The Campaigns of Alexander (Classics) (22 page)

Aristobulus’ account of this disaster is somewhat different: according to him, most of the Macedonian force was caught and destroyed by an ambush.
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The Scythians had concealed themselves in a park, and fell unexpectedly on the Macedonians when they were already engaged. This happened to be the moment when Pharnuches was offering to surrender his command to the Macedonian officers who had been sent with him on the expedition – on the ground that he was ignorant of military tactics and had been sent by Alexander not to command troops in battle, but to establish relations with the natives, while the others, unlike him, were true-born Macedonians and Companions of the King. But Andromachus, Caranus, and Menedemus refused to accept the command, partly to avoid the responsibility of a personal decision not covered by Alexander’s explicit orders, and partly because, in the present dangerous situation, they did not wish to incur individual blame in the event of defeat, much less to expose themselves to the general charge of inferior leadership. It was in this situation, when everything was at sixes and sevens, that the Scythian attack occurred – with results so disastrous that only about forty of the cavalry and 300 infantrymen escaped with their lives.

News of the
débâcle
caused Alexander great distress,
and he determined to march with all speed against Spitamenes and the tribesmen with him. Accordingly, with half the Companion cavalry, all the Guards, the Agrianes, the archers, and the most active of the infantry units, he proceeded towards Maracanda, whither he knew that Spitamenes had returned and was again besieging the garrison in the fortress. In three days he covered about 185 miles, and at dawn on the fourth was close to the town. At the report of his approach Spitamenes and his men abandoned the town and fled; Alexander followed in close pursuit, passing the scene of the battle, where he paused to give such burial to the dead as circumstances permitted. At the edge of the desert he turned back and began the work of systematic destruction; a number of natives had fled for refuge to the forts, and on a report that they had joined in the attack on the Macedonians, he had them all butchered. He covered in this way the whole region watered by the Polytimetus.
¹¹

The country is desert beyond the spot where the Polytimetus disappears – for disappear it does, in spite of the fact that it is a river of some size. It vanishes into the sand. The same phenomenon can be observed with other rivers in this part of the world – rivers, too, of considerable volume, not mere streamlets such as dry up in the summer: the Epardus, for instance, which flows through Mardia, and the Areius, from which the country of Aria takes its name, and the Etymandrus, which runs through the country of the ‘Benefactors’.
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All these are larger than the Peneus in Thessaly, which reaches the sea through the pass of Tempe. The Polytimetus is much larger than the Peneus.

Having brought these operations to an end, Alexander
went to Zariaspa, where he stayed for the worst of the winter.
¹³
He was visited there by Phrataphernes, satrap of Parthia, and Stasanor, the officer who had been sent to Aria to arrest Arsaces; they brought Arsaces with them under close guard, and also Barzanes, who had been appointed to the satrapy of Parthia by Bessus, and a number of other prisoners, all men who had assisted Bessus in his movement to depose Darius. At about the same time Epocillus, Menidas,
¹⁴
and Ptolemaeus, general of the Thracians, returned from their mission of escorting to the coast the allies and the treasure sent with Menes.
¹⁵
Alexander was also joined in Zariaspa by Asander and Nearchus with a force of Greek mercenaries, and by further reinforcements from the coast in charge of the satrap of Syria (also named Bessus) and of Asclepiodorus, the provincial governor.
¹⁶

Alexander had Bessus brought before a full meeting of his officers and accused him of treachery to Darius. He then gave orders that his nose and the tips of his ears should be cut off, and that thus mutilated he should be taken to Ecbatana to suffer public execution before his own countrymen, the Medes and Persians.
¹⁷

I do not myself approve the excessive severity of this punishment; for mutilation of that sort is, I think, a barbarous custom. I admit, moreover, that Alexander came to allow himself to emulate Eastern extravagance and splendour, and the fashion of barbaric kings of treating their subjects as inferiors; regrettable, too, was the assumption by a descendant of Heracles of Median dress in place of what Macedonians have worn from time immemorial, and the unblushing exchange of his familiar head-gear, so long victoriously worn, for the pointed bonnet of the vanquished Persians.
¹⁸
I have no praise for such conduct; but in my opinion, at least, the splendid achievements of Alexander are the clearest possible proof that neither strength of body, nor noble blood, nor success in war even greater than Alexander’s own – not even the realization of his dream of circumnavigating Libya and Asia and adding them both to his empire, together with Europe too
¹⁹
– that none of these things, I say, can make a man happy, unless he can win one more victory in addition to those the world thinks so great – the victory over himself.

In connexion with this I may as well relate here an incident which actually took place a little later: I mean the death of Cleitus, son of Dropides, and its effect upon Alexander.
²⁰
The Macedonians used to celebrate a festival
in honour of Dionysus, and it was Alexander’s custom to offer sacrifice each year on the sacred day. The story is that on this particular occasion Alexander, for some reason best known to himself, sacrificed not to Dionysus but to Castor and Polydeuces, the Dioscuri. There had been some pretty heavy drinking (another innovation – in drink, too, he now tended to barbaric excess), and in the course of talk the subject of the Dioscuri came up, together with the common attribution of their parentage to Zeus instead of to Tyndareus. Some of the company – the sort of people whose sycophantic tongues always have been and always will be the bane of kings – declared with gross flattery that, in their opinion, Polydeuces and Castor were not to be compared with Alexander and his achievements; others, being thoroughly drunk, extended the invidious comparison to Heracles himself: it was only envy, they maintained, which deprived the living of due honour from their friends.

Now Cleitus for some time past had quite obviously deprecated the change in Alexander: he liked neither his move towards the manners of the East, nor the sycophantic expressions of his courtiers. When, therefore, he heard what was said on this occasion (he, too, had been drinking heavily), he angrily intervened; it was intolerable, he declared, to offer such an insult to divine beings, and he would allow no one to pay Alexander a compliment at the expense of the mighty ones of long ago – such a compliment was not for his honour but for his shame. In any case, he continued, they grossly exaggerated the marvellous nature of Alexander’s achievements, none of which were mere personal triumphs of his own; on the contrary, most of them were the work of the Macedonians as a whole.

Alexander was deeply hurt – and I, for my part, feel
that Cleitus’ words were ill-judged; in view of the fact that most of the party were drunk, he could, in my opinion, have quite well avoided the grossness of joining in the general flattery simply by keeping his thoughts to himself. But there was more to come: for others of the company, hoping, in their turn, to curry favour with Alexander, brought up the subject of Philip, and suggested, absurdly enough, that what he had done was, after all, quite ordinary and commonplace. At this Cleitus could control himself no longer; he began to magnify Philip’s achievements and belittle Alexander’s; his words came pouring out – he was, by now, very drunk indeed – and, among much else, he taunted Alexander with the reminder that he had saved his life, when they fought the Persian cavalry on the Granicus.

‘This is the hand,’ he cried, holding it out with a flourish, ‘that saved you, Alexander, on that day.’

Alexander could stand no more drunken abuse from his friend. Angrily he leapt from his seat as if to strike him, but the others held him back. Cleitus continued to pour out his insulting remarks, and Alexander called for the Guard. No one answered.

‘What?’ he cried, ‘have I nothing left of royalty but the name? Am I to be like Darius, dragged in chains by Bessus and his cronies?’

Now nobody could hold him; springing to his feet, he snatched a spear from one of the attendants and struck Cleitus dead.

Accounts of this incident differ. Some authorities say it was not a spear but a pike; Aristobulus does not mention the occasion of the drinking bout: according to him, Cleitus need not have been killed but for his own action; for when Alexander sprang up in rage to kill him, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, a member of the King’s personal guard,
hurried him out of the door and over the wall and ditch of the fortress. However, he did not stay there, but went back to the banquet room and met Alexander just at the moment when he was calling his name.

‘Here I am, Alexander!’ he cried, and, as he spoke, the blow fell.

Personally, I strongly deprecate Cleitus’ unseemly behaviour to his sovereign; and for Alexander I feel pity, in that he showed himself on this occasion the slave of anger and drunkenness, two vices to neither of which a self-respecting man should ever yield. But when the deed was done, Alexander immediately felt its horror; and for that I admire him. Some have said that he fixed the butt of the pike against the wall, meaning to fall upon it himself, because a man who murdered his friend when his wits were fuddled with wine was not fit to live. Most writers, however, say nothing of this; they tell us that Alexander lay on his bed in tears, calling the name of Cleitus and of his sister Lanice, who had been his nurse. ‘Ah,’ he cried, ‘a good return I have made you for your care, now I am a man! You have lived to see your sons the fighting for me, and now with my own hand I have killed your brother.’ Again and again he called himself the murderer of his friends, and for three days lay without food or drink, careless of all personal comfort.

One result of these painful events was that soothsayers began to suggest that the god Dionysus was angry because Alexander had failed to offer him sacrifice; and when at last he was with difficulty persuaded by his friends to take food and attend in some measure to his bodily needs, he did offer the neglected sacrifice. Doubtless he was not unwilling that what had happened should be attributed rather to the wrath of God than to his own wickedness. Here again, I have nothing but admiration
for him: he made no attempt to justify his crime; he never added to his guilt by becoming champion and advocate in his own defence; he quite simply admitted that, being no more than human, he had done wrong.

There is a story that Alexander sent for the sophist Anaxarchus,
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in the hope he might give him comfort, and was still on his bed, bewailing his fate, when he came in.

Anaxarchus laughed. ‘Don’t you know,’ he said, ‘why the wise men of old made Justice to sit by the side of Zeus? It was to show that whatever Zeus may do is justly done. In the same way all the acts of a great king should be considered just, first by himself, then by the rest of us.’
²²

This was some consolation, at any rate for a time – though in my opinion he did Alexander a wrong more grievous than his grief, if he seriously, as a philosopher, put forward the view that a king need not act justly, or labour, to the best of his ability, to distinguish between right and wrong – if he really meant that whatever a king does, by whatever means, should be considered right.

In this connexion it is widely believed that Alexander wished people to prostrate themselves in his presence. This was due partly to the notion that his father was not Philip but Ammon, and partly to his growing admiration, expressed also by the change in his dress and in the general etiquette of his court, of Median and Persian extravagance. There were plenty of people, moreover, who, to
flatter him, submitted to this servile behaviour: Anaxarchus the sophist was one of the worst – and the Argive poet Agis.
²³

There was one man, however, who did not approve of these innovations. This was Callisthenes of Olynthus, a pupil of Aristotle. Thus far I agree with Callisthenes; but he was a somewhat tactless man, and his remark (if it has been rightly reported) that, without the history he was writing, Alexander and his work would be forgotten, was, I feel, most unfortunate. He used to declare that he had come not in the hope of honour for himself, but merely to spread Alexander’s fame throughout the world; adding that if Alexander was destined to have a share of divinity, it would not be owing to Olympias’ absurd stories about his birth,
²⁴
but to the account of him which he would himself publish in his history. According to another anecdote, Callisthenes was once asked by Philotas who he thought was held in the greatest honour by the Athenian people.

‘Harmodius and Aristogeiton,’ Callisthenes replied, ‘because they killed one of the tyrants and abolished irresponsible government.’
²⁵

‘And do you think,’ Philotas went on, ‘that a tyrannicide could find asylum in any Greek community he liked to choose?’

‘Even if no one else would have him,’ said Callisthenes,
‘he would be safe in Athens; for the Athenians once fought for the children of Heracles even against Eurystheus, who was at that time absolute master of Greece.’

I will now relate a widely accepted story about Callisthenes’ opposition to Alexander in this matter of prostration. Alexander had arranged with the sophists and the Persian and Median noblemen at his Court that the subject should be brought up one day at a party. The discussion was begun by Anaxarchus, who declared that Alexander had a better claim upon them to be considered divine than Dionysus or Heracles. The reason for this was not merely his brilliant and successful career, but also the fact that neither Dionysus nor Heracles was connected with Macedon: Dionysus belonged to Thebes, and Heracles to Argos – the latter’s only connexion with Macedon was through Alexander, who had his blood in his veins. This being so, there would be greater propriety in the Macedonians paying divine honours to their own King. In any case there was no doubt that they would honour him as a god after he had left this world; would it not, therefore, be in every way better to offer him this tribute now, while he was alive, and not wait till he was dead and could get no good of it?