your privileges have nothing to do with who you are, personally. Think of Darius…what sort of man was he? Yet to the Persians he was the pillar holding up the vault of the sky. Someone must set the limits who is not submerged by them. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise?”

“The men around you will drown.”

Alexander sat up on the cushions. Those eyes, so wide-set they seemed to be staring at me from around both sides of a corner, fixed on me with a peculiar sadness.

“I believe, my dear Machon, that you will come to regret making this argument to me.”

“By my oath to my countrymen, I can offer you only the truth,” I said.

“So be it, then.”

At the risk of seeming to magnify my influence, it did appear that from this point Alexander fought with a new ferocity. From his base at Marakanda, he waged a war of extermination against his enemies. The natives there had little taste for pitched battle, but instead bled the Macedonians white by attacking Alexander’s garrisons, supply caravans, and foundations. One chieftain in particular, Spitamenes, led a clever campaign of raids that tied down a Greek army ten times the size of his own. All but the largest concentrations of troops were targets: in a disaster that was never reported to the rest of the army, Spitamenes’ cavalry slaughtered 2000 Foot Companions and 300 cavalry at the Zeravshan River. But such losses could not be hidden for long. The Macedonians began to whisper of a war that would never end.

Alexander was comprehensively cruel in his reprisals. As a matter of policy, all the males of any town or village suspected of aiding Spitamenes were slaughtered. The Macedonians sent out small groups of mobile raiders who saw little success against Spitamenes, but were very good at terrifying the defenseless. Food stores were appropriated or destroyed, fields burned, families scattered. When Alexander at last marched for the Indus it was because he left little intact behind him. Spitamenes himself was finally betrayed and murdered, just as Darius and Bessus had been in their turn.

The chiefs of Sogdia were particularly contemptuous of any central authority, due in large part to their possession of several rock-cut fortresses that had never been taken by storm. The biggest of these was known simply as the Rock of Sogdia—a great stone pinnacle five stades high, with sheer walls and a snow-capped peak. The fortress of the chief, Oxyartes, was chiseled into the Rock, with no approach except along a narrow ledge. It had never been attacked by the Persians, much less taken. For this reason alone Alexander burned to make it his.

When the Macedonians arrived, Alexander was visited by emissaries of the Sogdian chief, cheekily demanding to know why the Greeks had violated
his
—that is, Oxyartes’s—territory. Alexander, through his interpreter, demanded the surrender of the Rock, on pain of death for all upon it. At this, the emissaries examined the backs of the Macedonians, as if assuring themselves of some fact.

“What are you doing?” the King asked them.

“You appear to have no wings,” they replied, “so your threats mean nothing to us!”

This remark reminded Alexander of the arrogance of the Tyrians, before he humbled their city. He told the emissaries to prepare their defenses for a siege. They laughed at him, asking what rock ever needed preparation to resist the wind? The fortress, they pointed out, was too high to be troubled by catapults or missile weapons of any kind. It was also blessed with abundant snowmelt and enough supplies to outlast a twenty-year assault. Alexander reminded them of similar boasts at Tyre and Gaza. The emissaries’ reply was a final insult, suggesting a place for the Macedonians to encamp that was sheltered from driven snow in the winter and received cool breezes in the summer—“for your pride will keep you here a very long time,” they assured him.