Virtues of War (29 page)

At this I break down like a child. I know at once what the physician means. We talk all night, he and I and Tigranes and Hephaestion.

What distresses me so about the East, I declare, is the misery of her people and the supineness with which they endure it. “Is it I who am mad, who cannot bear their woe, or they, who can? Are freedom and aspiration but bubbles upon a timeless sea of suffering? I cannot tell you the state of gloom this has cast me into.”

Cannot East and West be yoked, I ask. Can't we of Europe take wisdom from Asia, and she learn liberty from us?

“In hours of consternation,” Tigranes says, “I have often found a clue among children and horses. Perhaps your answer, Alexander, resides with these.”

I ask what he means.

“Your aim will never succeed with the standing generation. They are too bound up in their ways. But with the rising generation . . .”

I beg him to continue.

“Marry your men to our women, Alexander. Take a Persian bride yourself. You must not make whores of the daughters of Persia, but wives. It will work! In a single generation, the heirs of such unions will compose a freshly minted race, which cannot disown either of its progenitors without disowning itself.”

In the meantime, Tigranes urges, I must not pursue Darius as a prize of conquest; rather, tender to him offices of reconciliation and accord. Restore him to his throne and make him my friend and ally. “Do not degrade the noble order of Persia, Alexander, but integrate her champions and commons into your corps-at-arms and from these—Persians and Macedonians alike—appoint men of integrity to administer your empire with justice.”

He will raise a regiment of these Descendants, Tigranes pledges. “It will be my honor to assist at the nativity of this New World, and I swear to you, my lord, I can bring to its cause many and noble, whose despair would lift at once at such a prospect.”

On the fourteenth day Parmenio arrives from Babylon. Somehow he has learned of my conversations with Tigranes. He conducts me aside like a father. Have I taken leave of my senses? The army of Macedon will not stand me treating Persians as equals. “Depart this site of folly at once, Alexander. Every hour you remain renders those who love you more anguished and distraught.”

These are men of the East, Parmenio reminds me, of whom my illustrious tutor Aristotle admonished me:

Behave to the Greeks like a leader, but to the barbarians like a master.

And of whom the Spartan king Agesilaus, who knew them well, declared,

They make good slaves but poor free men.

“Dismiss this lunacy of interfusion, Alexander! These nobles of Persia, however nimbly they sit their horses, are incapable of self-rule. They are born to the courtier's life; it is all they know, and all they ever will.”

How do the Macedonians feel about the Persians? They despise them. They consider them less than women, with their trousers and their lockets of gold, and they conduct themselves toward them with insolence and contempt. Returning to the city, I must issue order and edict, and take it in person down to the level of captain and even sergeant, that these men we have defeated are not dogs; they are not to be beaten, or kicked out of the public way. But idleness and excess of cash have undone the army in other ways.

On the twenty-seventh day I preside over games in honor of the fallen. Passing the Gate of Bel-Marduk in the aftercourse, I find the lane choked with soldiers, among whom I recognize the sergeant Gunnysack, who had made such a haul of treasure after Issus. He and his mates stand on line before a table manned by a street-corner banker, an achaemist.

“What are you doing there, Gunnysack?” I hail, reining-in.

“Standing in line, sire.”

I tell him I can see that. “In line for what?”

“Ain't it like the cursed army, sir? Stand in line for chow, stand in line to piss, stand in line to get paid.”

I see now that he is waiting to borrow from the achaemist. “Can you be out of money, Sergeant?” I recall to him that bonuses worth three years' wages have been issued just twenty days past.

“Gone, sire. All of it.” Gunnysack indicates the banker. “And we're into these blackguards for half that again.”

I order the sergeant and his mates to present themselves that evening for an accounting. It seems the whole army assembles, feigning nonchalance, outside my offices.

In the corps of Macedon a squad of eight is called, as I have said, a litter. These fellows are the best of mates; they march together, pack their sarissas together, bunk, eat, and fight together. “And I see you have gone broke together.”

“Aye,” Gunnysack confesses. His fellows, upon receiving their windfalls, took it upon themselves to “broaden their horizons.”

“Spit it out, Sergeant.”

“Well, sire, we wanted to see the town. So we needed a translator. You can understand that. And a guide to show us round.” The litter had found both in the same fellow, declared Gunnysack, and at quite a reasonable tariff. Then someone to refurbish the outfit, worn out on campaign. So, a tailor, a bootmaker, a haberdasher, to look spruce for the ladies. “Our guide's brother-in-law was a money changer, which we needed to keep from getting fleeced—you see how these bastards are, sire. So he came too, and better still he knew the courtesans' quarter. He showed us the ropes with the flute girls and day-raters. Good girls, just a bit down on their luck. We wanted to help 'em.”

In the train of these trollops appear a perfumer, a cosmetician, a hairstylist. A barber for the men, who now look more like senators than sergeants. A bathhouse and bath master. All must dine, so a cook, a cook's boy, baker, wine steward, pastry maker. Now a place to bunk. A villa on the river, a bargain, and it comes with chambermaids, a privy matron, doorman, and night porter. One cannot walk in this heat, so a carriage, and since such cabs cannot be counted upon to appear in some strange quarter at some even stranger hour, Gunnysack and his litter-mates hire the taxi full-time, with its driver and footman and a groom for the horses, who must be fed and stabled as well. Yes, they got robbed. Yes, they got looted. Yes, they bought land and livestock.

“What, no racehorses?”

“Only two, sire!”

Three of the men have gotten married.

“Don't tell me. You're supporting their families.”

I cannot stay angry at my brothers and countrymen. But what can I do? I can't award them grants of land; they'll just convert them to cash from the syndicate agents and run through this second fortune as speedily as they've blown the first. The men like it here. They're getting a taste for the easy life. Many even prattle of turning back—to Syria or Egypt, where they can throw their money around, or home, to pitch their yarns and set themselves up as petty lords. I issue a proclamation that duplicate bonuses will be paid to all, drachma for drachma, making up all that our fellows have squandered—but that the paymaster will set up his tables forty miles east down the road.

In other words: We're moving on, mates.

The corps accepts this. They have heard rumors of even greater swag at Susa and Persepolis.

Departing Babylon, I retain Mazaeus in the governorship he held beneath Darius. His treasurer, Bagophanes, I leave in place, beneath a Macedonian controller, and I keep on, as well, the chancellors Pharnaces and Adramates. The city, I garrison with veterans, mercenaries, and those whose military skills no longer fit in with the faster, more mobile corps I intend to employ in the campaigns to come.

The city has come alive with our conquering army. The soldiers' share of Darius's treasure, passed by me to them and run through their hands to the population, has yielded abundance like a mighty silt-bearing river. This hoard of wealth has never seen daylight before; now the country is incandescent with it. Purses have never been so flush or times so gay. So that when, on the thirty-fourth day, our Macedonians pack up and pull out, as relieved as many of the natives are to see the occupying army decamp, so too are they made sad, as a great jolt of vitality goes out of their lives. They line the Royal Road, two million and more, hoarse with citation as the army marches out.

The time ends with another clash between me and my commanders. Day thirty-three: We hold a memorial service, in which I order the ashes of Persian officers interred beneath a mound on the same site as those of the Macedonians. This is greeted with outrage by the corps. That night, our last in the city, I throw a feast for my officers in Darius's great Banquet Hall, the one with the map of the empire on its marble and malachite floor.

What infuriates my comrades is this: When eunuchs bar my door, and mates who have fought at my side across two continents must cool their heels and wait attendance. Black Cleitus cannot endure the sight of me in converse with Tigranes or Mazaeus or any Persian, and this night, drunk on date-palm wine, he stalks to the center of the room and explodes. “Will barbarians gain access to you before ourselves, Alexander? For I swear by the black breath of hell, I will not stand to see these trouser-wearing dandies pass through your door while I am held out.”

I stride forward, offering my hand. “Cleitus, my friend. That right arm of yours preserved my life at the Granicus River. Can I forget that?”

He evades my embrace, his glance shooting to others, seeking support. Clearly no few would give it, absent fear of me.

“This is the East, Alexander. Its men are slaves and always have been. You wish to understand them? The thickest sergeant can make it plain. The place is corrupt! Each man steals from the man beneath him and pays off the man above. Treasure flows uphill to the king and each hand dips in the river as it passes by. That's how it works. You will not change it. By Zeus, I would rather be a dog than one of these serfs or landsmen. And while you endeavor to turn these bootlickers into free men, passing your days sequestered with your purple-mantled servitors, those who love you and have shed their blood at your side go neglected. We are soldiers, Alexander, not courtiers. Let us be soldiers!”

I am not angry. Fury has not seized me. Yet I perceive in this moment the gravest peril to the expedition since it marched forth from Europe. I glance to Hephaestion. He sees it too, and Craterus and Telamon at his shoulder.

“Soldiers are you? On the trek to Gaugamela,” I remind my officers, “your men were so stricken with dread, and such prey to mindless panic, that they crowded about me like children in the dark. Yet now in possession of victory, they—and you—grow insolent.” I turn back to my accuser, who stands atop the mosaic site designating Babylon. “Have you conquered this city, Cleitus, or has it conquered you?”

He shifts, shamefaced. He knows I know, as does all the army, of his liaison with a courtesan of the palace, and of the fortune he has torn through in days, bewitched by her.

“I will tell you what I think, my impertinent friend. I think that license and fornication have robbed you of your wits. Yes, you. All of you! For you who call yourselves soldiers have forgotten the foundations of our calling. Obedience and respect! Am I your king? Will you obey me? Or have sudden riches—which have come to you by
my
hand—turned you brazen and insubordinate? Do you doubt my vision, brothers? Have I lost your trust?”

The hall has gone stone-silent. My tread resounds as I stalk to the mosaic's eastern end: Greece and Macedon.

“When we set out from home, not four years past, how many of you dreamed that we would conquer even this far?”

I cross the Hellespont, indicating Troy and the northern Aegean.

“Yet we won here.” At the Granicus. “And here and here and here.” I stride down the coast, past Miletus and Halicarnassus to Issus. “Here, you would have turned back.” Tyre and Gaza. “Here you were satisfied to remain.” Egypt. “Here you counseled me to advance no farther.” Syria. “Do I say false? Speak up! Let him stand forward who dares refute me!”

No one breathes. Not a man budges.

I dislodge Cleitus from the mosaic site representing Babylon.

“Now we stand here—beyond our most daring dreams—and lay designs to march even farther. To here . . .” Susa. “Here.” Persepolis. “And here.” Ecbatana. “Is that your aim, soldiers—if so you call yourselves? Then answer: Who will lead you?”

I draw up.

“Name him! Name your man and I shall step aside. Let this new general direct your affairs, since you find my counsel unworthy.”

My glare scours the ring. Chastened countenances greet me. Not a man will meet my eye.

“Will you heed me then? Dare I call myself your king? For you may as well know now—there can be no better time to tell you—that I have no intention of halting here, halfway across this floor.”

I stride past Persia and Media. To Parthia, Bactria, Areia. The high plateau of Iran and the kingdoms of Afghanistan.

“Will you conquer these lands with me, brothers? Or, sated with riches, will you bed down partway and give yourselves over to whoring and gluttony?”

Murmurs of “No!” and “Never!”

I pull back. One can scourge good men only so much.

“My friends, I know I have pressed novelty too suddenly upon you. I have tried your patience. Let me beg you then, by all the good things that my counsel has brought you so far. Bear with me. Trust me, as you have always. For when we cross beyond Persia, into lands no Greek has known . . .”

I step past the Afghan kingdoms, to the Hindu Kush and India.

“. . . we will need all the good men we can get. And prepare your minds further, my friends. For from these lands we bring into subjection, I shall draw more foreign troops, and they will fight at my shoulder and at yours. It must be so. How can we work it otherwise?”

For the first time I sense the men turning toward me. They understand, or begin to. And those who don't, trust my vision and my call.

“Do you imagine, friends, that we can overturn the order of the earth without altering, ourselves? The world is new, and we will make it newer. Who will follow me? Who believes? Let he who loves me clasp my hand now and pledge his allegiance. For such dreams as I hold cannot embrace the timorous or the faint of heart.”