PHILIP II OF MACEDON & ALEXANDER THE GREAT 382–323 BC THE RISE OF THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE
BY
ARTHUR M. CURTEIS
CHAPTER I. GEOGRAPHY AND INHABITANTS OF MACEDON.
CHAPTER II. KINGS OF MACEDON TO THE DEATH OF AMYNTAS II., FATHER OF
PHILIP (7OO-369).
CHAPTER III. MACEDON AND HELLAS AT PHILIP’S ACCESSION.
CHAPTER IV. FROM THE ACCESSION OF PHILIP TO HIS INTERVENTION IN THE
SACRED WAR.
CHAPTER V. FROM PHILIP'S INTERVENTION IN THESSALY TO THE FALL OF
OLYNTHOS.
CHAPTER VI. THE PEACE OF PHILOKRATES. FALSA LEGATIO. THERMOPYLAI IN
PHILIP S HANDS.
CHAPTER VII. FROM THE PEACE OF PHILOKRATES TO THE BATTLE OF CHAIRONEIA
(346-338).
CHAPTER VIII. FROM THE BATTLE OF CHAERONEEA TO THE BEGINNING OF
ALEXANDER'S ASIATIC CAMPAIGNS.
CHAPTER IX. ALEXANDER IN ASIA MINOR.
CHAPTER X. FROM THE SIEGE OF HALIKARNASSOS TO THE BATTLE OF ISSOS.
CHAPTER XL FROM THE BATTLE OF ISSOS TO THE BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA.
CHAPTER XII. FROM THE BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA TO THE SACK OF PERSEPOLIS.
CHAPTER XHI. THE DEATH OF DARIUS. — REDUCTION OF PARTHIA. — EXECUTION OF
PHILOTAS AND PARMENION.
CHAPTER XIV. THE CAMPAIGNS IN BAKTRIA AND SOGDIANA.
CHAPTER XV. FROM THE OXUS TO THE HYPHASIS.
CHAPTER XVI. THE RETURN FROM THE HYPHASIS TO SUSA.
CHAPTER XVII. CLOSING SCENES.
CHAPTER I.
GEOGRAPHY AND INHABITANTS OF MACEDONIA.
“The history of a nation is by no means to be regarded solely as a
consequence of the natural condition of its local habitations.” So writes one
of the latest of Greek historians in the midst of a the physical graphic
description of the climate and physical characteristics of the shores of the
Aegean. But the stress which he lays on these characteristics, and the inferences
which he draws from them, show that he considers them to have been a strongly
determining cause of the history peoples who dwelt upon those shores. It is
indeed impossible to suppose that, had the Greeks been inhabitants of a level
inland country, they would have remained so long disunited, or would have shown
(as they did) the restless activity characteristic of the seaman; and we shall
have evidence in the following pages of the extraordinary endurance of Greeks
amid sudden changes of climate, as well as of their superiority to Asiatics in bodily not less than mental vigour.
That some part of this vigour was owing to the
country in which they lived will hardly be denied.
In its physical characteristics Greece was a land of singular contrasts.
A remarkable similarity of conditions between the eastern and western shores of
the Aegean was matched by a remarkable difference of conditions between the
eastern and western coasts of Greece itself, and still more between its
southern and northern provinces. The Aegean was a highway between two halves of
one country—a sea exceptionally suitable for commerce. The air is clear.
Islands—that is, landmarks— are frequent. Bays and safe anchorages are
innumerable. During a great part of the summer there are regular winds which
blow daily from the north, so regularly indeed that Demosthenes counted it
among Philip’s advantages that he lived at the back of the north wind. On the
other hand, while the eastern side of Greece is rich in fertile lowlands and
has a deeply indented though accessible coastline, the western side consists of
little but rocky ridges skirting a savage shore with few harbours.
But the contrast between south and north is yet more striking than this. There
is not on the entire surface of the globe, it has been said, any other region
in which the different zones of climate and flora meet one another in so rapid
a succession. The semi-tropical products of the Cyclades and the Peloponnesus
have vanished in Boeotia. The olives of Attica are not seen in Thessaly. Even
the myrtle disappears on the northern shores of the Aegean.
If we go farther north, we only heighten the contrast ; for the climate
and products of Macedon resemble those of central Germany. It is a land of
broad rivers and great plains, far superior to Illyria across the mountains in
fertility, and boasting a seacoast of great extent. Yet seacoast and inland
were strangely cut off the one from the other, so that the inhabitants of the
interior until Philip’s time were to a great extent a highland population
secluded from the world. The reason of this lay in the peculiar conformation of
the mountain system of the country. If we were to use the language of a
cultivated Athenian, we should say that the range of the Kambounian (Cambunian) mountains, stretching from the lofty mass
of Olympus in the east to Lakmon in the west, formed
a natural barrier between Hellenes and Barbarians, between pure-breeds and
half-breeds. This range was indeed of no great height, yet it formed, roughly
speaking, a sort of division between one kind of country and another, one kind
of people and another. The Hellenes to the south reached a high degree of
civilization, and emigrating from home and mingling with their neighbours in
all directions, powerfully affected the history of surrounding nations. The
Macedonians remained for a long while a half-barbarous people, because they
were shut off not only from the outside world, but from mutual intercourse by
lofty and numerous mountain chains. These mountains, in fact, were so lofty and
difficult, that at most points they were higher than the Kambounian range at many points even higher than Pindos itself. It was easier on the whole
to pass from the adjacent lowlands into Thessaly or the valley of the Istros (Danube) than from one Macedonian valley to another.
On the other hand, the rivers that rise in these mountain ranges gradually
converge before falling into the sea after long and devious wanderings. The
first outward expansion of these highland tribes would needs follow the natural
line marked out for them by their rivers flowing seaward, and their first
natural meeting-points would be Aigai (Aegae) and
Pella in the valley of the Axios, the successive
capitals of Macedonian kings.
In the widest extent of the name, Macedon included five tracts or
provinces, singularly different from one another. Three of these were basins of
large rivers, while a fourth (Emathia) was almost as
directly a “gift” of the united rivers as Egypt was of the Nile, being formed,
it would seem, out of the alluvial deposit brought down by them in the course
of centuries from the lofty mountains of the interior.
The valley watered by the Haliakmon was a
narrow district, enclosed between the Kambounian and Skardos ranges on the south and west, and Mounts Barnos and Bermios on the north
and east. Although it was not remarkable for fertility, the possession of this
valley was yet a matter of importance to the kings of Macedon. At its northern
end there was a remarkable gorge, cleaving the mountains from east to west, the
only rent in the great mass of Skardos for more than
200 miles, through which a tributary of the Apsos flows from its source in
Mount Barnos on its way to the Adriatic. The Roman
road of later days (Via Egnatia) was carried over a
pass some thirty miles to the north; but before the Roman conquest of Macedon,
this gorge of the Eordaikos must have formed the main
line of communication between Illyria and Macedon, whether for commerce or
invasion, and lent therefore an exceptional importance to the upper valley of
the Haliakmon.
To the north of Orestis lay the fertile
uplands, watered by the river Erigon, as it pursues a
winding course to join the Axios. Though averaging a
height of 1,500 feet above the sea, the district boasted “a fat rich soil,”
capable of maintaining a large population.
The Axios was the chief river in Macedon, and
its eastern boundary prior to the reign of Philip, a river too of a different
character to the preceding. In its upper course it flows through a narrow
cultivated plain, receiving the waters of the Erigon from Pelagonia abruptly changes its peaceful nature,
forming at the so-called Iron Gates rapids for some considerable distance,
where its waters begin to slide to the lowlands of Emathia.
At the Gates the river cuts through the mountain range which joins Skardos to Orbelos, and having
cleft for itself a passage through a precipitous gorge of more than 600 feet in
height, gradually descends to the lower level, and so falls at last into the
sea, close to the joint mouths of the Haliakmon and Lydias.
In the very centre of the country, and
entirely enclosed by mountains, lay the province of Eordaia — an almost circular basin, difficult of access, and with no outlet except a
couple of mountain passes. The water from the hills appears to drain entirely
into the Lake Begorritis.
Lastly there was the irregular strip of alluvial land, stretching from
Mount Olympus to the city of Therme (Thessalonica), at first a narrow plain,
enclosed between sea and mountains and called Pieria, but widening out between
the Haliakmon and Therme into the fertile province of Emathia, watered by the great river already
mentioned, and containing the two capitals of Macedon, Aigai (Aegas) and Pella. The former lay at the head of the valley
of the Lydias, on a plateau 200 feet above the plain,
and dominated the whole of Emathia as well as the
passes from the seacoast to the interior. It was the “portal of the
highlands,” the dominant “castle of the plain,” and remained to the last, as
became its position and associations, the burial-place of the Macedonian kings,
the centre and hearth of the Macedonian tribes. Pella
was a city of a different type. Archelaus was the first of the Macedonian kings
to understand its value as a capital ; but it remained comparatively
insignificant until it became associated with the glories of Philip’s reign. It
had two great merits. It was central and it was strong—as strong as Aigai,
far stronger than Pydna, and more central than either for a monarch whose long
arm reached from Amphipolis to Pagasai. It was also in direct communication
with the sea (distant about fifteen miles) by the marshes and the Lydias. In short, with no claims to beauty, or grandeur, or
healthiness, Pella formed a strong central useful capital, thoroughly
characteristic of a common-sense monarchy, whose right was might.
So far we have been dealing solely with Macedon. But there were large
districts and many cities to the east of the Axios,
which had been founded or colonized by Hellenes, and in which they were the
dominant, if not the more numerous part of the population. These colonies
fringed the whole coast of the Euxine Sea, the Chersonese, Thrace, and
Chalcidice; and as the extension of Macedonian power by Philip brought him
into collision with many of them, it will be well to give a short account of
the country lying between the Axios and Amphipolis.
The promontory of Chalcidice, with its three fingers or peninsulas,
seemed formed by nature to be the maritime province of the inland country
behind Chalcidice. Macedon might seem to have a natural right to it, and we can
hardly wonder that Philip was not content until he had won it. As compared with
the western shores of the same latitude it had marked advantages. In place of a
savage coast and precipitous cliffs, we have a broad mass of land reaching far
into the Southern Sea, whose three great spurs abound in harbours,
and were studded with flourishing colonies. The easternmost (Akte) runs forty miles into the sea, with an average
breadth of four miles, and ends in the grand limestone cone of Athos, towering
more than 6,000 feet above the level of the Aegean, and casting its shadow even
as far as Lemnos. The central and western peninsulas (Sithonia and Pallene) are not so mountainous as Akte, but were
far more densely populated. Each was fringed with a numerous belt of colonies.
Each boasted one city of first-rate importance. On the west coast of Sithonia lay Torone, the first
home of the emigrants from Euboean Chalcis, who colonized Chalcidice and gave
it their own name : while at the neck of land connecting Pallene with the
country to the north was Potidaea, a colony from Dorian Corinth; the near
neighbour, rival, and sometime subject of the Chalcidian Olynthus. Nor does the
list of Hellenic colonies end here. Besides a host of minor towns, there were
Methone, Therme, Olynthus, Akanthos, Amphipolis, all
colonized by men of Dorian race, and two of them occupying positions of
first-rate importance. Amphipolis, strongly situated in an angle of the Strymon, commanded the passage of the river and the road
from west to east. To be master of Amphipolis was to be master also of Mount Pangaios and its valuable gold and silver mines. Nor did
Therme occupy a less important site. The gulf on which it stands is a splendid
sheet of water, running inland loo miles in a general direction from south-east
to north-west, and gradually narrowing at its northern end. The town itself was
of little consequence till Macedonian times ; but the moment that a great state
arose on the northern shore of the Aegean, which swallowed up the pettier city-
leagues of Chalcidice, Therme at once assumed its natural importance as a great harbour, commanding and guarding the approaches from
the eastward. It lay close at hand to the plains of the Axios,
and communicated by a pass with the valley of the Strymon.
The difference in the physical features of the countries lying to the
north and south of the Kambounian range was not more
remarkable than that between the inhabitants of these countries. Epeirots, Macedonians, Illyrians, and Paionians were genuine Hellenes. Macedonians, indeed, were not the mere barbarians which
cultivated Greeks like Demosthenes affected to believe them; yet neither were
they Hellenes in the highest sense of the word. Their civilization was less
developed, their dress and fashion were different, and their language, though
similar, was yet not pure Greek. What we know of their government recalls the
heroic times of the Iliad. Their national life was not that of the city, (polis)
but of the tribe. In Italy the kingship died out. In Greece it survived at
Sparta alone, and even there was reduced by the Ephorate almost to a mere form.
But in Macedon it retained its essential character to historic times, though
limited, like the power of Agamemnon himself, by occasional assemblies of the
people in arms.
Whatever may have been the precise relations of Macedonians and
Hellenes, it is certain that the civilization of Macedon was kept Stagnant or
even deteriorated by intermixture with Illyrians. Hence Greeks and Macedonians
were ever tending to become more and more estranged. The higher the development
of Hellenic civilization in the south, the deeper was the contempt felt by the
genuine Hellene for the semi-barbarians of the north. “Philip!” cries
Demosthenes, scornfully, “Philip! who is not only no Hellene, or in any way
connected with Hellenes, but not even a barbarian from a creditable country! He
is a worthless fellow from Macedon, whence, in olden time, it was impossible to
get even a decent slave!”. This was, of course, the exaggerated language of
pride of birth, deepened by political hatred, and it was hardly true in any
sense of the Macedonian royal family; yet it expresses a partial truth, and it
was only from Hellas itself that the influence came which made a national life
on a large scale possible to these rude highlanders.
Hellenic colonies, it must be remembered, were not confined to the
shores of the Aegean. There were also important settlements on the Ionian Sea,
on Hellenic the coasts of which the Dorian Corinthians had founded several
colonies, and through them opened up a mercantile connexion with the interior. Nor were the Corinthians alone in their adventurous pursuit
of fortune north-eastwards. Other Dorians also, exiles from Peloponnesian
Argos, followed in their track, and by the end of the eighth century had
established themselves in the upper valley of the Haliakmon.
Among these wanderers, Herodotus tells us, were three brothers, of the royal
family of Argos. After many adventures and hair-breadth escapes, they gradually
won a leading position among the Macedonians, in the midst of whom they were
settled; and from this to kingship and conquest was an easy step. But the
youngest brother, Perdikkas, was the most intelligent, or the most favoured by
fortune. King in Orestis, with a new Argos for his
capital, he pushed his victorious arms almost to the mouth of the Haliakmon, and finally transferred the headquarters of his
growing power to a more convenient capital in Aigai. Thus was founded the
dynasty of the Argeads; and thus were laid the
foundations of that Macedonian empire which conquered Greece and overthrew the
might of Persia.
CHAPTER II.
KINGS OF MACEDONIA TO THE DEATH OF AMYNTAS II, FATHER
OF PHILIP, (700-369).
The first two centuries of the Macedonian monarchy, covered by the
reigns of six kings, were a period shrouded in obscurity, during which the
kingdom had enlarged itself at the expense of its neighbours, and crossing the Axios had even reached the Strymon.
This of conquest had been scarcely arrested by the Persian invasions of Europe.
Indeed, Alexander I, son of Amyntas, was cunning enough to bow to the storm,
and while cautiously doing his utmost to befriend the Greeks, affected to fall
in with Persian ideas as to Macedon being the centre of a great vassal state, and thankfully accepted any extension of territory
which the Great King might be pleased to give him. By these means he gained a
footing among the Thracian tribes as far as Mount Haemus, while he attained an
object by which he set even greater store as a true-blooded Hellene ; for his
claims to that title were publicly acknowledged at Olympia, and his victories
in the Stadium celebrated by the Hellenic Pindar. Yet the difficulties of Alexander
did not cease, but rather increased when danger no longer threatened Greece
from the side of Persia. He had removed his capital from Aigai to Pydna, a step
nearer to the Hellenes, whom he admired so much. But close to Pydna lay Methone,
an independent Greek city; while to the eastward, in Chalcidice, and as far as
the Strymon, were numerous Hellenic colonies whose
sympathies drew them naturally to the south rather than the west—to Hellas,
not to Macedon—and which, after the Persian wars, recognized in the maritime
Athens their natural leader and protectress. It was a difficult position; and
for a century it tried to the utmost the skill of the Macedonian kings. On the
one hand, the expansion of the kingdom had outrun its internal consolidation, and
there were latent elements of discontent which more than once brought it to the
verge of ruin. On the other hand, if the Macedonian monarchs were to be
anything more than petty lords of half-barbarous tribes, they could hardly put
up with the permanent dependence of what was practically their own sea-coast on
a far distant and hostile power, any more than with its permanent independence.
The kings of Macedon were forced by their position to choose between two
alternatives, to make good their claim to Method and Potidaea, Chalcidice and
Amphipolis, and to win their way to the coast, or else to submit to a
humiliating exclusion from the political affairs of Hellas. In such a case no
able man hesitates in the choice of his alternative; and we thus strike the
key-note of the discords and jealousies which for so many years troubled
Northern Greece. Even before the Peloponnesian war, in the time of Perdiccas II
(454-413), Athens and Macedon were face to face, conscious of divergent
interests.
The colonization of Amphipolis had been the crowning stroke of the
policy by which Pericles sought to keep a firm hold of Chalcidice and the
Thracian coast, and so of the Aegean. Perdiccas, on the other hand, threatened
at once by discontented neighbours in the west, by the formidable empire of the
Thracian Sitalces in the east, and by Athenian
jealousy in Chalcidice, was forced to pursue a tortuous policy. Adroitly
observant of the current of affairs, and quite devoid of scruples, he made
treaties and broke them, he waged war or bowed to the storm, with equal
facility. In the field of diplomacy he must have been an exceptionally able man
; for every neighbour in turn was utilized to serve his purpose, and was
neglected or attacked when the object of the moment was attained. Brasidas the
Spartan he made use of against his private enemies the Illyrians. He skilfully fomented the revolt of the Chalcidic towns
against Athens in 432; while in the next year we find him allied with his old
enemies the Athenians, and showing his gratitude by attacking his old friends
the Chalcidians. Two years later—once more allied with Chalcidians and at war
with Athens—he was attacked by Sitalces, and was
within a little of being ruined. Yet from these and similar perils he escaped
with unimpaired strength, or rather the stronger, in that the brilliant
campaigns of Brasidas had undermined the power of Athens in the north. Nor was
Athens ever again as formidable to Macedon as she had been ; for the disastrous
issue of the Sicilian expedition (413) paralyzed her influence everywhere, and
probably Macedon reaped more advantage from the victory of Syracuse than
Syracuse did herself.
The policy of Perdiccas was continued with success by his illegitimate
son Archelaus. He climbed to power by a series of violent deeds, with which
most barbarous societies are only too familiar : for he assassinated his
brother, as well as his uncle and his uncle’s son. Such were his crimes. His
merits were not less marked as the great civilizer of Macedon. Thucydides goes
out of his way to insist that Archelaus benefited his country more than all his
eight predecessors put together, not only in his military improvements, but in
building roads and founding cities. He transferred tire capital from Pydna to
Pella, while he pacified Pieria by the foundation of a new city, Dion,
dedicated to Zeus and the Muses, and reserved for festival occasions. He
gathered round him some of the most brilliant Greeks of the day—not sorry
perhaps to exchange the insecurity of their native cities for the lettered ease
and secure patronage of a court. But these efforts, though praiseworthy, were
not altogether successful. His clients seem to have been corrupted by the
atmosphere around them; and the premature attempt at artistic development was
cut short by the forty years of disorder which followed his murder. It is an
illustration of the assertion that the history of Macedonia is the history of
its kings, that this effort should have been thus fruitless, and that to the
last the people should apparently have retained so many characteristics of
barbarism. Hard fighters and hard drinkers, they were fine soldiers but
indifferent citizens, and seem to have received only faint impressions from the
civilization for which they prepared the way in Asia.
The murder of Archelaus was the signal for six years of bloodshed and
disorder, until Amyntas, the father of the great Philip, murdered his predecessor
and seized the throne. Amyntas was nominal king for twenty-four years, but it
was a reign full of romantic reverses of fortune. Ten years of anarchy had
given to the native nobility a long-coveted opportunity of revolt, against a
culture and ordered peace which in their hearts they disliked, as well as
against the tightening reins of despotism. It is a phenomenon often seen in
political history, that the substitution of one strong will for a hundred conflicting
wills is a slow process, subject to ebb and flow, and often desperately opposed
by those who have a personal interest in a time of license. What Normandy
suffered in the ninth and tenth centuries A.D., and England in the twelfth, and
France in the fifteenth, that Macedonia suffered in the fourth century B.C.,
until Philip gained the throne. The nobility were insubordinate. Authority was
set at nought. Each man fought for his own hand.
Murder was rife ; and the anarchy was only temporarily allayed by a politic
marriage. The union of Amyntas with Eurydice, a daughter of a leading family
among the Lynkestai, was intended, like the marriage
of Henry the Fifth of England with Katharine of France, to put an end to a
series of exhausting struggles.
But the marriage failed in its object and only secured him a temporary
respite from trouble. The Lynkestai were not
mollified by the union of a daughter of their house with the royal family ; and
the neighbours of Amyntas were eager to benefit by his difficulties. Illyrians,
Thracians, Thessalians, in turn or in concert, poured into Macedon. He was even
obliged to surrender the coast of the Thermaic gulf
to the Chalcidians of Olynthus. We might almost say that he was elbowed out of
his own country by encroaching friends and powerful enemies, and for nearly two
years was a king without a kingdom.
But he was a dexterous diplomatist, who in the school of adversity seems
to have learned the art of playing off one foe against another, and of exciting
them to mutual jealousy. If the Olynthians gained from
him more than they gave, it would seem that they checked the further advance of
the Illyrians. Against Olynthus itself, which was too near and powerful not to
be disliked, a happy combination of circumstances gave him an irresistible ally
in Sparta. For Olynthus also had enemies, whose enmity had arisen in the
following way. Favoured by accident, Olynthus had
become head of a considerable league of cities in and near Chalcidice. Indeed,
the terms of confederation (as described by Xenophon, an unwilling witness) were
so fair and generous, that it is hardly strange that the smaller and more
exposed Hellenic cities in those parts gladly exchanged precarious independence
for safety even if combined with partial dependence; or that Macedonian cities,
although as important as Pella, preferred comparative security within the
hardly felt restraints of a fairly constituted confederacy to being subjects of
a despot who could not protect them from even the attacks of Illyrians. In the
year 383 envoys appeared before the Spartan assembly from King Amyntas and the
city of Acanthus— men who recounted to a sympathetic audience the political
troubles which vexed themselves and their friends. A careful reading of the
speech delivered on the occasion by the Akanthian envoy throws a flood of light on the feelings of the day, and the prejudices
(to call them by no worse name) which blinded the eyes and tied the hands of
free Greeks. For what was it they feared? Not yet the tyranny of a Macedonian
king, not now the inroads of Illyrian savages, but the aggression of a great
city, which invited all to combine for self-defence and to agree to adopt such singular nations as common laws and mutual
citizenship, and intermarriage, and common rights of property! To Amyntas it
was only natural that such far-sighted justice should seem as dangerous as it
was strange—a precedent to be if possible never repeated. But Greek cities also
of size and importance, and notably Acanthus, sympathized with the king rather
than the free city, and passionately tenacious of their narrow town life,
actually joined Amyntas in petitioning Sparta to save them from their friends.
For Olynthus by the offer of manifest advantages had gathered into its
confederation city after city, until but a few in Chalcidice were left
independent. Of these the largest were Acanthus and Apollonia. Being invited to
join the league, they declined. Being threatened with compulsion if they
persisted in refusal, they appealed to Sparta, and their appeal was backed by
Amyntas. “You seem not to be aware, O Spartans,” said the envoys, “ of the
great power growing up in Greece. City after city, Greek and Macedonian, has
been won over or freed ” (the word must have slipped from their lips almost
involuntarily), “by Olynthus. We have been invited to join, and unless some
help reach us we shall have to do so against our wishes. They are already
strong. They are opening negotiations with both Thebes and Athens. If these
succeed, think of the strength of such a coalition! Olynthus is strong by sea as
well as land, having mines and forests and money. But as yet she is vulnerable,
for her allies are not all reconciled to her rule. Therefore strike hard and
strike soon.” This appeal was only too successful. The Spartan Eudamidas was despatched at once
with 2,000 men to the scene of action, and his mere presence induced Potidaea
to revolt from the league, and relieved Acanthus and Apollonia from all danger
of absorption. Eudamidas was to be followed by his
brother Phoibidas with the residue of 10,000 men.
It would be alien to the subject of this book to narrate the rash
seizure of the citadel of Thebes by Phoibidas on his
northward march; though it will be necessary to explain its unexpected effect.
Suffice it to say, that Phoibidas never reached
Macedon. The reinforcements for Eudamidas, who as yet
was only strong enough to maintain the status quo, were led by Teleutias, a brother of King Agesilaos,
and comprised a considerable force of Thebans. Amyntas was urged to do his
utmost in the way of getting mercenaries and money. And thus the storm broke on
the devoted city. The defence was little short of
heroic. For at this time (B.C 382), Sparta was at the height of her power, and
her will was law in almost every part of Greece. The Olynthians at first fully held their own, though with varying fortune. In 381 they even
defeated Teleutias in a pitched battle under their
own walls, slew him and a large part of his force, and drove the rest to seek
safety in Potidaea or whatever nearest city they could reach. For the moment
the star of Olynthus was in the ascendant. For the moment Amyntas seemed
farther from his throne than ever. But, whatever a city with less prestige
might have done, Sparta had far too much at stake to acquiesce quietly in so
rude a repulse. A second and more imposing force was despatched at once under King Agesipolis ; and once more the
hopes of Amyntas rose when he saw the Olynthian territory ravaged, the city itself besieged, and its ally Torone taken by storm. Agesipolis indeed did not live to see
the fruits of his vigorous attack, for he was carried off by fever. But his
successor succeeded both to his throne and to his tactics. The siege became a
blockade, more and more stringent. Corn was not to be obtained either by land
or sea. At last, the sufferings of the people constrained a surrender, and the Olynthian confederacy was at an end, sacrificed to the
fears of some and the jealousies of others. Each member of the confederacy, Olynthus
included, was enrolled as a member of the Spartan league, and sworn to an
offensive and defensive alliance. But Olynthus was no longer formidable. The neighbouring cities were independent and jealously watchful
: while her maritime allies in Macedon were restored by Sparta to Amyntas.
Amyntas indeed was the only one of the confederates who benefited in the
long run. Sparta gained little but obloquy. The cities of Chalcidice won a
short-lived independence at the price of eventual subjection. To Greece in
general the result was little short of ruin. Had Olynthus been allowed to
consolidate a confederacy in the north Aegean, it would have formed a natural
outwork for the d fence of Greece against Macedonian encroachment. There might
even have been no Macedon to encroach, confronted, as it would have been, by a
compact league of cities, and cut off from all access to the sea. As it was,
the same Sparta which had given up the Greeks of Asia to Persia, gave up the
Greeks of the Aegean to Macedon — a political blunder repeated afterwards by
Athens, when she left Olynthus to the tender mercies of Philip.
Amyntas was once more king in his own country. His difficulties,
however, were not removed but only shifted from one quarter to another. If Olynthus
was no longer a danger, yet the influence of his good friends the Spartans
began to wane, and before long he was so far shut off from communication with
them as to be obliged to look for new allies. In Greece the balance of power
was perpetually shifting. With the fall of Olynthus Sparta might have seemed
supreme ; but in fact it was the beginning of the end of her supremacy. Her
haughtiness and high-handedness led to a revulsion of feeling which armed
Athens and Thebes and their allies against her (378), and made many a good
Greek rejoice in the humiliation of this tyrant city, the friend of the Great
King, of the despot of Syracuse, and of the King of Macedon. With the defeat of
Leuctra (371), her influence in the north was at an end ; new combinations
brought other powers to the front, and to Amyntas fresh troubles.
The contest of seven years (378-371) between Sparta on the one hand and
Athens and Thebes on the other, left the field in northern Greece open to
adventurers ; and it was from Thessaly that Amyntas was next beset with danger.
This vast plain — the largest and most fertile in Greece — was from time
immemorial as notorious for its political instability as for the excellence of
its horses, the luxury of its rich men, and the badness of its coinage.
According to the old proverb, “there was no relying upon anything in Thessaly;”
and history confirms the proverb. The country was divided into four districts,
sometimes united, more often the reverse ; but when united truly formidable,
being able to place in the field 6,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry. But this
was a rare event. More often the three or four leading cities—Larissa, Krannon, Pharsalos—held their
immediate neighbours in subjection, and were at more or less open war with one
another, their government being either a close oligarchy or a despotism in the
hands of a single man. Towards the end of the Peloponnesian war (about 407),
Pherae was added to the list of leading cities by the energy of a man called
Lykophron, who made himself Tyrant and did his best, though without success, to
subject all Thessaly to himself.
Jason succeeded where Lykophron failed. He was strong and active, bold
and prudent. He knew how to ensure the discipline and to secure the devotion of
soldiers. His head was full of magnificent ideas. With all Thessaly at his
back, and elected Tagos or generalissimo in 374, his
dreams extended to a wide empire, based upon the subjection of Epirus, Boeotia,
Attica, and perhaps Lacedaemon, and lastly of Macedon ; and the object of this
great power was to be the humiliation of no less a potentate than the Great
King himself a far easier task, as he professed to think, than the subjugation
of Greece. These ideas of Jason were no secret, and, as might have been
expected, his immediate neighbours began to be uneasy. Boeotia, no doubt, had
little to fear, while Epaminondas and Pelopidas were at the head of affairs at
Thebes : and Athens was too far off to be in immediate danger. But with Amyntas
the case was very different. Restored only recently to his throne, and that by
foreign help, he was too weak to resist much pressure, although he did his best
to balance matters and to strengthen himself by keeping up friendly relations
with Athens and individual Athenians. Thus in 378 he adopted as his son Iphicrates,
who was one of the ablest soldiers at Athens, and had great influence in the
north Aegean. He sent deputies to the regular meetings of the Confederacy at
Athens : and in the extraordinary meeting held in that city in the autumn of
371, he even publicly acknowledged the right of Athens to the possession of
Amphipolis, her own colony. The city was not, indeed, his to give ; but however
little trouble the Athenians may have taken to secure it, they were always
eager that no one else should have it. This public recognition, therefore, of
their right was highly gratifying, and no doubt was regarded as deserving of
reward.
All these schemes were, however, cut short by the unexpected deaths
(370) of both Amyntas and Jason. The latter had announced his intention of
being present at the Pythian games at Delphoi, and
had further issued orders to his troops to hold themselves ready for service.
The political world of Greece was thoroughly uneasy, for he had recently seized
and dismantled Herakleia, a forfeited town near Thermopylae, fearing, as he
alleged, that it might hereafter bar the pass against him at some time when he
was wishing to march into Greece ? Was it that he meant to seize the presidency
of the games? Could it be that he meditated laying hands on the treasures of Delphoi? And, if so, what next? Immense, therefore, was the
relief universally felt, when (as the Delphic oracle had promised) “ the God
did take care for himself.” Jason was murdered, while reviewing his troops, by
a band of seven youths, two of whom were overtaken and slain ; while the
remaining five escaped, and were received everywhere with special honour, as those who had relieved the Greek world from a
haunting fear. Thessaly was no more a danger to Greece. Of the two brothers who
succeeded Jason as Tagos, one was murdered by the other
; and the latter, in his turn, was slain by a third brother, Alexander, a
brutal and unscrupulous tyrant. Once more the old proverb had come true, and in
Thessaly all was uncertainty.
CHAPTER III.
MACEDON AND HELLAS AT PHILIP’S ACCESSION.
Amyntas died in the same year as Jason, and at the time of his death
Macedon was undoubtedly in a stronger condition than she had ever been. Yet ten
troubled years were still to pass, before Philip’s strong arm could beat down
opposition at home and make her formidable abroad. Alexander, son of Amyntas,
had an uneasy reign of only two years. After the murder of Jason, many nobles
of Thessaly, especially from Larissa, crossed the border to escape death or
imprisonment, and took refuge in Macedon. Alexander espoused their cause,
invaded Thessaly, and seized Larissa and Krannon. But
it was a premature step, taken without due consideration of consequences.
Macedon was as yet weak ; and Thebes, at this time in the very heyday of
prosperity, was too strong and too ambitious to brook interference with her
cherished influence in the north. Pelopidas at once marched into Thessaly, and
occupied Larissa and other cities in force. A year later (368) he was in
Macedon itself, and on a graver errand. Alexander had been assassinated by a
certain Ptolemaios, and another competitor for power soon appeared on the scene
in the person of Pausanias, who had royal blood in his vein. Then began the
scramble for power which was so common in those scenes. Besides the men, there
was Eurydice, widow of Amyntas, with her young children, to be reckoned with or
to be set aside ; and the latter was no easy task, backed as she was by the
support of the Athenian Iphicrates, whom her late husband had adopted. There
was yet a further complication in Theban jealousy of Athenian, or, indeed, of
any interference, save their own, in northern matters. Of these various
competitors, Ptolemaios and Eurydice made common cause ; while Iphicrates,
moved by Eurydice’s pressing entreaties, attacked and drove Pausanias out of
Macedon. But at this juncture Pelopidas appeared upon the scene, compelled
Ptolemaios to bow to Theban dictation, appointed him regent, and guardian of Eurydice
and her sons, and carried off thirty hostages for his good behaviour to Thebes, one of whom was Philip, son of Eurydice and Amyntas. It is
imperative to remember this three years’ exile of Philip at Thebes, for it was
the beginning of a new era in his own life and in that of his country, similar
to that which resulted to Russia in the last century from the voluntary exile
of the Tsar Peter. It was tire development of the provincial into the man of
the world. He enjoyed in Thebes, and learned how to use, all the advantages of
a liberal education and of good society. He became familiar with all the
intricacies of Greek politics and alive to the strong and weak points of Greek
city life. He was intimate with Epaminondas, the ablest organizer and most
scientific tactician of his day. Inf short, Philip left Macedon a boy, and he
returned a man full of energy and new ideas. Even Russia hardly made greater
advances during the twenty-six years of Tsar Peter’s reign than did Macedon
under Philip’s vigorous rule of twenty-three years, and his son’s thirteen
years of unbroken victory.
Philip returned to Macedon in 365, and found the state of affairs
considerably altered. His brother Perdiccas had overthrown Ptolemaios, in spite
of the Theban settlement, and in order to maintain himself against actual or possible
enemies, had once more made advances to Athens. To play off one enemy against
another, until strong enough to cope with all at once, was the traditional
policy of his house. Timotheos had superseded Iphicrates
in the north Aegean (365-4). He had reconquered Samos, had obtained a footing
in the Chersonese, and was in high favour at Athens.
To him therefore Perdiccas turned as a useful ally upon the spot; and in
concert with him he stripped Olynthus once more of a great part of the dominion
which she had recovered since the fatal blow of 383, and finally ruined all
hopes that a Chalcidic Confederacy could ever curb successfully the power of
Macedon. On the other hand, nothing could have suited Perdiccas better than
that Timotheos, while helping him to humble Chalcidice,
should fail to master Amphipolis. Amyntas, it is true, had recognized the right
of Athens to the city ; but that Athens should waste men and money in vainly
trying to conquer an unwilling subject, could not but be a satisfaction to a Perdiccas
and a Philip. In this state of affairs, moreover, the young Philip was of great
service to his brother. Perdiccas gave him a district to govern ; and there he
raised and trained according to the newest tactics a small army, the nucleus
and origin of that which for nearly two centuries was the model army and best
fighting machine in the world.
In 360 Perdiccas also passed away—whether killed in battle or murdered
is uncertain. Once more the unhappy country was plunged into a vortex of
confusion and civil war. There were no less than seven candidates for the
throne, the last but not the least of whom was Philip —Philip, with all the
advantages of a base of operations in his own province, and of an army trained
and paid by himself. To Philip the mere number of the pretenders was an
advantage, and all the best men, tired of anarchy, rallied round him. He first
assumed the guardianship of the young Amyntas, and then quietly set him aside.
Of his half-brothers, one was put to death, while the other two succeeded in
escaping to Olynthus. Pausanias was rendered harmless by a dexterous bribe to
his supporters the Thracians ; while to detach the Athenians from the cause of Argaios Philip not only recognized the justice of their
claim to Amphipolis, but withdrew the garrison which Perdiccas had posted
there. Then suddenly attacking Argaios near Aigai, he
seized and put to death him and his Macedonian followers, but sent all his
non-Macedonian allies to their homes with a politic generosity, that gained for
him, if not the alliance, at least the non-intervention of the most powerful of
his neighbours. There remained only two enemies to reckon with. The Paeonians
in the north were easily reduced. But the Illyrians, who had seized a large
part of western Macedon, were more obstinate enemies. They even ventured to
risk a battle, which they contested obstinately and lost without dishonour. Its result was to fix once more the central
chain of Pindos as the boundary between Illyrians and Macedonians.
Thus Philip was king without a rival; but king of a comparatively petty
kingdom, almost wholly shut off from the sea. Look forward little more than
twenty years, and the King of Macedon’s word was law almost from the Propontis to the Ionian Sea, an extension of power which is
itself a test of Philip’s force of character. His good fortune was proverbial,
it is true ; but, as Demosthenes reminds us, the proverb which he best
exemplified was that which says that the gods help those who help themselves.
It was notorious that he freely used bribery and corruption as a means to an
end, and was as reckless in swearing as in breaking his oaths. On occasion
also, the barbarian in him would break through the crust of Greek civilization
and lead him to brutal intemperance and savagery. Yet he was a marvellous man. He had force of brain sufficient to gauge
the possibilities of the world in which he was thrown, force of will sufficient
to command success. It is not every king who is at once the boldest rider and
swimmer, the best educated man of the world, the most versatile diplomatist,
the greatest military organizer of his time and country. Philip was all these ;
and by this untiring energy on every side of life he overbore opposition and
commanded admiration and devotion, if not affection and respect.
But before describing the political struggles of Philip’s reign, it is
necessary to dwell briefly on the condition of Greece at the time when Macedon
began to be a real danger to her freedom. For the success of Philip was due
hardly less to the apathy and mutual jealousies of the Hellenic cities than to
his own genius. The last half of the fourth century b. c. was indeed as
critical a period in the history of Greece as the last half of the third
century in that of Rome. It was marked by two struggles which scarcely admit of
comparison in any single point except in the greatness of their results and in
the fact that the one was made possible by the successful result of the other.
No one would compare in importance the conquest of Greece by Macedon with her
conquest of Asia ; and yet to conquer Asia it was necessary first to conquer
Greece. The latter was, if not conquered in the usual sense of the word, at
least reduced to such a state of dependence and weakness, that Alexander could
safely vanish from view in the far depths of Asia for eleven years, and a
military force of 12,000 men was found enough to maintain obedience in his
absence. During these eleven years (it has been said) the history of Greece is
almost a blank—a remark sufficiently true, if we remember at the same time that
Greeks, in Alexander’s train, were during those years laying the foundations of
the history of ages to come.
In the last half of the fourth century Greece was called upon, for the
first time since the invasion of Xerxes, to face an enemy from without : while
her power of resistance was far less than it had been 130 years before. Macedon
was more formidable than Persia had been, and Macedonian tactics and diplomacy
achieved a success unknown to the multitudinous forces of a Xerxes. On the
other hand, no single city in Greece was in a position to take the lead as
Athens had taken it then. Peloponnesus was utterly disorganized by the
victories and anti-Spartan policy of Epaminondas. Elis and Sparta on the one
hand, Messenia and Arcadia on the other, were jealously on the watch— the
former to regain lost power, the latter to keep hardly won liberties. Argos, at
this epoch a satellite of Thebes, was herself too weak to interfere. Corinth
was but just rid of a tyrant. Even north of the Isthmus, there was scarcely
more of organization or unity. Thebes, it is true, was mistress of Boeotia, and
had a considerable empire over Phocians and Locrians and Thessalians. But she
had a jealous neighbour in Athens. The Phocians were such unwilling subjects
that they seized the first opportunity of revolt. And her treatment of the once
free cities of Boeotia had deeply offended the public opinion of Hellas. Even
Athens herself, with a large revenue and numerous allies, had the semblance of
power rather than the reality, and had lost the secret of imperial energy which
had held together the Confederacy of Delos. Thus disorganized, Hellas fell an
easy prey to the diplomacy and arms of Macedon.
An overwhelming calamity was brought upon Greece by the result of the
battle of Chaeronea. Republics once great and free became subject to the will
of a king, or the caprices of a king’s deputy. Yet although it was a calamity
for Greece, it was a gain to the world at large. For if the Macedonian conquest
did in a sense extinguish the liberties of Hellas, it opened afterwards a wider
field for Hellenic empire and influence by the conquest of Asia which followed
it. The victories of Alexander did far more than satisfy a sentimental desire
of vengeance upon Persia. They put an end to whatever fear may have been felt
of Persian interference in Hellenic politics. They spread broadcast over half
Asia the Greek language, Greek ideas, even Greek civilization in a more or less
perfect form. They deeply affected the history of Western Asia, and therefore
of Asiatic Christianity. Viewed as an episode in the history of Greece, few
things seem more lamentable than the rise of the Macedonian monarchy, because
it rose upon the ruins of free Greek republics. Viewed as an episode in the
history of the world, it assumes its due relation in the sequence of events,
and is seen to have been in reality a transference of power fraught with
advantage to multitudes of mankind.
The Hellas of 350 B. C. was singularly different from the Hellas of a
century before : and this difference is traceable in great measure to the
untimely-failure of a grand political development; which indeed was within a
little of being realized and the success of which, while rendering a Macedonian
kingdom impossible, might have rendered unnecessary the struggles of many
generations. It was a fatal defect in Greek political ideas, that barely one or
two men in all Greek history rose superior to the petty notion that life within
the compass of city walls was theoretically the perfection of political
existence. Man (says Aristotle) is a political animal, or a being with
political instincts, and a city is the highest and most perfect organization
which satisfies those instincts. Nothing less than a city (such as village
communities), and nothing more than a city (such as a nation), seemed to
satisfy the average Greek mind. This was indeed an advance upon the primitive
Aryan custom of the isolation of the family—it was an advance upon the
half-civilized village life of Arcadia or Aetolia : but it fell lamentably
short of the grand possibilities of national unity, wherein many cities combine
together for common political ends. Now, in the middle of the fifth century,
circumstances threw such power and influence into the hands of Athens, that she
became the president of a great confederacy of Greeks, and drove the Persian
fleet out of Aegean waters, and Persian satraps out of the Hellenized lowlands
of Asia Minor. For nine years (456-447), she was even a continental power, and
mistress of a territory reaching from Megara to Thermopylae, from Sunium to Phocis. It might have seemed not impossible that
round this nucleus other Greeks would gather (as the even less homogeneous
inhabitants of medieval Gaul gathered round the royal city of Paris) and that
by slow degrees a Greek nation would arise, of which Athens would be the
political and intellectual capital. This might have been. In reality, the facts
of the case are better illustrated by the analogy of mediaeval Italy. The
mutual jealousies of Florence and Milan, of Genoa and Pisa, were only a
repetition of the jealousies of Thebes and Athens and Sparta. But the
Peloponnesian war scattered to the winds the fair but delusive dream of
Hellenic unity. The comparatively tolerant hegemony of Athens was exchanged for
the wanton and intolerant oppression of Sparta. Happily for Greece, it lasted
only thirty years : but they were thirty years fraught with evil, when the
seeds were sown of a selfishness and corruption that bore fruit only too soon
in humiliation and foreign conquest. It was not merely the policy of Sparta in
Asia, and at Olynthus, that was demoralizing ; but the acts of individual
Spartans, like Phoibidas at Thebes, or Sphodrias at Athens, spread a general spirit of suspicion
which made national union impossible and the triumph of Macedon comparatively
easy. In the middle of the fourth century Greece had fallen back into its
normal state of petty jealous cities, whose strongest feeling was suspicion of
the nearest neighbour city, and their one object to keep that neighbour weak.
The evils of separatism are bad enough. They were worse when aggravated
by that personal corruption and decay of public spirit which often follow upon
political despair. The speeches of Demosthenes are so precise and severe in the
charges which he brings against his countrymen, that we cannot help believing
that a great deal of what he says, is true, more particularly we observe that
the actual course of events corresponded exactly to the character assigned to
the actors who took part in them. “Athenians (says the orator) are indolent,
selfish, suspicious, corrupt. The festivals they celebrate with great
regularity, and there is money in plenty for them; but their wars they starve.
So enamoured are they of the comfortable refinements
of home, that they hate to lift a finger, even in self-defence,
and are like raw boxers, who parry but never return a blow.” The cause of it
all lies in the word, so often on Demosthenes’ lips, or the art of taking
things easily. This it was, he adds, which led them to adopt the new-fangled
system of mercenaries, which made the city ridiculous and the city’s allies
quake with fear. No force was less to be trusted, for they regarded only their
own interest, not that of their employers. Nor could anything exceed the
short-sightedness of Thessalians and Thebans and Peloponnesians (unless it were
that of the Athenians themselves) whom he compares to men in a hail-storm, praying
earnestly that it may do them no injury, but taking no steps to prevent it !
Nor was this all. That Greeks should be selfishly supine and short-sighted in
the face of a great danger was bad ; but it was far worse that they should have
publicly sold off and disposed of a principle once valued—that it was shameful
to take a bribe for the ruin of one’s country, and to sympathize with her
enemies. Such men he compares to sprains and fractures in the body, which make
their presence felt as soon as anything goes wrong. Pure and old-fashioned
patriotism was at a discount, and in its place had come in a vulgar
importation, “jealousy, if a man gained any advantage; ridicule, if he
confessed it , hatred of any man who blamed such doings ’—feelings quite incompatible
with a lofty tone and with spirited action. In short, public opinion and public
spirit in Greece and Athens were very different from what they had been a
hundred years before. There was money and material strength in abundance ; but
it was rendered useless by corruption. What they needed was less talking and
more acting. Again and again he appeals to the Athenians in the Olynthiacs and Philippics to awake to the realities of the
case, no longer to fold their hands and sit still, above all to cease their
perpetual jealousies and recriminations. As for decrees and votes, “ decrees ”
he cries “ are worth nothing without action.” Again, he appeals to their
legitimate pride in the grand deeds of their ancestors, who were right to run
the risks they did in defence of Greece against
Persia. They died indeed, but what of that? “Death comes to every man, even
though he shut himself in a dove-cote; ” and it is
for brave men to do and dare ! He contrasts the forbearance and devotion of the
Athenians of old with the blind selfishness of his own contemporaries, who
allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by fawning demagogues, who grew rich on the
state’s misfortunes, while they cried peace when there was no peace. Their
ancestors did not seek for a general or an orator who would manage that they
should live in comfortable servitude. In short, Athens had no policy save that
of leaving things alone; and this fatal want of policy was no new thing.
Nothing could have looked more hopeful than the new Naval Confederation which
arose in 378 under the primacy of Athens. Its material power was very
considerable. Its object was simply to curb the power of Sparta; its rules were
framed to guard the interests of each and all against oppression from within
and aggression from without. Yet not only did Athens before long begin to trim
between Thebes and Sparta, acting the great power, and professing to hold the
balance, but individual Athenians were allowed abroad on a sort of roving
commission, and by high-handed exploits won popularity at home, and perhaps
extended the Athenian empire, but none the less laid the foundations of
subsequent revolt against such stupid ambition. Tactics like these only too
surely quenched all enthusiasm for Athens in the minds of the confederates, and
occasioned a revolt which left her to cope almost single-handed with the able
and unscrupulous Philip. The conditions of the struggle meanwhile were anything
but equal. “We on our side ” (says Demosthenes, reviewing their relative
resources) “ had only the weakest of the islands ; but neither Chios nor Rhodes
nor Corcyra. Our revenue amounted to forty-five talents, but even that was
raised before it was due. We had not a single cavalry or infantry soldier
beyond our own force. Worst of all, our own policy had made our neighbours more
hostile than friendly. Philip, on the other hand, was not hampered by
colleagues, or decrees, or want of money, or fear of indictment in case of
failure. He could do what he thought best, without publicly advertising his
intentions, being in brief, in his own person, Despot, Lord, and Master of all”.
That under such circumstances, and notwithstanding innumerable follies
and blunders, Athens maintained a twenty years’ struggle against the
ever-growing empire of Philip is a proof of the real greatness of Athenian
power (which nevertheless Athenians frittered away), as well as of the courage
and resources of the one man who seems never to have despaired of his country,
Demosthenes.
CHAPTER IV.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF PHILIP TO HIS INTERVENTION IN
THE SACRED WAR.
Once more Macedon was united under a single hand, and able to present a
solid front to enemies without. But it was strong now with a strength unknown
before. Of the means, indeed, whereby a loose group of mountain cantons was converted
into a powerful empire we know but little. One thing only is clear. Philip
himself was Macedon, and Philip’s character the clamp that bound all
Macedonians, willingly or unwillingly, into one compact whole. Philip,
moreover, was aware of a fact, which in his day seemed new, but has often since
then been proved to be true—that there is hardly any tie so strong as military
service, which fosters identity of development and feeling, and accustoms men
to live and act together. Hence he threw himself heart and soul into the
re-organization of the army, utilizing the experience he had gained at Thebes.
In the half-barbarous days before Philip’s time the cavalry of Macedon had been
almost as good as that of Thessaly, the infantry worth little—the former, as in
feudal times, being the landed proprietors, the latter the rural population of
shepherds or ploughmen. Even in Greece (speaking broadly) a battle had meant a
struggle of hoplites against hoplites, all armed alike, in which light armed
troops and cavalry were quite subsidiary to the main issue. But when
Epaminondas won battles by manoeuvring with infantry
and light-armed troops and cavalry at once, and by massing unexpectedly a
superior force on a single point of the enemy’s line, the old style of fighting
was doomed. Victory was secured
beforehand for the man who knew how to use the new tactics. And that mas was
Philips. Demosthenes, amongst others, notes that of all the various sides of
public life, none within his knowledge had shown such progress and development
as the art of war. He is almost pathetic over the way in which Philip actually
disregarded the old-fashioned seasons, and made no difference in campaigning
between summer and winter! But this was comparatively a small matter. The fighting
instrument itself, the actual army, was what he and his son brought to
perfection. The principle of Epaminondas, to strike the enemy always in
superior force, he so far improved upon that his main line of battle, was
always and everywhere superior in weight to that of the enemy : and the success
of his application of it is seen in the fact that the Macedonian formation
remained in vogue as the fighting system of the world until superseded by the
Roman legion.
The object proposed was so to strengthen the main line of infantry as to
enable them to withstand and break any attacking force which they were likely
to meet in the field. The ordinary depth of Greek battle array seems to have
been from eight to twelve files ; while the battle of Leuctra was won by the
Theban left wing of fifty files crashing through the Spartans, only twelve
files deep, and sweeping all before it. Now Thebans were of all others most
likely to meet Philip in the field, and the problem was how to resist such a
charge, how to meet the weight of a mass of men fifty deep. It was solved by
the introduction of a new weapon, and by a change of tactics adapted to its
use. The weapon was the sarissa; and the new
formation was the phalanx.
The sarissa was a huge lance, held in both
hands (unlike the Greek pike) and twenty-one feet in length; the infantry
soldier wearing besides a short sword, a round shield, a breastplate, and a
sort of broad-brimmed helmet. But such a weapon as this lance was clearly
fitted not for independent fighting or single action, but for close array.
Hence arose the peculiar formation of the phalanx with its 4,096 men. Its
smallest unit was the lochos, made up of
sixteen men standing one behind the other at intervals of 3 feet, the front
rank man, or lochagos, being the most
distinguished for experience and strength. Now the sarissa was held 6 feet from the butt, and projected therefore 15 feet before the body
of its holder. It follows that the front man of each lochos was protected by a bristling mass of five pikes—his own projecting 15 feet
before him, and the next 12, and the next 9, and the fourth and fifth
respectively 6 and 3 feet. The remaining files added weight to the mass, but
carried their lances sloping over their comrades’ shoulders. Now let us take the
more complete unit of the phalanx, the syntagma, numbering sixteen lochi— i.e., numbering sixteen men each way, or 256
in all. Two things are clear at once. Such a unit was capable of indefinite
multiplication; and, indeed, a quadruple phalanx of 64 syntagmata, or 16,384
men, was no uncommon thing. On the other hand, while a direct attack in front
on such a dense mass of pikemen might well seem hopeless, a charge on their
flank or rear, left exposed by the accident of battle, was fatal. It was even
possible, if the phalanx became unsteady, whether from inequalities of the
ground or from the necessity of changing front, to get inside the rows of
projecting lances, as the Romans found out at Pydna (B.C. 168), when the
phalanx became at once a huddling mass of helpless wretches doomed to
slaughter. Such cases, however, were quite exceptional. As against Greek hoplites
and ordinary modes of fighting the phalanx was irresistible, the moral effect
of awe and intimidation which it produced in an enemy predisposing men to
recoil before its impact. We know that at the battle of Chaeronea the front
ranks of Theban soldiers fell transfixed before they could touch their enemies,
in spite of desperate courage. We know that before the battle of Pydna even a
Roman consul was struck with mingled admiration and alarm at the sight of the
dense array and the “rampart of bristling spears,” and that he never forgot the
impression. We know further that at Pydna the Roman legion succeeded in
destroying the Macedonian phalanx, but not before the wavering of the long line
of pikes permitted the legionary to use his sword—not before, as Livy says, the
impregnable mass was broken up into an infinite series of minute struggles.
This, then, was the wonderful machine which Philip organized, and which
was gradually perfected by him and his son. In combination with and supported
by light infantry (hypaspistai), armed like
Greek hoplites, by irregular troops and cavalry both heavy and light, as well
as by a large and effective siege train, they speedily became irresistible. Nor
was this all. For the right of bearing arms, which is common in all free
half-barbarous tribes, was now substituted the obligation of military service.
Townsmen and countrymen, noble and peasant, all passed through a great machine,
so to speak, of assimilation, where all learned to feel as members of one body
and to obey a single will. Macedon in fact became nothing but a well-drilled
military machine ; and half-civilized Macedonians, led by the ablest of living generals,
were superior not only to Asiatic hordes but even to free Athenians or Thebans.
But in this we are somewhat anticipating. In 359 Philip had but just
driven Paeonians and Illyrians beyond his borders, and the Greek world knew
little beyond the fact that a young man of more than common energy and ability
had seated himself on the throne of Macedon. Amphipolis, though claimed by
Athens and occupied at intervals by Macedonian garrisons, was still virtually
independent. Olynthus was still the first city in Chalcidice. Potidaea, Pydna, Method,
and the shores of the Thermaic Gulf were subject to
Athenian influence. Philip was strong in Macedon and undisputed king ; but he
had no access to the sea, and did not seem likely to have. We may even say more
than this. Had Amphipolis and Olynthus and Athens been able to sink their
common jealousies and to unite loyally against their common foe, Philip would
never have had scope for his great abilities, or emerged from the comparative
obscurity of his predecessors.
Nothing could exceed the diplomatic skill with which Philip managed his
adversaries, whether individuals or cities. His earliest efforts, while
securing Macedon, were directed towards anticipating any movement for
co-operation between the three cities just named. For the moment this was no
very difficult matter, the Athenians being greatly vexed at their repulse
before Amphipolis in 364, and ready to pay almost any price for revenge. Since
that time the city had admitted Macedonian troops as a protection against
Athens (362), and indeed was being held at this very time by a Macedonian
garrison. Philip saw his opportunity of soothing Athens and gratifying
Amphipolis at the same time. Like his father Amyntas before him, he voluntarily recognised the right of Athens to Amphipolis, and as
an earnest of good-will withdrew his troops, leaving the city for a while to
itself (359). Amphipolis and Athens were equally flattered by so gracious an
act. The former was relieved of a foreign garrison, the latter was freed from a
nervous fear that Philip meant to keep the city himself. But even now the
Athenians could not rouse themselves to the necessary sacrifices for securing
what was all but in their grasp; and actually hoping to play with Philip, began
to cherish ideas of exchanging Pydna for Amphipolis, and so of gaining the
coveted town by Macedonian help. Philip, however, was alive to Athenian
failings, and saw through the motive which prompted their wish for
negotiations. He had no mind to be a cat’s-paw. If they were loth to act, he was not. Having settled matters with the Paeonians
and Illyrians (358), he resolved to take the first step towards expansion by
seizing Amphipolis, which commanded the communications between Thrace and
Macedon, and dominated the gold mines of Pangaios. To
the dismay of the deluded inhabitants, it became suddenly clear that they had
been beguiling themselves with fond hopes, and that Philip was rapidly
advancing to attack them. Then at last, but all too late, a hurried embassy was despatched to Athens, imploring forgiveness for the
past and immediate help, Athens at the moment was at the height of her power.
Apart from the ordinary members of the Naval Confederation of 378 she had in
this year succeeded in wresting Euboea from Theban influence and in adding the
Chersonese to her empire (358). But she was also on the verge of the serious
struggle of the Social War. To Athens, therefore, in spite of pride and power,
it was of prime importance to maintain for the present peace and alliance with
Philip.
Simultaneously with the ambassadors from Amphipolis an embassy arrived
from Macedon, to assure the Athenians once more of Philip’s regard for them,
and to state that, although he was besieging Amphipolis, it was really in their
interest, for that when he had taken it he should hand it over to them. Blinded
by dislike of the obstinate city, which had so long held them at arm’s length,
and predisposed in Philip’s favour by his politic
withdrawal of troops from the place in the previous year, the Athenians were
unwilling to offend a valuable ally merely to save an ungrateful colony from
merited humiliation, especially as it was to be theirs in any case. The
ambassadors from Amphipolis were dismissed with a refusal, and the city was
left to its fate. Thus the Athenians imagined they had tided over a difficulty
and gratified a legitimate feeling ; whereas they had really struck a blow at
their own prosperity and sown the seed pf future ruin. Philip laid siege to
Amphipolis, which fell before the energy of his attack combined with the
treachery of his partisans within; and once master of the place, he was too
well aware of its value to dream of giving it up even to Athens. Nevertheless
he continued to hold out delusive hopes, with which the Athenians were fain to
content themselves under the circumstances, though uneasily conscious that they
had been tricked.
For, indeed, circumstances were very much against them. By their own act
they had just thrown Amphipolis; and
now, in consequence of their own acts, four of their most important subject
allies—Rhodes, Kos, Chios, and Byzantion—renounced their allegiance and
revolted. They accused Athens of having broken the treaty of 378 by
appropriating her later acquisitions—Samos, the Thermaic Gulf, and the Chersonese— to the exclusive benefit of her own citizens. They
complained loudly of the exactions and want of discipline of the mercenaries,
whom Athenian indolence was content to use but Athenian parsimony forgot to
pay. The burden was all theirs, while Athens reaped all the advantage. They
therefore formally seceded from the league (358).
As if this were not enough to inspire uneasiness, an embassy arrived
shortly afterwards from Olynthus. That city was thoroughly alarmed by the
Macedonian conquest of Amphipolis ; for with a Macedonian garrison in that city
she was between two fires, and Philip’s ambition was seen to be growing. In the
crisis Olynthus turned naturally to Athens, Ionian like herself, and, as
mistress of the Aegean, able to help if she would. But now, as before, Philip
was alive to every move in the game, and the Olynthian deputies were met at Athens by an embassy from Macedon—were met and checkmated.
As before, so now, the Athenians were assured of Philip’s unchanging good-will,
and of his intention to cede Amphipolis even yet. He had indeed, it was hinted,
ground of complaint, in that they still held Pydna, which was more certainly
Macedonian than Amphipolis was Athenian. He did not wish, however, to be hard
on them, and was ready to negotiate for the exchange of one against the other.
But the negotiations were too deli¬ cate for the rough treatment of a public
assembly, especially as the people of Pydna would probably object to the
transfer. The ambassadors therefore insisted upon secrecy. It was a trying
dilemma for the unfortunate Athenians. They could not help distrusting Philip.
They could not avoid fearing for and with Olynthus. Yet open distrust or
precipitate action might now disappoint them of Amphipolis ; and to offend
Philip, when they were at war with their allies, would be nothing short of
madness. The ambassadors of Olynthus, therefore, like those of Amphipolis,
could obtain neither promise nor prospect of support. Athens had saddled
herself with another enemy, and Philip had gained another advantage. For the
present, at any rate, Olynthus and Athens were at daggers drawn.
Meanwhile, the mistress of the Aegean was in great straits. The revolt
of Byzantion threatened to stop not only the corn-tax levied on ships passing
westwards from the Euxine but even the corn-ships themselves. Chios was the
headquarters of this inconvenient secession, and an Athenian attack on the
island was repulsed with loss and the admiral, Chabrias,
slain. For some months Chios was supreme in the Aegean. Even when the Athenian
commanders had raised a considerable fleet, and, in order to divert an attack
of the confederates from Samos, affected to threaten Byzantion, their
disagreement was fatal to success : and failure in battle was followed by
indictment at home. Iphicrates was virtually cashiered, Timotheos was fined, and withdrew from Athens. Chares alone was left; a thorough soldier
but no general. It was in the midst of this trying series of failures and
losses that the last ray of hope in the northern Aegean was rudely and finally
extinguished. The difficulties of Athens were Philip’s opportunities. While the
former was struggling to avert defeat, the latter was making overtures of
alliance to Olynthus, seeking to widen the breach between her and Athens.
Feeling sure that the Athenians had their hands quite full and would endure
anything rather than a rupture of the peace, he advanced without compunction
and seized Pydna (357) which he kept for himself. Thence he proceeded to attack
Potidaea, which, together with Anthemous was handed
over to Olynthus as an earnest of Philip’s good-will. But if the Olynthians were not blinded by resentment against Athens,
they must have trembled at such a gift, even while they accepted it. How long
would it be before their turn came! Meanwhile they were hopelessly estranged
from their real ally, Athens, as receivers of stolen goods in accepting Potidaea!
Thus Philip stood out before the eyes of Greeks as a disturbing element
in their political relations—a man of energy, who wielded great resources and
showed but few scruples in using them. His position has been compared to that
of the Lydian Croesus towards the Ionians of Asia Minor, or of Jason of Pherae towards
the surrounding tribes. In fact his position was a far stronger one. He was a
genuine Hellene ; and Croesus was not. He was a legitimate king; and Jason was
not. He had at command greater resources than either. All that he needed in
order to attain the goal of a not ignoble ambition, the leadership of Hellas,
was a fair opening for interference in the affairs of Hellas. And this his
proverbial good-fortune soon threw in his way.
In 357 a war broke out in central Greece which is known in history as
the Second Sacred War. On the surface it looked like a struggle between the Phocians
and their neighbours for the possession of the town and oracle of Delphoi; in reality, its cause lay far deeper in national
antipathy. The Delphians were Dorians, the Phocians were not. The Delphians
moreover were an intruding, if not a conquering, race, in occupation of what Phocians
would regard as their own territory. More than once in Greek history this
precious strip of land had been transferred to its rightful owners ; more than
once it had been retransferred to the Delphians by some hateful Dorian
intervention. The Phocians therefore nourished a traditional hatred against
Delphians in particular, and Dorians in general. The privileges and wealth
attaching to the most famous oracle in the world, situated on Phocian soil,
were in the hands of aliens, and the political sympathies of its priesthood
were notoriously Dorian. But perhaps the strongest antipathy of the Phocians
was reserved for Thebes, whose subjects they had been during the Theban
hegemony (371-362), just as they maintained a warm regard for Athens, who had
often stood their friend. These feelings of dislike were brought to a head,
when the Thebans endeavoured to compel the Phocians
to submit once more to their rule. They tried, however, to attain their object
indirectly by bringing to bear the antiquated machinery of the Amphictyonic
Council, in which at this time they were virtually supreme. On their motion the
Phocians were condemned to pay a heavy fine on the pretext that they had
cultivated some of the consecrated ground at Kirrha.
This fine they refused to pay, and the council passed a resolution to oust them
from their land and to consecrate it to the Dorian Apollo.
But this was not so easily done as voted. The Phocians had friends as
well as enemies. Their enemies were slow to move, and they themselves found an
able leader in Philomelos. Delphoi was seized and
held ; and under the pressure of circumstances a finger was laid for the first
time on the vast accumulated treasure which had been silently growing for
generations in the secret chambers of the temple. This money purchased
mercenaries ; but its seizure forfeited what was much more valuable, the
good-will of Greeks, and compelled the Phocians as they became more and more
isolated to lean more and more upon mercenaries. Hence it was necessary to make
further requisitions on the treasury of the god, and what was at first decently
styled a loan soon ended in naked spoliation. At first the Phocians more than
held their own. In spite of the remissness of Sparta and Athens in sending the
aid they had promised—the former as embittered enemies of Thebes, the latter as
anti-Dorian sympathizers—Philomilos and his
mercenaries defeated the Locrians, and gained some advantages over the Thebans
and Thessalians. Even when Philomelos was defeated and slain (354), Onomarchos his colleague was equal to the occasion. It was
too late for any hesitation as to the right or wrong of appropriating the
Delphic treasure. He increased his military force. He bribed far and near,
enemies no less than friends. He overran Doris, invaded Boeotia, and actually
made himself master of Thermopylae, opening negotiations with the Thessalian
despots of Pherae.
It was this last step which brought Philip on the scene and led to his
taking part in the Sacred War. He had successively reduced Amphipolis, Pydna,
and Potidaea. In 354 he attacked Methone, which, unaided by Athens till it was
too late, struggled vainly against its fate, but was taken. Thus, master of
Macedon and secure of the neutrality of Olynthus in his rear, he advanced in
force into Thessaly (353) to help the ruling family of Larissa against the
encroachments of the tyrant of Pherae, who in his turn appealed to Onomarchos. It was a fatal day for the liberties of Hellas
!
CHAPTER V.
FROM PHILIP’S INTERVENTION IN TESSALY TO THE FALL OF
OLYNTHUS.
The Phocian intervention in the affairs of Thessaly brought Philip upon
the scene of Grecian politics. Even genuine Hellenes would in a sense condone
Philip Macedonian intervention in such a cause, when its object was to repress
the tyrant of e and to resist the sacrilegious mercenaries of upstart Phocians
! Religious scruples and political jealousies were alike enlisted in his favour.
At first, however, Lykophron and Onomarchos got the better of Philip (353). Whether it was that he was careless and
underrated his opponents, or that his great military machine had not acquired
the precision which it attained under Alexander, or that, as Diodorus says, he
was outnumbered, he was certainly worsted in two battles, and was obliged to
evacuate Thessaly for a time. But for a man like Philip to acquiesce in defeat
was impossible. He returned to Thessaly in force (352), induced the Thessalians
to make common cause with him against the tyrant Lykophron, took the field with
23,000 troops, and inflicted a crushing defeat upon the allies. Indeed, had it not
been for an accident, many more than the 6,000 slain and 3,000 prisoners would
have been lost to the Phocian cause. Chares, the Athenian, was cruising off the
coast at the time, and many of the fugitives swam off to his ships. Onomarchos himself was slain or drowned.
With the downfall of Lykophron Thessaly became practically Macedonian,
especially when Philip proceeded to subdue its great seaport Pagasai. It was a
base of operations for Philip hardly less important than Amphipolis. Lying at
the head of a land-locked gulf, and the only harbour on the Thessalian coast, it boasted a considerable fleet of its own, and the
export and import duties were valuable. Nor was this all. It was a standing
menace to Euboea, and through Euboea to Athens, as was seen before three years
were over. From the Gulf of Pagasai issued flying squadrons which were for ever harassing Athenian commerce, and on one occasion
even ventured to show themselves at Marathon and carry off the sacred trireme.
The fall of Pagasai, too, could not fail to remind the Athenians how Philip had
successively deprived them of Amphipolis and Pydna and Potidaea and Methone,
and it was the more alarming because it was so much nearer.
But the alarm passed into downright panic at Athens, when news suddenly
reached the city that Philip was actually marching to attack the Phocians at Thermopylae,
of which they were then in by the possession. Thermopylae was the gate from
northern to southern Greece, and it was felt at Athens that Philip, south of Thermopylae,
meant the ruin of their Phocian allies, a great accession of strength to their
Theban enemies, and imminent danger to themselves. For once the Athenians
roused themselves. A considerable force was despatched without delay and, reaching the place before Philip, fortified the pass with Phocian
aid so strongly that the king declined to attack it, and returned to the north.
The state of feeling in Greece, however, as to the case of the Phocians, is
clearly marked by the fact that the Macedonian Philip rose in public esteem by
taking the right side, while Athens lost caste by espousing the Phocian cause;
although each acted palpably from purely selfish motives. For the moment the
danger to Greece was postponed ; but it was only postponed. During the next five
years (352-347) Phocian affairs went from bad to worse. Each Phocian leader
became less and less scrupulous. Fresh requisitions were made on the holy
treasures, on the plea of political necessity, but in reality for personal
purposes, until it was found (348) that more than 2,000,000 sterling had been
squandered, and that the spring was running low. Then followed discontent among
the mercenaries, dissensions among the Phocians themselves until the Thebans,
half ruined by nine years of desultory warfare, took a step of which they
little foresaw the results. In the name of the Amphictyonic Council they
appealed to Philip to come and help the god of Delphoi and themselves against their sacrilegious enemies, the Phocians (347).
When Philip was thus invited by the Thebans to interfere directly in
Greek affairs, he was in a far stronger position than he had been five years
before. One more rival had been swept away from before him. In 352 the
Confederation of Olynthus was Philip’s friend and ally, prosperous and strong.
In 347 the Confederation was a thing of the past. Olynthus had been sacked and
the site thereof knew it no more. Philip breathed more easily ; for nevermore
could Athens and Olynthus be leagued together against him.
The delivery of this startling lesson to upstart cities was in Philip’s
most characteristic manner. He had succeeded in estranging Olynthus from
Athens. He had lulled Olynthian suspicions by an
ostentation of friendship. He had robbed Athens to pay Olynthus, and had added
to the Confederation Potidaea and Anthemous. He had
won over individual Olynthians by gifts and
concessions, and had allowed their capitalists to grow rich by shares in his
mines. There was apparently everything to gain by working harmoniously with
Philip, everything to lose by making oneself disagreeable. For a while the
pleasant delusion lasted. But when in 352 Philip was master of Thessaly, and
when, returning thence, he was next heard of as pushing his conquests in Thrace
to the very verge of Athenian possessions in the Chersonese, then indeed the Olynthians must have felt that Philip was gradually
encircling them, as the hunter draws his nets closer and closer round his prey.
Before this, however, a feeling of sympathy seems to have arisen between Olynthus
and Athens, which led to a formal peace between them, and to very strained
relations between Olynthus and Philip. The latter indeed affected to think that
it was impossible any longer for him and the Olynthians to live quietly side by side. Either he or they must go ; and he resolved that
it should be they. His tactics were of the familiar kind. Even so early as the
First Philippic (351) we find Demosthenes referring to sudden raids made upon
the Chalcidic Confederation; while, if accused of hostility, Philip was ready
with specious apologies. It was neither peace nor war, but it combined the
disadvantages of both. Olynthus now, like Athens seven years before, saw
herself stripped of dependent allies, one by one, yet unable to prevent it
except at the price of instant attack; while Macedonian gold and Macedonian
compliments had won even in Olynthus partisans whose interest it was to defer a
rupture.
At this juncture it happened that two of Philip’s half- brothers who had
incurred his wrath took refuge in the city. Glad of the pretext, he demanded
their surrender. The answer to that demand was an embassy from Olynthus to
Athens, proposing an alliance offensive and defensive against Macedonian
aggression—an appeal strongly seconded by Demosthenes.
The place occupied by this orator at Athens was so strange, and his
influence in after days so remarkable, that it will be well to explain, before
going further, some of the causes of his singular character and exceptional
position. For in talking of the struggle between Macedon and Athens, we
involuntarily think of Philip and Demosthenes, and of no others. Of what Philip
was, we have already some notion: let us try and imagine his great antagonist,
and that, not as he was in the prime of his powers, when Athens recognized at
last her greatest citizen, but rather as when he rose for the first time to
address the Athenian Ekklesia. We read his speeches,
and perhaps wonder how such an audience could fail to be convinced by them —
simple, terse, polished, and instinct with suppressed passion. Yet he often
failed to convince. The truth is, we forget the state of parties at Athens:
still more do we forget the difficulties to be overcome by the orator himself.
In a city where Philip had some sympathizers and many partisans—where there was
much vapouring about the glory of Athens, but little
zeal to maintain that glory— where there was a government of peace at any price,
headed by men as narrow as they were honest—where there were politicians in
abundance, but few statesmen—in such a city it was no easy matter, but the task
of years, for a man like Demosthenes to gain the ear of the Assembly. He was
only half an Athenian, as his enemies seldom forgot to remind him. His grand-mother
(if we may believe Aeschines) had been a barbarian of the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea); but the advantages of a strain of new blood are too well
known to allow us to think worse of Demosthenes for that. We may even infer
that more intermarriages of a similar kind might have served to invigorate the
exhausted Athenian stock, as in after days Gothic and Vandal blood invigorated
the comparatively effete Romans. Be that as it may, to the foreign blood in his
veins we may reasonably ascribe much of the vigour and broad sympathies of the Athenian orator. Moreover, partly from nature,
partly from circumstances, he was singularly un-Athenian. He was a pale, shy,
awkward young man, with a thin voice, and faulty intonation very poor company
for gay Athenian gentlemen. Hence, he was in youth a solitary—and a solitary
soured by ill-treatment: for his father died when he was only seven years old,
and his guardians squandered his property. But misfortune proved a good
school-mistress.
From an early age he set himself to correct the faults of nature, that
he might be able, when the time came, to bring the law to bear upon the
guardians who had ruined him. He mastered the ideas of Solon and Plato. He knew
Thucydides almost by heart, and is said to have written out his history eight
times. He studied under Isaios, and watched and
imitated Isocrates. He condescended to learn dignity, action, and even play of features
from actors on the stage. He declaimed aloud, it is said, with pebbles in his
mouth, or amid the roar of waves upon the shore, to improve and strengthen his
voice. He would march uphill while repeating some speech, to open and fortify
his lungs. In short, no trouble was too great if he might attain the great
object of his ambition, the power of persuasive speaking. And by dint of
perseverance he did, slowly but surely, attain it: first speaking against the
whole current of Athenian feeling, and to almost unsympathetic ears, but little
by little commanding attention, respect, admiration, and finally enthusiastic
assent. At last, though unhappily too late, the policy of Demosthenes became
the policy of Athens.
Of the details of the war of Philip against Olynthus we know next to
nothing : but the speeches of Demosthenes enable us to infer the progress of
events almost certainly. The proffer of alliance was welcomed at Athens, until
the question arose as to what was to be done ; and then the traditional caution
of Athenian politicians led (as usual) to words and nothing else. “Olynthus, it
was argued, was still a formidable power: and Philip’s strength (as Demosthenes
himself had pointed out) was more apparent than real. No state could rest
permanently on a basis of force, injustice, and perjury. No king could find
permanent support in corrupt partisans, forced allies, and dissolute officers,
or could safely ostracise all that was noble and of
good report. Philip was not strong, and therefore to the Athenians he ought not
to be a source of fear.” Unfortunately, from the same premises the orator and
his audience drew different conclusions. To the former it seemed almost
providential that Athens should have the opportunity of co-operating with Olynthus
against an enemy thus intrinsically weak. The latter were only too happy to
perceive that immediate action was not a necessity. Accordingly the affiance
was contracted, but nothing further was done.
The results of this fatal policy were soon apparent. Philip,
interpreting aright this masterly inactivity, concluded that for the present he
need fear nothing from Athens. His agents within and without Olynthus became
doubly active, even turning Athenian abstention to their master’s advantage. At
last the pressure became so stringent that further and more urgent appeals for
aid were made to Athens; and again Demosthenes stood forward to second the
call. But this time his speech was at once more pointed and more earnest. It
was a crisis, as he puts it, almost calling on them with articulate voice to
act at once. The road to Athens lay through Olynthus. “If we leave these men to
their fate, who is so simple (he asks) as not to know that the war will be
transferred from thence to us? Fight Philip we must, either there or here: and
Philip’s difficulty is our opportunity.” His inference was practical. They must
prepare at once and without delay a double expedition—the one to preserve the
confederation, the other to attack Macedon. But, to be of use, these expeditions
must be simultaneous; and, above all, it must be a genuine Athenian army and
fleet, not a mere mercenary force without interest in the result.
Shortly after the delivery of this speech some foreign mercenaries were
sent by Athens to Chalcidice, but no Athenian soldiers, and no money. However,
they were so far successful that there was quite an excitement at Athens, and a
good deal of talk of taking vengeance on Philip. Then Demosthenes for the third
time came forward with the warning that as yet nothing was done, and that it
was too soon, or rather, much too late, to talk of vengeance. What was still at
stake was the safety first of Olynthus, then
of Athens. Their only hope of securing that safety lay in readiness to fight,
and to provide adequate ways and means. They must act—and act at once. But
Demosthenes was still a young man (only thirty-one), and Athenian fears were
too easily set at rest by the influence of older, and as yet more trusted,
politicians. It was some months before any real aid was sent to Olynthus.
In the meanwhile Philip became alive to the troubles brewing at Athens,
and tried to anticipate their intervention by providing them with pressing
business nearer home (349). We have already seen him in possession of Pagasai;
and from Pagasai was but a few hours’ sail to Euboea. Trouble in Euboea might
banish Olynthus from Athenian thoughts. For many years this unhappy island had
been the centre of intrigues and conflicts.
Stretching along the coast for 100 miles from Attica to Thessaly, never able
from first to last to form a united state, it was, by
whomsoever held, a standing menace to someone else. Philip’s intrigues in the island
had begun even before the delivery of the First Philippic (351): and now he
stirred up a war between Chalcis and Eretria, in which Athens became involved.
This struggle led to a large expenditure, a considerable expedition, a barren
victory, and, as its only result, political exasperation; the very things which
best served Philip’s purpose, as causing embarrassment at Athens.
But at last even Athens seemed aware of her danger. In 349 she not only
intervened in Euboea, but actually sent a citizen force to Olynthus, which had
some success, and averted the ruin of the city for another year. But it was
only for a time. In spite of the efforts which, all too late, the Athenians
were now ready to make (and we know from Demosthenes that Athens helped Olynthus,
first and last, with as many as 4,000 citizens, 10,000 mercenaries, and 50
triremes)—in spite of all, Philip, by force of arms or corruption, gained step
by step first one city, then another, until Olynthus, the last hope of Hellenic
freedom in the north, stood quite alone, and prepared to fight her last battle
for independence with fruitless despair. Even Athens could now do little to
help. The north wind, as usual, befriended Philip; and when the reinforcements
from the south arrived it was too late. Olynthus herself had fallen. The gold
of Macedon completed what Athenian remissness had begun. Two cavalry officers
betrayed a large part of their force to the enemy. All heart was taken out of
the besieged by the treason of the Philippizers within. Further resistance was impossible. And then there fell upon Hellas a
blow perhaps more awful than anything: in her previous history. A free city of
10,000 inhabitants and thirty-two of her free allies were so ruthlessly
destroyed, that a chance traveller would not even
have been aware of the ruins beneath his feet. They vanished from the Hellenic
world as though they had never been. Still worse was the fate which befell the
inhabitants. They were exiled, or sold into slavery. It is pathetic even now to
read of the scene which moved Aeschines himself to tears, when “he met a
certain Atrestidas coming from Macedon, and in his
train were marching some thirty women and children ; and when he asked in
astonishment who the man was, and the people with him, one of the passers-by
answered that they were slaves from Olynthus, whom Philip had given as a
present to his friend Atrestidas.” If we think of the
change for these poor creatures, from the life of free and happy liberty to
slavery and all that slavery involves, we shall realize better the awful shock
which the sack of Olynthus gave to the Hellenic world. It was not so much that
Philip became at once lord of an empire reaching from the Chersonese to Thermopylae,
dominating men’s imaginations as Russia dominates them now; but that it
suddenly changed, as it were, the balance of men’s minds (as Russia’s conquest
of Constantinople might change it now), blinded their eyes, disturbed their
judgment, and turned even honourable politicians into
timid, if not corrupt, worshippers of the rising sun. Subsequent events can
only be read aright in the light of the fall of Olynthus.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PEACE OF PHILOKRATES. FALSA LEGATIO. THERMOPYLAI
IN PHILIP'S HANDS.
In the same year in which Olynthus fell (347) the Thebans called in
Philip to help them against the Phocians, and to save the Delphian land from
further sacrilege. It is probably true that they did not realize the result of
such an invitation ; but it is also true that they thus took the first step
towards the ruin of their own city and the enslavement of Hellas. Nothing could
better have seconded Philip’s fast-growing ambition; and ambition in Philip was
ably served by diplomatic tact. To divide and so to engage his enemies singly
was the key to all his policy. His present object was Thermopylae. But in order
to gain Thermopylae it was essential to throw dust in Athenian eyes, and so to
prevent their helping the Phocians to hold the pass against him. Accordingly
all his efforts were bent towards raising possible hopes at Athens, soothing
offended susceptibilities, hinting at possible dangers, gaining possible
friends—in short, towards paralyzing Athenian resistance, until resistance
would be useless. What the terror of his name and of the dreadful fate of Olynthus
failed to effect, courteous receptions, winning manners, a magnificent court,
splendid promises, and even more vulgar bribes succeeded in accomplishing.
Secret agents and open friends worked for his cause in every city in Greece—and
not least in Athens. If we turn to Athens, feeling at on the other hand, we
observe a marvellous blindness to facts. Of the
Athenians it might be said with singular truth, “Populus vult decipi; decipiatur;”
deceived they were by Philip, deceived yet more by their own leaders, and in
each case willingly deceived. They declined to spend money. They declined to
serve in person. They eagerly caught at every pretext for postponing the evil
day, when Philip must be faced and fought.
Troubles seldom come singly. In 347 the disquieting news of the Theban
appeal to Philip reached Athens, and almost simultaneously envoys appeared from
Phocis requesting instant aid at Thermopylae against an expected Macedonian
attack. Now Thermopylae was in Athenian eyes what Strasburg is in German or
Antwerp in English eyes — the door of the house, the gate of the castle, the
first outpost of defence. To look on at its seizure
would be little short of madness. As five years before, so now all Athens was
alarmed, and the Athenian commander at Oreos in Euboea was ordered to join Phalaikos at the pass without delay, and to hold it at all
risks. The alarm became a panic, when it was found that Phalaikos,
apparently from jealousy, refused to admit their troops, and had even thrown
into prison the Phocian envoys who had solicited aid. What could it mean ? Was Phalaikos intending to give up the pass, and make terms
with Philip ? And if so, how could they prevent it Here was another reason, if
reasons were needed, for peaceful negotiation to avert so great a calamity from
Hellas.
As the idea of peace was uppermost in Athenian minds, so the word
"peace” had already been heard in the Athenian Assembly, and the same Philocrates,
who had first dared to utter the word, now carried a decree that ten envoys
should ascertain from Philip’s own lips the terms on which he would agree to
peace. Aeschines and Demosthenes were of the number; and they were accompanied
by Aglaokreon, of Tenedos, representing their allies.
Their business was to sound Philip: and justice requires us to remember, that
up to the date of this embassy, so far as we can judge, each and all of the
ambassadors were equally sincere and equally patriotic. But the success of
Philip was already casting a spell over Hellenic minds : and of those who went
to Pella more than one returned to Athens not only deeply impressed with
Philip’s geniality and ready wit, with his wide knowledge and powerful memory,
but overawed by his self-possession and display of strength, or corrupted by
his attentions, his promises, and even by his gold. Timidity and avarice in the
“Philippizers” at Athens were, henceforth the main
difficulty of Athenian patriots.
The envoys returned about the 1st of March, 346; and at once laid the
results of their mission before the Assembly, together with a letter from
Philip himself; while the synod of allies, having heard the report of Aglaokreon, agreed to abide by whatever decision the
Athenians should adopt, recommending however that any Greek city, not there
represented, should have the option of declaring its adhesion within three
months. Philip’s letter was couched in the true Philippic vein. He had favours, he wrote, in store for Athens ; indeed he would
have mentioned them categorically, had he felt sure of the Athenian alliance.
Meanwhile, he proposed as a basis of negotiation that each side should retain
all that it then possessed—which was, in fact, a proposal that Athens should
confess herself defeated. Nevertheless, the highly-coloured reports of the Athenian envoys disposed the Assembly in Philip’s favour; and when the Macedonian ambassadors arrived, they
were received with more than ordinary cordiality, and found the general current
of public opinion running strongly in the direction which their master wished.
Two special meetings of the Assembly were held without delay to discuss the
whole question. At the first of these Philocrates again took the lead, and
proposed a decree only too characteristic of the Athens of the day. It is no
wonder that the charges of treason and corruption have clung to the names of Philokrates and Aeschines, when the former proposed and the
latter supported the proposition, that there should be peace and alliance
between Philip and his allies and Athens and her allies, but excluding the Phocians
and the town of Halos in Thessaly, Athenian allies ! For what other reason
could this exclusion of long-standing allies have been suggested, save that
Philip wished to have it so ? And for what other reason could statesmen of
Athens have stooped to so base, a desertion, save that Philip’s wishes, for
some strong motive, outweighed in their minds the dictates of honour? Demosthenes supported the motion, but he protested
against the exception ; and it appears that his protest was effectual. The
exception had not originated with the Macedonians. It was not therefore
essential to the peace. On the other hand there was no alternative proposal
before the Assembly ; and if they were not prepared to march down straightway to
Piraeus and go on board ship, and pay war taxes, and devote the Festival fund
to war purposes, they must vote for the peace as proposed. The Assembly
therefore voted for peace and alliance between Athens and Philip, but silently
struck out the rider about Phocis and Halos, thus implicitly including them in
the list of allies. Nothing was said concerning the confederate allies and the
three months of grace, mentioned above. Six days afterwards another assembly
was convened, that the Athenians might swear to the treaty in the presence of
Philip’s ambassadors ; while it was arranged that the same ambassadors who had
before represented Athens at Pella, should return to Macedon and take the oaths
of Philip and his allies.
But at this assembly a critical question at once arose : who were the
allies of Athens ? Was Halos, which Parmenion, the Macedonian, was besieging when the Athenian
ambassadors had passed it on their way to Pella? Was Kersobleptes of the Thracian
Chersonese, against whom King Philip was about to march in person when the
ambassadors were leaving Pella ? Above all were the Phocians? And to Athens, we
must remember the two last positions of primary importance— the Hellespont and
safety of commerce: Thermopylae, and safety from attack. Little objection was
made to Kersobleptes. About Halos nothing was said. But the Macedonian
ambassadors, in accordance with their instructions, positively refused to admit
the Phocians as parties to the treaty. And this in the face of the late vote of
the Assembly, ruling them to be allies ! Was this then to be the rock, on which
the coveted peace was to be wrecked? And what had Philocrates and his friends
to urge in defence of such a proposal? It was an embarrassing
position, but they were equal to the occasion. It is not easy to conceive of
any motive save self-interest which could have prompted men in their position,
and on such an occasion, to deceive their fellow-countrymen with assurances
which they must have known to be false. Yet they did so, trading on a presumed
acquaintance with the king’s real intentions, as men who had been at Pella and
seen him face to face. They declared that his present relations with Thebes and
Thessaly would make it ungraceful for him to accept the Phocians at once as
allies. At heart he was the friend of Phocis as of Athens, and the enemy of
Thebes ; and when once he obtained peace and was free to act as he chose, he
meant to welcome the Phocians as his allies, and to humble Thebes, and was even
disposed to restore Euboea and, better still, the lost Oropos (in Boeotia) to Athens. Here was good news indeed, if true; and Athenians in
their present mood were so eager to think it true that they did not stop to
think whether it was probable. In reality they were false, and known to be
false. The Assembly shut its eyes to probabilities, and, devoutly hoping that
all would yet be well in the matter of Phocis, agreed to the Macedonian terms.
The oaths were administered to the Athenians and their allies; and it only
remained now for the Athenian ambassadors on their side to obtain Philip’s oath
as soon as might be. It was indeed high time, for alarming reports were even
now reaching Athens of Macedonian victories in Thrace, and that Kersobleptes,
her ally, was being rapidly stripped of his dominions. For this again was a
further complication. The peace was to date from the day of its acceptance at
Athens. Were these victories of Philip anterior to that date ? If not, was it
at all probable that he would restore what he had won ? or that, if he refused,
the Athenians would at the eleventh hour repudiate the peace ? It was of urgent
importance, therefore, that Philip’s adhesion should be obtained with the least
possible delay.
It is never an easy matter to decide disputes as to questions of fact,
especially after an interval of three years. But when a man like Demosthenes is
precise in details and dates, and an Aeschines in his reply unmistakably slurs
these precise details, it is hardly wrong to infer that the former is in the
main a credible witness. “These venal envoys’’ (Demosthenes says) “were so
dilatory, that seven days after the vote of the Assembly they were still in
Athens, and I had to obtain a decree of the Senate, bidding us depart at once,
and enjoining Proxenos, the general in Euboea, to convey us wherever Philip
might be. But when—full sorely against their will—we reached Oreos, and had
joined Proxenos, they gave up all idea of a voyage, and made a circuitous
journey by land, taking three and twenty days to reach Macedon. And the whole
of the rest of the time, until Philip arrived (i.e. twenty-seven days)
“we remained quietly at Pella.” During these fifty precious days what was the
king doing ? Again Demosthenes shall speak for himself. “In this interval” (he
says) “Philip made himself master of Doriskos,
Thrace, and me castles on the Thracian coast,” in other words, gained command
of the sea-line from the Hebros to the Propontis, and, in complete disregard of Athens, reduced Kersobleptes.
At last he returned to Pella, master of the situation. Envoys were awaiting him
from Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Euboea, and Phocis—awaiting, it might seem, his fiat
as to their destiny. Whatever were his will it could be done, for a large army
was massed, ready to march at a moment’s notice. His intervention was requested
as arbiter in Greek affairs. Thebans and their friends on one side, Phocians
and their allies on the other, clamoured in turn for
his help. Even an Athenian ambassador, in the person of Aeschines, was not
ashamed to refer to Macedonian interference in central Greece as a foregone
conclusion, and to try to enlist his sympathies against Thebes. Philip
meanwhile was bribing and cajoling, playing off one against another, exciting
hopes, refusing none-until all his preparations were completed. He then set out
on his southward march with a formidable army, and carried in his train this
jealous bickering mob of Grecian envoys. At last he reached Pherae and there
the Athenian ambassadors succeeded m administering the oath to Philip and his
allies, not mentioning Kersobleptes, and formally excluding the Phocians. They
then returned to Athens, after an absence of seventy days, bearing also an
affectionate letter from Philip, in which he took on himself all blame for the delay
of the ambassadors.
Philip was within three days’ march of Thermopylae, and Athens was still
dreaming! Demosthenes was able indeed to alarm the Senate ; but would not
listen to him, for they were beguiled by the siren promises of Aeschines. “Don’t
be alarmed (he said) “about Thermopylae. Thebans, not Phocians, will shortly
feel Philip’s heavy hand. And it is you whom Philip has promised to befriend. Euboea
shall be yours, and—if I could speak freely—more besides.” But Philip was
playing a dangerous game, and was well aware on what delicate ground he stood.
Force was out of the question at Thermopylae, for the mere suspicion of violent
seizure would probably be the one thing capable of uniting all Hellas against
him. The pass must be won, if at all, by diplomacy ; and at this juncture once
more Philocrates played into his hands. He proposed a decree (and Phocians were
present, listening doubtless with despairing anxiety to a debate involving
their own fate) that if the Phocians still refused to give up Delphoi to its rightful possessors, the Amphictyonic
Council, the Athenians should interfere to compel them to do so. Now, up to
this time, the Phocians might well have hoped even against hope. They had heard
repeated assurances, both at Pella and at Athens, that the Macedonian arms were
to be really turned not against them but against Thebes their enemy. They might
well believe that, if the worst came to the worst, Athens would assuredly not
throw them over. But now they could hardly cherish any further illusion on
either point. King Philip was at their doors, and had already summoned Phalaikos to surrender Thermopylae ; and at such a crisis
it was that their old ally Athens published what was equivalent to a
declaration of war, just when their own resources of men and money were
exhausted. The Phocian envoys left Athens in despair; and three days afterwards
(June 23, 346), Phalaikos with 10,000 men had come to
terms with Philip. Phalaikos and his troops, and any Phocians
who chose to accompany them, were at liberty to go where they pleased: Phocis
and Thermopylae were placed in Philip’s hands. Thus, with no other weapons than
a courteous bearing, empty promises, abundant gold, and a show of force, the
king of Macedon was master of the key of Greece, henceforward a fortress of the
first order, and permanently occupied by. a Macedonian garrison.
The immediate results of Philip’s bloodless victory were as stern a
warning to Greece as the fate of Olynthus had been. He at once identified
himself with Theban policy. All Boeotia became once more dependent on Thebes,
and even a part of Phocis was added to her dominion. Phocis herself was
irretrievably ruined. Not only was she excluded from the Amphictyonic Council
and her place taken by King Philip, but two-and-twenty Phocian towns were
entirely dismantled, and their inhabitants dispersed into petty villages—a
disintegration of political unity similar to that which Rome inflicted on
Macedon herself after the fatal battle of Pydna (B.C. 168.) These Phocian
villages were in no case to number more than fifty houses, nor to be nearer to
each other than a furlong. An annual tribute of fifty talents was to be paid to
the temple at Delphoi until the squandered treasure
was fully replaced. All horses were to be sold, all arms destroyed. Phocians
who had taken any part in the sacrilege became ipso facto accursed, and were
liable to arrest wherever found. Such was the sentence passed on the impious Phocians
by the Amphictyonic Council, yet far less rigorous than some of its members had
wished to inflict. And of this rigorous sentence the execution was still more
rigorous. Thebans and Thessalians were not likely to be tender in their mercies
to Phocians, and their cruelty was not the less cruel because veiled under the
odious mask of indignation at sacrilege. The wealthier and upper classes fled
the country. Those who could not flee had Theban and Macedonian soldiers
quartered upon them. Children were torn from their parents, wives from their
husbands. Three years afterwards Demosthenes passed through the country, and
declares that the sight of its utter desolation was heart-rending —houses in
ruins, walls dismantled, the fields lying waste, and the only inhabitants a few
old men, women, and children. ‘‘Our ancestors,” he cries, in a burst of
indignation, ‘‘could they know what we have done in abandoning faithful allies
to so dreadful a fate, would, with their own hands, take up stones to cast at
us!”
The revulsion of feeling at Athens was proportioned to the greatness of
the disappointment. On the very day on which the motion of Philocrates had been
carried, ten envoys had been nominated to communicate its contents to Philip.
But they got no farther than Chaklis in Euboea. The news from Phocis was too
grave to admit of any further doubt as to his real policy. So one of their
number returned with all haste and laid before the people assembled in Piraeus
his unwelcome and startling report. It was like the awaking from a pleasant
dream to the stern realities of life. They had been deceived, outwitted,
checkmated ; and now they had to act in the very face of a pressing danger. It
was improbable that Philip himself would wish to attack Athens; and if he did,
it was easy to guard against a sudden blow (as was indeed done) by bringing in
the women and children from the country and by fortifying the city and Peiraeus;
but there was a serious risk that the various enemies of Athens in the Amphictyonic
body might force Philip’s hand, and compel him to break the newly-ratified
peace. And Athens was in no condition to resist such a combined attack. Great
diplomatic skill, therefore, was needed at such a juncture to avoid the
extremes of humiliating acquiescence on the one hand, or of imprudent
brusqueness on the other; and it was well for the Athenians that at such a
juncture they could fall back upon the practical wisdom of Demosthenes.
King Philip, meanwhile, was the central figure in a scene of festivity
and triumph. He had put an end to the weary struggle of the Sacred War. He was
a leading member of the Amphictyonic Council. He was a king, in an age when
kings were becoming fashionable—a man who could will and act while others were
hesitating or quarrelling. He conducted the Pythian festival. He celebrated his
triumph with hecatombs, gorgeous processions, costly offerings. Like Napoleon
after Austerlitz or Jena, he was the observed of all observers, whether friend
or foe—the man who held in the palm of his hand the future and the fortunes of
Greece.
And if there was one city in Greece more than another whose selfishness
and cowardice had made Philip’s course an easy one, that city was Athens. Over
the errors of her who was once “eye” and "mistress” of Greece we may well
draw the veil of pity and sorrow.
CHAPTER VII.
FROM THE PEACE OF PHILOKRATES TO THE BATTLE OP
CHAIRONEIA (346-338).
From the capture of Amphipolis to the peace of Philocrates Athens had
been half at peace and half at war with King Philip. And now a sham war of ten
years was followed by seven years of a sham peace, the latter equally with the
former being a time of loss and humiliation to Athens. Philip was already
firmly planted in central Greece, president of the Amphictyonic league, and
protector of Delphoi; and as his power increased so
did his ambition expand. But as yet the most important part of Greece was
independent of him —afraid of his power or only anxious for his aid ; and if he
was to be, as he hoped to be, leader and protector of an Hellenic
confederation, it must be by skilful diplomacy rather
than brute force. Open attack upon Hellenes—and specially upon Athens, the centre of Hellenic life—must be delayed as long as
possible.
Demosthenes describes the peace of Philocrates as a period during which
Philip was at war with Athens, but Athens was not at war with Philip—when he
reaped at once the fruits of peace and war. His object being to isolate Athens,
wherever there was uneasiness in Greece, there were his agents and his gold
secretly or openly at work. By slow degrees, indeed, this never-ending
aggressiveness was arousing Athens to a keen sense of danger. Boeotia was now
Theban; and Thebes was as yet in alliance with Macedon, and not unwilling to
see Athens in difficulties. It became necessary, therefore, however unpleasant,
to maintain permanent garrisons in the frontier forts of Drymos and Panakton, to command the passes of Cithaeron. And
not only was the sense of insidious danger on every frontier thus present to
the Athenian mind, but petty differences were perpetually arising on points
where Athenian and Macedonian interests diverged. A dispute, for instance,
arose with regard to the island of Halonnesos, to the
N. E. of Euboea, an irritating dispute about words. Philip had chastised a
certain pirate, whose headquarters were in the island, and with some show of
justice had then placed a garrison there, for Athens had clearly failed in her
recognized duty of maintaining the police of the sea. Athens called upon Philip
to give back to her her possession. Philip replied
that he would give it gladly, as a free gift, but could not properly give back
what was his own. Aeschines professes to laugh at this quarrel about a word;
but none the less there was a real question at issue. Again, in 342, Philip was
unmasking dangerous designs on a vital point of the Athenian empire, the
Chersonese and Bosphorus, as vital to Athens as Sicily or Africa was in after
days to Rome; for Athens was fed to a great degree by the corn-growing
countries of the Euxine. Demosthenes roundly asserts that no people in the
world consumed so much imported corn as the Athenians; and it has been
estimated that one-third of the annual consumption of Attica, or 1,000,000 medimni (nearly a million and a half bushels) must have
come from outside, and a large proportion of it from the Euxine. It was as
essential, therefore, to Athens to hold, as it would be desirable in Philip’s
eyes to win, the key of this trade—in other words, to command the Hellespont
and Propontis. He had an excellent base of operations
in the town of Kardia, which lay within the
Chersonese and was ill-affected to Athens; and from thence he proceeded to
encroach upon and appropriate lands belonging to Athenian settlers. A force of
mercenaries was at once sent out by Athens, who executed reprisals in Thrace,
while Philip’s troops were engaged in the interior. Angry remonstrances
followed on each side; and matters began to look so serious, that in 340
Demosthenes was sent as ambassador to Byzantion to counteract Philip’s
intrigues, and bring about an alliance equally necessary to each city. A sense
of common danger obliterated the memory of the grievances of the Social War
(358); and Byzantion and Perinthos concluded an
alliance with Athens. This step was a grievous disappointment to Philip, which
he tried to counterbalance by a sudden seizure of the two cities ; but in each
case he was foiled, and his failure brought into relief the danger which they
had barely escaped.
The bitter feelings aroused on both sides by this state of things found
expression in contemporary documents. An extant letter of Philip’s “to the
Athenian Senate and people ’’ sets forth nine indictments against them, partly
frivolous and partly embarrassing, whose collective weight however might seem
to justify action on his part, if Athens still persisted in refusing
reparation, or (as he suggested) arbitration. On the other hand a reference to
the third Philippic of Demosthenes, delivered in 342, or to his so-called
answer to Philip’s letter in 340, will show that Philip’s policy was diplomatic
in a sense of the word which has often been illustrated in history, since the
fable of the Wolf and Lamb was written. Demosthenes protested against further
delay in preparing for the inevitable struggle for liberty. But it was useless
to hope for energy in others — useless to expect Chalcidians or Megarians to
move in defence of Greece, unless Athenians set the
example of self-sacrifice.
Shortly after midsummer, 340, Athens at last declared war against King
Philip. A short respite was allowed her for preparation by a raid of the king
into the country between Mount Haimos and the and the
Danube in the spring of 339, whence he was returning with many slaves and
cattle when suddenly attacked by a tribe of Thracians, by whom he was defeated,
stripped of his plunder, and himself wounded. The respite was wisely used—thanks to Demosthenes—in reforming the navy; a
reform, the details of which belong to Athenian rather than to Macedonian
history, but the success of which was so marked, that, speaking nine years
later, when Athens was humbled to the dust by Philip’s greater son, Demosthenes
could boast that “under his law no trierarch had ever been obliged to appeal to
the State for relief, or been thrown into prison by the Naval Board—no trireme
had been lost to the city at sea, or left behind in harbour unable to put out.” Such a boast, made in public and therefore open to
contradiction, speaks well for the efficiency both of ships and captains ;
while it implies that such events were common enough under the older and less
equitable system. About the same time Demosthenes, in concert with friends
like-minded to himself, at last persuaded the Athenians to set aside the
noxious law which had decreed that all the surplus of the State income should
go to the Theorikon (Festival fund,) and that anyone
who moved a different application of it should be put to death. The new law
provided that any surplus should accumulate as a war fund. In this way, and not
a moment too soon, the sinews of war were provided for the fast-approaching
struggle. Yet the difficulties of the position were not so easily removed.
There was still a Macedonian Athens and party in Athens, as in most other Greek
cities—silenced for the moment, but watchful, bitter, audacious. There were no
experienced generals to pit against Philip, and it was difficult to find a weak
point for attack in Philip’s empire. For a blockade goes but a little way
towards ending a war ; and landings on the coast, without some base of
operations, would be mere temporary inconveniences. Philip, on the other hand,
had also difficulties of his own, in that he could not afford to stir up an
Hellenic war; while his allies, especially the Thebans, were not altogether
trustworthy, and a direct attack upon Athens would probably at once bring about
that very league which he feared. One coign of vantage, however, he had. If
direct attack was to be avoided, intrigue was always possible. He was president
of the Amphiktyons, and thereby guardian of the
national sanctuary. His agents were everywhere. It was to be their business to
find an opportunity for him to appear in central Greece at the head of an army,
so that he might seem to come as a defender of the god Apollo rather than for
aggressive purposes. Then whoever opposed him would have to bear the odious
part of seeming to oppose the god. This was the occasion of the Third Sacred
War.
At the head of a deeply-sunk bay in the Corinthian Gulf lay a small
fortified town, Kirrha, the port of Krissa and of Delphoi, distant
about seven miles. A large number of Delphian pilgrims came by water, and of
course landed at Kirrha, which was therefore
prosperous and wealthy, and an object of envy to its neighbours. So early as
the sixth century B. C. this jealousy had shown itself on the occasion of the
First Sacred War, when Kirrha had been destroyed, and
the whole plain as far as Delphoi had been
consecrated to the god—in other words, pronounced “incapable for ever of being tilled, planted, or occupied by man.” But
natural laws presently vindicated themselves. Men must eat and have the
necessaries of life, even though land has been consecrated ; and as pilgrims
did not cease to resort to Delphoi, and to come as
heretofore by sea, it was found as impossible to maintain the desolation of Kirrha as it would be to leave in ruins Djidda,
the port of Mecca. Kirrha was rebuilt and reoccupied
by Locrians of Amphissa—a usurpation which from its
convenience was tolerated, if not condoned. During the Second Sacred War
(356-347) these Locrians had been staunch allies of the Delphians and Thebans
against the Phocians, and had suffered many things at the hands of Philomelos ;
it follows that they were no friends to Athens, the friend of Phocis and enemy
of Thebes. It was on these long-standing feuds and secret jealousies that
Philip worked by means of his agents.
The Philippizers in Athens, for the moment
defeated, were still dangerous. The war party were busy with preparations, and,
while keeping watch on Philip’s movements, forgot or despised possible
intriguers at Delphoi or in the Amphktyonic Council. Hence their opponents stole an easy march upon them, when they
succeeded in carrying at Athens the election of Philippizing representatives to
the annual meeting of the council at Delphoi in 339, Aeschines
being one of the four. The Amphictyony met in February; and immediately,
instigated by the Thebans, the Amphissians made a
violent attack upon the Athenians for impiety in having dedicated afresh at Delphoi, before the temple was purified, a memorial of the
battle of Plataea, in the shape of shields bearing the names of Persians and
Thebans conjointly as defeated there. Nothing could have suited Philip’s
purpose better, for it seemed to make alliance between Athens and Thebes less
possible than ever. It happened that the chairman of the Athenian envoys at Delphoi was taken suddenly ill, and his duties devolved
upon Aeschines, who has left us his account of what happened. The Amphissian speaker (he tells us) was a violent and
uneducated fellow, who not only made this sudden onslaught upon Athens, but vehemently
declared that had the Greeks been wise they would have shut out the Athenians
from the temple itself, as accursed for their alliance with the Phocians. “I
was more angry” (says Aeschines) “than ever before in my life ... and standing
up where I was (for the whole plain of Kirrha lay
stretched at our feet) I pointed out to the Amphiktyons the cultivated plains, the buildings, the sacred harbour fortified, and asked them how they could hope to pray and sacrifice acceptably
to the gods, when they were forgetting their oaths and conniving at sacrilege.”
The indignation of the council was at once diverted from the offending
Athenians against the yet more guilty Amphissians ;
and next day the whole population of Delphoi, with
the sanction of the council, trooped down to the sea to burn the accursed
buildings and fill up the harbour. The deed was done,
and the god perhaps appeased. But as they returned the Amphissians fell upon them and drove them homewards in undisguised rout. Here was a further
complication, calling for prompt and signal punishment. A second and
extraordinary meeting of the council was summoned at Thermopylae to discuss
this new phase of affairs, and to arrange for the punishment of the now doubly
guilty Amphissians. Meanwhile the deputies were to
return to their several cities, to recount what had happened, and to receive
instructions for the future.
The first feeling at Athens was one of satisfaction at the vindication
of the city by Aeschines, and a resolve to send envoys to the extraordinary
meeting. But before long, at Athens no less than at Thebes, there followed a
sense of lurking danger, and at each city resolutions were passed to take no
part in the coming meeting. Nevertheless the Amphiktyons met in the summer of 339 under the presidency of a Thessalian; but it was
practically a packed meeting of Macedonian partisans only. The president was
charged with the duty of punishing the Amphissians.
But the half-heartedness of some and the corrupt abstention of others appear to
have so effectually prevented success, that by the time of the usual autumnal
meeting nothing had been done, and the council was obliged to discuss this
burning question under a new phase. It was just for this crisis that Philip’s
agents had been working and were now prepared. When the alternative was boldly
stated, that the league must either itself take up the matter more earnestly,
or must appoint Philip their general, and let him do it for them, little
hesitation was shown ; and the King of Macedon was formally invited into the
heart of Greece to settle Greek affairs by those who were in reality most
interested in keeping him out. Philip, on his part, gladly accepted an
invitation which gave him a legitimate footing south of Thermopylae, and
brought him nearer to his newly-declared enemies the Athenians (autumn, 339).
He at once collected his forces and marched upon Thermopylae, as though
to punish the wicked Amphissians. All Greece was
expectant, and was not long kept in suspense. From the corner of the Maliac Gulf three main roads led to the interior of Greece;
one running due south from Herakleia to Amphissa through the defiles between Mounts Parnassus and Korax—the
direct route therefore for Philip, if he desired to carry out honestly the duty
imposed on him. The other two ran at first together through the pass as far as Skarpheia, and then diverged southeastward along the coast
and southward over Mount Kallidromos to Elateia.
Philip passed Thermopylae, seized and garrisoned Nikaia close to Skarpheia, having previously detached a
small part of his army by the first-mentioned road; and then advancing rapidly
through the mountains halted and formed an intrenched camp at Elateia. It was a
strong position on the southern slope of the mountain side, commanding the
plain of the Kephissos, and favourable,
therefore, for cavalry—commanding also the road to Boeotia, Thebes, and Athens.
At the same time he could communicate by his right flank with the division
operating against Amphissa, while his retreat in case
of need was completely secured.
This sudden blow fell like a thunderbolt both at Athens and at Thebes.
The long-dissembled war was at their doors, and Philip’s intentions stood confessed.
“It was evening” (says Demosthenes) “when the news arrived of the occupation of
Elateia. Hereupon some of the prytaneis arose at once
from supper and began turning out the occupants of the booths in the
market-place, and setting fire to the barriers ; others sent for the generals,
and the whole city was full of confusion.” Next morning at break of day there
was a special session of both Senate and Assembly ; yet such was the general
panic that no one had a word of advice to offer. Demosthenes at this moment was
the sheet-anchor of Athenian hopes, and all eyes were turned on him. The most
urgent question was as to the loyalty of Thebes. Was she in league with Philip
? Demosthenes strenuously denied it. Had she been so, Philip would have been
not in Elateia but already on the frontiers of Attica. He was, where he was,
because he wished to embolden his friends and overawe his enemies in Thebes.
The Athenians, therefore, must follow Philip’s example, and encourage their
friends in Thebes by a show of force upon the frontiers. They must further send
ten envoys to Thebes, not to haggle about conditions, but to promise help
whenever and wherever it might be required.
This advice was followed, but it was a delicate negotiation for the
envoys to conduct. Thebes was nearer to the danger than was Athens; and
Macedonian envoys were already on the spot, reminding the Thebans of favours in the past, and hinting at favours to come. Thebes, too, had no special love for Athens. Thanks, however, to the
eloquence of Demosthenes, the offered alliance was accepted. The major part of
Alliance of the Athenian army joined the Thebans on Athens and the Boeotia
frontier; the rest remained in against garrison at Thebes, which was to be the
base Philip, of operations. The command was shared equally by the two allies.
Of the expenses Athens undertook two-thirds. To Philip, on the other hand, the
alliance was seriously embarrassing. He had two foes before him instead of one—an
enemy in Thebes where he had expected an ally.
During the winter the allies held their own with considerable success.
They were victorious in two minor engagements, and they achieved a masterly
stroke of policy in restoring the Phocian emigrants to their homes, and in
fortifying some of their towns. Nor was the alliance against Philip confined to
the two cities. The activity of Demosthenes secured further aid from various
allies, amounting (including Thebans) to an auxiliary force of 15,000 infantry
and 2,000 horsemen. But soldiers without generals are little worth, and, as Phocion was in the Hellespont, neither Athens nor Thebes
had a general worth the name to oppose to Philip. The decisive struggle took
place in August, 338. Philip was in position at Elateia with 30,000 infantry,
and not less than 2,000 cavalry. He had already fixed upon his field of battle,
and his immediate tactics were directed to securing it. The allies lay before
him with about equal numbers, occupying the pass through the hills between the
towns of Parapotamii and Chaeronea, which led into Boeotia.
His first object was to gain this pass. Passing along their front, his vanguard
crossed the border, more to the east, plundered some villages, and threatened
the whole country south and east of the Lake Kopais.
In short their flank was turned, and Thebes in danger. The allies were obliged,
therefore, against their wish, to leave a small garrison in the pass, and to
fall back toward Thebes. This was exactly what the king desired. His chosen
battle-field was the plain of Chaeronea ; and to gain it he must gain the pass.
Returning by forced marches, he overpowered the garrison, passed the defile,
and stood master of the situation on his chosen ground, the grave, as Marathon
was the cradle, of Hellenic liberty. The allies returned also, and faced him in
front of Chaeronea.
The right wing was held by the Thebans; in the centre were the allied contingents and mercenaries; on the left and nearest to Chaeronea
were the Athenians. Opposite to them Philip commanded in person; Philip’s son,
Alexander, was to attack the Theban right. The battle began hopefully for the
allied forces. While the Thebans sturdily held their ground against Alexander’s
vehement charges, Philip, whether from weakness or design, fell back before the vigour of the Athenians. “Let us pursue them’’
(shouted one of the generals) “even to Macedon!” But this boasting was
premature. After fighting all the morning, the brave Thebans were at last
overpowered by the superior training and endurance of their enemies, and died
where they fought. Charging over their bodies Alexander fiercely fell upon the
flank of the centre, which gave way at once ; and
having disposed of these he turned yet once more upon the flanks and rear of
the Athenians, who after a too hasty advance were now slowly retreating before
Philip’s renewed attack. All indeed was lost save honour.
For a short while making head against overpowering odds, the brave left wing at
last broke and fled, leaving 1,000 dead upon the field, and 2,000 prisoners in
the enemy’s hands. The Theban loss must have been even greater. Nor was the
moral effect of the victory less imposing. It was a conquest rather than a
victory. The army of the allies ceased to exist. There was no thought of any
further resistance ; and Athens and Thebes must prepare for the worst — for
attack and siege — possibly for ruin.
CHAPTER VIII.
FROM THE BATTLE OF CHAIRONEIA TO THE BEGINNING OF ALEXANDER’S
ASIATIC CAMPAIGNS
In spite of the collapse of all their hopes, energetic preparations for defence were made both at Thebes and at Athens. But there
was no more possibility of common action. The latter, indeed, was better off
than the former, for she was not a faithless ally but an open enemy ; while her
prestige was too great to admit of harsh treatment, and her power (at any rate
at sea) still too formidable to make it safe to drive her to extremities, It
was not strange, therefore, that Philip should have treated Athens with marked
leniency, and Thebes with great harshness—selling his Theban prisoners as
slaves, indulging freely in banishment and confiscations, filling the Cadmea
with Macedonian troops, establishing a packed oligarchy of 300 of his own partisans,
and restoring nominal autonomy to the smaller Boeotian towns. In his relations
to Athens Polybius insists that Philip’s conduct was marked by extraordinary
moderation, humanity, and gentlemanly courtesy. Diodorus tells us, in a very
different strain, that Philip’s head was turned by his success, and that he
grossly insulted his Athenian prisoners, until rebuked by one of them, named
Demades, for playing the part of Thersites, when fortune had allotted him that
of Agamemnon. Whichever account be true, his final treatment of Athens was
unquestionably lenient.
Demades had been released by Philip—perhaps in compliment to his
plain-speaking—and shortly after his return home an embassy (including himself
and Aeschines, and probably Phocion) was sent to the
king, to sound his intentions. They found him, now at any rate, full of
courtesy, and ready to make peace on terms, with one exception, both easy and
welcome. He agreed to restore his prisoners, and to transfer the border town of Oropos from Thebes to Athens. But one condition was
humiliating. Athens must acknowledge the Hegemony of the King of Macedon in
Hellas. In other words, henceforth not Thebes, nor Sparta, nor Athens was to be
recognized chief of Greece, but a barbarous, half-Hellenic King at Pella! It
has been said—and rightly—that the peace of Demades was a renunciation of a
proud historical past, and that with it the connected history of Greece is at
an end. Nevertheless, Athens had but little choice in the matter. The terms
were accepted, and the peace concluded. And here we may observe once more the
astuteness of Philip. Not only had he bought his own recognition as the leader
of Greece from the necessities of Athens, but by the price paid—the cession of Oropos—he had also secured perpetual jealousy between
Thebes and Athens.
The progress of the king’s arms was now rapid and easy. He reduced
Akarnania, and placed a garrison in Ambracia. In the Peloponnesus he had so
many friends, who counted on his aid against Sparta, that he met with little or
no resistance. It does not appear that he actually attacked Sparta itself; but
he gratified Messene, Megalopolis, Arcadia, and Argos, by restoring to them
severally the lands which had been torn from them by Spartan aggression; while
he served his own purposes by thus constituting a number of small communities,
all jealous of each other and all equally feeble. This commanding position was
further assured at a general congress of Greek cities, held at Corinth (337).
The king there publicly announced his intention of invading Persia, with the
double purpose of freeing the Asiatic Greeks, and of avenging the invasion of
Xerxes, and was formally accepted by a general vote as Commander-in-Chief: but
to some, and most of all to Athens, it must have been gall and wormwood to find
themselves, not only stripped of subject allies, but enrolled along with them
in the common herd of contributory appendages to King Philip. Sparta alone held
aloof, and was spared this humiliation. Preparations were at once begun, and
carried on throughout the year, for the projected invasion of Asia; and in the
spring of 336 the first division crossed the Hellespont, under the command of
Parmenion and Attalus, father of Philip’s last wife, Cleopatra. Philip himself
was to follow with the main body.
But the king was destined never to set foot in Asia. In the apparently
unchecked career of this man of strong passions, who had led a joyous, active,
masterful existence, there was an element of discord and unhappiness only too
common in courts of despots. Philip had married several wives in succession:
and the same jealousies and intrigues which distract the harem of an eastern
sultan, or haunted the court of a Louis XIV, disturbed also the palace of King
Philip. The last favourite was Cleopatra, and at her
solicitation it was that Philip was said to have repudiated Olympias, the
mother of Alexander, who withdrew to her brother’s court in Epirus. Furious
quarrels ensued between father and son, even at the marriage feast of Cleopatra.
Cabals arose within the palace. So uneasy, indeed, did Philip feel at the
prospect of leaving this hotbed of intrigue behind him, when he went to Asia,
that he gave his own daughter in marriage to the brother of Olympias, to
disarm, if possible, his hostility. This marriage, as well as the birth of a
son to Cleopatra, were celebrated at Aigai, in August, 336, with the utmost
magnificence. It was hoped that banquets and games, and scenic representations,
might not only dazzle the minds of Greek deputies, but reconcile the jarring
feuds of court cliques. But it was a vain hope. There was present at the feast
a young man, Pausanias by name, who had a deadly insult to avenge upon Attalus,
Cleopatra’s father, or (in the absence of Attalus) on any connected with him ;
for Pausanias had complained to Philip, with no result but ridicule. He had
already resolved, therefore, to divert his vengeance from Attalus, who was in
Asia, to Philip, who had refused redress, when he fell into the hands of
Olympias and her partisans, who artfully whetted his thirst for revenge, and
instigated the deed of blood. On the festal day, by Philip’s express
invitation, hundreds were present from all parts of Greece, and so great was
the crush that many flocked to the theatre before daylight to secure places.
There were dubious rumours and curious oracles
afloat, as on the fatal Ides of March, when Caesar fell before the daggers of
the Liberators; but Philip, absorbed in his own greatness, or perhaps careless
of danger, proceeded to the theatre on foot, and even bade his guards fall
back, that all might see how safely he was defended by Hellenic good-will and
affection. At this moment Pausanias rushed forward, and drawing out a hidden Celtic
sword, plunged it into the king’s side, who fell dead upon the spot. His guards
and friends were so paralyzed with horror, that the assassin almost escaped
their vengeance; but was presently overtaken and slain. It was a moment of
tumult and confusion, when, but for one man’s presence of mind, Macedon might
have been plunged into the horrors of civil war. Philip was no sooner seen to
be dead than one of those who had been privy to the plot hastened to salute the
young Alexander as king, helped him to arm, and accompanied him to the palace—a
promptness which anticipated any action on the part of Cleopatra and her
friends. From that moment Alexander was king of Macedon, and the successor to
all his father’s power and ambitious plans.
So perished one of the world’s great conquerors, in the 47th year of his
age, and the 24th of his reign—great beyond question, if greatness consists in having
grand and definite aims, and in successfully adapting means to ends. To
Macedon, the reign of Philip was the passage from obscurity to empire, from
barbarism to at least semi-civilization. Arrian puts into the lips of Alexander
a glowing eulogy on his father’s benefits to his country. From
mountain-shepherds clad in skins, hard pressed by warlike neighbours, he turned
them, he said, into dwellers in cities, with laws and civilized habits.
Illyrians, Thracians, Thessalians, he reduced to subjection. He added to the
kingdom seaports and mines. Phocians, Thebans, Athenians he humbled, and set in
order the affairs of the Peloponnese. Lastly, “he was appointed Supreme
Commander of United Greece for the invasion of Persia, and thus attached glory
not so much to himself as to the whole of the Macedonian people.” Philip was
great, but by no means of a fine or heroic nature. Judged by the moral standard
of Greece, he was not so much immoral as devoid of moral sense altogether. To
gain his ends all means were alike—bribery, flattery, cruelty, reckless
promises, audacious perjury. He had wives and mistresses on an almost Eastern
scale. His court was the resort of good-for-nothing adventurers; his body-guard
was a corps in which no decent man could live. And yet it was something that a
character so ungoverned should have been willing to endure so much for glory
and power, and have been capable of even winning sympathy and admiration—that a
man so violent should have preferred mild measures to strong, and have been
sometimes (as in the case of Athens) generous and forbearing. He was
pre-eminently fortunate both in his life and in his death. He fell upon times
of confusion in Greece, when there was no able general, no leading city, no
patriot army to oppose him. He died at a moment apparently premature, but in
reality peculiarly happy, when the difficulties had been overcome with which
his genius was most fitted to cope. To gain diplomatic triumphs, by fair means
or by foul, was as congenial to Philips’s character as the forced march or the
din of battle was to Alexander.
A great man was succeeded by a yet greater son, one who ascended the
throne before he was twenty, and died at the age of thirty-two. The history of
heroes is the history of youth, it has been said, and Alexander displayed not a
few of the qualities which the world agrees to call heroic. It would be premature
to dwell at length upon the character and exploits which are to develop
themselves in the following pages; yet as Alexander resembled Napoleon and many
another great man in the fact, that extraordinary success spoiled a really
great character, it will be well to touch briefly on some of the stories which
have come down to us of his early years, his habits, and his education. He was
the son of the impetuous, fanatical Olympias a fact which itself explains half
the eccentricities and violent deeds of which he was guilty when his head was
turned by adulation. Three successive messengers on one day (it was said)
brought his father Philip the good news, that Parmenion had defeated the
Illyrians, that his horse, had been victorious at Olympia, and that his wife
had given birth to a son. From early years the boy showed signs of a marked
individuality, which was trained and cultivated by the best teachers of the
day—notably, from the age of thirteen to sixteen, by the famous Aristotle, from
whom he gained a special taste for medical science and natural history, and a
general liking for knowledge of all sorts. He was an adept in music, and when
only eleven years old played the lyre in public before the Athenian
ambassadors, who were at Pella in 346. Of books he loved the Iliad best, even keeping
a copy by his side at night with his sword, and of all the characters he
admired most that of Achilles. If he surpassed his compeers in general
intelligence, he was not less manly than they, but loved hunting and fencing,
and was so bold a rider as to manage even the spirited Bucephalus whom no man,
before had dared to ride. Indeed he had the tenderness for animals
characteristic of all fine natures, loving dog and horse as faithful friends.
Plutarch even asserts that when Bucephalus once fell into the hands of a tribe
on the shores of the Caspian, Alexander was inconsolable, threatening fire and
sword and utter extermination unless his favourite were restored; and that he called a city by his name, when he died of fatigue
after the battle with Poros. In person Alexander was of a fair and ruddy
complexion, and of middle height; he had bright, expressive eyes, and a strange
trick of holding his head on one side, which his generals and courtiers
imitated. His temper, if hot, was generous, and found expression in remarks and
repartees—often wise, sometimes witty, always frank. It is perhaps more
remarkable that, considering who he was and the atmosphere in which he lived,
his life was singularly pure and simple, and that in circumstances of more than
ordinary temptation his treatment of women was considerate and even chivalrous.
To those around him he was, with rare exceptions, a constant and liberal friend
; and many a story is told of his magnanimous self-control both towards his
enemies and his soldiers, graphic enough to account for the admiring affection
which they often showed. On the whole we gather the idea of a young man,
superior to his father both in character and abilities, frank, passionate,
ambitious, yet singularly self-restrained; and all the more shall we lament,
therefore, the downward progress of such a youth into a manhood disfigured by
acts of cruelty and by excessive vanity.
On his proclamation, as king Alexander’s first act was to issue an
address to his Macedonian subjects, promising to maintain the dignity of the
kingdom and to follow out the Asiatic plans of his father Philip. This was
necessary, to satisfy the statesmen and soldiers who might be contrasting the
youth and inexperience of the son with the experience and long success of the
father. His next step may have appeared not less necessary, from the point of
view of a successor to a disputed inheritance, whose mother had been
repudiated, and whose half-brother and male relations either had better claims
than himself to the throne, or thought to make them appear better. Not only
were all the associates of Pausanias in his father’s murder but two put to
death, but Amyntas, his first cousin, and Cleopatra, his stepmother, with her
infant son and Attains her father, were by Alexander’s orders or with his
connivance put out of the way.
His position as king being thus assured, Alexander set out three months
after his father’s murder with an army of 30,000 men to make a progress through
Greece, and to assert his supremacy there. Indeed the loyalty of Hellas was
more than doubtful. Thanksgiving had been openly offered at Athens for the
death of Philip. Anti-Macedonian sentiments were everywhere heard in Peloponnesus.
All such expressions, however, were discreetly hushed as soon as the king
appeared. The Amphictyonic League named him, as they had named his father
before him, leader of Greece; and a conciliatory embassy from Athens endeavoured by apologies to dispel the memory of recent
indiscretions. After this a second congress was held at Corinth, at which all
Greek states again were represented, excepting Sparta. A second time a king of
Macedon was recognized as head of Greece, whom each city was bound to obey,
while the cities were severally to be independent each of the other, and each
was to retain its existing constitution. On paper it was a fair enough
arrangement; but beneath the smooth exterior a deep irritation was smouldering, which it needed but a spark to set in a blaze.
At this juncture it was (March, 335) that Alexander was lost to the
sight of the Greek world for five months. He was anxious to secure the
submission of his restless neighbours on the north and west—Thracians, Triballians, Illyrians—before setting out on his distant march
to the East ; and to secure it he must show himself in force among them. It was
an expedition which fully served its purpose, and at the same time brought into
relief the military genius of the great conqueror — specially his dashing
audacity, his fertility of resource, his rapidity of movement. Starting from
Amphipolis, he forced a difficult pass of Mount Haimos,
and attacked and defeated the Triballians. He crossed
the Istros (Danube) almost out of bravado; and,
recrossing it, executed a rapid march to the westward through Paionia and by the rivers Axios and Erigon into the country of the Illyrians, whom in
the face of superior numbers he outmanoeuvred,
surprised, and defeated. If originality may be defined as the power of striking
out new thoughts at the right moment, nothing could have been more original
than his device for baffling the Thracians of Mount Haimos.
They had collected a number of chariots, or wagons, intending to launch them
into the dense mass of the Macedonian phalanx as it approached, and so to make
their own attack easier. Alexander ordered his men to open out their ranks
wherever it was possible and let the wagons through, but if not, to lie flat
upon the ground with their shields interlaced and slanted over their bodies, so
that the chariots should run over and bound off them. Thus not a single
Macedonian was killed. It was a piece of audacity to cross the greatest of
rivers without a bridge and in the face of an enemy, the Getai,
4,000 strong : yet he accomplished it under cover of night by aid of canoes and
rafts, and without the loss of a man. It showed not a little fertility of
resource to extricate an army from a narrow gorge, where in some places only
four men could march abreast, in the teeth of superior numbers, and then to
turn upon them in the dead of night and inflict a crushing defeat. And the
general who displayed this audacity, resource, and originality was only twenty
years old.
Meanwhile no news of Alexander reached Greece. No one knew where he was
or what he was doing. Presently rumours were rife of
disasters and reverses; improved before long into authoritative statements that
he was dead. In truth, the wish was father to the thought. Nevertheless such rumours were highly dangerous to Macedonian interests amid
the general discontent of Greece. Of all Greeks, perhaps, the Thebans were the
most ill-disposed to Macedon, suffering, as they did, from the constant
surveillance of a foreign garrison in the Cadmea. As, forty-four years before,
when a Spartan force had seized the citadel, so now there were exiles from
Thebes in Athens, where they were encouraged by Athenian orators and subsidized
by Athenian money. When reports of Alexander’s
death were bruited about and generally believed, these exiles conceived the
design, which Pelopidas had devised and carried out, of recovering Thebes and
of ejecting the Macedonian garrison—a design warmly seconded by Demosthenes and
his friends. Accordingly they marched unexpectedly, and being welcomed by their
partisans, seized the town, and summoned the garrison in the Cadmea to
surrender—a demand scornfully refused. Simultaneously they sent deputies to Peloponnesus,
imploring immediate help both in men and money for what was essentially the
cause of Hellas. But Greeks had almost forgotten how to act in concert.
Sympathy was to be had in abundance. Promises might be bought not to help the
Macedonians. The Arcadians actually sent troops as far as the Isthmus. Even the
Athenians were over-persuaded by Demades and Phocion to wait until rumour was confirmed before they
committed themselves. Thus the favourable moment was
again let slip, when the passes into Greece might have been barred against the invader;
and the Thebans were left to shift for themselves. Nothing daunted, they
proclaimed themselves independent of Macedon, and drew lines of circumvallation
round the garrison in the citadel, hoping to starve them out. Suddenly, like a
thunderbolt, while they were yet dreaming of fair weather and recovered
freedom, Alexander was upon them. Hurried news had reached him of the Theban
rising, while he was still west of Mount Skardos,
and, aware of the gravity of return of the crisis, without a thought of rest
for himself Alexander, or his troops, or of returning first to Pella he started
at once on a forced march of thirteen days for Boeotia. Following the valley of
the river Haliakmon, he crossed the Kambounian ridge on the seventh day and reached the town of Pelinna; thence in six days he traversed Thessaly,
passed Thermopylae, hurried by Elateia, and was first heard of by the astounded
Greeks as present in force at Onchestos, a few miles
from Thebes. He moved up at once to the city and established his camp to the
southward, in order to cut off all access to or from Athens, and to open
communications with the Cadmean garrison. After waiting a day or two, in hopes
of their submission, he issued a proclamation demanding the surrender of the
anti-Macedonian leaders, and inviting any Thebans who pleased to join him. The
Thebans rejoined with a counter-proclamation, demanding the surrender of two of
his generals, and inviting all who would assist the Great King and the Thebans
in freeing the Greeks, and overthrowing the Tyrant of Greece, to join then at
once. This was in fact to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard. Nothing
remained but to fight it out to the bitter end. The city was assaulted and at
last taken, after a desperate resistance which contested every inch of ground.
Five hundred Macedonians were said to have fallen and 6000 Thebans, while no
less than 30,000 men, women, and children were taken prisoners. The question at
once arose as to what was to be done with the city and the captives. Nominally
the decision was left by Alexander to the Phocians, Plataeans, and other Greek
auxiliaries, the bitterest foes of the Theban name. But it is obvious that in
reality it must have been known to coincide with Alexander’s wishes, and that
his wish was to bring home to the mind of every Greek citizen a terrible
example of the consequences of disloyalty. That decision was a tearful one.
Thebes was to be razed to the ground; her territory was to be distributed among
the Boeotian towns ; the prisoners were to be sold as slaves, excepting only
priests and priestesses and personal friends of Macedonians; and all Theban
fugitives were to be outlawed. It was an unimportant addition that Orchomenos
and Plataea were to be rebuilt; that a Macedonian garrison was to be
permanently quartered in the Cadmea; and that the house of Pindar was to be
spared. Arrian’s account, the tone of which is certainly truthful, represents
the whole transaction from first to last as unexpected, the result of accident
rather than calculation, and makes the revengeful fury of Phocians and Boeotians
more responsible for the tragedy than the policy of Alexander. Taken at the
worst, and viewed merely as an act of policy, we may set it side by side with
the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford (1649), or the devastation of the
Palatinate (1688), and say that Alexander’s was a venial deed compared with the
deliberate cruelties of a Cromwell and a Louis XIV.
All further opposition at once collapsed. Arcadians, Eleians,
Aetolians, vied in their protestations of loyalty ; while Athens which three
short years before had fought for freedom at Chaeronea, now of sank so low as
to congratulate a king of Macedon on his safe return from the north and on his
destruction of Thebes; and she owed it to the intervention of a Demades that
she was excused from the necessity of giving up ten of her most prominent
citizens to the vengeance of Alexander.
From Thebes the victorious king repaired to Corinth to preside over
another synod, and to fix the contingents of the various cities for his Asiatic
campaign; and thence returned by way of Delphoi to
Pella, never to set foot again in Hellas. The winter (335-4) was spent in
preparations, the army for Asia being massed in early spring, in the district
between Pella and Amphipolis. Antipater was left as governor of Macedon during
the king’s absence, with a force of 12,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry, to
maintain order there, and to keep down, if necessary, the cities of Greece.
CHAPTER IX.
ALEXANDER IN ASIA MINOR.
The empire, which Alexander was about to attack, was the greatest in the
world— the greatest which the world had ever seen. Hellas itself to the south
of the Kambounian range was but little larger than
Portugal ; while the empire of Darius Codomannus did
not fall far short of the extent of modern Europe. From the Sahara to the
Indus, from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, all nations were subject to
the Great King, who could place a million of men in the field, and had often
overrun provinces larger than Greece in a single campaign. To resist his will,
and much more to invade his kingdom, might seem like madness. But the
appearance of strength belied the reality. From the days of the first Darius to
those of the third luxury and corruption, bloodshed and revolt, had been
sapping the strength of the empire. The sinews of war were still abundant; and,
among the multitude of subject races, individual nations were brave, and even
formidable. But the organization was defective, and the tactics and arms were
antiquated; while the natural leader of the army was too often a spoiled child,
with a spirit softened in the harem and a judgment blinded by adulation. Of
course no one could have foreseen the issue of the campaign; yet it is certain
that some Greeks had already formed a shrewd estimate of the real strength of
the empire ; and even seventy years before, Xenophon had observed that the vast
distances, and the consequent isolation, of the imperial forces were a source
of weakness.
There was hardly a corner of this vast dominion to which Alexander did
not penetrate : its capitals, with their rock-tombs and marvellous palaces ; its wide plateaus, its fertilizing rivers, its loftiest mountain
passes. It will be well, therefore, at the outset to gain a general idea of the
countries whose inhabitants he visited or reduced, and so to apprehend more
clearly the objects at which he aimed, and the difficulties in the way of his
attaining them.
The first thing to observe in the physical configuration of the empire
is the relatively great extent of desert and plateau, and the way in which they
split it up into thin strips and isolated patches of population. The teeming
thousands of the Nile valley, and the Euphrates, and the Indus, were sundered
from each other by vast tracts of uninhabitable rock and sand, and by a journey
of several months’ duration. The most remarkable of these plateaus was the
table-land of Aria (Iran), rising more than 3,000 feet above the sea, and
forming one link in the great chain of desert which runs from the west of
Africa to the frontiers of China. It is itself only the southern portion of a
yet vaster desert, arid and barren, which stretches in unbroken monotony from
the Indian Ocean far to the north of the Sea of Aral—unbroken save by the
narrow strip of valley and mountain which cuts it at right angles in the
middle. For at this point Mount Tauros (Elburz),
after skirting the Caspian, runs eastward to meet the Paropanisan mountains (Hindu Kush) in three or four parallel ranges, which average 200
miles in breadth, while the fertile plains which lie between them form the
natural route of traveller or army from west to east.
To the north-east of this plateau, as well as between it and the Indus, lay a
considerable population (in modern Afghanistan and Turkestan), who were Persian
subjects, but whose connexion with the empire must
have always been precarious.
Again, we may change our point of view, and regard this plateau in a way
altogether different. Its general direction is from south-east to north-west,
where the greatest length is 1,100 miles; plateau from but at both the
north-eastern and north-western corners it communicates immediately, in the
former case with the higher table-land of Central Asia, in the latter with the
lower plateau of Asia Minor through the mountains and uplands of Armenia. From
the western borders of Phrygia, where the uplands sink into the fertile valleys
of Ionia, to the tangled mountain systems of Arachosia (Afghanistan), there is continuous highland, whose fertility varies inversely
with its elevation above the sea, from the abundant corn and flocks of Cappadocia
to the utter absence of all life, whether animal or vegetable, in the loose red
sands of Aria, or Khorasmia, “a country the image of
death.” From end to end, moreover, this plateau, whether elevated or low, has
one pervading characteristic. It is bordered on every side by mountain ranges,
in Pontus as in Karmania, in Cilicia as in Hyrkania, which slope more or less abruptly on the outer
side, and have a comparatively narrow fringe of habitable country at their
base.
Once more we may change our point of view, and remark that, rich as was
the empire in every sort of produce, this richness was confined within narrow and
well-defined limits, especially to valleys of the four great rivers. Take out
of the empire the upper waters of the Oxus and the Indus, and the basins of the
Euphrates and the Nile, and a glance at the map will show that we have taken
away its fairest and most prolific regions. In the higher courses of both the
Indus and the Oxus irrigation still produces great fertility ; but in the case
of the latter there is satisfactory evidence to show, not only that the valley
was fertile enough to support a large population, as it does now, but also that
a valuable trade was carried on by that route between India and the Euxine, the
goods passing down the river, and by its western mouth, now dry, into the
Caspian, and thence by way of the river Cyrus (Kur) to Phasis. The valley of the
Indus resembles that of the Oxus, not only in the fact of the two rivers being
almost exactly of the same length, i,86o miles, but because the upper course of
each is made up of numerous tributaries that help to fertilize a wide district.
On the other hand, there is no comparison between the tributaries of the Oxus
and the five rivers which make the beauty and the fertility of the Punjab. The
desert, it is true, is near at hand; but the bounteous rivers and laborious
irrigation make the plain rich, wherever the rivers flow, with corn, and rice,
and fruits ; and the people are among the noblest of India.
But, though the valleys of the Indus and Oxus were sufficiently rich,
they were as nothing compared to Babylonia or Egypt, the “gifts” of the
Euphrates and the Nile. Herodotus tells of the rare barley crops of Babylonia,
never returning less than two hundredfold. The date palms were unparalleled
elsewhere. And this fertility was due to the abounding streams of Euphrates and
Tigris, converging slowly through more than 1000 miles of level country, and
diffusing their superabundant waters by innumerable canals. Nor is this less
true of the Nile valley. Hardly more than 600 miles of the river’s course was
within the limits of the Persian empire, but that was the richest part. The
annual inundations and subsequent irrigation secured a marvellous return, so that three crops in a year were not uncommon ; and the river itself
was in those days, as it still is, the high road of a great commerce with
central Africa.
These four great river basins were sources of vast wealth and power to
the ruler who controlled them, whoever he might be ; and we have probably here
a satisfactory clue to Alexander’s seemingly erratic course. He would make
himself master of the great centres of life in the
empire, one by one—first the Nile, then the Euphrates, then the Oxus, and last
the Indus—reducing all alike to subjection first, that he might afterwards
concentrate, regulate, and combine. The route which he followed from one river
basin to another will find its explanation in the description given above of
the deserts and plateaus in his way.
Lastly, the resources of the empire were as various as its peoples and
climate, and so boundless in both men and money, that had there been empire.
organizing brain, or a strong will at the head of affairs, its powers of
offence and defence would have been equally
irresistible. As it was, the vigour was gone; and the
vast fabric, externally so formidable, was ready to fall to pieces at a touch. The
Great King was for the most part a tyrant or a cipher. The satraps were either
too strong or not strong enough — too strong to be loyal to the central
government; too weak to offer successful resistance to an invader. In the field
the Persian tactics were altogether out of date, for by these numbers were
always presumed to be more than a match for discipline. Strategy there was
none, the game of war consisting merely in finding the enemy and trampling him
under foot. Moreover, a Persian army was ill-assorted: some nations were
warlike, others were cowards ; some were well-armed, others the reverse. Even
the best were armed less well than the enemy whom they were about to meet. The
rifled gun is not more superior to the unrifled than was the Greek spear to the
Persian, the latter having only seven feet of length against the ten, or in the sarissa, the twenty, feet of the former. In short,
the component parts of the Persian host were armed according to local habits or
ancient tradition, not with a view to efficiency; and a Persian army was little
better than a fortuitous concourse of atoms. A Macedonian army, on the other
hand, was a finished machine, each part devised to supplement another, each arm
equipped with a view to its special purpose. Hence disparity of numbers ceased
to be of any importance; and we are the less surprised to read of the calmness
with which a Macedonian army would march to attack a Persian host ten times its
own size, and of the terrible carnage among the latter which always followed
defeat.
With this immense empire Greeks had been repeatedly in contact since the
days of Xerxes, especially in Asia Minor and Egypt. Greeks had helped Cyrus the
Younger to fight the battle of Cunaxa (B. C. 401), and had been strong enough
to make a treaty with the Great King (B. C. 387). Greeks had been mixed up with
the revolt of Egypt from Persia, and had fought on both sides when it was
reduced to subjection (B. C. 346). A Greek of Rhodes, Memnon by name, for his
services on that occasion, had been rewarded with a Greeks with satrapy in Asia
Minor. In short, Greeks Persians, were admitted behind the scenes, and were
awaking to a sense of their own strength and of the weakness of Persia. At this
crisis it was that a man of genius and energy arose on the horizon of Greek
politics, who had the means at his disposal for attacking Persia, as well as
the will to use them. That Alexander’s career changed the whole current of
subsequent history is certain : but it is impossible not to regret, in his case
as in Hannibal’s, the silence and stupidity of some who accompanied him all the
way from the Hellespont to Babylon, and who might have told us how far that
career was shaped or foreseen by Alexander himself, what opinions he expressed
beforehand on the chances of the conflict, and what end precisely he had in
view, as opposition ceased and half Asia was at his feet. Gossip has handed
down to us isolated expressions, and a few chance conversations; but our
judgment of the man rests only on his deeds, uninterrupted by any thought or
word of his own.
Alexander crossed the Hellespont in the spring of 334, just eleven years
before his death, with a force of 30,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry; leaving
Antipater, to maintain the peace of Hellas and Macedonia in his absence. The
actual crossing was superintended by Parmenion ; while the king with a few
companions crossed lower down the strait for the purpose of visiting Ilion. To
his susceptible mind, familiar with Homer from his earliest days, such a visit
would be a pilgrimage at once of duty and of pleasure ; and when he took down
the arms hanging in the temple of Athene, or visited the barrow of the Hellenic
Achilles, it was probably with feelings of exaltation, which may have been
confused, but were certainly genuine. This pious duty fulfilled, he joined the
army once more at Arisbe, and directed its march towards Priapos,
along the lowlands lying between the mountains and the sea, throwing out light
cavalry as he advanced to feel for the enemy.
Meanwhile the Persian leaders were divided as to what was best to be
done. They were three in council: Spithridates, satrap of Lydia, Arsites,
satrap of Phrygia, and Memnon the Rhodian, high in favour at court for his services in the Egyptian war twelve years before. The counsel of the latter was bold and
original. He proposed to avoid giving battle as long as possible, retreating
and ravaging the country ; while the fleet in superior force should make a
diversion in the rear, land troops in Macedon, and open communications with disaffected
Greek cities. The plan might have saved the Person Empire, and was easy of
execution; but it was overruled. The two satraps were jealous of Memnon; and,
having the command of some 20,000 Greek mercenaries and 20,000 Asiatic cavalry,
they believed themselves a match for Alexander, and desired to end the struggle
at once. They resolved, therefore, to occupy the right bank of the Granicus and
to dispute the passage of the river, being aware of its extreme difficulty from
the depth of the water here and there, from the numerous holes, and from the
height and steepness of the banks. The crossing in itself was clearly no easy
task, or Alexander’s best general Parmenion would not have advised that it
should be deferred for a day. But the king’s judgment was against him. Delay
before such a tiny brook would only discourage his own troops and encourage the
Persians. Immediate action was the right thing ; and the event proved that it
was so.
Alexander, as usual, commanded the right wing, and Parmenion the left—an
arrangement which was speedily observed by the enemy across the river, from the splendour of the king’s armour and the respectful courtesy of his suite. Accordingly they at once increased
the depth of the squadrons on their left flank. For a while there was silence
as the two armies on either bank stood confronting one another, dimly conscious
perhaps of the great issues staked upon that day’s battle. Then Alexander leaped
upon his horse, and calling on those around him to show, their courage, bade
Ptolemy lead the advance with a squadron of cavalry and a division of the
phalanx, while he himself, at the head of the extreme right, plunged into the
river, the men shouting, and the trumpets sounding the charge. Both the left
and right wings appear to have crossed the river obliquely to the course of the
main body, partly to avoid the holes in the river bed, partly to reach the
opposite bank as much as possible in line, and so exposing the flanks of
columns to the charge of the enemy’s swarms of cavalry. As they neared the opposite bank
the Macedonians met with a warm reception. Where the ground was higher than the
river, the Persian cavalry kept up a constant shower of javelins from above ;
where it was on the river level, there they advanced even into the river itself
and barred the way in superior numbers, so that many of the Macedonians were
cut down at once on coming within sword’s reach, and all were for the moment confused,
being annoyed by the enemy’s missiles and finding great difficulty in keeping
their own footing. But when they came to close quarters the action became a
trial of strength, each side pushing desperately against the other ; and ere
long weight and physical strength, discipline and tenacity, won the victory,
even on these unequal terms, over men of light frame and inferior resolution,
less stoutly armed. Hence it was not long before the whole Macedonian line had
emerged from the river, and was establishing itself in the teeth of obstinate
resistance on the banks above. But the fiercest fighting was round the king
himself, on the wing where the best of the Persian troops were posted, and
where most of the leaders had gathered, as if to the turning point of the
battle. The reckless courage of Alexander often led him into peril and
hair-breadth escapes ; but never perhaps but once was he in such instant peril
of death as in this cavalry skirmish, which opened his campaigns in Asia. Hiss
spear broke in his hand at the first onset. Turning to a groom he asked for
another; but this man was in the same plight as the king, and was reduced to
fighting as best he could with the butt. At last a Corinthian supplied him with
another. At this moment Mithridates, a son-in-law of Darius, was advancing to
the charge at the head of a wedge-shaped squadron of cavalry. Alexander dashed
out from his own line to meet him, smote him in the face, and brought him to
the ground. At the same instant he was assailed by another general, who aimed a
sweeping blow with his scimitar at the king’s head, and broke off a piece of
his helmet. Alexander retaliated with a javelin thrust, which pierced corslet
and breastbone, and laid his assailant low ; but, while thus engaged in front,
he was himself in imminent danger from behind; for Spithridates, at the instant
of his friend’s fall, had raised his sword to aim a blow at the king’s now only
half-defended head. But there were quick eyes and strong arms around. A timely
and dexterous sabre-cut from Kleitos,
Alexander’s foster-brother, averted the danger, severing the Persian’s
sword-arm at the shoulder. Every moment brought to the king’s side a fresh
accession of strength from those who had succeeded in forcing the passage, so
that the enemy were more and more hardly pressed on their left flank and centre, until they broke before the pressure, and gave way
at all points, in a headlong rout, leaving 1,000 dead upon the field. Their
loss was comparatively trifling ; for there was but little pursuit of the
broken cavalry, Alexander recalling his troops to join in the attack upon the
mercenaries. The battle so far had apparently been as short as it was brilliant
: for these mercenaries were still in the position which they had occupied at
first, and were now paralyzed with astonishment at the unexpected turn of
events, and rapidly becoming demoralized by the sight of their comrades’
defeat. Thus, troubled and irresolute, they found themselves suddenly
surrounded, and that by foes whose prowess was known to them not only from the
witness of their own eyes, but from their memory of what Macedonians had done
in recent times. They were defeated even before they were attacked. Assailed in
front and flank and rear, they speedily became a mere huddling mass of men with
arms in their hands, and were butchered where they stood, only 2,000 being made
prisoners, and of the rest not a man escaping, save a few lucky ones who were
overlooked among the dead bodies. It was a brilliant victory and won at slight
cost. The Persians had lost not only half their force of 40,000 men, and an
extraordinary proportion of superior officers, but prestige as well. There were
no more troops in Asia Minor to bring into the field— indeed no force existed
except some isolated garrisons, and after the fall of Halicarnassus resistance
in that quarter ceased. On the other hand the Macedonian losses are said to
have been so slight as to amount to no more than twenty-five of the Companion
cavalry, who fell at the first onset, about sixty of the other cavalry and
thirty infantry soldiers, or less than 120 in all: a small price to pay for
such immense results. They were buried with all military honours,
the twenty-five Companions even receiving the extraordinary compliment of
brazen statues, carved by Lysippus, and set up in their honour at Dion.
The wives and children of those who had fallen received the substantial
boon of a remission of all taxation and of personal service. The wounded were
treated with signal marks of favour, the king visiting
them in person, and in kindly conversation giving each man the flattering
opportunity of telling his own story and recounting his own deeds. All his
Greek prisoners Alexander sent in chains to Macedon, to be kept to hard labour. In his eyes they were guilty of treason for taking
up arms against their rightful leader. On the other hand, he strove to gain increased
interest and sympathy for his cause in Greece by sending to Athens 300 suits of armour as an offering to Athens, with an inscription
stating that they were taken by Alexander, son of Philip, and by the Greeks
(excepting the Lacedemonians) from the barbarians who dwell in Asia.
The effects of the victory of the Granicus were seen at once in the
surrender of Sardis and Ephesus, as soon as the king appeared before them — a
submission of great value while the Persians were masters of the Aegean ; for
at present his main danger arose from the possible acceptance of Memnon’s plan,
and from insurrection and invasion across the sea. It was, therefore, of
primary importance to secure the adhesion of the Asiatic Greeks, and by so
doing to shut out the Persians from the harbours of
Asia Minor. Miletus, indeed, attempted a brief resistance, being encouraged by
the presence of a Pesian fleet of 400 sail at Mycale.
Alexander, however, had seized the island of Lade; moored his fleet of 160
ships so as to bar ingress and egress; and, having made a practicable breach in
the wall, stormed the town in the face of a languid resistance. There remained
one strong fortress in those parts, Halicarnassus, where the Persians had
collected all their forces for a serious defence, and
where Memnon was in chief command. Alexander, therefore, resolved to send away
his fleet, which was at once expensive and numerically weak, and to direct all
his efforts to the capture of that city, as a step to driving the Persians from
Asia Minor.
CHAPTER X.
FROM THE SIEGE OF HALIKARNASSOS TO THE BATTLE OF ISSOS.
Halicarnassus was the strongest city of Karia.
Built on the side of a precipitous rock, sloping steeply to the southward and
to the sea, it was doubly defensible from the possession of two citadels, the
chief one lying at the northern and highest point of the city. On the eastern
face of the hill can still be traced remains of the famous tomb built by Queen
Artemisia in memory of her husband, Mausolos. There
were two good harbours, the larger and safer lying to
the north, its entrance being at once sheltered and protected by a fortified
island. The whole city was surrounded with walls, and strengthened further by a
ditch, 45 feet broad and more than 20 feet deep. Moreover, the preparations for defence were on a scale adequate to the strength and
importance of the place. The Persian fleet had been brought up from Mycale.
Besides native troops, there was a considerable garrison of Greek mercenaries
under an Athenian, Ephialtes ; and the guiding spirit of the defence was Memnon, a man as versatile as he was brave. The
siege of Halicarnassus was the most arduous task which Alexander bad as yet to
face.
Before he actually began the operations of the siege, he took care to
render the attack as easy as possible, and to secure his communications by
conciliating the nearer Greek towns with freedom and special immunities ; while
he won the good-will of the Karians by restoring the
kingdom to Ada, the popular representative of their ancient line of kings. He
then sat down before the city, about half a mile from the walls. At first the
proceedings on both sides were desultory. One or two sallies of the besieged
were repulsed with ease ; and a night attack of Alexander’s on the neighbouring town of Myndos was
foiled. But thenceforward both the attack and defence became serious. To get at the walls with battering engines, it was first
necessary to fill up the ditch ; and this was done by the soldiers, under cover
of three movable penthouses. The rams were then brought up, and ere long two
towers, with the intermediate extent of wall, had yielded to the incessant
shocks, and were in ruins. Meanwhile the besieged made repeated sallies, and
busied themselves in raising a thick wall of brick in the shape of a crescent
behind the city wall, and abutting on it at each end, in case, as actually
happened, a breach were made. Before the wall was finished, however, the breach
was practicable; and an attack was inadvertently brought on by the drunken
frolic of two Macedonian soldiers, who, to settle a disputed question as to
their comparative valour, donned their armour, and boldly set out to storm the town alone. A few
who saw them coming ran out to attack them ; but these they slew, and proceeded
to throw their javelins at others more distant. Presently the first amazement
of either side gave place to excitement; and hurried reinforcements, two or
three at a time, joined the two reckless Macedonians, as well as their
opponents. The fight became general. The besiegers, after a struggle, drove
back the besieged behind their walls, and (so great was the confusion) might
probably have captured the city, then and there, had the assault been
intentional and well-supported. As it was, the half-moon was finished before
Alexander was ready to deliver the attack. Moreover, when the engines were
moved up, the troops, being thus as it were within the circle of the city
walls, were exposed to a harassing cross fire in front and on both flanks,
while the sallies of the enemy became more desperate and impetuous. Gradually,
however, the attack, directed by Alexander in person, began to overpower the defence, and the Persian commanders held a council of war.
The end was clearly approaching. What was to be done? Ephialtes was urgent that
they should not tamely surrender, but at least make one more effort for
victory, and by persistence obtained the consent of Memnon to his heading one
more desperate sally. Two thousand men were chosen. Half he armed with torches
to set fire to the engines; half he drew up in a deep column to charge the
enemy. At daybreak all the gates were thrown open, and the sallying parties
dashed out. Some of the engines were soon in flames, while Ephialtes and his column
steadily pressed onwards, overpowering all resistance, and even putting some of
the younger soldiers to flight. But the efforts of Alexander presently rallied
them ; and yet more the disciplined courage of the veteran reserves, who,
taunting them with cowardice, fell into the ranks of their own accord with a
coolness learnt on many a battlefield, and soon checked and eventually swept
back again their already triumphant assailants, Ephialtes being one of the
first to fall. The loss of the besieged in this sally was heavy; and Memnon and
his colleagues, aware that they could not hold out much longer, resolved to
evacuate the city. Under cover of night they set fire to the engines and
magazines, and carried off the stores and troops and some of the inhabitants,
partly to the upper citadel, partly to adjacent islands. Alexander razed the
city to the ground ; and left 3,000 infantry and 200 cavalry with Queen Ada to
blockade and reduce the citadel, while he himself pursued his march eastward.
Having detached Parmenion with the cavalry and baggage to meet him in
the spring in Phrygia, he himself led the rest of his army through Lycia and
Pamphylia, Pisidia and Phrygia, to Gordion in
Bithynia. At first sight this seems a strangely circuitous route Alexander’s
for a man whose next object was to reach circuitous Syria ; nor is it likely
that a man like Alexander would go so far out of his way merely to reach better
winter-quarters, or to escape the difficulties of western Cilicia. Two things
were of primary importance at this time. To protect the Greeks of the coast
from annoyance in his absence at the hands of the satraps of the interior, and
to secure his own communications with Macedon. It was a wise step, therefore,
to make a display of his power, and to exact if it were only a passing
submission in the highlands of Phrygia and Cappadocia; while the position of Gordion would facilitate rapid overland communication with
the west, as well as a ready control of the satraps to the north and east. Here
he was joined once more by Parmenion and by reinforcements from Greece, to the
number of 3000 infantry and 650 cavalry. Here, too, before he turned his face
southward, he cut the famous Gordian knot. In the citadel of the town (so runs
the tale) was a wagon, in which, once upon a time, when the people were at
strife, a certain Midas with his father and mother had entered the place. Now
it had been revealed to the Gordians that a wagon would bring them a king, who
should allay their strife. So they laid hands on Midas and made him king; the
wagon was dedicated in the Acropolis, and a further oracle declared that
whoever should loose the pole from the yoke was
destined to be lord of Asia. Now the knot that tied it was of cornel bark, and
had seemingly neither end nor beginning. But for the omen’s sake, and for the
comfort of his friends, it was needful that Alexander should do the deed ; so
he went to the citadel and loosed the pole, either cutting the knot with his
sword, or pulling out the peg. At any rate the conditions of the oracle were
satisfied, and a thunder-storm the following night rendered assurance doubly
sure.
From Gordion he marched to Ancyra, and then
straight for Mount Tauros and the Cilician Cates, The
folly of the Persians in disregarding Memnon’s advice, and in neglecting to occupy
in force so defensible a pass, is incredible, especially when we remember that,
not seventy years before, Cyrus the Younger had traversed it on an errand
similar to Alexander's, and that Xenophon, who was in his train, calls it a
carriage-road, impassable in the face of an opposing force. In one place there
was no more room than for four armed men abreast. A resistance, possibly
successful, might there have been made to invasion, which was attempted to no
purpose at Issus, especially as Alexander had not, like Cyrus, a fleet with
which to make a diversion in the rear. As it was, the Persians in their
supineness seem hardly to have been aware of the king’s approach. The scanty
garrison of the pass fled at once without a blow. Scarcely able to credit his
good fortune, Alexander marched without a day’s delay into Cilicia, only to
find that the satrap Arsames also had fled, and that Tarsus was his—a place
then important as a great commercial centre, and
since famous as the home of the Apostle Paul, and the burial-place of the
Emperor Julian. It was near being famous also as the burial-place of Alexander
himself. Having bathed incautiously in the cold waters of the Kydnos when his blood was heated by his recent exertions
and forced marches, he was seized with fever, and presently was dangerously
ill. The physicians were quite baffled. One alone, an Acarnanian named Philippus,
undertook to give the king a medicine which would certainly cure him. Meanwhile
a letter reached Alexander from Parmenion, warning him to beware of Philippus;
as a rumour was abroad that he had been bribed by
Darius to poison him. As yet the hero was untainted by success, and was as
generously above suspicion as he was chivalrously above fear. Having read the
letter, he held it in his hand; and when Philippus appeared, gave it to him as
he handed him the cup. Then, as Philippus read, he drank the cup to the dregs.
It is difficult to conceive of a more apt illustration of the virtue of
high-mindedness, as conceived by the Greeks and described by Aristotle, which
indeed (he says) is impossible without goodness and beauty of character.
After celebrating his recovery by solemn sacrifices and games to Asclepios
(Aesculapius), the king set out on his eastward march to find Darius, of whose
approach with a vast host he had already heard. The Macedonian army converged
by different routes upon Issus, where the sick and wounded were left behind;
and then marched southward through the Cilician Gates, reaching Myriandros on the third day after leaving Issus. The bay
and plain, called after the last-named place, are formed by the two diverging
arms of Mount Amanos, a southern off-shoot of Mount Tauros; the bay running some fifty miles inland and having
an average breadth of twenty-five miles. Its importance has been recognized
from very early times, for the best and most natural route from Asia Minor to
Syria and Mesopotamia runs round the head of the bay, and then passes along the
narrow defile between the mountains and the sea, turning near Myriandros to the south-east, and passing over Mount Amanos by the Syrian Gates (or Beilan pass) to Antioch on the south, and to Thapsakos, the
ford of the Euphrates, on the east. In parts the mountains approach very
closely to the sea ; hence the pass is very easily defensible, and is the exact
spot which a general would choose who had to contend with an enemy superior in
numbers, but inferior in discipline and courage. On the other hand the folly of
Darius in not defending so strong a position, which, like the Cilician Gates of
Mount Tauros, might have been made practically
impregnable, was as fatal as the pride which led him and others to slight the
advice of Memnon while he was alive, and to exchange his policy of defence for offence as soon as he was dead. The Great King
had collected a vast host of 400,000 infantry, and 100,000 cavalry ; but the
Athenian Charidemos (like Demaratos the Spartan, in the days of Xerxes), warned him that these numbers were
delusive, and worthless against the enemy whom he was marching to attack. The
warning cost Charidemos his life, and the neglect of
it cost Darius his throne.
While Alexander was in the defile of Issus, Darius was encamped in the
Syrian plain, about two days’ march from Mount Amanos.
He had brought his vast army, his courtiers, his harem, as for a triumphal
progress : and now that his rash enemy, as he vainly imagined, was skulking
behind the mountains, or lying sick at Tarsos, he
would go and find him out. So the huge array, which had taken five days to
cross the Euphrates, slowly made its way by the Amanian Gates over the mountain ridge (the heavy baggage and treasure being sent to
Damascus), and came down upon Issus only two days after Alexander had left it
on his southward march. It was a singular chance which thus led two enemies,
each in search of the other, to march on nearly parallel lines but in opposite
directions, and to be so near without knowing it. At Issus were found the sick
and the wounded of the Macedonian army, whom Darius was persuaded by his
courtiers to torture and put to death; after which he turned southward in
pursuit of his foe, and encamped on the right bank of the river Pinaros, where the plain is only from two to three miles in
breadth. Darius therefore could bring no more than 90,000 troops into line of
battle. The king would scarcely believe the good news, when told that the
Persians were actually within reach ; and sent off some of the Companions in a
fifty-oared galley to reconnoitre and bring him back
word. They soon returned with the tidings that Darius was close at hand.
Alexander at once assembled his officers, and addressed them in words which
were clearly intended to serve as the text for each officer’s address to his
own division. They had every reason (he urged) for good hope. They and he had
fought together before, and always with success. They were about to fight now
with men whom they had conquered, and to whom they were as superior as warrior
freemen always must be to unwarlike slaves. Moreover, it was Alexander pitted
against Darius ; and the prize was the empire of Asia. He reminded each man by
name of his former brilliant deeds— of the rewards now within his grasp—of the
great things which Xenophon had done on a similar scene, but with vastly
inferior means—and at last roused them to such enthusiasm that they begged him
to advance at once. Sending forward a few cavalry and bowmen to feel for the
enemy, and having offered sacrifice, he set out after the evening meal, and by
midnight reached the narrowest part of the pass—the Cilician Gates— where he
halted for the night. At dawn he advanced once more, in column, until the pass
widened as the mountains receded from the sea ; here he deployed his troops
into line of battle, and again moved forward in the usual order into the plain
of the river Pinaros. Darius, meanwhile, had made his
preparations, and they were such as by no means to encourage his men; being
rather those of one who expects not to attack but to be attacked, and who has a
lurking distrust of himself. He posted 20,000 men in the mountains in the rear
of Alexander’s right flank. These, had they been worth anything, might have
paralyzed the Macedonian advance, or charged at a decisive moment on his rear.
As it was, their real merit was soon discovered ; for at the first charge of
some troops whom Alexander detached for the service, they retired to higher
ground and were actually held in check during the rest of the battle by a mere
handful of 300 horsemen. The interval of about two miles between the mountains
and the sea Darius occupied with a continuous mass of heavy-armed infantry—30,000
Greek mercenaries in the centre, and on their flanks
troops called Kardakes (or Asiatics armed as
hoplites) to the number of 60,000. The line of troops followed the line of the
river bank, which in parts was precipitous and, where it was not so steep, was
defended by intrenchments. The mass of the Persian cavalry was on the right
wing in advance of the Kardakes. Of the actual 500,000 men present, there was
thus room for no more than 120,000 to fight, the residue being massed on the
plain in the rear, by tribes and nations. Well might Alexander exclaim that
heaven itself was fighting on his side, when Darius had been prompted to
entangle his overwhelming numbers in so narrow a space! Well might he believe
the Persians to be cowed in spirit, and already as good as defeated, when he
saw their preparations, not so much for delivering a blow, or trampling the
audacious invader under foot, as for resisting his attack as best they might.
He advanced with the phalanx in six divisions, with the Hypaspists and Macedonian cavalry on the right wing under
his own command, and the Peloponnesian and Thessalian cavalry on the left under
Parmenion. His idea of the battle was, as actually happened, that the right
wing under his command should charge the Persian left, and drive it off the
field, and then fall upon the flank of the centre,
which would be occupied in front with resisting the impact of the phalanx. The
approach to the river was conducted slowly, so as to maintain the order of the
ranks, the king all the while riding up and down along the lines and
encouraging both officers and men, who answered him with cheers. Presently they
came within bowshot of the enemy, and the Persian arrows began to fall among
them thickly. Like Miltiades at Marathon, Alexander gave immediate orders for
the charge at the double, that his men might be exposed to the galling fire for
as short a time as possible; and setting spurs to his horse dashed into the
river at the head of the Hypaspists, charging
furiously into the Asiatic troops opposite to him. Ill prepared and little
accustomed to such stress of war as this, they began to falter and give ground
almost from the moment of attack ; and presently, overborne by the tremendous
energy of their assailants, they yielded to the pressure, broke, and fled.
Alexander pursued them far enough to ensure their utter rout, and then returned
to the relief of his centre, against which the Greek
mercenaries of the Persian host were maintaining a fierce and not wholly
unsuccessful struggle. Alexander’s own rapid advance had made a gap in his
array, and left his phalanx a little behind him; and as they pressed hurriedly
into the water and surged up against the opposite bank, it was with ill-dressed
ranks and a wavering line, while their right flank was open to attack. Such
disorderly advance was fatal to the full efficiency of the phalanx; and the
Greeks opposed to them were quite aware of it, and were eager to win the honour of defeating them in fair fight for the first time.
A desperate struggle ensued for the possession of the bank; while on the flank
between them and the sea an encounter no less desperate was going on between
the Thessalian cavalry and the main body of the Persian horse, who had crossed
the river to attack them. At this juncture Alexander, having driven the Persian
left wing off the field, fell suddenly and furiously on the left flank of the
Greeks, who were already engaged with the phalanx in front, and threw them into
utter confusion. Even then the resistance might have been stouter than it was,
had not Darius himself despaired of success, and with craven timidity set the
example of flight. As soon as his left wing was broken and scattered, fearing
that his own sacred person in the centre was no
longer safe, he leaped on his chariot, just as he was, and fled away along the
plain with a few of his suite. To an army like the Persian such an example was
disastrous, and the flight of the Great King became the signal that all was
lost. And all was lost, indeed, beyond recall. The Greeks, attacked on two
sides at once, wavered and then gave ground, and at last broke up into a
seething mass of struggling men; while the cavalry beyond the river, seeing
what was going on behind them, hastily recrossed it, hotly pursued by the
Thessalians, and strove to make good their own retreat, jostling and trampling
on one another in their panic, and even riding down their own infantry. The
whole length of the narrow plain from the Pinaros to Issus
was now one scene of indescribable horror and confusion, the great multitude
that had never struck a blow helping to swell the vast tide of terror- stricken
fugitives. The slaughter was prodigious, and not only by the sword. The plain
was in some places narrower than others, and here and there were water-courses,
where the crush and pressure were so terrific that hundreds appear to have been
suffocated, and Ptolemy, who himself took part in the pursuit, avers that he
crossed a ravine by aid of the dead bodies with which it was choked. Of the
cavalry 10,000 are said to have perished, and 100,000 of the infantry; 4,000
fugitives succeeded in reaching Thapsakos and
crossing the Euphrates; 8,000 of the Greeks actually fought their way through
the Macedonian army, and marching down to Tripolis seized some Phoenician transports, and crossed the sea first to Cyprus and
eventually to Egypt. But with these trifling exceptions the rest of the vast
host disappears from sight. Only after the lapse of two years could Darius
gather another army wherewith to meet his enemy, and that was raised almost
wholly from countries east of the Euphrates. The Macedonian loss was returned
at 300 foot and 150 horse soldiers slain, and about 500 wounded. Alexander
himself was slightly injured in the thigh by a sword thrust.
The pursuit was continued as long as the brief light of a November day
allowed. Darius himself escaped; but his wife and sister and mother, his young
son and two daughters, his tent and chariot, his shield and bow, together with
3,000 talents of money, fell into the conqueror’s hands. If we remember what
the ideas of those days were with regard to prisoners of war, it will seem to
be no small part of Alexander’s glory that he treated these ladies from first to
last with unvarying courtesy and respect.
When he returned from the pursuit, the king found that the Persian camp
had already been plundered by his soldiers ; but the royal tent, and perfumed
bath, and the royal banquet had been carefully reserved for his use—luxuries to
which hitherto he had been a stranger, and which possibly occasioned the
sarcastic remark, quoted by Plutarch, that this apparently was what was meant
by being a king. The next day he celebrated his victory on the spot, erecting
altars on the Pinaros to Zeus, Herakles, and Athene ;
and sent Parmenion forward, with some Thessalian cavalry, to seize whatever
treasure was to be found in Damascus. Its amount and varied character must have
been almost embarrassing. for we are told that he became master not only of the
military chest, but of a great number of Persian nobles and ladies of the
highest rank, and of camp followers of every sort and description to the
amazing number of 30,000. Such it was, it seems, to be a conqueror.
CHAPTER XI.
FROM THE BATTLE OF ISSOS TO THE BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA.
The victory of Issus not only gave Alexander practically the command of
Asia west of the Euphrates, but relieved him of much anxiety as to any alliance
between Greeks and Persians in his rear. That alliance had been a possible and
even threatening danger, and it was with a view to guard against its recurrence
in the future that Alexander directed his next attack against Phoenicia and
Egypt, the homes and recruiting ground of the Persian fleet, rather than
against Babylon or Persepolis.
From the Pinaros, Alexander retraced his steps
as far as Myriandros, and then, crossing the Syrian
Gates, followed the valley of the Orontes to Arados and Marathos, which, like Byblos and Sidon
immediately afterwards, welcomed with acclamation the conqueror of Persia.
At Marathos the king gave audience to two
envoys from Darius himself. They were bearers of a letter of remonstrance at
Alexander’s unprovoked attack, and of a request that he would send back his
wife, mother, and children. The king’s answer was characteristic, and revealed
the larger views that were now occupying his mind. After adducing a number of
grievances, of which Greeks in general and he himself in particular had to
complain, he repeated in other words what he had already said to the mother of
Darius, that the contest between them was for the empire of Asia. He bade the
Great King come to his presence, as to one who was master of all Asia. “And in
future” (he adds), “when thou sendest to me, send as
to the King of Asia, and write not as an equal, and speak, if thou requirest aught, as to one who is lord of all thy
possessions. If not, I will take counsel against thee as a wrong-doer. And if
thou hast ought to object in the matter of the royal power, await my coming and
do not flee, but try the issue of battle. I will come to thee wherever thou
art.” These lofty words have to our ears an arrogant ring, but they defined
exactly the relative position of the two men.
From Sidon Alexander proceeded towards Tyre, hoping to find as cordial a
welcome as he had just experienced in the northern cities. He was met by an
embassy with valuable presents, and with promises on the part of their city to
do all that the king desired. The king’s answer was that he desired to enter
Tyre, and to sacrifice to the Tyrian Herakles. The ambassadors replied, in the
name of the city, that they would gladly accede to whatever else the king might
wish, but that they could not admit any man, whether Persian or Macedonian,
within their walls. But the king (they added) could sacrifice equally well at Palai Tyros, the old town, on the mainland, where was a
temple of Herakles, more ancient and more venerable than their own. Alexander
was deeply offended by their refusal, and at once called a council of war, at
which it was resolved that, however difficult the siege might be, it was a task
which could not safely be declined. It has been said that impatient pride on
the king’s part prompted this resolution; but his own speech to his officers in
council suggests three or four weighty reasons for the step, which amply
justify it. The wording of the Tyrian refusal gave the impression of
“trimming,” and of their wishing to remain neutral in a contest which seemed as
yet undecided. Could Alexander safely leave behind him, unreduced, those who
were either secret enemies, or at best lukewarm friends ? The Phoenician fleet
in Aegean waters was his greatest source of danger; but if Phoenicia were
reduced, that fleet would be his. In that case the submission of Cyprus would
be certain; and with Cyprus and Phoenicia as the base of operations, the
conquest of Egypt would be no less certain. Then, and not till then, would it
be possible to feel secure of Greece, and to turn his face resolutely towards
Babylon. But everything depended on that first link in the chain—the complete
reduction of Phoenicia. So great a military genius as Alexander, living amid
his own ideas and not ours, could hardly be expected to admit such
considerations as that Tyrians wished to remain neutral, or were “an ancient
and intelligent community,” or fancied their position impregnable. It was an
essential part of his policy that Phoenicia and Egypt should be wrested from
Persia, and completely subdued.
The city of Tyre (Tsur, Sur, the Rock) was
built partly on the mainland, partly on a rocky island, twenty-four miles south
of Sidon. This island was nearly three miles in circumference, and separated
from the continent by an arm of the sea seven-tenths of a mile in breadth,
which was comparatively shallow near the mainland, but three fathoms deep off
the island. The line of coast seems to have altered considerably from time to
time, owing to the silting of sand and to volcanic agencies ; so that part of
the island on the western side is now submerged, ruins of columns being still
visible below the water, while the channel between it and the mainland, which
is now one-third of a mile across, was in Strabo’s time (about the Christian
era) entirely blocked by an isthmus of sand, resting on the ruins of
Alexander’s mole. The city had two harbours, to the
north and south of the island respectively, protected by sea-walls; and the
southern, which was the more exposed, was defended further by an immense
breakwater, thirty-five feet thick, and now covered with six or eight feet of
water. These harbours were connected by a canal
running across the island, the outline of which is still traceable. All round
the city ran a wall, which opposite the mainland rose to the stupendous height
of 150 feet. Within this comparatively limited area, it has been supposed that
the population must in Alexander's day have amounted to nearly 50,000; but the
narrowness of the area was compensated by the immense number of stories in
which the houses were built, reminding us of the “insulae” at Rome or of the
vast piles crowded within the fortifications of some foreign town.
The Tyrians were masters of the sea, and Alexander had no fleet. It was
necessary, therefore, in order to reach the city at all, to run a mole across
the channel, by which the engines might be brought to bear upon the wall. At
first the work was easy enough. There were stones in plenty at Old Tyre,
abundance of timber was to be had on Lebanon, and the piles were without
difficulty in the soft sand and mud. But the further the work was carried the
more difficult it became : for the water grew deeper, and the Tyrian men-of-war
could sail up from either harbour and molest the men
at work, who ere long came also within range from the
walls. When the Macedonian engineers erected mantlets and two wooden towers on the mole to protect their workers, the Tyrians were
equal to this emergency also. They prepared a fireship, and having waited for a
wind steered her skilfully, so as to set alight the
towers and everything inflammable within reach ; the men on board the ships
meanwhile kept up an incessant shower of darts and arrows, while volunteers
from the city, pushing off in any boat that came to hand, eagerly joined in the
work of destruction, pulling up palisades and helping to spread the fire. Most
of the engines and a large part of the mole were thus destroyed, and the
destruction was completed by a storm. Alexander, however, nothing daunted, at
once set to work to construct more engines and to build another mole, broader
than the first, and carried obliquely across the channel in a south-west
direction to escape the force of the waves. At the same time it was clear that
his task was doubly difficult while the Tyrians were masters -of the sea.
Accordingly, leaving his engineers to carry on the mole, he took some picked
troops and marched to Sidon, to collect as large a fleet as possible. Here the
wisdom of his policy in first reducing Phoenicia became evident at once, for he
found there the fleets of Sidon and Byblos and Arados,
which had left the Persian side as soon as they heard of the adhesion of their
native towns to Alexander, as well as ships from Rhodes, and Lycia, and Cyprus,
and 4,000 mercenaries from Peloponnesus. He thus returned to Tyre with a fleet
of more than 200 sail, and so formidable from its equipment and the skill of
the sailors, that Tyrians gave up all idea of fighting them, and merely blocked
the entrances of the ports with a tightly-packed row of triremes. The fleet,
however, was useful to Alexander, not more from giving him the command of the
sea, than because the larger ships could carry engines and so multiply his
means of offence. But even this was at first useless, for the Tyrians had
thrown great stones into the sea to bar the approach, and their divers cut the
cables of any ships that were moored there to pick them up. Next they organized
and cleverly carried out a surprise, which was near proving fatal to the
Cyprian ships on the north side of the mole. Getting ready a squadron of thirteen
vessels behind a screen of sails set up for the purpose, at midday, when the
Cyprian crews were ashore reposing in the shade, they sent them out silently
and suddenly m single file to charge and destroy whatever they could reach. The
surprise was complete. Alexander hastily manned a few ships, which he sent off
at once to stop more from sailing out of the north harbour,
and pushed off himself, with some half-dozen others, to round the island and
help the Cyprians. The scene soon became exciting. Alexander’s little squadron
was straining every nerve to reach the scene of action, while the inhabitants,
who were lining the walls of their city, suddenly became aware of the danger of
their own vessels, now busily engaged in the work of destruction. At first they
shouted to attract their attention, but the din on shore drowned the shouts.
Then they signalled them to come back, but it was too
late, for, as they strove to regain the harbour,
Alexander was upon them; a few ships escaped, but the majority were damaged and
waterlogged, while two were captured at the very mouth of the harbour.
The failure of this gallant effort was the beginning of the end. The
strength of the wall, indeed, resisted the engines for a while, and the
struggle became daily more bitter, the inhabitants even going so far as to kill
some prisoners on the walls in the sight of the besiegers, and toss their
bodies into the sea. But at last a breach was battered in the wall on the south
side of the city, and three days afterwards Alexander took advantage of a calm
to deliver the assault, which he led in person, while a simultaneous attack was
made on both harbours. The resistance was desperate,
but vain. The assaulting party made good their footing at the breach, and
gradually fought their way to the king’s palace, while the harbours were forced and the ships sunk or driven ashore. The slaughter was merciless,
for the Macedonians were exasperated by the length of the siege, and the
slaughter of their comrades on the wall ; so that 8,000 perished in the
struggle at the breach and in the streets, while 30,000 are said to have been
captured and sold as slaves. One author asserts that several thousand were
carried off into safety by Sidonian triremes, of course with Alexander’s
connivance. The Macedonian losses during the siege are stated at the quite
impossible total of 400, considering that it lasted nine months, and that there
was very severe fighting from first to last. Be that as it may, there can be no
doubt that the fall of the first city of Phoenicia was worth to Alexander
whatever time, or money, or lives it may have cost.
Before the siege was concluded the king had already received a second
embassy from Darius, offering such splendid terms of alliance that, at the
council where they were discussed, Parmenion declared that if he were Alexander
he should accept them. “So should I,” rejoined Alexander, “if I were
Parmenion.” These terms were, the payment of 10,000 talents as the ransom for
his family, the cession of all provinces west of the Euphrates, and the hand of
his daughter in marriage. But, however tempting these offers might be to the
older man, who would not, perhaps, be sorry to return home, they had no
attraction for the younger, who had schemes of an ever-widening ambition in his
head, and was brimful of restless energy. Alexander replied almost exactly as
before. These things which Darius offered were his already. Let Darius come and
see him if he had anything to ask. Then the Great King (we are told) abandoned
embassies as useless, and set about preparing for war. It was, indeed, time ;
for during the summer of 332, and while Alexander was besieging Tyre, his
admirals in the Aegean, relieved by the sudden withdrawal of the Phoenician
contingents, had driven the Persian fleet from those waters, had recovered
Chios and the other islands, and had taken prisoner Pharnabazos,
the Persian, with all his forces. Thus Persian influence in the Aegean was
destroyed; and when Alexander had reduced Egypt (as he would clearly do with
ease) he would at once be free to attack the heart of the empire.
From Tyre the king marched southward towards Egypt ; but he did not
actually reach that country until quite the end of the year, being detained
more than three months before the fortress of Gaza. It is needless to dwell on
the details of a siege where operations were carried out similar to those at
Tyre and Halicarnassus. The place was exceptionally strong, from the height of
the artificial mound on which it stood, and of the walls which surrounded it,
and it was under the command of a man of exceptional resolution. But Alexander
was resolute also. In spite of a desperate resistance, the place was taken,
every man falling where he stood, and the women and children were sold as
slaves. At this point it was, if we may believe Josephus, that the king
retraced his steps, and visited Jerusalem, intending to punish the Jews for
refusing him aid in the siege of Tyre ; but was moved from his purpose by the
high-priest, Jaddua, who, being warned of God in a
dream, went boldly with the priests to meet the king outside the city. Like
Attila before Leo the Roman pontiff, Alexander was awe-struck before Jaddua, and bowed down before him ; and when Parmenion
asked him why he did so, he declared that he had seen in a dream in Macedon,
before he started, a figure like Jaddua’s, which had
promised to go before his army, and to give him dominion over the Persians.
Then he entered the city and the temple, and offered sacrifice under Jaddua’s direction, bestowing both on priests and people
whatever favours they chose to ask.
At last the king was able to pursue his way to Egypt, and seven days
after passing Gaza reached Pelusium. A willing
submission awaited him on the part of the Egyptians, who had suffered many
things from their Persian masters. From Pelusium he
marched to Memphis, and was there joined by the fleet ; and thence, after
sacrificing to the god Apis and celebrating gymnastic
games, he dropped down the river to the mouth of the western arm of the Delta,
and, after sailing round the Mareotic lake, landed on
the narrow neck of land separating it from the Mediterranean, where stood a
little village called Rhakotis. The place had long
been a haunt of Greek and Phoenician pirates, particularly because the
roadstead was sheltered from the Etesian winds by the island of Pharos, and was
the only refuge along the coast for man miles. Alexander’s eye seems to have
been caught at once by the possibilities of the place, and he began surveying
and drawing plans without delay. The first and most important thing was to take
advantage of the shelter of the island for constructing a harbour at once safe and large; and this was done by means of a mole or causeway seven stades (Heptastadion) or
three-quarters of a mile in length, which ran from mainland to island, and
formed on either side a spacious harbour, along whose
sides were presently built numerous quays and docks. The city of Alexandria
itself—the first and greatest of that name—was laid out between the ports and
the Mareotic lake in the shape of an irregular
parallelogram, with broad streets crossing at right angles ; but although, no
doubt, it rose at once, even in Alexander’s day, to the rank of a fine and
important city, its beauty and grandeur date from later days, when a succession
of Ptolemies vied with each other in adorning it. Water in abundance was
supplied by an artificial canal from the Nile; the soil was dry, and the air
healthy ; and the annual inundation of the river, which was connected with the Mareotic lake at the back, prevented it from degenerating
into a lagoon. Indeed, much of the commerce of Alexandria reached the city by
the Canopic branch of the Nile, and by the various canals which led into the
lake. The population of the place, thus favoured by
position, climate, and royal patronage, like that of Constantinople six
centuries later, increased rapidly ; and we know that 250 years afterwards it
was estimated at 600,000 Souls. It was certainly not the least of the glories
of Alexander to have founded Alexandria, the granary first of imperial Rome,
and then of imperial Constantinople, the rival of Athens in intellectual life,
the focus and highway of the commerce of the Middle Ages.
It is hard to determine the motives which led Alexander’s steps westward
from Alexandria. His mind was at once practical and romantic, and he may
possibly have wished to emulate the deeds of a Herakles or a Perseus, while
satisfying at the same time his thirst for knowledge and adventure. He set out
on the march along the coast, intending to follow the southward caravan route,
which led to the oasis of Ammon from Paraitonion,
where he was met by a deputation from Kyrene, bringing presents, and wisely
inviting a visit which they had certainly no power to prevent. But his mind was
bent on other objects. A march of six days across the desert from Paraitonion brought him to the oasis—a march whose dangers
only divine interposition (it was believed) enabled the army to surmount. At
last they reached their goal, the most northerly of those wonderful “resting-places”
in the barren, sandy desert, whose green fertility is the more striking from
contrast with the endless stretch of red sand around, and which alone make
travelling possible. Being dips or depressions in the limestone bed of the
desert, they catch and retain in their spongy clay the moisture which runs from
the limestone rim around or percolates through the sand, and which is the cause
of their beautiful vegetation. The oasis of Zeus-Ammon is six miles in length
and three in breadth, abounding in springs, and producing in profusion wheat,
millet, and dates; while the only animal which cannot flourish, probably
because of the moisture of the soil, is the camel. The present population is
8,000; but in Alexander’s day it must have been larger, when the oasis was not
only a focus of commerce, but the seat of a famous oracle as well, and
therefore visited by numerous pilgrims. But never before had the shrine of Zeus
been visited by so famous a pilgrim, or one to whom the god and his priests
were more zealous to do honour. A grand procession of
priests and virgins met the king and his army on the confines of the oasis, and
the answers returned by the god to the inquiring hero were (it is said) all
that he wished. The purport of these answers he does not seem to have made
public till a later period; but we can, perhaps, imagine how, even after Issus,
and before Gaugamela, Alexander must have seemed both to himself and to others
one of the greatest of earth’s conquerors, almost more than human, and how the
cunning suggestion of a priest or an oracle might give rise to the astonishing
belief in his divine birth, or might at least inflame the vanity which
gradually clouded the great qualities of a great genius.
From the oasis the return was made to Memphis by the direct route ; and
a short time was spent there in settling the future government of the province
of Egypt, its loyalty being secured by letting well alone, and by leaving the
reins as far as possible in the hands of native rulers, while garrisons were
placed in Memphis and Pelusium, with a small naval
and military force to support them. Then at last the course was clear for that
march to the east, which was to end in such unparalleled results. It is, per.
haps, as useless as it is fascinating to speculate on the feelings with which men
have entered on any course of action which has definitely shaped and changed
the thoughts, or habits, or political history of other men ; and, perhaps,
Alexander’s vision of the future, when he set his face towards the Euphrates,
was not more defined than Caesar’s when he crossed the Rubicon, or than
Luther’s when he stood before the Diet of the Empire at Worms. Yet the
exaltation of feeling, which at the entrance of a great task fires the
imagination and kindles enthusiasm, amounts in some men to prescience of
success; and what was true of Columbus may well have been true also of
Alexander. In action, the genius is the man who gauges difficulties most
correctly.
Leaving Memphis in the spring of 331, and passing a short time at Tyre,
the king there left the sea-coast, and, marching to the eastward of Anti-Libanus, reached the river Euphrates about the mid- die of
August at Thapsakos, the same ford which Darius had
crossed in pursuit of Alexander himself two years before, and by which Cyrus
and his army had passed to the eastward in 401. Two bridges of boats were
already being built, and only not finished because a body of 3,000 cavalry was
posted on the further bank; but when the Macedonians appeared in force from the
westward these retired precipitately, and the crossing was effected without
opposition. From Thapsakos the army marched to the
north-eastward, and crossed the Tigris likewise without difficulty, some
distance above Nineveh, and then halted for a few days’ rest prior to the
impending struggle. Impending it clearly was, for some Persian scouts had been
taken prisoners, who announced that Darius was close at hand with an army far
larger than that which had fought and been routed at face to face Issus, and
more formidable because levied from the more warlike tribes of Parthia and Bactria.
Alexander rode forward in person with a few squadrons of cavalry to reconnoitre, and, having had a smart skirmish with some
outposts of the enemy, ascertained that Darius was immediately before him,
encamped in the broad plain between the Tigris and the mountains of Kurdistan,
at a place called Gaugamela (or the Camel’s House), with a force estimated at
the lowest at 20o,ocx3 infantry and cavalry, with 200 scythe chariots and 15
elephants. Every endeavour, moreover, had been made
that the fight should be fought under circumstances favourable to the Persian arms. There was ample room in the vast plain to deploy all the
host. There was neither sea nor mountain, as at Issus, to protect the enemy’s
flank and to prevent his being overlapped; and a part of the field had been
carefully levelled and cleared to facilitate the charge of cavalry and
chariots. It was indeed a critical moment for the invading army. In point of
numbers they were at most as one to six, and defeat would probably mean utter
destruction. Yet defeat was not dreamed of. The king himself slept soundly the
night before the battle, and remarked to Parmenion, who woke him in the
morning, that it was as good as a victory to have overtaken the enemy ! To a man
of such a spirit, at the head of veteran and disciplined troops, victory was
assured before a blow was struck.
CHAPTER XII.
FROM THE BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA TO THE SACK OF PERSEPOLIS
Once more Darius and Alexander were face to face, and this time the conditions
were all in favour of the former. He had overwhelming
numbers of the bravest troops which the empire could furnish. They had been
newly armed and equipped. The field of battle had been chosen by themselves. If
they could not conquer now they would never conquer. Alexander, on the other
hand, had no more than 40,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry ; and were it not that
fighting men must be weighed as well as counted, they might have seemed doomed
to certain destruction from combined attacks in front and flank and rear.
After four days’ rest, and having fortified a camp to contain his
invalids, prisoners, and baggage, Alexander advanced boldly to find his enemy.
Starting shortly before midnight, he timed his march over the seven or eight
miles that intervened between himself and the Persians so as to reach them at
the early dawn of a September day. Immediately in his front were a few low
hills, entirely concealing each army from the other ; but, as he breasted the
slight ascent and halted on the top, there in the broad plain below were
marshalled, already in order of battle, the tens of thousands whom Darius had
levied during the previous two years from every corner of his vast empire. At a
distance of little more than three miles from the enemy Alexander halted, and
called a council bf war. It was a critical moment, and opinions were divided ;
the majority of generals voting for instant attack with tacit reference
probably to the king’s supposed wishes. Not so Parmenion, who was cautious as
well as able, and who urged that on such ground and against such odds, it was
necessary to reconnoitre the field before engaging
the enemy. His advice was adopted, and the rest of that day was spent by the
king in riding about and carefully examining the ground. In the evening he
summoned his generals to receive their last orders, which were brief but
imperative. Then he dismissed them to their quarters to get supper and rest.
But Parmenion was not yet satisfied that the right course had been
adopted. It was well not to risk all in impetuously giving battle at once; was
it equally well to risk all in fighting when and where the enemy pleased? So he
returned to the king’s tent and proposed to him a night-attack, when the foe
would be off their guard, and easily panic-stricken. There were others present,
and perhaps for their sakes the king’s refusal was emphatic. “It would be
disgraceful” (he cried) “to steal a victory; and the success of an Alexander
must be manifest and beyond cavil.” These were brave words, but there was also
doubtless present to his mind the reflection which Arrian makes, that night
attacks are hazardous things, in which science is often checkmated by accident
; while, if Darius were to be defeated, it were well that he should recognize
that his victor was really abler and stronger, not merely more lucky than
himself. Accordingly, Alexander adhered to his original purpose.
Strangely enough, Darius had expected the very thing which Parmenion
proposed, and had kept his troops under arms all night in consequence. When
morning dawned, they were in battle array order of and ready ; but it was the
readiness of men who have waited till they are weary, and in whom the
excitement of expectation is apt to pass into despondency. They were massed by
nations all across the plain: the Bactrians on the extreme left under their
satrap, Bessos ; the Syrians on the extreme right; while Darius himself was as
usual in the centre, with the Persian horse and foot
guards and the Greek mercenaries. Behind, and supporting the main line, were
dense columns of Babylonians, and other central nations of the empire. Resting
on the left wing were the Scythian and 1,000 Bactrian cavalry, with loo scythe
chariots, designed, it would seem, to overlap and turn Alexander’s right flank.
Immediately opposite the place where Alexander himself usually took up his
position were stationed fifty chariots, and the fifteen elephants, to serve
doubtless as ramparts and bastions in the fierce stress of battle to be there
expected. On the right wing were posted the remaining cavalry and chariots.
In the face of such a multitude of men, Alexander’s tactics were of
necessity slightly modified. As usual, indeed, the flower of the cavalry was on
his right flank, commanded by Parmenion’s order of son Philotas, while the six
divisions of the phalanx were in the centre, and the
allied cavalry on the left under Parmenion ; but in order to guard against the
special risk of being outflanked and surrounded, he held a second line in
reserve, ready either to support the phalanx, or to wheel round and resist an
attack in flank or rear. A few squadrons of light cavalry and bowmen were
thrown forward in advance, to deal by anticipation with the scythe chariots,
and under special orders to watch the enemy’s cavalry on their right, and if
they attempted to ride round and overlap the Macedonian right, to charge them
in flank at once. So great, however, was the disparity of numbers on the two
sides, that at the outset Alexander, in command of his own right wing, found
himself exactly opposite the Persian centre and
Darius in person, while the Persian left stretched far beyond him, and was
ready at once to swing round and envelop his flank and rear. To obviate this
pressing danger, which was even greater than he had anticipated, he appears to
have opened out the ranks of his right wing, deploying columns into line, and
throwing his right back, so that the Companion cavalry might advance obliquely,
and somewhat repair the inequality. But it was clear to Darius that, if this
movement were not stopped, it would soon be impossible for the Persians either
to outflank the Macedonian right, or even to use against them the chariots, for
which the ground had been artificially levelled. He therefore ordered the
Scythian and Bactrian cavalry to stop the advancing Macedonians by riding round
and charging them in flank, while at the same time the chariots were to dash in
upon the front. It was a well-conceived, even possibly a decisive movement, had
scythe chariots been really the terrible weapon which our imagination conceives
them ; but in reality they had no terrors for disciplined troops. As at Kunaxa, so now the Charge of Persian cavalry on the Macedonian
skirmishers wounded the drivers and killed the horses, or seized the reins and
turned the chariots round ; while if any succeeded in getting through, it was
but a few here and there, and their attack was rendered harmless by the
coolness of the veterans of the phalanx, who opened their ranks and let them
pass, or, striking spear upon shield, scared the horses into charging back upon
their own line. In the meantime a far more desperate struggle had been raging
on the extreme right, where the Bactrian cavalry had been met by some Greek
squadrons, whom they drove in, and by reinforcements of both horse and foot
which Alexander sent up in haste. It was of the first importance to check this
flank movement ; and presently, by reason of the superior training and
precision of the Greeks, the Bactrians and Scythians were stopped, pushed back,
and at last swept off the field. Still the Persian left overlapped the Macedonian
right ; and, as the main bodies of the two armies were on the point of coming
into action, first one division of Persian cavalry and presently another,
nearer to the centre, moved by their left with the
apparent intention of repeating the manoeuvre attempted by the Bactrians at the beginning of the battle, and of charging the
Macedonian right flank and rear. But the movement left a gap in the line, of
which Alexander was not slow to make use. Ordering up the light horse in reserve
to engage and occupy these cavalry, he formed his own squadrons of Companions
into a pointed column or wedge,, and charged boldly into the opening, the men
shouting as they charged. Almost at the same moment the phalanx crossed spears
with the enemy in the centre, and at the first
contact bore back with irresistible weight even the Greek mercenaries opposed
to them.
Meanwhile, the Macedonian left had been outflanked, and was being hard
pressed by the cavalry on the Persian right. But a temporary repulse on either
flank was of little moment now, when Alexander and his cavalry, and four
divisions of the terrible phalanx with its bristling hedge of spears, were
battling vehemently on the front and flank of the Greeks and Persians in the centre, step by step and by dint of sheer determination
forcing a way into their very midst. The Persian left and centre,
in spite of their vast numbers, reeled before the shock, and the disorder had
begun which presages a panic; when the timid Darius, seeing the press of battle
drawing nearer to himself, and remembering only too well all the horrors of Issus,
set a shameful example of cowardice, and hastily exchanging his chariot for
horseback rode off the field to Arbela. Darius himself, says Arrian, was the
very first to turn and flee. Immediately, all in that part of the field was
panic and confusion. Many of the officers followed the king. The troops rapidly
lost cohesion, having no centre or commander to rally
round, and presently became a mere mob, whose first object was personal safety.
Thus the left wing and main body were soon in hopeless rout, nothing saving
Darius himself from the relentless pursuit of Alexander’s light horse, but the
dense clouds of dust which went up from beneath the feet 'of the flying host.
The destruction of life was immense ; it would have been yet greater, had not
Alexander been obliged to return in haste to the battlefield.
It appears that the attempt to overlap the Macedonian flank with
superior numbers, which had been foiled on the Persian left wing, had been made
on their right with success. The Greek cavalry of the allies had been
outflanked, and nearly surrounded by the Armenian and Cappadocian horse. Two of
the six divisions of the phalanx were brought up to their support; yet even so
Parmenion had much ado to hold his ground, while a gap was thus left in the
phalanx itself. Into this gap the generals of the Persian and Indian cavalry on
the Persian right centre led a furious charge,
passing right through the Macedonian double line, and emerging in the rear of
the whole army; but, instead of wheeling round and falling upon Parmenion’s
rear, they galloped on to assault the camp, where the Thracian troops were
wholly off their guard. Then it was that Parmenion sent a hasty message to
recall Alexander from the pursuit; and the king was obliged to return with some
of the cavalry to the aid of his own hard-pressed left. As he was riding
hastily thither, he suddenly met the flying squadrons of Persians and Indians,
who had been driven out of the camp by the reserves, and were now in full
retreat. A furious combat ensued ; and only a handful succeeded in cutting
their way out, while sixty of the Macedonians were slain, and Hephaistion and two other generals fell wounded. When the
king at last reached the scene of fighting on the left the battle was
practically over, the gallant efforts of the Thessalian horse having extricated
Parmenion from his danger. The Persian right, now broken and routed, and aware
of the issue of the day in other parts of the field, were following their
companions in headlong flight. Then Alexander at once turned upon his steps,
and started again in pursuit of his unhappy rival. He halted on the banks of
the Lykos till midnight, arid then rode on once more,
hoping to overtake Darius at Arbela. How hot was the pursuit, and how
exhausting the strain, we may judge from the fact that during the day, partly
from wounds, partly from fatigue, 1,ooo horses were lost, 500 of which belonged
to Alexander’s own division. But at Arbela the bird had flown; and the spoils
were but a shield, a bow, and a chariot, money and baggage. The royal fugitive
was far on his way, with a small escort, over the mountains to Ecbatana.
The battle of Gaugamela was decisive of the struggle between Greece and
Persia — between Alexander and Darius. It was a battle as conclusive as that at
Issus in its immediate, and far more so in wider and final results. It gave to
Alexander not merely the command of western Asia, but the dominion of all Asia.
It seated him on the throne of the Great King, and gave him that dubious,
undefined position, half king of a free and warlike people, half despot of a
subject world, in which he lost the regard of the best of the Macedonians,
without welding the diverse nations of his empire into one homogeneous people.
Henceforward no such levy was any more possible as that of whose fighting
powers Darius had made so poor a use. Contingents and detachments only were met
with afterwards, who waged purely local and useless struggles. The oracle of Gordion was proved to have spoken truly, an Alexander was
the Lord of Asia.
Nor were the immediate results less striking in their way. Other battles
have been fought between Europeans and Asiatics, in
which the disparity of numbers was greater, or the disproportion of losses was
more startling. Clive won the battle of Plassy (A.D.
1757), and laid the foundation of our Indian empire, with a force of 3.000, of
whom only 900 were Europeans, against 55,000; but his enemy, whom he routed,
lost no more than 500 men. The Romans at Magnesia (B. C. 190), where Antiochus,
king of Syria, was irreparably defeated, were as one to two, but they destroyed
50,000 out of 92,000 men, with a loss to themselves of only 324. At Gaugamela
the numbers were not so disproportioned as at Plassy,
nor the disparity of losses so overwhelming as at Magnesia. The forces of
Alexander were as one to six instead of one to two: and at the lowest estimate
40,000 Persians were left hors de combat, while the Macedonian loss was 500.
Nor were the fruits of victory confined to the destruction of an army. Babylon
and Susa opened their gates to the king without resistance, who thus became
master of almost fabulous treasures. Babylon, indeed, like Sidon and Egypt, had
suffered under Persian rule. It was the less surprising, therefore, that
Alexander was welcomed in the capital, and that his entry was in the manner of
a triumph, amid songs and flowers and smoking altars. In this most splendid of
Eastern cities the army was permitted to reward itself for past toils and
dangers for nearly a month; while the king was regulating the government of his
new provinces, utilizing his vast treasures, or devising schemes for tire
improvement of Babylon as the destined capital of his new empire. At Susa,
which was reached in. twenty days, and which had already surrendered, were
found treasures yet vaster—50,000 talents of silver; the rest of the royal baggage
; and various spoils which Xerxes had brought away with him from Greece,
especially certain bronze statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the Athenian “liberators,” which Alexander
sent back to Athens, and which were seen by Arrian in the Kerameikos.
At Susa he received reinforcements from Greece,13.500 infantry, and 1,500
cavalry, as well as fifty young Macedonian nobles who had come out to serve in
his personal suite. Then, after celebrating games and distributing promotions
and donatives, he set out on the difficult march from Susa to the more ancient
and hereditary , capital of the Persian monarchs, Persepolis. It was a district
of rugged mountains and narrow passes, occupied by a fierce tribe called Uxians—so fierce that the Great King on his passage through
the country had been always wont to pay them black-mail, which he disguised
under the name of largess. At one point of the district, moreover, the Susian
Gates, all roads converged, and in this almost impregnable pass the satrap of
the province intrenched himself with 40,000 troops to bar the way. But the Uxians were soon taught the rough lesson that times were
changed ; while the satrap’s position was turned, as that of Leonidas is said
to have been at Thermopylae. For Alexander, with some picked troops, was guided
by a shepherd over a precipitous path, which brought him into the Persian rear
and flank. Resistance was hopeless, and the Persians, abandoning their
intrenchments, fled or were cut to pieces. Persepolis, like Susa and Babylon,
fell into the conqueror’s hands, with treasure amounting, (it was said) to
120,000 talents—a sum not wholly incredible if we remember the Eastern passion
for hoarding coin, and the love of Eastern potentates for amassing precious stones,
and for displaying gold and silver ornaments on their persons.
The glories of Persepolis dated from the days of Darius I. The capital
of Cyrus had been Pasagardae (Pasargadai),
where the tomb of the great conqueror is still to be seen. But Persepolis was
the centre and the pride of the Persians, grander
than Pasagardae, more national than Susa or Babylon—a
Moscow rather than a Petersburg. At this favoured capital were built temples and palaces, whose ruins still suggest both beauty
and grandeur—vistas of columns, bright hangings, gorgeous colours;
while the city lay at the base of the rock on which the ruins stand. This rock
was enclosed by a triple wall, the innermost and highest rising to 90 feet, and
each of its four sides having a gate of brass. On the eastern side of the hill
were the royal tombs and treasuries.
The city and all its wealth were delivered up without a blow. A sad
sight, however, awaited the army, as it drew near to the capital. A miserable
body of 800 Greeks came out to meet them, in suppliant guise, and with shame
and confusion of face, every one mutilated in hand, or foot, or ear, or nose,
and most of them stricken in years—men who for various offences had been
brought up long years before to the capital and consigned to this wretched
existence, in accordance with that Eastern custom which, in our own days as in
Xenophon’s, looks on mutilation as the natural punishment of crime. The whole
army was deeply moved at the hideous spectacle, and Alexander himself could not
refrain from tears. He offered to restore them to their homes and provide for
them in the future ; but to this they could not bring themselves for very
shame, choosing rather to stay on the spot and to receive their satisfaction in
Persian land and Persian money. This dreadful episode, however, helps to throw
some light on an event, the motives for which are singularly obscure, and which
is generally regarded as one of the greatest blots on Alexander’s fair fame.
That event was the sack of Persepolis, and the burning of the royal palace. If
we may believe Arrian and Diodorus, it was an act of deliberate state policy.
The former asserts that Alexander had resolved to exact a vengeance similar in
kind to the sack and burning of Athens by Xerxes, and that he carried it out in
spite of the remonstrances of Parmenion. When we remember that Alexander’s
imagination was singularly open to such half-poetical, half-superstitious ideas
(leading him, for instance, to visit Ilion and Ammon and Gordion)
it seems probable that their account is correct, and that the sack of
Persepolis was a deliberate act of political vengeance, embittered and
aggravated by the dreadful sight of the mutilated captives, and occasioned by
the drunken revel which Plutarch and Diodorus describe. At a great banquet
(they say), given by the king before leaving the city, when the revel was at
its height, one of the women present, an Athenian, remarked that it would be
one of Alexander’s most notable deeds if he should burn the palace, and if
women’s hands should destroy as in a moment the boasted glories of the
Persians. The idle words were caught up by young blood heated with wine.
Torches were lit. Shouts were heard for “revenge for the Greek temples!” and
cries that Alexander alone ought to do the deed; until, carried away by the mad
excitement, and led on by a crowd of reckless women, he cast the first torch
among the cedar columns, others following his example, until the venerable
building, witness of so many glories, was in a blaze, and the ruin of Athens
was avenged by the counsel and the deed of an Athenian woman. The city .itself
also was sacked. The men were slain and the women sold as slaves; and, amid the
wild and unrestrained pillage, an amount past reckoning of robes and plate was
wasted or destroyed. We are told that the king repented before the work of
destruction was half accomplished, and sought to arrest it; but from any point
of view it was a deplorable mistake, and politically a blunder. It was an act
at once cruel, wanton, and useless—a sad episode, whose incidents develop
themselves naturally from the first romantic conception of revenge down to its
brutal realization in drunken revels and burning temples, in wasted property
and ruined lives.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DEATH OF DARIUS. — REDUCTION OF PARTHIA —
EXECUTION OF PHILOTAS AND PARMENION.
Darius, meanwhile, who had fled through the mountains to the eastward,
was resting at Ecbatana. There were still 30,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry
with him; he had still the support of satraps, undaunted as Bessos and loyal as Artabazos; but all heart was gone from his
resistance, and his one thought was to flee from Alexander’s face to the
farthest corner of his empire. With this view the heavy baggage and the harem
had been sent forward some days’ journey in advance ; and when he learnt that
his restless enemy, not content with being master of his finest capitals and of
the fairest parts of his empire, was bent on having possession of his person
also, he delayed no more but set 43ut eastwards at once, intending to pass
through Hyrkania and Parthia, and to hinder his
pursuers’ march by ravaging as he went (July, 330).
Eight days afterwards Alexander was in Ecbatana. At three days’ march
from the capital he was met by the news that Darius had set out five days before,
and taken with him all his treasures. When the Macedonians, therefore, entered
the city, it was only to make hurried preparations for a forced march in
pursuit. At the same time a short delay was inevitable, for some of his Greek
troops were anxious to return home after their four years’ service, and it was
necessary to remodel the military organization, which had so far served its
purpose perfectly. Henceforth he was to deal not with regular armies, but with
provincial levies ; and still more with vast distances, with mountains and
deserts, where rapidity of movement might mean not victory only but life. Hence
he needed archers, light troops, and flying columns, more than the massive
weight of the phalanx. Lastly, he had to provide for the safe custody of the
extraordinary amount of treasure which had fallen into his hands during the
previous nine months. This was lodged in the citadel of Ecbatana, and entrusted
to the care of Harpalos.
Then once more he started in pursuit of the Great King. In eleven days
he traversed 300 miles of the broken, difficult ground lying between the desert
and Mount Tauros to the north, passing near the site
of the modern Teheran and almost at the foot of the splendid peak of Demavend, rising
20,000 feet into the air. On the eleventh day he reached Rhagai,
but only to learn that Darius had already passed the Caspian Gates, fifty miles
to the eastward, and to find that a short rest was indispensable for his jaded
men and horses. In five days he was again in the saddle. Before him were the
Caspian Gates, a long and difficult series of defiles, where he had vainly
hoped to intercept the fugitive, A day’s march beyond the pass he heard the
alarming tidings that Bessos and his friends had laid hands on Darius, and that
his life was in danger. Headlong as had been the speed of the pursuit so far,
there was clearly need of yet greater efforts. The eastern satraps, it appears,
had resolved to seize Darius and surrender him to Alexander if it were
necessary, but if possible to push on across Parthia, outstripping pursuit, and
to organize a resistance on their own behalf in Bactria and Sogdiana. But
Alexander was determined to cut them off. Taking with him only the Companion
cavalry, the light horse, and some picked infantry, and leaving Koinos to bring on the rest by slower marches, he rode on
all that night and the next day till midday. After a short rest they started
again, and again rode all the night through, in the morning coming on traces of
a camp recently occupied. Here further tidings reached them, to the effect that
Bessos had actually superseded Darius, and that Artabazos and the Greek mercenaries, unable to prevent what they disapproved, had parted
company with the others and turned off into the mountains. Darius, in short,
was utterly in his enemy’s hands. So fagged were both horses and men, that
another forced march of a night and half a day only brought Alexander to a
village where Bessos and his party had encamped the day before; and, just when
all reserve of energy in his own men seemed gone, he learned that the fugitives
also were resolved to make a forced march all the next night. To overtake them
was out of the question ; was it possible to intercept them ? At this juncture,
when his prey seemed about to slip from his grasp, of some of the natives
informed him of a route, shorter, indeed, but waste and waterless.
Difficulties, however, were no bar to the impetuous Alexander. Picking out the
strongest and freshest both of horses and men, again he set out in the
afternoon, and actually accomplished nearly fifty miles in the course of the
night, coming suddenly, about dawn, upon the weary and bewildered fugitives,
the majority of whom fled at once on sight of Alexander. Bessos and his friends
tried vainly for a while to induce Darius to mount a horse and flee with them ;
and as he again and again refused, they cast their javelins at their unhappy
victim and rode off, leaving him in his chariot mortally wounded, where, though
presently found and recognized by a Macedonian soldier, he breathed his last
before his indefatigable enemy could come up.
So died Darius, the last of the Achaemenids, at the age of fifty, after
a troubled reign of barely six years—hurled in that short time from the height
of human grandeur to the depths of
misfortune—a man who might have adorned more peaceful times with the gentler
graces of a benevolent despot, but too feeble and apathetic to cope with so
tremendous a crisis—a king who would have been happier had he never reigned.
More fortunate in death than in life, he was honoured with the burial of a king in the sepulchre of his
ancestors; while his conqueror married his daughter, and provided for the
education of his other children. But that Alexander was mortified at the result
of his march cannot be doubted; for the death of Darius left the hands of the
Eastern satraps free, and forced him to pursue them if he meant to complete the
subjection of the empire. It further changed Alexander’s position entirely. The
king of Macedon became transformed into the Great King. Pella ceased to be the
first city of a petty kingdom, and became a second-rate town in a vast empire,
whose capital was the splendid Babylon. But it was a special difficulty of this
new position that, though perfect success was scarcely possible, an effort, at
least, had to be made to unite two incompatible things— Alexander was forced to endeavour to be king of Asia and king of Macedon; to
rule Macedonian freemen and Persian slaves at the same time and in the same
way. It is to be regretted, indeed, that his of that premature death cut short
the plans which he initiated for the amalgamation of his diverse subjects; but
an Alexander usually forms juster conceptions, and
has loftier aims than the courtiers and generals around him. We can perceive
that he started from the sound basis of universal equality, which was so great
a source of strength in after days to Rome; and it seems probable that his
adoption of Persian habits, and his plans for associating Persians and
Macedonians, in the army and elsewhere, were due to a desire to harmonize
discordant elements, rather than to vanity. Without such harmony the government
of so vast an empire was impossible. On the other hand, it is certain that
Macedonians had begun to be jealous of Asiatics even
before Alexander’s death, and were seriously annoyed by his assumption of
Eastern customs and a state ceremonial, which he himself deemed to be only
advisable concessions to prevalent ideas.
And now Alexander was in Parthia—the Atak or “Skirt” of the desert—the
beautiful tract of 300 miles of mountain, stream, and valley, which parts the
desert uplands of Iran from the still more awful desert of Chorasmia (Kharesm or Khiva), where the traveller may wander for weeks without finding a drop of sweet water, the home of a Tatar
population encamped amidst alien Aryans, as Basques amid Teutotis,
or Magyars amid Slaves, who, less than a century later, issued forth to subvert
the conquests of Alexander’s successors, and founded an empire which lasted for
500 years. From Hekatompylos, the capital, he crossed
Mount Tauros in three columns into Hyrkania. There were barbarous tribes in that happy
district (as Strabo calls it) too fierce and independent to be safely left
unvisited; the Greek mercenaries were there who had abandoned Darius, and who
must be dealt with; lastly, it was important to secure the connexion between the provinces of the south and the Caspian. Hyrkania itself was speedily reduced, and the Mardians were
taught a bitter lesson. The Greek mercenaries also, 1,500 in number, came in
and made their submission. As after the battles of Granicus and Issus, so now
Alexander appealed to the resolutions of the Synod of Corinth as a test of their
loyalty or treason. All who had taken arms in the service of Darius, prior to
the Synod, he set free at once; they had been within their rights in so doing.
To the rest he used the language which he always held. They were traitors to
the common cause of Greece against the barbarians, and might therefore think
themselves happy to have no worse fate than to enter his service on their
former pay.
Alexander now set his face steadily eastwards for Baktra (Balkh), and it seemed as if it would be none too soon. For news met him on the
way to the effect that Bessos had assumed the tiara of satrap of royalty,
together with the name of Artaxerxes, that he had a large Persian and Bactrian
force under arms, and that he was expecting Scythian auxiliaries from Central
Asia. In fact his position on the upper waters of the Oxus and Jaxartes gave
him the simultaneous advantages of inexhaustible reinforcements from the tribes
of the steppes and of inaccessible retreat in case of need. A rapid attack,
therefore, seemed beyond all things necessary. And yet Bessos was fated to
enjoy his ill-gotten power for another year. Alexander had passed the modern
Meshed, the frontier town of Persia, and had crossed the Margus, the river of
clear green waters, which further to the north creates the oasis of Merv
(Margin) and then is lost in the sands, when he heard that the satrap of Aria, Satibarzanes, to whom he had committed the government of
that province, had murdered the forty lancers whom he had attached to his
suite, was gathering troops and money in his capital of Artakoana,
eighty miles to the southward, and intended to join Bessos in attacking the
Macedonians wherever they might be found. Alexander did not hesitate. A variety
of motives would lead Bessos to await an attack; but the treachery of a
pardoned satrap could not be overlooked. Turning sharply to the south, and
leaving the main body under Krateros to a more
leisurely advance, he reached Artakoana with some
picked troops by a forced march in two days. But Satibarzanes had heard and fled. With a small body of horsemen he rode for his life, leaving
the hapless villagers of his satrapy, whom he had beguiled, to the vengeance of
the king and his flying column. Still Alexander was not satisfied, and he
resolved, before turning northwards, to face a circuitous march of 800 miles
and to teach the wild tribes of Drangiana and Arachosia—true forefathers of the restless Afghans—that
they had better acquiesce in the will of the stronger.
Speaking generally, these provinces are the southern slopes of a huge
mountain bastion, thrown out from the towering Paropanisos towards the lower level of the Arian plateau. From time immemorial, and in
spite of the perpetual barbarism of the population, country has been of
first-rate importance as the easiest approach to India from the west. The
climate is fine, though severe. Snow falls heavily throughout the mountain
district in winter, and is even seen in the plains; and in summer the heat in
the lower lands though oppressive in parts, is less intense than in India. The
irrigation, which alone turns the parched country into a garden, diminishes the
volume of the rivers, which are rarely full except after the melting of the
winter snows.
In Afghanistan there are four cities which boast of Alexander, if not as
their founder, at least as the originator of their greatness. Kandahar
(Alexandria) even tries to trace its name to the great Iskandar (Alexander).
That Alexander passed through both Kabul (Ortospana)
and Kandahar is certain, as also that he spent some time at Furrah (Prophthasia). It is far from improbable that he
actually founded the now important city of Herat (Alexandria in Ariis), which for ages has been the centre of commercial intercourse between India, Persia, and Tartary. The mere site of
this Gate of Central Asia marks it out as an object of contention to its
neighbours, a prize for which Persians and Afghans fight, and which Russia
desires to have. It lies in an immense plain on the north-eastern edge of the
desert, destitute indeed of trees, but fertile and beautiful. There are
numerous canals and scattered villages, watered and fertilized by the Herirood (Arius) and on all sides are ruins attesting
former greatness. To the traveller fresh from the
steppes of the north and the desert of the west, the plain of Herat is, as the
Eastern proverb says, like Paradise. Its climate is one of the most delightful
in Asia, and its products as plentiful as they are various. It would not be
strange, therefore, that a man of keen and rapid judgment like Alexander should
have fixed upon Herat as a link in his long chain of fortress- colonies, to
reach from Babylon to the Indus ; or that he who stands there as a victorious
invader from the north or west should be said to. hold the key of India in his
hand.
From Herat Alexander marched southward to Prophthasia (Furrah) a place of sinister influence on his good
name and character. For it was there that the terrible tragedy was enacted
which ended in the deaths of Philotas and his father Parmenion,— “the first
cloud that casts a shadow over Alexander’s heroic character—the first calamity
that embittered his hitherto uninterrupted prosperity.”
It is difficult to ascertain exactly the precise share of guilt
attaching to each actor in this tragedy, when the most trustworthy of our
authorities, Arrian, gives only a brief and guarded account, and the fuller
details are added by men like the Roman Curtius or
the gossip Plutarch; yet, granting this, it is certain that of all who were
concerned in it, not one save, perhaps, the aged Parmenion himself, was wholly
guiltless, while the conduct of some of the Macedonian generals was atrocious.
The inherent difficulties of the king’s position have already been briefly
noticed. His great officers were strongly averse to his adoption of Persian
customs, and Philotas, no less than others, was apt to ridicule in private his
growing vanity ; they were also more spoiled than he by their marvellous successes, and were furiously jealous of each
other. And if Krateros or Perdikkas were envious of
the influence and wealth of Parmenion and his family, Philotas himself was
unguarded in his language and insatiable in his claims. If we would understand
by what kind of men Alexander was surrounded, and how baleful an influence they
might possibly exert on his susceptible mind, we have only to look forward a
few short years, and to observe how, when his strong hand was removed, his
generals fought for the power which they were neither worthy to gain nor able
to retain.
Philotas was the commander of the Companion cavalry, and therefore in
daily, almost hourly, communication with Alexander himself. He was the sole
survivor of three brothers, sons of that and Parmenion of whom Philip once
said, that the Athenians were lucky indeed to find ten generals every year, for
he in the course of many years had never found but one. Next to the king
himself, the father and son were perhaps the most important men in the empire.
But they were not popular, nor even wholly trusted. Parmenion, it is true, was
left in chief command at Ecbatana; but he was getting old, and was thought to
have shown a want of energy and resource at the battle of Gaugamela. Philotas
also was in bad odour with both officers and men—with
the former for his arrogance and bluntness, and his very success; with the
latter for a supercilious selfishness, which showed itself in disregard for
their comfort as compared with his own, and a studied contempt of their wishes
and prejudices. Even with the king himself for the past eighteen months his
relations had been less cordial than before, owing to some disparagement of
Alexander, which he had let fall in conversation with his mistress, and which
had been betrayed by her to Krateros, and by Krateros—only too willingly—to the king. In so perilous a
position caution was needed; and caution was a virtue of which Philotas was
incapable.
Now it happened at this time that a certain officer named Dimnos was accused by one of his bosom friends of a design
against Alexander’s life. This friend had imparted the secret to his own
brother; and the brother in turn disclosed the plot to Philotas, as to one who
would certainly provide against the danger. The attempt was to be made on the
next day but one. On that day and on the next Philotas had long interviews with
the king; and on each occasion omitted to mention what he had heard. On the
third day his informant, finding that nothing had been done, resolved to take
the matter boldly into his own hands. He demanded admission to the king’s presence
at once—even though he was in the bath—and told him all he knew. Orders were
immediately issued for the arrest of Dimnos, who,
however, either slew himself or was slain in resisting, and thus the most
important witness in the matter was removed by an act that appeared to prove
his guilt. It presently came out that Philotas also had been aware of the plot
two days before, and had said nothing. In so grave a matter silence would in
any man seem strange. In Philotas, not unnaturally, it was taken to prove
complicity; while his defence, that the story seemed
to rest on insufficient authority, was looked upon as an afterthought.
The suspicions aroused in Alexander’s mind were artfully inflamed by Krateros and other enemies of Philotas. A council of officers
was held, and they insisted that the only means of arriving at the truth was to
arrest and question Philotas. It needs but little imagination to see how it all
happened; Alexander hurt, angry, suspicious; the generals, one here and another
there, hinting, arguing, or openly accusing; the very absence of Philotas, who
was not present at the council, perhaps being turned against him. That night
the accused man was arrested; and on the next day, according to the national
custom, he was brought before an assembly of the Macedonian troops, where the
king himself stated the charge against him, though he retired before the trial
began. But there was little hope of an impartial hearing where the accuser was
the idol of the generals who envied the accused, and of the soldiers who hated
him. He was .found guilty of the charge of being privy to the act.
But this was not enough. If the son were condemned on evidence so
slight, what view would the father take of the whole affair ? And if he chose
to resent it, or took up arms in self-defence, the
revolt of so famous a man, master of all the vast treasure stored at Ecbatana,
would be formidable even to Alexander. Parmenion, therefore, must be involved
in the fate of Philotas. Evidence must be gained against the father as well;
and that evidence must come from the lips of the son. To us both the end and
the means taken to achieve the end are equally odious. Philotas was tortured. But
we must not forget, if we wish to be just, that the false notion of torture being
the surest means of eliciting truth has been common in nearly every age and
nation, and was neither more nor less disgraceful in Macedonian officers than
in Roman slave-masters or Christian inquisitors. However wicked the object may
have been, we may be sure that the means used for its attainment seemed natural
and suitable. Philotas was tortured, and confessed what was desired, that both
his father and himself were guilty of a design against the king’s life, and
that he himself had purposely precipitated measures, lest death should remove
his father, who was now seventy, from the command of the treasures which were
necessary to success—a confession, the truth of which was said to be confirmed
by the contents of a letter from Parmenion, seized among the papers of
Philotas. On the next day this confession was read before the troops, and
Philotas and others, his accomplices, were executed; while a hurried messenger
was sent off to Ecbatana, eleven days’ march across the desert, with orders to Kleander, the second in command, to put Parmenion instantly
to death. The command was obeyed ; and the old man was killed while reading a
forged letter purporting to come from his son.
An impartial consideration of the story just narrated leads us to the
conclusion, that of all the persons concerned Krateros and his friends were the most guilty. Whether we assume that Philotas was
really privy to the plot, or without being privy to it would not have been
ill-pleased to see it succeed, or was simply imprudent and forgot to speak —and
either of these assumptions is possible—it is clear that there was prima
facie ground for suspicion, and that the generals used it to ruin Philotas.
They might have used their influence to pacify Alexander; they did in fact
exasperate him against their enemy. It is hardly strange that the king himself
should have suspected Philotas, when he knew that for two days he had been
aware of a plot against his life and said nothing about it, while the very
first man implicated had preferred death to facing investigation. Appearances
were against Philotas. It is equally clear that the charge was not proven, and
that, if the accused had had friends at court, there was much to be said in his defence; while the actual way in which he was treated
showed a passion, a suspiciousness, and a want of generous forbearance, not
unnatural perhaps in a son of Olympias, but hitherto unexampled in Alexander.
If we conclude, however, that it remains an open question whether Philotas was
innocent or guilty, the same cannot be said of the fate of Parmenion. That the
death of the son should have made the father’s death an apparent necessity both
for Alexander and his generals may be granted, but that is only saying that one
false step necessitates another. No man who admires the genius or respects the
noble qualities of Alexander the Great can fail to deplore the odious crime
which he allowed himself to commit in assenting to the assassination of his
oldest and ablest general, or to condemn the wickedness of those who urged such
a barbarous judicial murder. Philotas may have been guilty. Parmenion was
almost certainly innocent.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CAMPAIGNS IN BAKTRIA AND SOGDIANA.
In the autumn of 330 Alexander set out from Prophthasia on his long march of more than 600 miles to Ortospana (Kabul), which he did not reach until early in 329. The weather was severe, for
snow had fallen and was lying on all the highlands; the country was difficult,
especially the latter part of it, where the route was intersected by lofty
ridges, deep gorges, and narrow passes. He met with no combined resistance from
the tribes through which he marched; although he was obliged to detach a
division to return to Aria, which the indefatigable Satibarzanes had entered once more with 2,000 horse and was rousing to rebellion. This was
soon crushed; and two more military colonies were planted at Alexandria
(Kandahar) and Ortospana to secure the peace of the
province. But though his march was checked by no serious resistance, the
soldiers suffered terribly from the intense cold and want of food, the snow (it
would seem) being exceptionally deep. Yet, in spite of hardships, Alexander
pressed on, being anxious to cross the central range before the melting of the
snow. There are four passes over the Paropanisos from
the country of the Gandarians to Bactria; and it is
probable that the army took the so-called Kushan Pass, 8.500 feet above the
sea—a march of extreme difficulty, which consumed sixteen days and cost the
lives of many both of the soldiers and the camp-followers. At the southern end
of the pass, and twenty-five miles north-east of Ortospana,
a new city (Alexandria ad Caucasus) was founded in a commanding position at or
near the site of the modern Beghram, where vast
numbers of Greek coins are still to be found. Thence the army struggled on its
weary march, half blinded by the dazzling brightness of the snow, half-buried
in the drifts; and all the more bitter was their disappointment when, on
emerging from the mountains at Adrapsa (Anderab), they found the whole country lying between them
and the Oxus laid waste by order of Bessos ; and men who had been battling with
cold and fatigue had now to battle with hunger also. It was not indeed a
difficult country to ravage, for much of it is barren and hilly where the spurs
of Paropanisos run northwards to the desert, and it
is only the valleys of the tributaries of the Oxus that are fertile. In spite
of difficulties, however, Alexander pressed onwards, taking at the first onset
the two most important towns of Bactria ; but Bessos himself he did not find,
for, shrinking at the last moment from the collision he had provoked, he had
fled with 7,000 of his native troops and a few of his fellow-conspirators, and
had placed the Oxus between himself and his pitiless pursuer, burning the boats
in which he had crossed. Disunion, however, was already at work in the ranks of
his adherents ; for the Bactrian cavalry rather than accompany him broke up,
and dispersed in all directions.
Alexander left garrisons in Aornos—a great
hill-fort whose name, like that of another Aornos in
the Indus valley, imports inaccessibility even to the birds of the air, and in Baktra or Zariaspa (the modern
Balkh), where ruins that cover five leagues of country remain to prove the
former greatness of what Orientals call the Mother of Cities, in the Middle
Ages the rival of Bokhara and Samarkand and the capital of Mohammedan
civilization. Then he set out across the desert in pursuit of Bessos. The
foresight of Alexander in timing his march now received another confirmation.
The Oxus was before him, and he had no boats. Even then it was a deep and rapid
river, not far short of a mile in breadth. There was no wood near enough to
use, and the bottom was formed of shifting, loose sand. So great, indeed, is
the quantity of sand which its yellow waves hold in solution, that, although
the water is proverbially sweet and delicious to drink, it grits under the
teeth if taken straight from the river, and requires time for the sand to
settle. Had Alexander reached it in flood time, when the snows are melted in
the mountains, and when its breadth is so great that both banks cannot be seen
at the same time, the passage would have been hardly practicable. Nor would he
have had an easy task, had Bessos chosen to dispute the passage. As it was,
Bessos was far away in Nautaka of the Sogdians ; and
the army got across the river safely in five days, on tent skins stuffed with
straw. Had he been able to seek safety in the boundless steppes of Scythia,
Bessos, even if bereft of his shadow of a crown, would have kept life and
liberty. But it was not so to be. Very soon after the king had crossed the
great river, he received a message from Spitamenes and another of the
companions of Bessos, offering to seize and give him up if a small force were
sent to support them. He was already their prisoner, they said, though not in
chains. Alexander’s resolution was at once taken. Slackening his own pace, he
ordered Ptolemy, son of Lagos, to take a division consisting chiefly of cavalry
and light-armed troops, and to come up with Spitamenes by forced marches, and
with as little delay as possible. In four days Ptolemy was so close upon the
fugitives that he reached the camp where they had bivouacked the night before.
There he heard that the conspirators were hesitating. He instantly started with
the cavalry, leaving the infantry to follow, and shortly reached a village
where Bessos was resting, with a few soldiers— Spitamenes and his friends being
ashamed (it would seem) at the eleventh hour to play the traitor, and having
retired to a distance. Ptolemy posted his troops all-round the village, which
had walls and gates, and then summoned the inhabitants to give up the stranger
under a promise of immunity from attack if they did so. They opened their gates
to him, and Ptolemy with his own hand arrested Bessos, and set out again to
rejoin the king. He sent, however, an officer before him to ask in what guise
Alexander would have Bessos brought into his presence. For a man who had
murdered his sovereign and usurped his place there was no room for mercy. The
answer was that Bessos was to be bound naked in chains, with a collar round his
neck, and placed at the side of the road by which the army would march. Then,
as Alexander drew near to the place, stopping his chariot, he sternly asked how
it was that he had dared to seize and bind and slay his master and benefactor,
Darius. Bessos answered that he had not acted alone, and that the deed was done
to propitiate Alexander. The king’s only reply was to order the traitor to be
scourged, and sent back a close prisoner to Bactra—shortly to die.
The onward march to Marakanda (Samarkand) and
the Jaxartes—undertaken, perhaps, in emulation of the first Cyrus—was broken by
a curious episode. At a certain village the army came unexpectedly upon an
isolated Greek population, said to be descendants of that priestly family of
the Branchidai of Miletus, who being guardians and
treasurers of the great temple of Apollo near that city, had surrendered its
treasures to King Xerxes 150 years before. Covered with odium for this
treachery, and obliged to abandon their old home, they had been settled by
Xerxes in Sogdiana, and their descendants had continued to occupy the same
place. Now they came out to meet their victorious brethren from Greece,
doubtless with mingled feelings of pride and apprehension. They were not long
left in doubt as to their treatment. Alexander had a special tenderness for the
oracle, which had broken silence for the first time since the days of Xerxes to
pronounce that he was the son of Zeus; and the sacrilege of the Branchidai against the god had involved treason against the
fatherland, far baser than that of any Greek mercenaries who had fought for
Persia since the Synod of Corinth. That the sins of the fathers were to be
visited on their posterity was a common Greek belief; and it is hard to assign
any probable motive for the infliction of so awful a retribution as the
destruction of the village and of all its inhabitants, men, women, and children,
unless it were this belief, coupled with the desire to avenge the treason and
sacrilege of which the Branchidai had been guilty
against Hellas and the Hellenic god. If Alexander was not a conscious agent in
what he conceived to be a work of righteous retribution, he was a merciless
savage.
Alexander was now in the fertile district, midway between the Oxus and
Jaxartes, watered by the river Polytimetos, or
Zarafshan, ‘the scatterer of March to the gold, which pours its waters into the Oxia Palus, or during the
dry months is lost in the sands. Having repaired the loss in horses which the
army had sustained in the march across the mountains and the desert, he
advanced to Marakanda (Samarkand). In Alexander’s day
it seems to have had little of the importance which it gained in the fifteenth
century as the capital and burial-place of Timour,
and which is recalled by the Persian proverb, that styles it the focus of the
whole globe. It is more truly said that it resembles Paradise, for no lapse of
time or change of circumstance can efface the contrast between the terrible
desert and its beautiful site, fine air and water, and luxuriant vegetation,
which even in those days marked it out as the capital of Sogdiana. Here
Alexander left a garrison, and it would appear from subsequent events that
Spitamenes also retained at least a part of the power which he had held under
Bessos. But the king himself still set his face steadily northwards, until he
reached the left bank of the Jaxartes. Here, too, he founded another city or
military colony, Alexandria (Khojend), the position
being suitable for making it at once a frontier fortress and a base of
operations against the Scythians of the right bank. It was not long, indeed,
before the place became of vital importance in each character. For in this
remote corner of the empire Alexander was unexpectedly assailed by enemies in
front and flank and rear, not acting in combination though actuated by a common
hostility. On the march from Marakanda he had reduced
without difficulty a chain of seven forts, standing near to one another on the
skirt of the hills and the desert, and intended probably as outposts against
Scythian inroads. The largest and most important bore the ambitious name of Cyropolis. He now received tidings that the mountain tribes
in his rear had taken all these forts, and put their Macedonian garrisons to
the sword. And not only so; they had been reinforced and assisted by Sogdian
and Baktrian allies, only too certainly excited by
the intrigues of Spitamenes, who, as he learned later, was even threatening Marakanda, while presently the right bank of the river
became lined with a host of Scythian horsemen, either roused to action by the
same intriguer, or fearing for an independence that might seem threatened by
the erection of the new fortress. It was a serious crisis, exactly suited to
try the king’s judgment, and to call out his determined energy. The first and
most important thing was to recover the seven forts. Accordingly he despatched Krateros to blockade
the strongest, Cyropolis, which lay furthest but one
to the east, and was held by 15,000 men, while he himself hastened to attack
the westernmost, Gaza. It was carried by storm and burnt, and the garrison was
put to the sword. On the same day he stormed a second. On the next day three
more were carried ; and the garrisons in their attempt to flee to the mountains
fell into the hands of the Macedonian cavalry. The resistance at Cyropolis was more desperate; but the dry bed of a torrent
gave admittance to a forlorn hope headed by the king in person, while the
attention of the besieged was engrossed by a fierce attack on the other side.
Even so, however, with the gates open, and the enemy actually within the walls,
the garrison fought bravely; Alexander himself was wounded by a blow in the
neck from a stone , and it was not till 8,000 had fallen, and the residue, shut
up in the citadel, were fainting for want of water, that they thought of
submission. The seventh and last fort surrendered at discretion.
By this time the new colony of Alexandria was sufficiently advanced in
building to sustain an attack; and after leaving a garrison there of combined
Greeks and natives, and sending a force of 1,500 foot and 800 horse to the
relief of Marakanda, he crossed the river under cover
of showers of arrows from the engines on the bank, and at once attacked the
Scythian horsemen, who had defied him to come over, and boasted of the
different sort of enemy he would find in them. It was a new style of fighting,
in which the enemy, so to say, eluded the grasp, but hovered on the flanks of
the army, and trusted to their missiles. Alexander’s genius, however, was shown
not least in coping with strange emergencies, and few generals, if any, have
rivalled his rapidity of movement. The Scythians were compelled to fight in his
way, and not their own, and were finally driven off the field with a loss of
1,000 killed and 150 prisoners. A reverse so unexpected speedily led to
apologies, submission, and peace. Alexander at once recrossed the river; and,
spurred by the intelligence of disasters in his rear, actually made the whole
distance from the Jaxartes to Marakanda by a forced
march in less than four days. His presence was indeed needed. It appears that
on the approach of the relieving force already mentioned, Spitamenes, who was
pressing the garrison of Marakanda hard, at once
retired westward down the valley of the Polytimetos in the direction of the modern Bokhara, and passed it to the very edge of the
desert lying between Bokhara and Khiva. Here he was joined by 600 Scythian
cavalry; then, turning fiercely on the Macedonians, who had been pursuing him,
and using cunningly those very tactics which had almost baffled Alexander himself,
he harassed their advance with perpetual feints and unceasing showers of
missiles, until they were driven to a retreat. At the river the retreat became
a rout and simple massacre, so that less than 400 escaped to tell the tale.
Then Spitamenes marched a second time to Marakanda to
renew the siege. It was the first reverse of the Macedonian arms, the possible
signal for a general rising against the intruders in accordance with the usual
habits of barbarous tribes. Indeed, it is in this light, and this light only,
that a word of extenuation can be said for the pitiless vengeance which fell
upon the inhabitants of this fertile valley; for if it was not an act of
military self-defence, it was an act of atrocious
cruelty. Spitamenes, on hearing of Alexander’s approach, a second time bowed
before the storm and retreated hastily in the same direction as before, this
time into the very desert itself. Alexander followed as far as he dared; but to
enter the desert would have been sheer madness. Baulked of his prey, he turned
back up the valley, ravaging far and near as he went, reducing every fort, and
putting all alike to death. After this, he returned victorious into
winter-quarters at Bactra (329-8), where he received reinforcements from Greece
and Syria. During the winter, moreover, the unfortunate Bessos was brought
before the assembled Macedonians to receive his final sentence. If Arrian is
correct in saying that Alexander ordered him to be mutilated in nose and ears,
and then sent him to Ecbatana for execution, the strictures are just which he
passes on the king for this conformity to a hideous Eastern custom. On the
other hand, Diodorus avers that Bessos was given over to the tender mercies of
the brother and other kinsmen of Darius, as a politic concession, and that they
insulted, and tortured, and finally put him to death, with ingenious
refinements of cruelty only possible to Orientals.
The events of the campaigns of 328 and 327 are so obscurely narrated
that, while the results are intelligible, it is almost impossible to understand
the details. It will be sufficient, therefore, to recount briefly the steps
which were taken to insure the subjection of Bactria and Sogdiana and the
defeat of Spitamenes. It became clear to Alexander during the winter of 329-8
that his work in these provinces was as yet only half done. There were many
hill tribes still restless under the interference with their liberty. There
were many independent chiefs whose submission was secure only so long as
Macedonian troops were in the neighbourhood. There
were several important leaders at large, who might possibly become centres of formidable insurrection. And there was more than
one almost impregnable hill-fortress still unreduced, where an insurgent force might
find shelter. He therefore organized a series of flying columns, to act in
several directions at once under himself and his lieutenants in Sogdiana, with
orders to rendezvous at Marakanda. Krateros was left with a sufficient force to answer for
order in Bactria. From the mountains of Nura in the
far west, lying to the north of Bagae (Bokhara), to Marginia in the north-east (Marginan in Ferghan), and Paroetakene in the south-east, the whole country seems to have been swept by these flying
columns during the year 328, and the early part of 327. Meanwhile Spitamenes in
their rear, ever on the watch, fell upon isolated detachments, and on one
occasion boldly ravaged up to the very walls of Bactra. But it was an unequal
struggle ; and at last, after a defeat at Bagae more
crushing than usual, the Scythian allies, weary of the struggle and thinking
the cause desperate, first plundered the baggage and then cut off the head of
Spitamenes, and sent it to Alexander. Thus fell the most obstinate, active, and
courageous enemy that the Macedonian troops had met in Asia, and his death
unquestionably relieved Alexander of a permanent source of anxiety.
Of all the military operations the king, as usual, reserved the most
difficult for himself. This was an attack Capture on two hill-forts of a
similar character, standing on high, insulated rocks, precipitous on all sides,
and surrounded by deep ravines—so lofty and apparently inaccessible that the
taunting question of one of the chiefs seemed not amiss, whether the
Macedonians had wings to fly with! The difficulty, moreover, of attacking the
first of these forts—the famous Sogdian Rock—was increased to all appearances
by the deep snow that lay on the ground at the time; though in the event it was
the means whereby the place was taken. A reward of twelve talents was offered
to the first man who mounted the rock, and less in proportion to those who
followed. Three hundred volunteers were soon forthcoming. Armed with ropes and
iron tent-pegs, they made for the steepest and least protected side of the rock
in the dead of night; and, fixing the pegs in the crevices of the rock where
possible, but chiefly in the snow, which was frozen so hard as to bear the
weight, slowly and with difficulty they made the dangerous ascent. Thirty of
the number slipped and perished in the attempt, and their bodies were buried so
deeply in the snowdrifts at the bottom that they were never recovered even for
burial. Nevertheless the deed was done ; for the chieftain Oxyartes,
being summoned to surrender, “as the Macedonians (he might see) had found their
wings,” was so confounded by the sight of the adventurous soldiers in actual
occupation of the highest point of the rock, that he at once gave up the
fortress and all the souls within it. Among the prisoners was his own daughter,
Roxana, declared by Alexander’s officers to have been the most beautiful woman
they had seen in Asia next to the wife of Darius. Amid the violent acts which
at this time sullied the conqueror’s fair fame it is just to remember that, as
in the case of Sisygambis, so now he treated his
prisoner with honour and generosity; and we can
hardly share in Arrian’s hesitation whether to praise or blame his hero for
making Roxana his wife. After this exploit, the capture of the second fort in
the following year was comparatively easy; and indeed, when the ravine at the
foot of the rock had been partly filled, and the arrows of the besiegers could
reach the battlements, the terror of Alexander’s name and energy seems to have
done the rest, and the fort was surrendered with vast stores of provisions.
Open resistance was now at an end; Spitamenes was dead, and the
Macedonian fortress-colonies were numerous and strong enough to hold the two
provinces in subjection. Alexander was, therefore, in a position to turn his
face towards the one province of the Persian empire which he had not yet
entirely reduced, though he was master of all the western part of what the
Persians called India. His ambition and curiosity were both aroused. Stories of
the wonders and riches of India
had been rife in Greece for generations. It was known that in the days of the
first Darius its tribute, even if not’ levied beyond the Indus, had amounted to a third of
the whole sum received. Among the adherents of Bessos, moreover, had been an
Indian chief, who had fallen into Alexander’s hands, and, while the king’s
ardent imagination was all on fire with this man’s stories, making clear and
precise what before was vague, a timely embassy arrived from another chieftain,
who ruled between the Indus and Hydaspes, and whose capital was Taxila, asking
Alexander’s help against a powerful and troublesome neighbour, named Poros.
Thus the die was cast, and Alexander resolved to march at once into India.
Before, however, we follow his fortunes on the Indus it is necessary to
recount briefly two miserable events, which a historian would gladly omit, but
cannot, because they are clearly true, and- because they illustrate the change
for the worse in the character and position of the king.
It was in the summer of 328, when the flying columns already mentioned
had reunited at Marakanda, that a great banquet was
held on a day sacred to Dionysus. Deep drinking (says Arrian) was becoming the
fashion in camp; and with the deep drinking began loud talking about the heroes
of the day, and their relationship to Zeus, and some of Alexander’s more open
flatterers began disparaging the deeds even of Herakles, in comparison with
those of the king. There was one man present to whom these eulogies were
specially distasteful. This man was Kleitos,
commander of one division of the Companion cavalry, who had saved the king’s
life at the Granicus, and whose sister had been the king’s nurse. But, however
intimate his relations were with Alexander, he had long been secretly offended,
like some others of the officers, by the adoption of Persian habits, and by the
adulation which was expected and given. Heated now by wine, he protested aloud
against this disparagement of old-world heroes. The acts of Alexander, he
cried, were not comparable to those of Herakles, nay, not even to those of
Philip. Philip’s greatness was due to himself alone; Alexander’s in part to others,
to Philip’s officers, to Parmenion. Then raising his right hand on high, “This
hand,” he exclaimed, “Alexander, at the Granicus saved thy life.” The king
started from his couch, maddened by a conflict of feelings. In vain did his
generals crowd around and try to restrain him. He called aloud for the guard.
He protested that he was a second Darius in the hands of a second Bessos, and
king only in name. At last, exerting his vast personal strength, he broke from
the group of officers, who were doubtless afraid to use much physical force,
and snatching a pike from one of the soldiers slew Kleitos,
who, after being once dragged from the room, had been rash enough to return. It
was a terrible deed, followed by a terrible remorse. Alexander hurried from the
hall to his chamber, and for three days neither ate nor drank, calling aloud
with deep groans for Kleitos and for Kleitos’ sister, and reproaching himself as the murderer of
his friends. It was indeed too true. Parmenion was dead, and now Kleitos was dead, and each man might wonder whose turn
would be next. But the past could not be recalled ; and soldiers and officers,
seers and philosophers, one and all, feeling how intimately their own safety at
the ends of the world was bound up in the safety of the king, rebuked,
implored, and argued, until he was induced once more to eat, and return to that
life of energy which would be the best solace for his grief.
The second episode yet to be related was even more significant of the
unsound state of things in the royal camp. In the spring of 327 Alexander
celebrated his marriage with Roxana at Bactra. There was as usual a banquet,
and as usual the conversation turned for the most part on the greatness of
Alexander. The king’s love of adulation had not waned any more than the
servility of his flatterers; and the tragic scene at Marakanda of the previous summer would be in every man’s memory. When, therefore, some of
those present not only maintained the right of Alexander to divine honours during his lifetime for his superhuman deeds, but
proceeded to set the example of prostration before the demigod, the veteran
officers sat still, moody and dissentient; but no one spoke. To speak might be
to provoke the fate of Kleitos. To Callisthenes, of Olynthus,
the nephew of Aristotle, belongs the honour of
possessing moral courage enough to protest against the unworthy act. The gods
would be as little pleased, he said, to see their proper honours assigned to a mortal, as would Alexander himself be to see a private man
claiming the honours peculiar to a king. Let the king
bethink him whether, on his return to Greece, he could enforce prostration from
all Greeks, and, if not, what distinctions he would draw. Rather let him be
content with whatever utmost honours mortal man might
rightly have. These words were so clearly in harmony with the feelings of the
majority, that, like Caesar when offered the crown by Antony, Alexander abstained
from pressing the point, but was, nevertheless, deeply offended with Callisthenes—a
feeling which was not lessened when the philosopher pledged the king in a
goblet of wine like the rest, and offered him the usual kiss, but without
prostration. Alexander declined the kiss, and Callisthenes turned on his heel,
with the remark that he was going away the poorer by a kiss! But the matter did
not end here. Callisthenes was intimate with Hermolaos,
one of the royal pages ; and Hermolaos was smarting
under a recent injury. He had been hunting with the king, who was suddenly
charged by a wild boar ; and the page, fearing for the king’s safety, launched
his javelin and killed it. For this offence the page was whipped, and deprived
of his horse. But the injustice rankled in his mind; and, with a boy’s
impetuosity, he arranged a plot with some of his fellow-pages to murder the
king in his chamber, when they were on guard. The plot was frustrated by
accident, and presently divulged ; and the conspirators were arrested and
tortured, but no confession was elicited implicating others. They were
therefore arraigned as conspirators before the assembled army, and stoned to
death by the soldiers. If this were all, it would perhaps prove no more than
that Alexander’s arrogance was undermining his popularity ; but it is only too
clear that the friendship existing between Callisthenes and Hermolaos was made an excuse for the gratification of the king’s jealous dislike of the
philosopher, who was arrested, put to the torture, and hanged.
CHAPTER XV.
FROM THE OXUS TO THE HYPHASIS.
It was the summer of 327 when Alexander set out for India. He left
Amyntas in chief command in Bactria, , with a force of 10,000 infantry, and 3.500 cavalry. His own army numbered 120,000 foot,
and 15,000 cavalry, of whom probably at least half were Asiatics,
and mainly recruited from Bactria and Sogdiana, serving the double purpose of
reinforcements and hostages. The range of Paropanisos was crossed by another and a shorter pass than the Kushan in ten days. At
Alexandria he appointed a new governor, and added some fresh colonists from the
less robust of his soldiers; and then marched onwards to Nikaia,
either a town lying between Alexandria and Ortospana (Kabul) or a new name given on this occasion to Ortospana itself. Then he turned his face eastwards, to pass the grim defiles where a
British army was destroyed in 1842. But he met with no opposition which the
historians think worthy of notice; and presently, dividing his forces, he sent Hephaiston and Perdiccas with a strong division down the
valley of the Kophen, to its junction with the Indus
at Attok (the forbidden, to the west of which no
Hindoo may pass without losing caste), with orders to prepare materials for a
bridge; while he himself struck north-east into the mountains, partly to reduce
the mountain tribes, and partly because supplies were reported as more abundant
in that district. It was several months before the king rejoined Hephaistion’s corps, and a detailed record of those months would
be but a record of marches, sieges, and skirmishes without a single reverse,
and of endless booty and prisoners. But of all his successes in the campaign,
probably none was more gratifying to the king himself than the reduction of the
hill-fort of Aornos, so far stronger than the fort of
the same name in Bactria that a legend told how it had baffled even the mighty
Herakles himself. As described by Arrian (whose authority is irreproachable
since it rests on the witness of Ptolemy, a prominent actor in the storming of
the place), it was a huge rock or mountain plateau, rising eleven stades above the plain, and about 200 stades in circumference, with plenty of good spring water, abundance of wood, and good
soil enough to employ 1,000 men. Within a short distance lay a town called Embolima. Now the identification of spots mentioned in
Alexander’s campaigns in India is not easy ; but the identity of Aornos with a table mountain, called Mahabunn,
on the right bank of the Indus, about sixty miles above its confluence with the
river Kophen, is almost certain. The description of Aornos answers almost exactly to that of Mahabunn, allowing for the exaggeration of height and size
natural in a man who could not speak from actual measurement. Mahabunn is 4,125 feet above the plain, and is fourteen
miles in circumference. It is spoken of as a mountain plateau, scarped on the
east by tremendous precipices, from which one long spur descends upon the
Indus, and as the natural refuge of the neighbouring tribes from the arms of a conqueror. Nor can it be mere chance that the name Embolima seems to survive in the names of two villages, Um
and Balimah, lying respectively in the river valley,
and in the mountain immediately above it.
Leaving Krateros at Embolima,
to collect corn and other necessaries for a long blockade in case the first
assault were to fail, Alexander himself advanced towards the mountain to reconnoitre. At first sight, even he might well despair of
success. There was only one road leading to the top of the plateau, made for
Capture of purpose, and difficult of access; and the steepness of the cliff
walls may be inferred from the fact, that in the night attack, in which the
defenders were chased from their stronghold, great numbers perished by falling
from the rocks. But the manoeuvre which succeeded
against the Bactrian Aornos was successful here also.
Some natives of the district came into camp, and offered to act as guides to a
commanding spot on the weakest side of the plateau, from whence it might be
possible to take it. It is difficult to gather an exact idea from Arrian’s
somewhat confused account; but it would seem that there was a hill separated
from the rock itself by a long, though shallow, depression, not occupied by the
natives, and only to be reached by a rough and difficult track. Its occupation
would at once give the assailants the advantage of attacking from above, and
not from below. The operation was accomplished with success. Ptolemy, led by
the native guides, and taking a considerable body of light troops, occupied the
hill unperceived under cover of darkness, and having hastily intrenched himself,
set light to a bonfire as a signal of success to his friends below. It was well
that he had succeeded; for Alexander, endeavoring the next day to fight his way
to join him, found the difficulties of the ground too much for him, and was
rudely repulsed. Then the natives, elated by success, made a dashing attempt to
carry Ptolemy’s intrenchments; but the conditions of success were here
reversed, and after a fierce struggle, they were driven back at nightfall, and
obliged to retire. In the night Alexander sent off an Indian with a dispatch to
Ptolemy, ordering him to watch for his own advance, and when he himself
attached, to do the same, that they might place the garrison between two fires.
There was seldom much delay in the Macedonian camp when there was work to be
done, and by break of day the army was in motion. Presently Ptolemy’s troops
also issued from their intrenchments. A desperate battle followed, lasting from
dawn to midday, in which at last Alexander was victorious, and, having effected
a junction with Ptolemy, thus became master of a base of operations from which
to attack the plateau with some hope of success. As many times before, so now he
began carrying a mound across the depression already mentioned. Every man was
set to work; and the king himself stood watching, ready to praise or blame as
need might be. The mound advanced a furlong a day; and by the fourth day had so
nearly reached the plateau, that a handful of Macedonian soldiers were able to
rush across the intervening space and to seize a small peak, which abutted on
the plateau, and where they were partially protected by the arrows and missiles
of their comrades on the mound. Every nerve was now strained to complete the
communication between the peak and the mound, and it became a question of hours
how soon the attack might be delivered. But by this time the garrison was
thoroughly cowed, having never before seen such resolute energy in an assailant;
and they sent an embassy to Alexander, offering to surrender on terms. It seems
that their real object was to gain time, and thus to steal away on the
following night, and to separate to their several homes. But Alexander was as
far-seeing as they. Aware of their design, he pretended to amuse them with
overtures for their surrender, but made ready meanwhile for attack, and when it
was dark, after allowing time for them to withdraw their sentinels and to begin
the stealthy evacuation, he put himself at the head of 700 heavy-armed troops
and rushed up into the plateau, being the first to set foot in it himself. The
rest of the army soon followed, and overtaking the panic-stricken fugitives
began cutting them down in all directions. Many were slain on the spot, or
pursued into the plain and slain there. Many were killed by falling from the
cliffs. When day broke Alexander was master of this important fortress, and of
the adjacent country which it commanded, and in a position to rejoin Hephaistion and Perdikkas when he pleased, at the bridge
over the Indus which they had built near Attok.
In the course of the campaign to the north of the Kophen the Macedonians are said, by Arrian, to have passed a city called Nysa, which
claimed Dionysus as its founder. It is added by Curtius,
that in this country of the Cyraeans they were struck
by various sights and names among the natives and in the products of the
district, which reminded them of their own legends of the same god ; and that
near to Nysa was Mount Meros, where grape vines were
to be seen as well as the ivy and laurel which he had planted. It is easy to
believe both that Alexander himself was nothing loth to be treading, as it
might seem, in the very steps of Dionysus, and that the natives were acute
enough, then as often since, to humour the whims of
an invincible conqueror. On the other hand, we are in a position to go further
than this, and even to infer how the confusion arose. The most correct form of
the ancient name of the Hindukush appears to be Paropanisus (or nisas), so that the name Nysa or something similar
may have been heard and misunderstood by Macedonian ears. Moreover, if, as is
probable, the country of the Cyraeans answered to the
modern, Kafiristan, whose inhabitants, like those of Badakshan,
have still floating traditions about Alexander, it is worthy of note that
grapes, both wild and cultivated, grow in profusion in the valleys, and that
the Kafirs (unbelievers), as the Mohammedans of India
call the people, are great wine-drinkers, both men and women, and are given to
dancing with much gesticulation, and to the accompaniment of wild and rapid
music. Certainly to any Greek such customs would have seemed to be of a
thoroughly Dionysiac character.
Alexander crossed the Indus a little above Attok about March, 326. At this point, 950 miles from the mouth and 1,000 feet above
the sea, the river is at all times broad, deep, and rapid, averaging a speed of
six miles an hour, a depth of 60 feet, and a breadth of 800 feet ; in the
floods of August it is sometimes 15 miles broad, when a large part of the ‘doab’
(land of two rivers), or country between the Indus and Hydaspes, (Jhelum), is
under water. But the Indus like the Oxus and Jaxartes, owing partly to
evaporation and partly to irrigation, diminishes rather than increases as it
approaches the sea; while the Punjab resembles Bactria in so far as the desert
is never far off, and fertility depends on neighbourhood to a river.
On the eastern bank Alexander offered solemn sacrifice, and then
advanced to Taxila (Takshachila “the hewn rock”), the
capital of the chief who had appealed for his aid against Poros (Purusha,
“hero”). If it be true that the rainy season set in before he left the city, he
must have stayed there some two or three months, improbable as it may seem; for
the south-west monsoon seldom begins in the Punjab before the end of June.
From Taxila two roads diverge, one running nearly past Jelalpoor and crossing the Sutlej just below its junction
with the Beas ; the other running more to the eastward, and passing through a
more fertile and populous district. Alexander, however, had no choice as to
which of the two he should follow, as Poros had taken up his position just
opposite Jelalpoor, on the eastern side of the
Hydaspes, and posted scouts up and down the river to watch for his enemy’s coming.
Having sent Koinos back to the Indus with orders to
have the vessels which had formed the bridge sawn in pieces, and to bring them
on wagons to the Hydaspes ready for use, the king himself marched onwards to
that river, then fully a mile broad, where he came in sight of his enemy, who
had 30,000 infantry and 200 elephants, with numerous chariots and cavalry ready
to dispute the passage. To force it in the face of such an army was clearly
impossible. It was necessary to wait, to distract attention, to throw the enemy
off his guard, to spread false intelligence ; and then it might be possible to
deliver a sudden and rapid blow. Accordingly he gave out that he was aware of
the extraordinary difficulty of crossing so broad and rapid a river in the
teeth of such an army, and had made up his mind to defer the attempt until the
monsoon was over and the water lower. At the same time he kept Poros always on
the alert, by constantly moving his boats and showing deceptive intentions of
crossing. At other times he would send off large divisions of troops up or down
the river, as though searching for a ford, all of which movements were plainly
visible from the other side. Then for many nights in succession he posted on
the banks squadrons of cavalry at intervals who shouted to one another, and
ever and anon raised the war-cry, as though preparing to try the passage; and
at every such alarm of course Poros made instant preparations for battle. At
last, after many false alarms, and since they always ended in noise and shouting,
Poros was thrown completely off his guard, and even ceased to take notice of
such purposeless agitation. Then, and not till then, Alexander resolved that
the time was come for action. About eighteen miles up the stream on the right
bank there was a remarkable cliff, where the river takes a wide bend, turning
from a south-easterly to a south-westerly course. Opposite the cliff in mid
river was an island, which, as well as the bank, was densely covered with
tamarisks. This was the point decided upon for the passage. To keep up the
illusion in the mind of his enemy, the king posted sentinels along the whole
distance from the camp to the cliff, each man within sight and earshot of his
neighbour, who during several nights kept up the shouting and noise already
described, and lighted fires at intervals. Poros was again completely deceived
and took no notice, merely lining his side of the river with scouts to give
notice of any unusual movement. At last a night was fixed upon for the attempt
; and Alexander set out in the afternoon with two divisions of the phalanx and
the flower of the cavalry and light troops, striking somewhat inland (perhaps
by the Kandar “nullah,” or rivulet), so as to be out
of sight. Krateros was left in camp with the rest of
the phalanx and some cavalry ; and his orders were to remain quiet in case
Poros detached only a part of his force against the king, but if he saw that
the whole of the elephants were withdrawn, which were the only real difficulty
where horses were concerned, he was to cross without loss of time. Midway
between the island and the camp were posted the mercenary foot and horse, with
orders to make the passage whenever they saw that fighting had begun. Pontoons
of skins had already been prepared, and the boats brought from the Indus had
been put together. It was a night made for the occasion, dark and windy, with
thunder and heavy rain ; so that the words of command and the noise inseparable
from the movement of large bodies of armed men were inaudible at a distance. Just
before dawn the wind and rain ceased, and the passage began. The whole force
was thrown across to the island, as silently and rapidly as possible, in the
boats and pontoons. It would seem, however, from Arrian, that they had all
mistaken the island for a projection of the bank, and were taken aback at
finding that a rapid though narrow channel of the river still separated them
from the mainland. But there was no time to be lost in embarking the troops a
second time. The scouts had already sighted them, and galloped off to raise the
alarm. At last they found a ford : but so heavy had been the rainfall that it
could hardly be called practicable, for the water was above the men’s breasts
as they waded and up to the horses’ necks. Nevertheless all got safely across ;
and Alexander at once made his arrangements for the battle, which he intended
to bring on with¬ out delay. Pushing on himself at the head of the cavalry,
5,000 in number, in case the enemy should be panic-stricken and attempt to flee
without fighting, he ordered the archers and the 6,000 heavy infantry to follow
him as fast as they could.
But Poros was a different man from Darius. As soon as he learnt that he
had been outwitted, and that the Macedonians were actually across the river, he
sent forward one of his sons with 2,000 cavalry and 120 chariots, while he
himself prepared to follow with the main body. These cavalry were presently met
by Alexander; but recognizing him, and seeing his superior numbers, they
faltered, broke, and fled, hardly waiting for his charge. All the chariots
which had stuck fast in the mud remained in his hands, and 400 of the horsemen,
including their leader, lay dead upon the field. Meanwhile Poros had stationed
a small force, with a few elephants, on the river-bank to hold Krateros in check; and having chosen his ground on sandy
soil, where there was firmer footing and ample room, was engaged in drawing up
his troops in order of battle. The 200 elephants were the mainstay of his line,
standing forward, says Diodorus, “ ike the bastions
of a wall,” at intervals of 100 feet from one another; and the heavy-armed
infantry were “ like the curtain,” ranged in line immediately behind the
elephants. No horses, he thought, could be brought to face such a line ; no
troops could be so rash as to venture within the spaces between the elephants.
On either flank were massed the cavalry; but his main reliance was clearly
placed in the centre of the line, “that seemed like a
city to look at.” As usual Alexander’s tactics were suited to his enemy. As at Issus
and Gaugamela, so here, he resolved that the cavalry of the right wing should
bear the brunt of the attack, and that he himself would lead it while the phalanx in the centre was to hold back for awhile, in readiness to deliver
the decisive blow. Koinos was on the left wing with
about 1,500 cavalry, and was ordered to watch the cavalry of the enemy’s wing
opposite, and if they should offer to ride across to help their comrades on the
left, to follow and charge them in the rear.
The Indian cavalry on their left wing were still deploying from column
into line when the Macedonian mounted archers rode forward to the attack,
supported by the king himself with the Companion cavalry. The Indians moved
forward to meet the attack ; but so much superior were Alexander’s numbers seen
to be, that the horsemen from every part of the field, including the were at
once ordered up to reinforce the threatened left. It was the very movement
which Alexander had foreseen and provided for. Scarcely had the cavalry on the
Indian right galloped off along the front to join their overmatched comrades on
the left than Koinos wheeled round and followed them,
and one wing of each army was thus suddenly withdrawn to the other end of the
line. The Indian cavalry, however, now massed upon the left had a difficult manoeuvre to perform, and that in the very face of the
enemy; for, being well in advance of their own centre,
they were threatened on two points at once — by Alexander in front, and Koinos in the rear, and had, therefore, to face both rear
and front. They were in the act of attempting this manoeuvre when Alexander gave the word to charge. Unsteady and hesitating, they wavered
for a moment, then broke and rode for their lives towards the elephants as to
the shelter of a friendly rampart, passing between them and through the
intervals between the divisions of the infantry. The mahouts, it would appear,
had already begun to urge their animals on to the charge and were supported by
the infantry—a movement which might have been dangerous had it not been checked
by a rapid advance of the phalanx. It was a fearful struggle such as even these
veterans had never before experienced. The huge animals trampled down their
ranks by sheer weight, or seized the men singly with their trunks and, raising
them aloft, dashed them to the ground; while the soldiers in the howdahs plied
them with arrows and javelins. The cavalry, moreover, had rallied, and
presently advanced once more to the charge. But they were no match for Alexander's
troopers either in steadiness or bodily strength, and were speedily repulsed
and driven in again upon the centre. By this time,
too, the elephants, a force scarcely more dangerous to foes than friends, were
becoming unmanageable. Some of them had been wounded, and many of the mahouts
slain; and being hemmed in by the close press of horsemen and infantry,
distracted by the confusion, and maddened by pain, they kept up an incessant
trumpeting, and began to turn round, treading down the men of their own side,
or to try and back out of the turmoil like boats backing water. Then the
infantry also were thrown into confusion, foot, and horse, and elephants being
hopelessly intermingled; whereupon the king ordering the phalanx to push
steadily onwards in front, drew a cordon of cavalry, as it were, round the
flank and rear of the struggling, helpless mass, and completed the
demoralization and ruin by repeated charges. The loss was prodigious, including
all the chariots. Two of the sons of Poros were slain, and a great number of
the superior officers. If a portion of the infantry and cavalry broke through
and escaped, it was but to find themselves hotly pursued by a fresh and unspent
enemy in the person of Krateros, who had forced the
passage of the river during the battle ; so that 3,000 of the horse are said to
have been slain, and 12,000 of the infantry; while 9,000 prisoners were taken,
and 80 elephants. The Macedonian loss was, as usual, trifling ; amounting to no
more than 280 cavalry and 700 infantry—taking the highest estimate of the
Macedonian, and the lowest of the Indian losses (July, 326).
Poros himself fought like a brave man, not, as Darius being the first to
flee, but stoutly resisting to the last. But when he saw the day was lost,
being himself also wounded in the shoulder, he turned his elephant and began to
retire. Alexander was most anxious that he should be taken alive ; but Poros
sullenly resisted all overtures for surrender, even attacking the officers whom
the king sent after him. At last, weary and faint with thirst, he yielded to
the appeals of a personal friend, halted, and dismounted from his elephant. The
king, it is said, when Poros was brought into his presence, was struck with
admiration of his manly presence and undaunted bearing, and, because he
approached him as one brave man should approach another, Alexander asked him
how he wished to be treated. “Like a king,” was the answer. ‘‘That boon, O
Poros,” replied the conqueror, “thou shall have for my sake. For thy own sake ask
what thou wilt.’’ But Poros answered that everything was contained in his
request to be treated like a king. Alexander was so charmed with his reply that
he restored to him his kingdom, and added to it largely, and thus secured a
faithful friend.
The army was now allowed to rest a month in the capital of Poros until
the rains had somewhat abated. In the interval Alexander founded two cities—Nikaia near the field of battle, and Boukephalia,
which he named after the favourite horse which had
carried him so gallantly through a thousand dangers, and was now dead. He
further ordered timber to be felled in the forests of the Upper Hydaspes, and a
fleet to be built for the navigation of the Indus. Then he crossed successively
the Akesines and the Hydraotes,
into the country of the warlike Kathasans whom he
soon reduced, and added to the subjects of Poros.
The Hyphasis (Sutlej), to which he next
advanced, was the eastward limit of his conquering march. Beyond it, he was
told, lay a desert of eleven days’ march as far as the mighty Ganges, whose
valley was the empire of a king greater than Poros. To Alexander’s enterprising
spirit such a vista of adventures was no doubt delightful. Indeed, if we can
credit the speech to the army put into his mouth by Arrian, he had some strange
notion that “the great sea which encircles the earth,” was just beyond the
Ganges, and that thence they might circumnavigate Libya to the pillars of
Herakles, and so march through Libya homewards. But soldiers and officers alike
were downcast and homesick, and at first only answered his appeals with an
eloquent silence ; until, being urged by him to speak, they expressed their feelings
in the curious speech assigned by Arrian to Koinos. “
Our numbers are thinned,” he said ; “we are longing to see our wives and
children; let us return, and afterwards, if thou wilt, lead other troops,
fresher and younger than we are, to the Euxine, or to Carthage, or wherever
thou wilt.” But Alexander was wroth, and dismissed
the troops to their quarters. Next day he tried a further appeal to their
loyalty and devotion. Anyone who pleased, he said, should return ; he would
take with him only volunteers ; the rest might go home and report that they had
abandoned their king in the midst of his enemies. And then he retired to his
tent, deeply mortified. For three days no one was admitted to his presence. But
gloom and silence still pervaded the camp, and the revulsion of feeling which
he hoped for never came. On the fourth day he offered sacrifice preparatory to
crossing the river ; but the victims were unpropitious.
Then at last, overborne by all these adverse signs, he summoned his
friends and some of the Companions, and bade them make known to the army his
resolution to return. The universal joy was attested by shouts and tears and
blessings on their king, who had never known defeat but from them. Twelve huge
altars were raised on the bank as a thank-offering for the protection of the
gods, and as a memorial of his victories ; and sacrifices were offered and games
were celebrated before he set his face finally westward. Then at last the army
set out on its long march for home. The Hydraotes was
passed, and the Akesines; and at length they reached
the new cities, Nikaia and Boukephalia,
where the fleet was being built, and the preparations made for the voyage down
the Indus. But one man at least was destined never to go further. Koinos died, and was honoured with a magnificent funeral; although Alexander, having not forgotten nor,
perhaps, forgiven his expostulations at the Hyphasis,
could not forbear the cynical remark, that Koinos had
made his long speech to very little purpose.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE RETURN FROM THE HYPHASIS TO SUSA.
However disappointed Alexander may have been to give up his schemes of
adventure beyond the Hyphasis, there was quite enough
of the marvellous and the unknown in the future to
make him soon forget the disappointment. He had seen alligators in the Indus,
and a lotus similar to that of Egypt ; and a letter of his, written about this
time to his mother Olympias, shows that he thought he had discovered the source
of the Nile in the Indus, which he believed must flow by a circuitous course
through the desert, and there, losing its name, pass through Ethiopia and Egypt
under the new title of Nile. His after discoveries, of course, and more
particularly the adventurous voyage of his admiral Nearchos,
who explored the whole coast from the Indus to the Euphrates, dispelled the
illusion.
The fleet built or collected for the downward passage amounted to 2,000
vessels, including eighty men-of-war. The ships were chiefly manned by Phoenicians
and Egyptians, and Nearchos was in command. Of the
troops, 8,000 were to be on board under the king’s own command ; the main body,
with the elephants, under Hephaistion was to
accompany the fleet along the eastern bank; Krateros was to lead a smaller division along the opposite side ; while a fourth corps
was to follow after three days’ interval.
On the appointed day at dawn the army began its embarkation; and Alexander
himself, after sacrificing to the gods, took his stand on the bows of his ship
and poured a solemn libation, with prayers, to the river deities whose waters
he was about to explore, and especially to his great forefathers Herakles and
Ammon. Then, at a given signal, the oars were dashed into the water, and the
fleet was under weigh, each division of horse transports, baggage ships, and
men-of war being ordered to keep at a safe and invariable distance from the
others. Never before—and probably never since—was such a sight seen on the
Hydaspes. The banks rising high above the level of the water were crowded with
natives, whom the splash of the oars and the shouts of the boatswains,
re-echoing from the cliffs and surrounding woods, had drawn from every side to
gaze on the unwonted sight. With childish delight they ran along the shore by
the side of the fleet, and sang barbaric songs, keeping time with the measured
sweep of the oars. Thus hour by hour the fleet dropped quickly down the stream,
till on the fifth day they reached the confluence of the Akesines and Hydaspes, a point of no little danger. For here the banks converged, and
the greater mass of water, pent within a narrower space, formed an eddying,
chafing rapid, the roar of which was heard from afar. Amazed at the sound, the
sailors almost involuntarily rested on their oars, and the boatswains ceased
their chant. They had barely time, indeed, to recover presence of mind before
they drifted into danger. The broader vessels suffered no damage ; but the long
war-ships got athwart the current, which broke some of the oars and made them
almost helpless. Two of the number fouled one another and foundered, losing
most of the crews. At last, partly drifting, partly rowing, they reached the broader
water below, and put in to the right bank to refit.
As they were now approaching the country of a people from whom a fierce
resistance was expected, Alexander at this point made a new disposition of his
forces. The people were the Mallians, whose name,
perhaps, remains in that of the city of Multan. It is true that their territory
lay to the north of the Hydraotes, and that Multan
now lies considerably to the south of it ; but it is well known that the Punjab
rivers often change their courses in the present day, and geographers have
supposed that the Hydraotes (Ravi) and Hydaspes in
Alexander’s time met far more to the south. In conjunction with the Mallians occur two other names, at once curious and interesting— Barchmans and Oxydrakans (Sudrakae). If we may suppose that these names represent
what we know as Brahmins (high caste) and Sudras (low caste), it is not only of
interest as confirming the high antiquity of Indian castes, but will serve to
explain why, powerful as they were, they failed to act in concert. The mutual
jealousy of high and low caste was only suspended for a while by common
hostility to the invader. Their forces, if united, are said to have numbered
80,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry, and 700 chariots, but they do not appear to
have dreamt of resistance in the field, but to have trusted rather to their
walled towns and to the belt of desert which sheltered their northern frontier.
Fearing lest they might seek to escape him by flight, Alexander organized four
flying columns, as he had before done in Sogdiana, to sweep through the
country. He himself intended to strike boldly across the desert, the side
whence they would least anticipate attack, and thus to be upon them before they
expected him. Nearchos was sent on with the fleet to
the confluence of the Akesines and Hydraotes.
This campaign against the Mallians reminds us
in many points of the campaign of 329 in Sogdiana. Rapidity of action
characterized both alike. The preparations of the natives were forestalled by
the king’s dash across the desert. Town after town was taken with ease.
Scattered bodies of their troops were intercepted and cut to pieces. Fugitives
were pursued and destroyed. Little by little the miserable remnant of the
population was driven in upon their chief town, where it was hoped that all
further resistance might be crushed at one blow. If we can overlook the
inhumanity of an attack on unoffending natives—and it can hardly be too often
repeated that to a Greek the use of the term in such a connexion would seem quite out
of place—we cannot but admire the king’s skilful tactics, and the energy with which they were carried out.
In attacking this town Alexander was within a little of losing what
might have seemed a charmed life. At the first onset the defenders abandoned
the walls and fled to the citadel. The Macedonians burst in through a postern
gate, Alexander leading the way. The rest followed, but in the hurry of the
moment, or in the belief that the place was as good as taken, most of the
ladders were left behind. It soon became clear that the walls must be scaled if
the citadel was to fall; and the king, seizing the first ladder that came to
hand, planted it against the wall himself, and crouching behind his shield
mounted and leaped to the top. Close behind him followed Peukestas,
bearing the sacred shield from the temple of the Ilian Athens: behind Peukestas was Leonnatos.
The veteran Abreas mounted by another ladder. At the
foot were swarming the foremost troops, eager to be at their king’s side, when
suddenly both ladders broke beneath the weight of the climbing crowd, and
Alexander was left with his three companions on the wall, a mark for every
weapon. To clear a free space around him was the work of a moment; some of the
enemy were slain, others pushed headlong from the wall. Then after a moment’s
hesitation, and with what even in Alexander was insane rashness, he leaped down
among the enemy on the inside and, setting his back against the wall, prepared
to defend himself. At first they ventured to attack him at close quarters,
thinking to kill him off-hand; but when they saw their leader slain, and three
others fall beneath his sword or by the stones which, like some Homeric hero,
he picked up and dashed among them, they drew off and plied him from a distance
with darts and arrows. By this time his three companions were at his side, but
the position was becoming critical. Abreas was struck
in the face and slain. The king himself was wounded in the chest, and after
fighting for a while began to faint from loss of blood, and sank upon his
shield; while Peukestas and Leonnatos,
who sheltered him as best they could, were also wounded. Meantime the soldiers
outside were in a state of fury at their king’s danger. In the absence of
ladders they improvised means of mounting by driving pegs into the earthen
rampart, or climbing on each other’s backs. Others burst a hole through one of
the gates, and so struggled in, a few at a time. A short, sharp conflict
followed, and then a terrible massacre, the enraged soldiers sparing neither
man, woman, nor child to tell the tale. Alexander was carried out on his shield
in a dead faint, and, when he came to himself, the barbed arrow was cut out of
the wound ; but when from loss of blood he fainted again and lay as one dead,
the rumour that he was dead spread even to the camp
on the river, and was followed by an universal outburst of genuine sorrow and
panic. Their heroic leader had fallen, it seemed; and now who was to lead them
back to Macedon through the thousand dangers which were before them ? It is
easy to imagine the general shout of joy, therefore, which welcomed Alexander,
when he was sufficiently recovered to drop down the river to the camp, and was
seen not only to wave his hand to the anxious crowds upon the bank, but to be
able even to mount his horse. They pressed around him to touch his hands, his
knees, his clothes, or crowned him with garlands and fillets.
Before the camp on the Akesinde was abandoned
the Mallians made their submission. The king then
sailed to the junction of the five rivers and founded, as usual another colony,
with docks and forts to command the navigation ; and thence proceeded
southwards towards the mouth, meeting with but little opposition except from
the Brahmins, who seem to have been able in those days, as in these, to rouse a
tempest of religious and political fanaticism against the “ infidel,” and induced
a certain king Mousikanos to revolt when Alexander
had passed to the south. But such partial resistance was useless, and its
punishment fearful. Mousikanos and his advisers were
attacked, seized, and crucified. Many of his towns were razed to the ground,
and the inhabitants reduced to slavery. Others were occupied by garrisons.
There was still a voyage of some 200 miles before the open sea could be
reached; but when the Rajah of the Delta of the Indus had surrendered his
dominions, there was little more hostility to be feared, and Krateros was detached with three divisions of the phalanx,
the elephants, and some light troops, together with the invalids, to take the
easier but longer road to Persia, by way of the Bolan Pass and the valley of
the Etymander into Karmania.
The king himself continued the descent of the river towards its mouth,
accompanied by Hephaistion on the left bank. At the
apex of the Delta, 130 miles above the sea, Hephaiston was left to turn the native town of Pattala into a
strong fortress ; and Alexander took only the swiftest ships of the fleet to
face the unknown dangers before him. The shifting sand banks were presumably as
great a source of peril then as now, and for the greater part of the distance
he could obtain no pilots. Near the mouth, moreover, his vessels were caught in
the ebb and flow of a rushing tide (an experience quite unfamiliar to Greeks)
and somewhat roughly handled. All dangers, however, were happily surmounted;
Alexander sailed some miles out into the Indian Ocean and satisfied himself of
its true nature; he explored the Delta and the Runn of Cutch; and then returned
to Pattala, to finish the preparations for his own
march to the West, and for the voyage of exploration along the shores of the
ocean the direction of which was given to Nearchos.
Although Alexander was in part aware of the difficulties of his intended
march, he clearly did not know them all, nor the time which the march would
require. Yet his object m making it was precise and intelligible. If we suppose,
with Arrian, that he was eager to do what Cyrus and Semiramis had failed to do,
we may be sure also that he wished to reduce provinces of the empire as yet
unvisited, and to be near at hand in case the fleet were in need of help. He
had set out from Pattala, with perhaps 50,000 men,
towards the end of August, 323. The great heat, therefore, which lasts from
March to November, though beginning to subside, was still so terrific as to
render night marches for the most part necessary. The nature of the country,
too, is harassing and forbidding. There are ranges of mountains which form the
southern fringe of the terrible central plateau before described, and which run
parallel to the sea, but seldom nearer than ten miles. The ridges are bare, and
even the valleys poor and barren. At intervals the desert seems, as it were, to
intrude upon the mountains, and though here and there aromatic plants were
found to relieve the bareness, the horrors of heat and thirst were aggravated
by the numbers of poisonous herbs and venomous snakes; while they were not a
little annoyed by thorns, says Arrian, of such uncommon size and strength as to
tear the horseman from his horse if they caught his clothes, and to hold an
entangled hare as firmly as the hook does a fish. Sometimes they would come to
stretches of fine soft sand, like untrodden snow, dazzling to the eye and hot
to the feet, and swept by the wind into vast rolling billows. Men and beasts
alike sank under the toil of ascending and descending these yielding sand waves,
so that the sick and weakly fell out of the ranks, while the chariots for their
transport had been broken up to avoid the labour of
dragging them through the sea of sand. To fall out, therefore, was certain
death. But of all their hardships thirst was the most terrible, as it is of all
human sufferings the most intolerable, the one torture which robs ordinary men
of the spirit of self-sacrifice. Yet a fine and touching story is told of
Alexander, which borders on the sublime. They were on the march, Alexander at
the head; all alike oppressed with heat and thirst. Some light troops had come
upon some water in a shallow torrent bed, a priceless prize, which they
gathered in a helmet and bore loyally to their king. Greedy, if loving, eyes
were turned upon him; yet it was too little to share with others. Who but a man
of self-restraint, almost heroic, would have endured, as Alexander endured, to
take the helmet and calmly pour the water on the ground! And so refreshed was
the whole army by this example (such is Arrian’s comment) that one might have
thought that every man had drunk of the water poured out by Alexander.
From the horrors of Gedrosia the army passed
with joy into the fertile country of Karmania. and
the king celebrated games, and offered solemn thanksgivings for his victories
over the Indians and for his safe return. Here also he was joined by abundant
convoys, by troops from Media, and by Krateros with
his division. Some satraps and officers, who had presumed upon his long absence
to misconduct themselves in office, were arrested and put to death. Here, too,
he met with Nearchos, who, as we shall see presently,
had passed through dangers and privations nearly as great as the king himself,
and more trying because strange and novel. Then, dividing his forces, he bade Hephaistion lead the main body to Susa, by the shore of the
Persian Gulf, where the climate was mild and provisions plentiful ; while he
himself made for Pasagardae and Persepolis. At the
former place his special anger was aroused by the discovery that the famous
tomb of Cyrus had been violated in his absence, the golden coffin chipped and
opened, and the body of the great king gone. Having done justice on the
offender, and having stopped for awhile to lament
over the memorial of his own folly, the blackened palace of Persepolis, he went
on his way to rejoin Hephaistion at Susa. A strange
spectacle was there witnessed by the whole army. At Taxila, Alexander had met
certain Indian anchorites, whom the Greeks called Gymnosophists ; and one of
them, by name Kalanos, had been persuaded to follow
the king. This man, being advanced in years and threatened with disease,
resolved to die while he was still in possession of his faculties, and so,
mounting an immense funeral pyre, he was burnt to death in the sight of all,
amid the screech of elephants and the blare of trumpets.
Nearchos,
meanwhile, had led the fleet in safety along the coast of Gedrosia and the shores of the Persian Gulf, and proved (if nothing else) that the Indus
was not the Nile. Arrian’s account of this memorable nautical enterprise in
Grecian antiquity is a compilation from other and later authors, as well as
from Nearchos himself; yet the general accuracy of
the details, and the frequent reference to the admiral’s own words as the basis
of them, prove that it must have been an epoch in the annals of Greek
geography. If not the first, it was one of the first steps towards correcting
the crude notions of earlier geographers. The coast line was followed from the
Indus to the Euphrates, and landings were made at various points; while curious
observations were recorded both in physical phenomena and in natural history.
Quantities of crabs, oysters, and indeed fish of all kinds were met with
throughout the voyage. Whales and porpoises were seen many times. One monster
of the deep is described, which had been cast up by the sea, whose length was
50 cubits and its skin a cubit in thickness, and covered with limpets and
oysters. In fact, the southern shore of Gedrosia was
occupied by people who lived upon fish, partly eating it raw, partly drying it
in the sun and then pounding it into a sort of pemmican or fish-bread, and who
made their huts with fish-bones and their clothes with fish-skins—uncivilized
barbarians, who had the claws of wild beasts rather than nails, wherewith they
tore their fish asunder, and who supplied their ignorance of iron by the use of
flints. But inside the Persian Gulf they reached less wild districts, where
provisions were comparatively abundant, and every island was fertile with vines
and palms. The approaches to the mouth of the Euphrates, Nearchos described in terms which might be used now—shallows, not of sand but of deep,
treacherous mud, in which a man would sink up to the shoulders, and where the
channel, marked out by stakes, was only navigable for a single ship. Another
observation he made, which in the hands of a geographer eighty years later was
the basis of the first measurement of the circumference of the earth. He
observed, when they were in the open sea about latitude 25 north, as
Eratosthenes observed at Syene in nearly the same
latitude, that the sun at midday cast no shadow. Facts like these, apparently
unimportant, were in reality of the greatest value as items in the slowly
growing mass of physical knowledge, which the philosophers of Hellas were
accumulating and learning how to use. Nor were the observations of Nearchos the only scientific results of Alexander’s reign.
At the request of Aristotle, the king had been for some time employing agents,
in many parts of Asia as well as Europe, to collect specimens of animals and
send them to Athens; and after examining and comparing these, Aristotle wrote
down the results in the fifty volumes of his Natural History. Alexander also despatched three exploring squadrons along the southern
coast of the Persian Gulf, having clearly in his mind the reduction of Arabia,
and the establishment of a sea route between Egypt, Babylon, and India.
But the leading idea, as well as the hardest task, which Alexander had
set before him was the amalgamation of his diverse subjects into one people. It
was equally difficult to conciliate the European and to protect the Asiatic.
The latter had been drilled by centuries of oppression into abject submission
to extortion and tyranny. The former had learned from years of freedom and a
long muster-roll of victories to despise the effeminate Oriental. How was it
possible to combine elements so antagonistic ? Nevertheless Alexander set
himself the task. It was before all things necessary to convince Asiatics that tyranny and extortion were not the principles
of the king’s government; and with this view, as has been already mentioned,
many satraps and officers, who had presumed on his long absence, were banished
or executed. The worst offender had been Harpalos,
the Macedonian. Already convicted of peculation as treasurer before the battle
of Issus, and a fugitive, he had been pardoned by Alexander, restored to his
post, and afterwards appointed satrap of Babylonia. There, as lavish as he was
grasping, his shameless luxuries in the king’s absence had rivalled even those
of a Sardanapalus. The fish for his table were brought specially from the sea.
His gardens were filled with choice exotics. On Alexander's return he fled a
second time to Athens with a vast sum of money, and so escaped justice. But it
was men like these, if any, who would endanger the empire, and whose excesses,
therefore, it was essential to punish. On the other hand, it was not less
essential and much more difficult to induce the conquerors of these Asiatics to acknowledge the conquered as their equals under
a common sovereign. Englishmen are only now beginning to find it possible,
after loo years of empire, to recognize Hindoos as
fellow-subjects and equals. It is true that the gulf between the latter is
greater than was that between Greeks and Persians ; but such a fusion is
impossible in the course of a few months or even years, and when forced on
people against their will is often opposed with singular obstinacy. And so it
was with Alexander’s attempted fusion of Macedonians and Persians. He did his
best, indeed, to bribe and flatter the former into acquiescence. He offered to
pay the debts of every Macedonian in the army; and when the soldiers hesitated
to register their names lest it should be remembered against them, heaps of
gold were placed on tables, from which every man was allowed to help himself.
Several of the generals were presented with crowns of gold. He himself married Statira, daughter of Darius, and nearly 100 of the officers
to please him followed his example in marrying Persian women; and when as many
as 10,000 of the soldiers were found to have already formed such connexions, or to be ready to do so, he presented each with
a marriage portion, and the weddings were celebrated publicly, with the
accompaniment of a grand banquet in a pavilion built for the occasion. But the
jealousy of the Macedonians was not one whit lessened; and when on one occasion
he had assembled the troops at Opis, and told them
that he meant to disband any of them who were unfit to serve from age or
wounds, they, remembering that he had drafted thousands of Asiatics into the ranks, and choosing to suspect that he only wanted to get rid of them,
broke out into open mutiny, and, no longer awed into silence by his presence,
bade him dismiss them all and go campaigning alone with his father—meaning, of
course, Zeus Ammon. The outbreak was sudden, but told of a deep current of
feeling below. Another man might have hesitated what to do ; but Alexander
leaped down at once among them with three or four of his generals, and,
pointing out the ringleaders to the guards, ordered them off to instant
execution. They were at once seized and put to death, to the number of
thirteen. A deep silence immediately followed among the vast crowd, broken
after a pause by the king's voice, who had remounted the platform. He was
bitter and angry, and his words were sarcastic. “ They to mutiny! Men who owed
all to his father and himself ! Men who once were rude clowns dressed in skins,
and now were satraps and generals loaded with the wealth of Lydia and the
treasures of Persia and the good things of India. They thought, perhaps, he had
spared himself, or kept too much for himself? Could any man show more wounds
than he could? or accuse him of niggardliness in his rewards?” “You are all
wishing to go,” he cried, ‘‘and go you shall; and tell those at home how you
left your king, who had led you victorious from the Granicus to the Hyphasis—ay, and would have crossed the Hyphasis had you not been laggards to the care of barbarian guards? It may be that such
things are glorious in the eyes of men, and right in the sight of the gods!
Away!” With these words he hurriedly left the platform and shut himself up in
the palace. For two days he saw no one. On the third he sent for the chief
Persian officers, and gave them his orders. In future (he said) he would have
Persian troops only, named and organized after the Macedonian model, but officered
by Persians. This was the last drop in the cup. Repentant before, the soldiers
were now in despair; and, rushing to the palace, they threw their arms at the
gates, and, with cries and prayers for admittance, declared that they would not
depart by night or day till Alexander showed them some pity. Then the king
relented, and came out to them in haste ; and the reconciliation, soon
effected, was sealed by a banquet at which 9,000 of the troops were entertained
by Alexander.
Soon afterwards 10,000 veterans were led home by Krateros—“the
trusty friend, dear to the king as his own life’’—each man receiving a talent
above his pay. At the same time he sent despatches to
Greece, bidding the cities receive back all exiles who had not been guilty of
sacrilege or murder, and requiring them to give himself divine honours. Of the two demands the latter seemed to Hellenes
ridiculous, and the former intolerable, Alexander’s speedy death, indeed,
relieved the Greek cities from this direful prospect of having in fact to
receive so many Macedonian garrisons in the persons of their exiled citizens;
while the general view, held on the question of divine honours,
may be adequately summed up in the advice of Demades to the Athenians, not to
lose earth while contesting about heaven, and in the reply of the Spartans that
if Alexander would be a god, he might.
CHAPTER XVII.
CLOSING SCENES.
In the winter of 324-3 Alexander set out from Susa to Ecbatana, passing
on his way the famous rock monuments of Behistun. His
object, no doubt, was to gratify the Medes by a short stay in their capital, as
he had already stayed in Babylon and Persepolis, and to retain what had been a
yearly custom of the former kings of Persia. They were further gratified by a
magnificent celebration of the annual festival of Dionysus. But the general joy
was suddenly overcast by a great sorrow. Hephaistion,
the “lover of Alexander,” fell ill of a fever, which a foolish confidence in
his own strength induced him to neglect. During the feast he became rapidly
worse, and at last sank before the king could reach his bedside from the amphitheatre, whence he was hastily summoned. It was only
natural that a man of strong, manly affection like Alexander should for three
days shut himself up in sorrowful isolation, and neither eat nor drink. It was
only natural that he should bury a comrade, so dear and faithful, with
extraordinary honours at Babylon, his capital, and
that he should order a general mourning throughout Asia. But we may surely
dismiss, as the mere gossip which gathers round every great name, such tales as
that he cut off the hair of his horses and mules, or dismantled the town walls
of their battlements, or killed the foolish physician who could not save his
friend’s life, or razed to the ground the temple of Asclepius in Ecbatana by
way of revenge; and may echo Arrian’s verdict, that such barbarous “ ollies
were not consistent with Alexander’s character, though they might be natural
enough in a Xerxes, who chastised the Hellespont with fetters for wrecking his
bridge.”
The king was roused from his deep dejection by that best of remedies,
the necessity for action. The Kossseans, a mountain
tribe on the borders of Susiana of and Media, were up in arms. Taking with him
the dead body for burial, he set out on his march to Babylon, about mid-winter
324-3, dividing his army into two corps under himself and Ptolemy respectively,
and crushing the armed resistance of the mountaineers as he went. He then came
down from the mountains into the Tigris valley, and so passed on to the
capital.
It was his last march. Already omens and presages, we are told, of
impending calamity were of frequent occurrence, and it would seem that even
Alexander’s strong mind was not a little impressed. As he drew near to Babylon
he was met by a body of Chaldean priests, who in private audience besought him
to defer his entry into the city; for their god Belus had revealed to them that
an entrance into Babylon at that time would not be for his good. Then a strange
story got wind about the Indian philosopher Kalanos.
Before his death, it was said, he declined to take leave of the king, because
he should soon meet him at Babylon. On another occasion Alexander was cruising
on the canal of Pallakopas, which had been dug to
carry off the superfluous waters of the Euphrates at flood time. As the boat in
which he was sailing passed by some tombs of ancient Assyrian kings, it chanced
that a sudden gust lifted from his head the kausia,
or broad-brimmed cap, which fell into the water, while the diadem which
encircled it lodged in the reeds that grew out of one of the tombs. A sailor at
once plunged in and swam to recover it, but in returning placed it on his own
head, lest it should be wetted. For this exploit he was rewarded with a talent,
but afterwards flogged for being so thoughtless as to put on the king’s headdress.
Some of the soothsayers were even so alarmed at the evil omen as to urge the
king to put the sailor to death. By-and-by another event happened still more
disquieting. It was at Babylon, and the king was holding a council about his
intended campaigns. Feeling thirsty, he rose from his throne and left the
council-room, followed by his officers, only a few attendants remaining behind.
It was a moment of unguarded relaxation. On a sudden a man, a stranger to all,
entered the chamber, and passing through the midst of the astonished slaves,
before they had presence of mind to stop him, seated himself in the empty
throne. The etiquette of the Persian court, as stringent as that of the French
or Spani.sh courts in their palmy days, forbade the laying of a finger on one
who was sitting in the royal seat. So the slaves fell to rending their clothes
and beating their breasts, but had nothing else that they could do. The news
was presently carried to Alexander, who ordered the man to be seized ; and an attempt
was made by torture to elicit his purpose or the names of his confederates. But
the only thing that he could say was that it came into his mind to do and he
did it—a statement from which the seers inferred that it was an inspiration
from heaven, and must be regarded as a warning. Our inference should be,
perhaps, that he was mad.
However little any of these omens singly might have affected so powerful
a mind as Alexander’s, it was inevitable that their concurrence at a time when
he was depressed, and when perhaps the seeds of fever were already in his
system, should impress him not a little. The first warning of the Chaldean
priests he set aside with a jesting quotation from Euripides, and indeed
shrewdly suspected that they had a personal interest in keeping him out of
Babylon, fearing to be brought to book for peculation during his absence. But
the recurrence of the omens and the increasing alarm of the seers seem at last
to have made Alexander himself anxious, and to have inspired him with fears of
a plot.
Nevertheless, it became necessary to enter Babylon, and (owing to the
morasses on the south and west) with his face turned towards the gloomy west, and
by the very eastern gate against which the priests had warned him. But it was a
splendid spectacle, such as the city had seldom, if ever, seen. There were the
veteran troops that had conquered Asia the fleet of Nearchos,
which had sailed in waters never but once navigated before. There were new
ships from Phoenicia, and others building on the stocks of the new harbour. There was an army of workmen busy upon the
splendid funeral pile of Hephaistion. Last, but not
least, there were crowds of ambassadors, not only from Greek cities, but from
Libya, from the Lucanians, the Tyrrhenians, and even, according to one author, from
the Romans, from Scythia, Ethiopia, and Carthage—an imposing array, testifying
to the wide-spread influence of Alexander’s name. For the moment Babylon was
the centre and capital of the world.
But, as Arrian repeats many times over, with an almost dramatic
iteration, the end was drawing near. All things indeed went on as usual.
Reinforcements were coming and going. The Euphrates fleet was finished and its
sailors were under constant drill. The details of the Arabian voyage and
campaign appear to have been settled, and a scheme for the exploration of the
Caspian was so far arranged that a party of shipwrights was sent to the sea to
build a fleet. Finally, a further step towards the fusion of the peoples of the
empire was made by the incorporation of a certain number of Persians with the
Macedonian infantry of the phalanx, each file of sixteen containing twelve
Persians, while the places of honour and importance,
the first three and the last in the file, were reserved for Macedonians.
But the end was drawing near. A solemn sacrifice was celebrated for the
success of the projected expedition, at which wine and meat were distributed to
the troops ; and the king himself gave a banquet to his friends, which was
carried on far into the night. As he was leaving the feast, Medios,
an officer of the Companion cavalry, pressed him to continue the revel at his
quarters, and Alexander complied. The next evening Medios renewed his invitation, and again a great deal of wine appears to have been
drunk. On the following day the king felt the first symptoms of fever, and
accordingly slept at the house of Medios, though
still well enough to transact business. He was afterwards carried on a couch to
the river side, and rowed over to a park on the other bank, passing the next
day in retirement, and in conversation with Medios.
But he now grew rapidly worse, and day by day became weaker, hardly mustering
strength to perform the usual sacrifice; until on the seventh day of the
attack, feeling apparently that he was dying, he had himself carried back to
the palace, and summoned the generals to his presence. He recognized them, but
had no strength to speak. Four of them in despair passed the next night in the
temple of Serapis, hoping for a sign. Three others even consulted the oracle as
to whether it would be better to bring the king to the temple of the god. The
answer was that he was better where he was. Some of the soldiers meanwhile,
from anxiety and affection, demanded to be admitted to see Alexander, and,
being allowed to pass through his chamber, soon saw that all hope was gone. He
lay speechless but sensible, recognizing them severally as they passed by his
bedside with eloquent eyes, but hardly able to raise his head. Had he been able
to frame articulate words, it is possible that he might have returned the
answer ascribed to him in the story, and said that he left his kingdom “to the
worthiest.’’ As it was, all he 'had strength for was to take the ring from his
finger and give it to Perdikkas. Shortly afterwards he died in the 33rd year of
his life, and the 13th of his reign (June, 323).
It has been said that none of mortal birth ever went through such an
ordeal as Alexander the Great ; and Arrian insists on certain points which
ought not to be forgotten in forming an estimate of his hero. He was the son of
the able and unscrupulous Philip and of the violent Olympias. He was brought up
in a court notoriously licentious. He was a king at twenty—the greatest monarch
of the world before thirty. A general who never knew defeat, he was surrounded
by men vastly inferior to himself, who intrigued for his favour and flattered his weakness. Thus inheriting a fierce and ambitious temper, and
placed in circumstances calculated to foster it, it would have been little
short of a miracle had Alexander shown a character without alloy. To stand on a
pinnacle of greatness higher than man had ever reached before, and to be free
at the same time from vanity, would have required a combination of virtues
impossible before Christ, perhaps never possible. Alexander was beyond question
vain, impulsive, passionate, at times furious ; but he had strong affections,
and called out strong affections in others. A man of energy and ambition, he
was the hardest worker of his day both in body and mind. Incapable of fear, he
foresaw difficulties or combinations which others never dreamed of, and
provided against them with success. Amid endless temptations this son of Philip
remained comparatively pure. Unlike his fellow-countrymen, he was (says Arrian)
no great drinker, though he loved a banquet and its genial flow of
conversation. On one point in his character Arrian dwells with an admiration in
which we may heartily join. Alexander, he says, stood almost alone in his
readiness to acknowledge and express regret for having done wrong. That in his
later days, and when he had succeeded to the position of the Great King, he
adopted the Persian dress and customs may be ascribed to the same motive which
induced him himself to marry, and to press his officers and soldiers to marry,
Asiatic women, a politic desire not indeed to ape the ways of foreigners, but
to amalgamate his diverse subjects into one body. And if, over and above this,
he went so far as to claim divine honours as the son
of a god, we may remember that of all men Greeks were most easily thrown off
their balance by extraordinary prosperity, as were Miltiades and Alcibiades,
Pausanias and Lysandros, and that few men of his day
or country were more susceptible to the charm of heroic and legendary
associations than was Alexander. Elated, therefore, by success, and genuinely
wrought upon by the legends which were as the air he breathed, he set an extravagant
value on obtaining a public recognition of the super-human nature of his
powers, in which, perhaps, he had even come to believe himself.
It has been said in depreciation of Alexander that his conquests were
needless and the bloodshed wanton, that he gave the final stroke to the ruin of
free Hellas, and that whatever benefits Asia derived from its conquests by
Greeks were due rather to Alexander’s successors than to himself. These
objections are as false in the spirit as they are true in the letter. For on
the first of these points we shall go altogether astray unless we place
ourselves at the point of view of a Greek of the fourth century. His view of
the relations between himself and a barbarian (and all who were not Greeks were
barbarians) was something similar to that of a mediaeval Christian towards a
Mohammedan, or of a Mohammedan towards an infidel. The natural state of things
between them was war; and for the vanquished there remained death to the men,
slavery or worse for women and children. Any milder treatment was magnanimous
clemency. For years before Alexander, the idea of a war of revenge against
Persia had been rife. That he should invade Asia, therefore, and put down the
Great King, and harry and slay his subjects, would seem to almost every Greek
right and proper.
A few here and there indeed were clear-headed enough to see that the
elevation of Macedon meant the downfall of free Greece. It clearly was so. And
yet, if we look the facts in the face, we observe the free life of Greece in the
fourth century assuming a phase incompatible in the long run with freedom. It
was the day of orators, not of statesmen or warriors—of timid action and peace
at any price. It was a time of isolation, when (thanks to Sparta) the glorious
opportunity of a free Hellenic nation had been forever lost, and when the
narrow Greek notion of political life within the compass of city walls and no
further had reasserted itself. It was the day of mercenary forces when free men
talked of freedom but did not fight for it. It was a time of corruption, when
politicians could be bought, and would sell their country’s honour.
Indeed considering that the hegemony of Macedon was distinctly less oppressive
than that of Sparta, we may well believe that while cities, like Athens or
Sparta, which had once been leaders themselves felt a real humiliation in
subjection to Macedon, many less prominent states felt it to be a change for
the better, in proportion as such government was less oppressive than rulers of
the type of the Spartan harmosts or the Thirty Tyrants at Athens. Technically
the Macedonian conquest did put an end to Hellenic freedom. On the other hand,
that freedom was fast tending towards, if in some cases it had not already
passed into, the anarchy which belies freedom, or the pettiness which cramps
it.
Lastly we may allow that in all probability Alexander neither intended
nor foresaw half the benefits which resulted from his career to Asia and the
world, without saying more than has to be said of every man of commanding and
progressive ideas. It is not, as a rule, given to men to see the fruit of their labours. Nevertheless the world combines to honour those who initiate its varied steps of progress. The
change for the better which Alexander’s conquests made in Asia can hardly be
exaggerated. Order took the place of disorder. The vast accumulations of the
Persian kings, lying idle in their coffers, were once more brought into
circulation, and at least tended to stimulate energy and commercial activity.
Cities were founded in great numbers. New channels of communication were opened
between the ends of the empire. Confidence was restored ; and it may fairly be
added that only the king’s own premature death cut short the far-sighted plans
which he had devised for the gradual elevation of his Asiatic subjects to the
level of his European, and which, indeed, had already begun to work the results
which he intended. It is true we can trace no signs of political reform in
Alexander’s projects; but Asiatics had never known
any but despotic government, and beyond question were unfit for any othe ; while a king of Macedon would probably look on
government by free assemblies with as much contempt and suspicion as a Tsar of
Russia in our own day. Even Greece, which gained no direct benefit from the
Macedonian empire, was yet indirectly a gainer, in the fact that it was her
language which was the medium of communication, her literature which modified
the religion that came back to her and to Europe from Asia. It was Alexander
who planted that literature and language in Asia ; and it was.^ to Alexander
that the great Christian cities of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria always
looked back with reverence as in some sort their founder and benefactor.
It would be difficult to conclude this short sketch of a heroic life
more aptly than in the words of Bishop Thirlwall. “ Alexander was one of the
greatest of earth’s sons — great above most for what, he was in himself, and,
not as many who have borne Conclusion, the title, for what was given to him to
effect ; great in the course which his ambition took, and the collateral aims
which ennobled and purified it, so that it almost grew into one with the
highest of which man is capable, the desire of knowledge and the love of good —
in a word great as one of the benefactors of his kind.”
END
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
BC
700.-Perdikkas
I, first of the so-called Dorian Kings of Macedon.
498.-Alexander
I, takes part in the invasion of Greece by Xerxes.
413.-Archelaos, the ‘civiliser’
of Macedon.
385-Amyntas
II, the friend of Sparta and enemy of Olynthos.
368.-Philip, son of Amyntas, a hostage at Thebes.
359.-Philip, King of
Macedon, remodels the army.
358.-Question about Amphipolis between Philip and Athens.
The Social War. Philip
seizes Amphipolis.
357.-Second Sacred War.
352.-Philip, master of Thessaly, takes Pagasai.
347.-Capture and destruction of Olynthos by Philip.
346.-Falsa Legatio.
Thermopylai surrendered by
Phokians to Philip.
340.-Athens declares war against Philip.
339.-Third Sacred War.
338.-Battle of Chaeronea. Ruin of Thebes.
336.-Assassination of Philip. Alexander king.
Congress of Corinth.
335.-Revolt and destruction of Thebes Timoclea before Alexander the Great
334.-Alexander crosses the Hellespont to invade Persia.
Siege and fall of
Halikarnassos.
Alexander at Gordion.
Alexander visits the Tomb of Achilles
333-2.-Siege and fall of Tyre, and of Gaza.
332.-Alexander the Great in the Temple of Jerusalem.
331.-Foundation of Alexandria.
331.-Battle of Gaugamela.
Alexander at Babylon, Susa, Persepolis.
330.-Murder of Darius by Bessos. The Family of Darius Before Alexander
Alexander in Afghanistan. Execution
of Philotas. Judicial murder of Parmenion.
329.-Capture of Bessos in Sogdiana.
Alexander at the
Jaxartes—the furthest point of his march north-eastwards.
328.-He marries Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes.
Murder of Kleitos at Samarkand.
327.-Execution of Kallisthenes and Hermolaos.
Capture of Aornos, a
hill-fort in the Punjab.
326.-Passage of the Indus. Battle between Alexander and Porus Chandraguota Maurya).
Passage of the Hydaspes.
Battle of the Hydaspes,
and defeat of Poros.
Alexander at the Hyphasis
(Sutlej)—the furthest point of his march eastwards
325.-Descent of the Indus, and return march through Gedrosia and
Karmania.
Famous voyage of Nearchos.
3234.-Mutiny of soldiers at Opis.
323.-Death of Hephaistion at Ecbatana.
Death of Alexander at Babylon.
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