Surrounded, scattered, hounded one by one like fleeing beasts, the Triballians surrendered, while the Getae continued to the bitter end, to the last spark of their vital energy.
When it was all over the squall that had been moving down from the north reached the island and, on coming into contact with the humidity of the Ister, it quietened somewhat. Then, as if by magic, it started snowing. Initially it was a form of sleet, tiny crystals of ice falling with rain, and then they became ever bigger and thicker and developed into large flakes. The bloody mess on the ground was soon covered by a white blanket, the fires were quenched and everywhere a grim silence fell, broken only here and there by some muffled shout or by the snorting of the horses as they moved through the blizzard.
Alexander returned to the riverbank, and the soldiers he had left on guard at the jetty saw him appear suddenly out of the curtain of snow and fog. He had lost his shield, but he still held his sword and his double-bladed axe and he was covered with blood from head to toe. The bronze plates on Bucephalas’ chest and forehead were splashed with red too and thick steam came from the stallion’s body and his nostrils. He looked like some beast from a warped imagination, a creature from a nightmare.
Parmenion was with Alexander in an instant, consternation written all over his face. ‘Sire, you shouldn’t have
The King took off his helmet, freeing his hair into the icy wind, and the old General didn’t recognize his voice when he said, ‘It’s over, Parmenion, let’s go back.’
Part of the army was sent back home along the same road they had taken on the way north. Alexander, however, led the rest of the soldiers and the cavalry westwards along the Ister until he came upon the Celts, a people whose origins lay far away on the banks of the northern ocean, and he established an alliance with them.
He sat under a tent of tanned animal skins with their chief -a huge, blond-haired man sporting a helmet with a bird on top whose wings went up and down with a slight creaking every time he moved his head.
‘I swear,’ said the barbarian, ‘that I will be faithful to this pact for as long as the earth does not sink into the sea and the sea does not rise to cover the earth and the sky does not fall on our heads.’
Alexander was surprised by this formula which he had never heard before and asked, ‘Which of these things do you fear most?’
The Celtic chief looked up and the bird’s wings moved up and down as he thought for a moment before saying, very seriously, ‘That the sky might fall on our heads.’
Alexander never discovered the whys and wherefores of that one.
He then crossed the lands of the Dardanians and the Agrianians, wild peoples of Illyrian stock who had reneged on their alliance with Philip and had joined forces with the Getae and the Triballians. He quashed them and forced them to provide troops because the Agrianians were famous for their ability to climb, fully armed, up the steepest mountain faces. The young King thought that making use of these skills might be more convenient than cutting stairways out of rock for his infantry as he had done on Mount Ossa.
The army took a long time marching and riding its way through the many valleys and woods of those inhospitable lands, so much so that rumours began to circulate about the King having fallen into an ambush and having been killed.
This news travelled like lightning and reached Athens first, by sea, and then Thebes.
Demosthenes returned to Athens immediately from Calauria where he had taken refuge and he gave an impassioned public speech. Messages of support were sent to Thebes together with supplies of heavy armour for their infantry, something the city was completely lacking in. Indeed, the Thebans rose up in arms and besieged the garrison occupying the Cadmean citadel, digging trenches and building barriers all around it so that the Macedonians who were blocked in there had no hope at all of receiving supplies from outside.
But Alexander came to hear about the uprising and was furious when he heard about Demosthenes’ speeches against Macedon and her new King.
It took him thirteen days to travel from the banks of the Ister and he appeared beneath the walls of Thebes just when the defenders of the Cadmean citadel much
weakened by the siege were
about to capitulate. They couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the King astride Bucephalas, ordering the Thebans to hand over the ringleaders of the uprising.
‘Hand them over!’ he shouted. ‘And I will spare your city!’ The Thebans went into council to decide. The representatives of the democratic grouping, exiled by Philip, had returned and were determined now to wreak their revenge on Macedon. ‘He’s only a. boy. What are you afraid of?’ asked one of them, who went by the name of Diodorus. ‘The Athenians are with us, the Aetolian League and even Sparta itself might well join forces with us before long. Now is the moment to rid ourselves once and for all of the Macedonian tyranny! Even the Great King of Persia has promised his support arms
and money to bolster our uprising are on their way to Athens as I speak.’
‘In that case why don’t we wait for reinforcements?’ asked another citizen. ‘In the meantime the garrison in the Cadmean citadel may well surrender and then we will be able to use those men in negotiations letting
them go free in exchange for a definitive withdrawal of the Macedonian troops from our territory. Or we might wait until an ally’s army is positioned behind Alexander and attempt an attack.’
‘No!’ Diodorus persisted. ‘Every day that passes goes against us. All those who believe they have suffered injustice or oppression at the hands of our city will unite with the Macedonian. As I speak, troops are coming from Phocis, from Plataea, from Thespiae, from Oropus, and they all hate us to the point of
seeking our total ruin. Have no fear, Thebans! We will avenge the dead of Chaeronaea, once and for all!’
The citizens, fired by these passionate words, stood up in unison and started chanting, ‘War!’ Without even waiting for the federal magistrates to bring the assembly to its official conclusion, they all ran off to their homes to make ready their weapons.
Alexander summoned a war council in his tent.
‘All I want is to force them to negotiate,’ he began, ‘even though they refuse to do so.’
‘But they’ve issued a challenge!’ Hephaestion objected. ‘Let’s attack now and show them who’s the strongest!’
‘They already know who is the strongest,’ Parmenion said. ‘We are here with thirty thousand men and three thousand horses, all of them veterans who have never lost any battle. They will negotiate.’
‘General Parmenion is right,’ said Alexander. ‘I don’t want blood. I am about to invade Asia, and all I want to leave behind me is peace among all Greeks and to know that perhaps I have their support in my venture. I will give them time to mull it over.’
‘Then why on earth have we just put ourselves through thirteen days of forced marching? To sit here under the tents and wait for them to decide what they want to do?’ Hephaestion asked.
‘My aim was to demonstrate that I can strike whenever I want and at short notice; to show them that I will never be far enough away for them to organize their defences. But if they ask for peace, I will gladly give it to them.’
But the days passed and nothing happened. Alexander decided to intimidate the Thebans more decisively, to put more pressure on them to negotiate. He had his army line up in battle formation, marched them up to the walls and then sent forward a herald who proclaimed:
‘Thebans! King Alexander offers you the peace that all other Greeks have accepted, together with your independence and whatever political system you may prefer. But, should you reject this offer, he will still offer refuge to those of you who wish to leave Thebes now to live in peace without hatred and without bloodshed!’
The Thebans’ response was not long in coming. One of their heralds shouted from the top of a tower:
‘Macedonians! Whomsoever wishes to join us and the Great King of the Persians in freeing the Greeks of all tyranny is welcome here in Thebes and we will open our gates to let
them in.’
These words hurt Alexander deeply. They made him feel like the barbarian oppressor he never had been and had never had any ambition to be. In an instant the Theban proclamation reduced all the dreams and efforts of his father Philip to nothing. Rejected and humiliated, Alexander’s fury knew no bounds and his eyes darkened like a sky in which a storm is brewing.
‘That’s it!’ he exclaimed. ‘They leave me no choice. I will make such an example of this city that no one will ever dare break the peace I have created for all Greeks.’
In Thebes, however, not quite all of the voices that called for the city to negotiate had been silenced, and several ominous portents had spread anxiety throughout the population. Three months before Alexander’s arrival beneath the walls with his army, an enormous spider’s web had been seen in the temple of Demeter it
was in the shape of a cloak and it shone all around with iridescent colours, just like a rainbow.
On being questioned about it, the oracle at Delphi gave this response:
The gods to mortals all have sent this sign; To the Boeotians first, and to their neighbours.
The ancestral oracle of Thebes was also consulted and responded:
The woven web is bane to one, to one a boon.*
* Diodorus Siculus, xvn.io.3.
No one had succeeded in interpreting those words, but on the morning Alexander arrived with his army, the statues in the market square at Thebes had started sweating, and soon they were covered with big drops of liquid that ran slowly to the ground.
The city representatives also received reports that a sort of moaning sound had been heard coming from Lake Kopais, and in the water near Dirke some ripples had appeared, such as when a stone is thrown into the water, but these had the colour of blood and they then extended over the whole surface of the lake. And last but not least, some travellers from Delphi recounted that the Theban temple at the sanctuary, built in thanks for the spoils taken from the Phocaeans during the sacred war, had bloodstains on its roof.
The seers who busied themselves with these omens said that the spider’s web inside the temple meant that the gods were planning to abandon the city, while the fact that it shone in many colours was a presage of a variety of disasters. The sweating statues prefigured a looming disaster and the bloodstains indicated an approaching massacre.
It was felt therefore that since these were all bad omens then nothing should be done to tempt fate on the battlefield, but rather a negotiated settlement should be sought.
And yet, despite all of this, deep down the Thebans were not particularly worried. Indeed, they were very much aware of their reputation as being among the best fighters in Greece and the memories of their great historical victories were very much alive. They were completely in the grip of a sort of collective madness and they acted more out of blind courage than out of sagacity and reflection, and thus it was that they dived headlong into wrack and ruin, bringing about the destruction of their city and its lands.
In just three days Alexander made ready all his plans for the siege and the machines for breaching the walls. The Thebans then came out lined up for battle. On the left wing was their cavalry protected by a palisade, in the middle and to the right was the front-line heavy infantry. Inside the city the women and children took refuge in the temples, where they prayed to the gods for salvation.
Alexander split his forces into three divisions the
first had the job of attacking the palisade, the second was to take on the Theban infantry while he held the third back in reserve, under Parmenion’s command.
When the trumpets sounded the battle erupted with a violence that was even worse than the fateful day at Chaeronaea. Indeed, the Thebans were well aware of their having gone beyond the mark and they knew that if the Macedonians achieved victory they would be shown no quarter. It was clear that in defeat their homes would be sacked and burned, their wives raped, their children sold. They fought with reckless disregard for their own safety, courageously looking death square in the face.
The reel of the battle, the shouts of the commanders, the high-pitched sound of the trumpets and the whistles rose up to the sky, while from the depths of the valley came the grim, rhythmical thumping of the enormous Chaeronaea drum.
Initially the Thebans had to retreat a little because they simply couldn’t withstand the impact of the infantry phalanx, but when they came to fight hand-to-hand on rougher ground they demonstrated their superior ability, so that for hours and hours the battle seemed to be in the balance, almost as though the gods had put the two sides on the scales in perfect equilibrium.
At that stage Alexander sent his reserves into the battle the
phalanx that had been fighting up until that moment split in two and let the fresh troops advance. But the exhausted Thebans, rather than being daunted by the prospect of having to fight on against the new reinforcements, found their second wind.
Their officers shouted at the tops of their voices, ‘Look at this, men! It takes two Macedonians to defeat one Theban! Let’s send these new ones back where they came from, just as we did with the first lot.’
Thus they unleashed all their energies in an attack that would decide not only their own individual fates, but the fate of their entire city.
Just then, however, Perdiccas, out on the left flank, saw that a side door in the walls had been opened up to let out reinforcements for the Theban lines. He sent a division to take it and immediately sent as many Macedonians as possible inside the walls.
The Thebans ran back to close the breach, but there were too many of them all at once and they ended up piled one on top of the other, horses and men, wounding one another and unable to stop the enemy troops from spreading throughout the city.
