The Campaigns of Alexander (Classics) (36 page)

Alexander sailed off-shore along the stretch of coast between the Eulaeus and the Tigris, and then proceeded
up the Tigris to the place where Hephaestion and the whole army were encamped. From there he went further up the river to Opis, a town on its bank. During the passage up-stream he had the weirs demolished, thus restoring the river to the same continuous level throughout;
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the weirs had been constructed by the Persians to prevent a victorious naval force from coming up the river to invade their country – a remarkable piece of engineering for a non-maritime people. Their existence, at frequent intervals, made the passage up-river a very awkward business. Alexander declared that no power which enjoyed military supremacy would ever bother with such contrivances; in his own case a safeguard of that sort was pointless and irrelevant; and indeed, the very ease with which he destroyed these works which the Persians had laboured so hard to complete was sufficient proof that they were not worth much.

At Opis he summoned an assembly of his Macedonian troops and announced the discharge from the army of all men unfit through age or disablement for further service; these he proposed to send home, and promised to give them on their departure enough to make their friends and relatives envy them and to fire their countrymen with eagerness to play a part in similar perilous adventures in the future. Doubtless he meant to gratify them by what he said.

Unfortunately, however, the men already felt that he had come to undervalue their services and to think them quite useless as a fighting force; so, naturally enough, they resented his remarks as merely another instance of the many things which, throughout the campaign, he had done to hurt their feelings, such as his adoption of Persian dress, the issue of Macedonian equipment to the Oriental ‘Epigoni’, and the inclusion of foreign troops in
units of the Companions. The result was that they did not receive the speech in respectful silence, but, unable to restrain themselves, called for the discharge of every man in the army, adding, in bitter jest, that on his next campaign he could take his father with him – meaning, presumably, the god Ammon.

Alexander was furious. He had grown by that time quicker to take offence, and the Oriental subservience to which he had become accustomed had greatly changed his old open-hearted manner towards his own countrymen. He leapt from the platform with the officers who attended him, and pointing with his finger to the ringleaders of the mutiny, ordered the guards to arrest them. There were thirteen of them, and they were all marched off to execution.
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A horrified silence ensued, and Alexander stepped once again on to the rostrum and addressed his troops in these words: ‘My countrymen, you are sick for home – so be it! I shall make no attempt to check your longing to return. Go whither you will; I shall not hinder you. But, if go you must, there is one thing I would have you understand – what I have done for you, and in what coin you will have repaid me.

‘First I will speak of my father Philip, as it is my duty to do. Philip found you a tribe of impoverished vagabonds, most of you dressed in skins, feeding a few sheep on the hills and fighting, feebly enough, to keep them from your neighbours – Thracians and Triballians and Illyrians. He gave you cloaks to wear instead of skins; he brought you down from the hills into the plains; he taught you to fight on equal terms with the enemy on your borders, till you
knew that your safety lay not, as once, in your mountain strongholds, but in your own valour. He made you citydwellers; he brought you law; he civilized you. He rescued you from subjection and slavery, and made you masters of the wild tribes who harried and plundered you; he annexed the greater part of Thrace, and by seizing the best places on the coast opened your country to trade, and enabled you to work your mines without fear of attack.
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Thessaly, so long your bugbear and your dread, he subjected to your rule, and by humbling the Phocians he made the narrow and difficult path into Greece a broad and easy road.
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The men of Athens and Thebes, who for years had kept watching for their moment to strike us down, he brought so low – and by this time I myself was working at my father’s side
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that they who once exacted from us either our money or our obedience,
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now, in their turn, looked to us as the means of their salvation. Passing into the Peloponnese, he settled everything there to his satisfaction, and when he was made supreme commander of all the rest of Greece for the war against Persia, he claimed the glory of it not for himself alone, but for the Macedonian people.
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‘These services which my father rendered you are, indeed, intrinsically great; yet they are small compared with
my own. I inherited from him a handful of gold and silver cups, coin in the treasury worth less than sixty talents and over eight times that amount of debts incurred by him;
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yet to add to this burden I borrowed a further sum of eight hundred talents, and, marching out from a country too poor to maintain you decently, laid open for you at a blow, and in spite of Persia’s naval supremacy, the gates of the Hellespont. My cavalry crushed the satraps of Darius, and I added all Ionia and Aeolia, the two Phrygias and Lydia to your empire. Miletus I reduced by siege; the other towns all yielded of their own free will – I took them and gave them you for your profit and enjoyment. The wealth of Egypt and Cyrene, which I shed no blood to win, now flows into your hands; Palestine and the plains of Syria and the Land between the Rivers are now your property; Babylon and Bactria and Susa are yours; you are masters of the gold of Lydia, the treasures of Persia, the wealth of India – yes, and of the sea beyond India, too. You are my captains, my generals, my governors of provinces.

‘From all this which I have laboured to win for you, what is left for myself except the purple and this crown? I keep nothing for my own; no one can point to treasure of mine apart from all this which you yourselves either possess, or have in safe keeping for your future use. Indeed, what reason have I to keep anything, as I eat the same food and take the same sleep as you do? Ah, but there are epicures among you who, I fancy, eat more luxuriously than I; and this I know, that I wake earlier than you – and watch, that you may sleep.
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‘Perhaps you will say that, in my position as your commander, I had none of the labours and distress which you had to endure to win for me what I have won. But does any man among you honestly feel that he has suffered more for me than I have suffered for him? Come now – if you are wounded, strip and show your wounds, and I will show mine. There is no part of my body but my back which has not a scar; not a weapon a man may grasp or fling the mark of which I do not carry upon me. I have sword-cuts from close fight; arrows have pierced me, missiles from catapults bruised my flesh; again and again I have been struck by stones or clubs – and all for your sakes: for your glory and your gain.
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Over every land and sea, across river, mountain, and plain I led you to the world’s end, a victorious army. I married as you married, and many of you will have children related by blood to my own. Some of you have owed money – I have paid your debts, never troubling to inquire how they were incurred, and in spite of the fact that you earn good pay and grow rich from the sack of cities. To most of you I have given a circlet of gold as a memorial for ever and ever of your courage and of my regard.
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And what of those who have died in battle? Their death was noble, their burial illustrious; almost all are commemorated at home by statues of bronze; their parents are held in honour, with all dues of money or service remitted,
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for under my leadership not a man among you has ever fallen with his back to the enemy.

‘And now it was in my mind to dismiss any man no longer fit for active service – all such should return home to be envied and admired. But you all wish to leave me. Go then! And when you reach home, tell them that Alexander your King, who vanquished Persians and Medes and Bactrians and Sacae; who crushed the Uxii, the Arachotians, and the Drangae, and added to his empire Parthia, the Chorasmian waste, and Hyrcania to the Caspian Sea; who crossed the Caucasus beyond the Caspian Gates, and Oxus and Tanais and the Indus, which none but Dionysus had crossed before him, and Hydaspes and Acesines and Hydraotes – yes, and Hyphasis too, had you not feared to follow; who by both mouths of the Indus burst into the Great Sea beyond, and traversed the desert of Gedrosia, untrodden before by any army; who made Carmania his own, as his troops swept by, and the country of the Oreitans; who was brought back by you to Susa, when his ships had sailed the ocean from India to Persia – tell them, I say, that you deserted him and left him to the mercy of barbarian men, whom you yourselves had conquered. Such news will indeed assure you praise upon earth and reward in heaven. Out of my sight!’

As he ended, Alexander sprang from the rostrum and hurried into the palace. All that day he neither ate nor washed nor permitted any of his friends to see him. On the following day too he remained closely confined. On the third day he sent for the Persian officers who were in the highest favour and divided among them the command of the various units of the army. Only those whom he designated his kinsmen were now permitted to give him the customary kiss.
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On the Macedonians the immediate effect of Alexander’s speech was profound. They stood in silence in front of the rostrum. Nobody made a move to follow the King except his closest attendants and the members of his personal guard; the rest, helpless to speak or act, yet unwilling to go away, remained rooted to the spot. But when they were told about the Persians and Medes – how command was being given to Persian officers, foreign troops drafted into Macedonian units, a Persian Corps of Guards called by a Macedonian name, Persian infantry units given the coveted title of Companions, Persian Silver Shields
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and Persian mounted Companions, including even a new Royal Squadron, in process of formation – they could contain themselves no longer. Every man of them hurried to the palace; in sign of supplication they flung their arms on the ground before the doors and stood there calling and begging for admission. They offered to give up the ringleaders of the mutiny and those who had led the cry against the King, and swore they would not stir from the spot day or night unless Alexander took pity on them.

Alexander, the moment he heard of this change of heart, hastened out to meet them, and he was so touched by their grovelling repentance and their bitter lamentations that the tears came into his eyes. While they continued to beg for his pity, he stepped forward as if to speak, but was anticipated by one Callines, an officer of the Companions, distinguished both by age and rank. ‘My lord,’ he cried, ‘what hurts us is that you have made Persians your kinsmen – Persians are called “Alexander’s kinsmen” – Persians kiss you. But no Macedonian has yet had a taste of this honour.’

‘Every man of you,’ Alexander replied, ‘I regard as my kinsman, and from now on that is what I shall call you.’

Thereupon Callines came up to him and kissed him, and all the others who wished to do so kissed him too. Then they picked up their weapons and returned to their quarters singing the song of victory at the top of their voices.

To mark the restoration of harmony, Alexander offered sacrifice to the gods he was accustomed to honour, and gave a public banquet which he himself attended, sitting among the Macedonians, all of whom were present.
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Next them the Persians had their places, and next to the Persians distinguished foreigners of other nations; Alexander and his friends dipped their wine from the same bowl and poured the same libations, following the lead of the Greek seers and the Magi. The chief object of his prayers was that Persians and Macedonians might rule together in harmony as an imperial power. It is said that 9,000 people attended the banquet; they unanimously drank the same toast, and followed it by the paean of victory.
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After this all Macedonians – about 10,000 all told – who were too old for service or in any way unfit, got their discharge at their own request.
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They were given their pay not only up to date, but also for the time they would take on the homeward journey. In addition to their pay they
each received a gratuity of one talent. Some of the men had children by Asian women, and it was Alexander’s orders that these should be left behind to avoid the trouble among their families at home, which might be caused by the introduction of half-caste children; he promised to have them brought up on Macedonian lines, with particular attention to their military training, and added that when they grew up he would himself bring them back to Macedonia and hand them over to their fathers. It was a somewhat vague and unsatisfactory promise; he did, however, give the clearest proof of how warmly he felt for them, and of how much he would miss them when they had gone, by his decision to entrust them on their journey to the leadership and protection of Craterus, the most loyal of his officers and a man he loved as dearly as his own life.
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When he said good-bye to them, his eyes and the eyes of every man among them were wet with tears.

Craterus’ instructions were to take them home and, on arrival there, to assume control of Macedonia, Thrace, and Thessaly and assure the freedom of Greece.
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Antipater received orders to bring out fresh drafts to replace the men sent home; Polysperchon was sent with Craterus as his second in command – Craterus was in poor health, and thus Alexander ensured that if anything happened to him during the journey the men should have someone to take charge of them.
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There are always plausible and malicious people ready to start whispering campaigns about Court secrets – and the more secret the better they like it – and to put the worst possible interpretations upon what appear to most of us perfectly straightforward actions. So it was in this matter of Alexander and Antipater.
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The rumour was, that Alexander was beginning to be influenced by his mother’s calumnious statements about Antipater, and for that reason wished to get him out of the country. It may well be, however, that his recall was in no way meant to discredit him, but was merely to prevent the quarrel between him and Olympias from reaching a point beyond Alexander’s power to heal. Both of them were constantly writing to Alexander; Antipater’s letters were full of the Queen’s headstrong character and violent temper and her determination (most unsuitable for Alexander’s mother) to have a finger in every pie – indeed, the stories of her behaviour gave rise to a much-quoted remark of Alexander’s, to the effect that she was charging him a high price for his nine months’ lodging in her womb. Olympias, for her part, continually complained that Antipater’s position and the respect to which it entitled him made him insufferably arrogant; he no longer remembered, she wrote, who had put him where he was, but claimed absolute pre-eminence among his fellow countrymen and the rest of Greece. It cannot be denied that the stories which tended to blacken Antipater’s good name did seem to gain more and more influence over Alexander, for such things would naturally alarm anyone in his position; nevertheless
we hear of nothing he either did or said, which would serve as ground for the conclusion that he did not continue to regard Antipater as highly as ever.
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