The Campaigns of Alexander (Classics) (23 page)

Those who were, so to put it, ‘in the know’ expressed their approval of what Anaxarchus said, and were only too willing to begin prostrating themselves forthwith; but the Macedonians – or most of them – who were present, strongly dissented, and said nothing. Suddenly Callisthenes intervened. ‘For my part,’ he said, ‘I hold Alexander fit for any mark of honour that a man may earn; but do not forget that there is a difference between honouring a man and worshipping a god. The distinction between the two has been marked in many ways: for instance, by the building of temples, the erection of statues; the dedication
of sacred ground – all these are for gods; again, for gods sacrifice is offered and libations are poured; hymns are composed for the worship of gods, while panegyrics are written for the praise of men. Yet of all these things not one is so important as this very custom of prostration. Men greet each other with a kiss; but a god, far above us on his mysterious throne, it is not lawful for us to touch – and that is why we proffer him the homage of bowing to the earth before him.
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‘Again, for the worship of gods we perform the ceremonial dance and sing the song of praise. There is nothing surprising in this, for even the gods are worshipped by varying forms of ceremonial; and heroes and demigods, remember, have, again, their own peculiar, and quite different, rites.

‘It is wrong, therefore, to ignore these distinctions; we ought not to make a man look bigger than he is by paying him excessive and extravagant honour, or, at the same time, impiously to degrade the gods (if such a thing were possible) by putting them in this matter on the same level as men. Suppose some fellow or other, by some quite unjustified vote or show of hands, were brought to enjoy royal honours: would Alexander tolerate it? Of course he would not. By the same reasoning there are much better grounds for the gods’ resentment against men who invest themselves with divine honours, or allow other people to do it for them.

‘Now Alexander deserves his reputation of being incomparably the bravest of the brave, the most kingly of kings, the worthiest to command of all commanders. And you, Anaxarchus – you who are admitted to Alexander’s
presence for the express purpose of instructing him in the truth – you, above all people, should have been the first to speak as I am speaking; you should have stopped the mouth of anyone who dared argue on the other side. To take the lead in the way you did was a disgraceful thing: you ought to have remembered that you are not the attendant and adviser of Cambyses or Xerxes, but of Philip’s son, a man with the blood of Heracles and Aeacus in his veins,
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a man whose forefathers came from Argos to Macedonia, where they long ruled not by force, but by law.

‘Again, not even Heracles was accorded divine honours by the Greeks while he was alive – nor when he was dead either, until the command to do so was given by an oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Well, here we are in a foreign land; and if for that reason we must think foreign thoughts, yet I beg you, Alexander, to remember Greece; it was for her sake alone, that you might add Asia to her empire, that you undertook this campaign. Consider this too: when you are home again, do you really propose to force the Greeks, who love their liberty more than anyone else in the world, to prostrate themselves before you? Or will you let the Greeks off and impose this shameful duty only on the Macedonians? Or will you make a broad and general distinction in the matter, and ordain that barbarians only should keep their barbarous manners, while Greeks and Macedonians honour you honourably as a man, according to the traditions of Greece?

‘It is said that Cyrus, son of Cambyses, was the first man to receive the homage of prostration, and that this humiliating custom thereafter became an accepted thing
in Persia. So be it; none the less you must remember that the great Cyrus was cured of his pride by a tribe of Scythians – poor men but free; that Darius was humbled by Scythians too,
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as Xerxes was by Athens and Sparta, and Artaxerxes by the Ten Thousand of Clearchus and Xenophon. And now Alexander has robbed another Darius of his pride – though no man has yet bowed to the earth before him.’

This speech vexed Alexander profoundly, but not the Macedonians, who found what he said very much to their mind. Alexander was aware of this, and told the Macedonians accordingly to forget the matter: the need to prostrate themselves would not in future arise.

For a moment there was silence; then the senior Persian officials rose from their seats and one by one grovelled on the floor before the King. Leonnatus, a member of the Companions, thought one of them bungled his bow, and burst out laughing at his attitude, which was, indeed, hardly dignified.
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Alexander was angry – but his anger passed and he was afterwards willing to make friends again.

One more story on this subject is on record.
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Alexander sent round a golden loving-cup, passing it first to those with whom the agreement about the act of prostration had been made. The first to drink rose from his seat, prostrated himself, and then received a kiss from Alexander.
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The rest followed suit; but Callisthenes, when his
turn came, first drank, then rose to his feet, and then, without prostrating himself, walked up to Alexander and offered to kiss him. Alexander, at the moment, was talking to Hephaestion, and did not trouble to observe whether or not Callisthenes had properly performed the act of obeisance, but one of the Companions – Demetrius, son of Pythonax – mentioned the fact that he had omitted to do so before going up for his kiss. Thereupon Alexander refused to allow him to kiss him.

‘Well then,’ Callisthenes exclaimed, ‘I must go back to my place one kiss the poorer.’

In my opinion all these stories are deplorable in so far as they reflect upon Alexander’s growing arrogance and Callisthenes’ bad manners. It is enough, I think, once a man has consented to enter a king’s service, that he should exalt his master as much as he can, while at the same time preserving a decent modesty in his own behaviour; and for that reason I feel that Alexander was not unjustified in being angry with Callisthenes both for his absurd conceit and for letting his tongue run away with him. And this, I imagine, is why credit was so readily given to the story that Callisthenes had a hand in the plot which was laid against Alexander by his young attendants – or indeed that he was actually the prime mover of it.
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It was Alexander’s father, Philip, who first instituted the custom of making the adolescent sons of Macedonian nobles personal attendants upon the king. These boys were entrusted with the general care of his person and also with the duty of guarding him when he was asleep; when he went riding, they would receive the horses from
the grooms, lead them up and assist him to mount in the Persian manner, and share with him the friendly rivalry of the hunt.
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One of these boys was named Hermolaus; he was the son of Sopolis, and was supposed to be interested in philosophy, an interest which brought him into close touch with Callisthenes. Now the story is that during a hunt Alexander was charged by a boar and, before he could strike, was forestalled by Hermolaus, who himself struck the boar and killed it. Alexander was furious at missing his chance, and ordered Hermolaus to be whipped in front of the other boys, and then took his horse from him.
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Bitterly hurt by this high-handed treatment, Hermolaus told Sostratus, son of Amyntas and his bosom friend, that life would not be worth living till he had had his revenge for this brutal insult, and Sostratus, who adored him, was easily persuaded to take a hand in planning it. The two boys then obtained the support of Antipater, son of Asclepiodorus, a former governor of Syria, and of three others: Epimenes son of Arseus, Anticles son of Theocritus, and Philotas son of a Thracian named Carsis. It was agreed between them that, when Antipater’s turn of night duty came round, they should murder Alexander in his sleep.

It so happened that on the night in question Alexander sat up drinking until dawn. This may have been pure chance, though Aristobulus has a different explanation. According to him,
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there was a certain Syrian woman
with the gift of second sight, who kept following Alexander about. He and his friends used to laugh at her; but, as time went on and everything she foretold in her trances turned out to be true, Alexander began to feel differently. He no longer found her a figure of fun, but let her come to him whenever she wished, by day or night, and on many occasions allowed her to watch over him while he slept.

This woman, in one of her prophetic trances, met him as he was coming away from his potations. She begged him to go back and drink the night out, and Alexander, convinced that there was something more than human in the warning, took her advice. So the boys’ plot fell through.

Epimenes, one of the guilty ones, also, like Hermolaus, had a bosom friend, Charicles, son of Menander; and to him, on the following day, he told the whole story. Charicles told Epimenes’ brother, Eurylochus, who went to Alexander’s tent and passed everything on to Ptolemy son of Lagus, of the King’s Guard, who, in his turn, told Alexander. Alexander ordered the arrest of all the boys whose names were given him by Eurylochus. Questioned under torture, they admitted their guilt, and at the same time implicated certain others as well.

Aristobulus declares – and Ptolemy supports him – that the boys said that Callisthenes had urged them to commit the crime. Most authorities, however, have no mention of this; they merely suggest that Alexander was ready enough to believe the worst about Callisthenes, first, because he already disliked him, and, secondly, because of his close association with Hermolaus.
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In some writers,
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moreover, we find the story that Hermolaus, when he was brought to stand his trial, openly confessed his guilt, declaring that it was no longer possible for an honourable man to endure Alexander’s inhuman arrogance; and then went on to give a list of his crimes – the lawless killing of Philotas, the still more arbitrary execution of his father Parmenio and the other officers who were put to death on the same occasion, the murder in his cups of Cleitus, his assumption of Persian dress, the duty of prostration he had planned, and was still planning, to impose, his heavy drinking and his drunken sleeps: what he desired was to free himself and the Macedonians from evils such as these, which were no longer to be borne. Hermolaus and the other boys arrested with him were then stoned to death on the spot.
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Callisthenes’ fate is variously reported: Aristobulus writes that he was dragged about in chains wherever the army went, till his health broke and he died. According to Ptolemy he was first tortured and then hanged. So we see that even the most trustworthy writers, men who were actually with Alexander at the time, have given conflicting accounts of notorious events with which they must have been perfectly familiar.
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Many other details of this affair have been handled by other writers, too, in a most confusing and contradictory manner – so I can do no better than leave the story as I have told it. I have, indeed, anticipated events a little; but I do feel that, for the purposes of my narrative, the story of Hermolaus is closely connec
ted with the story of Alexander and Cleitus; so for that reason I have related it here, as an immediate sequel.

Alexander was now for the second time visited by envoys from the European Scythians, who arrived in company with the envoys he had himself sent to Scythia.
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The reigning King of Scythia at the time of their dispatch had died; he had been succeeded by his brother, and the purpose of the present embassy was to express the willingness of Scythia to accede in every point to Alexander’s instructions; they brought as presents from the King such things as are reckoned most valuable in their country, and communicated to Alexander their King’s desire to cement the friendship and alliance between their countries by giving him his daughter in marriage. Should Alexander be unwilling to marry the Scythian Princess, the King was none the less anxious to do the next best thing and to give as brides to his most trusted officers the daughters of the governors and other personages of rank in Scythian territory. He would, moreover, visit Alexander in person, if he were called upon to do so, and thus be enabled to take his instructions from Alexander’s own lips.

About the same time the King of the Chorasmians, Pharasmanes, arrived at the Court with 1,500 mounted troops.
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He told Alexander that his territory had common frontiers with the Colchians and the Amazon women,
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and that if Alexander should ever contemplate an invasion of those countries with the object of reducing the various peoples in that part of the world as far as the Black Sea, he was willing to act as his guide and to provide all the necessary supplies for his army.

To the envoys from Scythia, Alexander gave a polite and suitable reply: he had no need, he said, of a Scythian marriage. He thanked Pharasmanes for his offer and concluded a pact of friendship with him, adding that an expedition to the Black Sea was not at the moment convenient; and, before dismissing him, he put him in touch with Artabazus, the Persian, to whom he had given charge of affairs in Bactria, and also with the various governors of the neighbouring provinces. His own thoughts were at present occupied with India, and he pointed out that once India was his he would be master of all Asia, after which his intention was to return to Greece and to make from thence an expedition to the Black Sea region by way of the Hellespont and the Propontis with all his land and sea forces combined. Pharasmanes, therefore, would oblige him if he deferred the fulfilment of his offer until that occasion should arise.

Alexander now returned to the Oxus. His intention was to proceed to Sogdiana, as a report had come in that many of the people there were refusing to obey the governor he had appointed and had shut themselves up in the forts. While he was in camp on the Oxus, a spring of water and another of oil quite near it came up from the ground close to his tent. Ptolemy, son of Lagus, was informed of this remarkable event, and Ptolemy told Alexander, who, to mark his sense of its miraculous nature, offered sacrifice according to the form prescribed by his soothsayers. Aristander declared that the spring of oil was a sign of difficulties to come and of eventual victory.
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