Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great (31 page)

“It may be true that Parmenion is innocent so far. But he is proud, and he is popular, and his position is too close to you to take such a risk. You only have this moment to judge him now, but if you pardon him, he will have the rest of his days to conspire against you!”

These and similar absurdities took their toll on Alexander’s resolve, until he took refuge in his divine right to wash his hands of all consequences.

Armed messengers went out straightaway, before the news of Philotas’s death could reach Parmenion by other means. Alexander had written a dispatch to divert the old general’s attention; he was killed as he bent under a lamp to read it.

Parmenion’s execution shook the Greek camp. He had, after all, served both Philip and Alexander faithfully for many years. Among other critical tasks, it was he who had overseen the passage of the army across the Hellespont, and anchored the Macedonian left wing at Issus and Gaugamela. His sad end sent reverberations all the way back to Macedon, where old Antipater must have wondered if he was due similar recompense for his long service.

Even Callisthenes was shaken by it. I sincerely believe that he did serve an inspirational role for the pages, though it is a lie to claim that I instigated the charge against him. And what a feat of mendacity to insinuate that I sought to remove a rival by condemning him! Callisthenes’s history, after all, is already for sale all over the world, while as Aeschines has so clearly said, I have so far published nothing. So in what way have I benefitted from his death?

The prime instigator of Callisthenes’s fall was Callisthenes himself. The story went that Hermolaus, before he hatched his plot against the King, came to Callisthenes with a question: which were the heroes esteemed most by the Athenians?

“That would be the Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton.”

“And why are the Tyrannicides honored most?” the boy asked.

Callisthenes replied, “Because they freed the people from the state of their oppression.”

“And would similar men be welcomed by the Athenians today, and given refuge in their city?”

“They would be given refuge in any city where Greeks dwell,” answered Callisthenes, “but most gladly in Athens. For she has always opposed tyranny, from the end of Eurystheus’ domination of Greece, when he pursued the children of Heracles into Attica and was defeated there, until recent times.”

“Until…today?”

“Recent times,” said Callisthenes, smiling and saying nothing more.

More serious than the substance of this exchange, Callisthenes had failed to report Hermolaus’s sudden interest in tyrant-killers to anyone. On this basis alone, Alexander was prepared to accept his guilt, for the King defined loyalty as much in terms of what was omitted as what was said. Callisthenes’s record of public statements against prostration, against Alexander’s divinity, also came back to haunt him, for these insults did not dispose anyone to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Upon his arrest, Callisthenes was brought before the King. Echoing his question to Bessus, Alexander asked, “Why have you betrayed me?”

To which Callisthenes charged “Why are you betraying history? Do you believe the boasts of Olympias will assure your fame, Alexander? It is only because of the writings of Callisthenes that the world will know about you!”

After this, the historian disappeared. Some say he was hanged right away, some say stabbed. Still others swear he was clapped in irons and died much later, of despair. But no one is sure.

The weight of endless campaigning, massacre, and deceit began to have its effect on the morale of the men. Those who shared Alexander’s symposium likewise faced narrowing options. As the King’s wife, Rohjane could not substitute for the unabashed Thais, who was by then more or less a fixture in Ptolemy’s tent. The army was by then approaching the Indus—too far for most entertainers to come out from Corinth or Athens. Alexander’s pretensions to divinity would not allow him to condescend to the usual subjects of conversation, namely prostitutes, wine, and buggery delivered or received. Instead, his purview shrank to arcana having to do with battlefield equipment, and feats of horsemanship. In other words, he became a bore. Nor was Callisthenes around to elevate the topics. Matters became so desperate, at last, that the Macedonians were reduced to louche drinking games, such as flinging the dregs of their wine at targets on the floor.
 
The party was desperately ready for something new.

The solution came from the prisoner’s stockade. He was an old priest of Zoroaster with an unpronounceable name that we took to sound like ‘Gobares.’ He was not a Persian or a Mede, but came from the Hycanian region south of the Caspian Sea. The guards had been surprised to see him proselytize among the enemy prisoners, having wrongly believed that since Darius was Zoroastrian, all the Persians must already have been so. Great crowds formed around him as he disputed with his doctrinal adversaries, with the debates becoming so impassioned that the Macedonians took notice, though few of them spoke Persian, Aramaic, or any of Gobares’ other languages. Upon his interrogation and punishment for this trouble-making, it was learned that he had been active in Ionia in years past, and could also speak Greek. This earned him an interview with Alexander, who was curious about the beliefs of the lands he conquered.

He came to the symposium in a simple white cloak with a rude rope tied around his waist. This rope, we learned, was only removed during the act of worship, when it was loosed and tied again to symbolize the conquest of order over chaos. Of these practices Gobares was eager to speak, as if he expected to convert some general or even the King himself.

“Our prophet was Zarathustra son of Pourushaspa, or ‘Zoroaster’ to you Greeks. No one knows exactly when he lived, or where, except that it was at a time before men worked metals, and in the east. As a young man he was a priest of the cult of his people. One day, after he had reached his maturity, he was collecting haoma-water from the center of a pure running stream. As he turned to go back to dry ground, he saw a messenger of Ahuramazda waiting for him there. This messenger, whom we call Vohu Manah the-well-intended, had the appearance of a mortal man, except that a pure light like the dawn through a keyhole emanated from his eyes and mouth. The messenger led Zarathustra to the Creator, who told him that because he was a man of
arsa
, he was chosen to bring the truth of Ahuramazda to all men. And Ahuramazda also informed him of the proper way to honor Him with prayer, about the ways men of faith may remain pure, and about the observances the Creator desired men to make throughout the year, so that they may help Him in his great struggle…”

Though we never asked him to, Gobares then went into the details of his ritual. The proper observance, he said, is made five times a day, at midnight, sunrise, noon, afternoon, and sunset. Most commonly, it is made by standing before the flame and reciting a short prayer handed down from the prophet himself. The prayer is an affirmation of the Creator’s power that, Gobares said, will aid Him in his struggle with the Hostile Spirit, Angra Mainyu-May-His-Name-Be-Forever-Accursed. It is not recited out of any vain desire to satisfy the worshipper’s needs, but to do the work of driving evil from Creation, until the day when the work of the Hostile Spirit has been expunged utterly, and what he called the ‘Third Time’ begins. As Gobares explained this, he pretended to untie his rope, and as he spoke of the Hostile Spirit, he snapped the ends of it, as if he was lashing Angra Mainyu.

His people had many other strange beliefs. They attributed to that single god, Ahuramazda, the creation of both the spiritual and physical world. They held that men would be judged for the rightness of their actions after death by a great weighing of all they had said, done, and thought. That is because, according to the Zoroastrians, good words, deeds, and thoughts are not the mere private business of individuals, but all have influence on the universal struggle against disorder. If the good side of the scale was heavier the deceased proceeded to a kind of Persian garden, or
pairi-daeza
in the old tongue of their prophet. If the bad side prevailed, the dead was cast into a chasm that was like Hades, only worse, where Angra Mainyu ruled.

At some future time there would come an ultimate triumph over evil when the bones of the interred dead would rise up and be reunited with their souls. The last battle against the minions of the Hostile Spirit would then be led by the savior named Saoshyant. He would be a mortal man, but would be born of a virgin mother after she bathed in a blessed lake containing Zoroaster’s seed. Upon his victory would commence a Final Judgment, where the resurrected bodies of all who had ever lived would be forced to swim a river of molten iron. To the righteous this ordeal would seem like bathing in mother’s milk, while the not-so-good would suffer the flesh seared from their bones. The torrent would then wash the rejects down to Hell where they, Angra Mainyu, and all his
daevas
would be finally annihilated. With their destruction would commence the ‘Third Time,’ when all the mortals of the earth would consume haoma for the last time, attain immortality, and realize eternal happiness.

Gobares continued: “Zarathustra did not have great success at first in enlightening his neighbors. After years invested in teaching them, all except one rejected the truth. His single success, the first Zoroastrian besides the prophet, was Zarathustra’s own cousin. The prophet made many more converts later, when he preached among strangers.
 
Today his truth has been accepted by men from Africa to India and, if I might say, in your country as well.”

Craterus was fuming before Gobares was finished.

“Are these the beliefs of adult men, or of children? Really, do you honestly believe that your prayers, personally, will affect the planets in their courses? What arrogance! And do you believe that the gods care for the individual fates of such insignificant creatures as ourselves? What do we care for the fates of ants, though ants are far closer to us than we are to your omnipotent Creator! Really, I’m surprised even Zoroaster’s cousin believed him!”

“I have heard these beliefs before, among the Jews in Syria,” observed Ptolemy.

“The Jews,” replied the unflappable Gobares, “imbibed the teachings of Zoroaster during their captivity in Babylon. When Cyrus the Great allowed them to return to their homelands, they took this wisdom to the west with them.”

“Let the Jews and other slaves delude themselves with tales of virgin births and lakes of fire and dead souls rising!” Craterus scoffed.

Alexander took his chin from his hand, where it had been resting as he pondered the implications of what he had heard. We all looked at him when he spoke.

“There is nobility in believing in a just god. Our Olympians are too much reflections of ourselves, are they not? They do not compel us to be good.”

“Is compelled good any good at all?” asked Hephaestion.

“Perhaps not. But that does not concern me as much as this: there is no place for my father Ammon in your story, Gobares.”

The old man nodded as if to agree. But he was not done.

“Perhaps, O King, you will see something of yourselves in the truth of the Creation. The world began as a thought in the mind of Ahuramazda, the eternal and uncreated one, and the first manifestation of this thought was a spiritual world. With this stage appeared the spirits of all the beings that would later appear as material things: the spirits of the air and the earth, of the Single Plant and the Single Animal, and of First Man. And because the spirits were not yet admixed with their physical forms, Ahuramazda’s first creation was not subject to flaw.

“Yet He was not satisfied by the spiritual world, splendid as it was, because in its perfection there could be no change, and without change there could be no virtue. And so Ahuramazda with his will gave birth to Time, and his son Time, in his turn, begat the Amesha Spentas, the Sacred Immortals. Each of these Immortals was responsible for one of the seven lesser Creations. Sky appeared as a great stone sphere into which the second Creation, Water, was poured. And floating upon Water, like the froth strung upon the sea, appeared the Earth. The fourth, fifth, and sixth lesser Creations were the physical manifestations of Single Plant, Single Animal, and First Man, who lived on the earth, and with the blessing of Time, ramified into all the types and tribes we see today. The last and most important Creation was Fire, for it is the link between the two worlds of the Great Creation, through which the spirits may animate the physical bodies while they live.”

“And does this wisdom explain why you all wash in cow piss?” interjected Craterus, laughing.