Alexander the Great Read online

  This story was told to Herodotus six generations after Perdiccas by King Alexander I, the direct ancestor of Alexander the Great. The elder Alexander began his rule during the Persian Wars against Greece during the early fifth century and, after the victories of Athens and Sparta against Persia, was eager to connect his royal family to the winning side. Thus the foundation story of Macedonia should be taken with a large grain of salt, though it is possible to see a glimmer of history beneath the fairy tale. The divine Greek origins of the Macedonian royal family are fanciful, but the gradual spread of a local highland tribe from the hills near Mount Olympus to the coastal plains beyond the city of Vergina is quite plausible. The takeover of nearby winter grazing lands by a warlike tribe from the highlands would have provided a strong nucleus for a future Macedonian kingdom.

  Whatever truth was in the tale, Alexander I was not about to let Herodotus continue on his travels without a few more stories to prove his undying love for the Greeks. According to Alexander, when the Persians invaded nearby Thrace, they sent envoys to the court of his father, Amyntas, requiring him to submit to the Great King by the symbolic act of giving him earth and water. Old Amyntas was terrified and agreed, even inviting them to a feast that evening. During dinner the Persian ambassadors began shamelessly to fondle the wives and daughters of the royal family who were present, but the old king was too afraid to object. Young Alexander was beside himself with anger, though he remained outwardly composed and merely suggested that his father retire for the evening. After the king was gone, his son declared to the Persians that they were most welcome to the company of the Macedonian women for whatever pleasure they might desire. But, with a wink, he suggested the women be allowed to withdraw for a few minutes to freshen up before the orgy began. The eager Persians gladly consented, but while the women were gone Alexander substituted his own warriors, veiled and dressed in women’s clothing, to sit beside the visitors. At his signal, just as the Persians were beginning to untie their garments, the disguised warriors pulled out daggers and cut the Persians’ throats. Macedonian men might treat their women as chattel, but woe to any foreigner who touched them.

  And yet, if this story is true, it is remarkable that just a few years later the elder Alexander, now king, gave his own sister to a high-ranking Persian official in marriage and was considered a loyal ally of the Great King. He was even chosen as Persian ambassador to Athens to plead for the city’s submission and fought with his Macedonian troops against the Greeks during the final battle at Plataea in 479—though he claimed secretly to have given the Greeks the Persian plan of attack on the eve of battle. If the Greeks were later willing to forget about the duplicity of the elder Alexander and even honor him as a friend of the Greeks, it can only be that they needed his timber and mineral resources more than they wanted revenge for his treachery.

  Alexander I was a master diplomat who played all sides against one another to expand his kingdom. He was a faithful subject of the Persian Empire when it suited him and a Greek patriot when the Great King turned his back. After Alexander was assassinated—a frequent event in Macedonian royal history—his son Perdiccas II continued his father’s policies of international intrigue during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Perdiccas changed sides so many times during the conflict that the Macedonians couldn’t keep track of who they were backing during any given year.

  Perdiccas was murdered by his illegitimate son Archelaus who—amid the swirl of treachery, violence, and vicious love triangles, heterosexual and homosexual, that were part of everyday life in the Macedonian court—took the throne and began an intensive program of Hellenization. Earlier kings had long encouraged Greek culture among the nobility, but Archelaus made it a top priority. Though the common people scoffed and continued to live as they had for centuries, the Macedonian court under the new king became a center for Greek artists and scholars. Among the many intellectuals wooed to the palace with lavish gifts was the Athenian playwright Euripides, who visited in his waning years and wrote the Bacchae there—a wild tale of sex, murder, and insanity that surely owes its inspiration to life among the Macedonian nobility.

  In 399, the same year Socrates was forced to drink hemlock in Athens, Archelaus was murdered during a hunting expedition by his friend and lover Craterus. Macedonia was soon plunged into bloody dynastic struggles and debilitating frontier wars. Kings quickly rose and fell, sometimes several in a single year, until at last Amyntas III, grandfather of Alexander the Great, clawed his way to the top and seized the throne in 393. His long reign, however, brought little stability to the kingdom and palace intrigues raged unchecked, including an unsuccessful plot by his wife, Eurydice, and her young paramour to murder him. When Amyntas died, surprisingly of old age, in 370, his son Alexander II succeeded him, only to be murdered by his cousin Ptolemy the following year. Ptolemy in turn was slain by Perdiccas III two years later. Perdiccas himself soon died fighting against the resurgent Illyrians, leaving the last surviving son of Amyntas to take the deeply troubled throne. The untested young man faced an almost hopeless situation. Macedonia was in chaos with the nobility pitted against each other in civil war, barbarians invading on all sides, and the Greeks, especially the Athenians, working tirelessly to weaken, divide, and dominate the beleaguered kingdom. No one believed the new king, Philip, stood any chance of saving Macedonia.

  Years later in Asia, Alexander and his men were feasting one night after their hard-won victories. As the wine flowed freely, some of Alexander’s dinner companions began to belittle the achievements of his father, Philip. Alexander joined in, boasting that his own victories from the Danube to the borders of India rivaled those of the god Hercules and were not to be compared with the petty conquests of his father. It was then that one of Philip’s old generals rose and called the drunken king an ungrateful lout. You would be nothing, he declared, without the achievements of your father—a far greater man than you will ever be.

  Alexander personally ran the man through with a spear for his insolence, though he knew there was truth in the soldier’s final words. History has been so fascinated with Alexander the Great that it has overlooked the genius of his father. But by his supreme skill at diplomacy, his mastery of intrigue, and his revolutionary innovations in warfare, Philip laid the foundation for everything his son achieved.

  Yet when young Philip came to the Macedonian throne after the death of his brother, few would have wagered the new ruler or his kingdom would survive. At first glance Philip was a typical Macedonian nobleman—fiery in temperament, excessive in drink, and exceedingly fond of war, horses, beautiful women, and handsome young boys. But he possessed a keen understanding of the hearts of men and a boundless vision for Macedonia.

  Philip also knew exactly how he could change Macedonia’s dismal fortunes. When he was only fifteen, he had been sent as a hostage to the Greek city of Thebes by his brother the king. The ancient city of Thebes had lacked the influence of Athens and Sparta, but at the beginning of the fourth century it had taken advantage of the power vacuum created by the end of the Peloponnesian War to build its army into the most powerful force in Greece. In 371, the Thebans crushed Sparta’s finest warriors at the battle of Leuctra and ended forever the myth of Spartan invulnerability. The Macedonians immediately negotiated an alliance with Thebes and sent hostages to guarantee their good intentions. If Macedonia behaved itself, the hostages would be treated as honored guests. If not, they would be tortured and killed.

  Philip was fortunate to be assigned to the household of the Theban general Pammenes, who was a great friend of Epaminondas, the victor of Leuctra. While the other Macedonian hostages feasted and chased local girls, Philip spent every moment learning the latest techniques in warfare from the Theban generals. The Macedonian army before Philip’s time consisted of a peasant infantry led by undisciplined nobles on horseback. Like their counterparts in the Middle Ages, these Macedonian knights saw themselves as the epitome of heroic warfare and treated the lowly farmers and sh
epherds in the infantry as so much fodder for enemy spears. But Philip discovered a very different kind of army at Thebes.

  The Thebans had perfected the art of hoplite warfare. Each hoplite was a proud citizen who could afford to equip himself with a bronze helmet, a thick breastplate, greaves to protect the legs, and an iron-tipped spear eight to ten feet long used for thrusting, not throwing. In addition, each man carried a razor-sharp iron sword and heavy shield (hoplon) almost three feet wide on the left arm. As each hoplite was unshielded on his right side, he relied on the man next to him for protection, encouraging by necessity a strong sense of unity in battle. When a hoplite line advanced shoulder to shoulder against the enemy, it was a wall of death.

  The Theban hoplites drilled endlessly and, whether common soldier or wealthy cavalryman, were ruled by iron discipline. The very best of the Theban warriors were chosen for membership in the Sacred Band, an elite corps of infantry consisting of 150 pairs of male lovers funded by the state. As lovers, the soldiers fought all the more furiously to protect and impress their partners. They had been crucial in the defeat of the Spartans at Leuctra and were the finest soldiers Greece had ever produced.

  Philip also watched and learned from the democratic assembly at Thebes. He saw the grave weakness of a system in which every man could voice his opinion and vote. Debates in the assembly were endless, while political parties worked to destroy the power of their rivals. Philip began to see how an old-fashioned monarchy like Macedonia could act much more decisively than a Greek city and be unstoppable on the battlefield—if it were ruled by the right king.

  After three years in Thebes, Philip returned to Macedonia when his brother Perdiccas slew their cousin Ptolemy and took the throne. When Perdiccas marched off to fight the Illyrians a few years later, Philip was left in charge as regent. A few weeks later, Perdiccas and four thousand Macedonian soldiers lay dead on the battlefield. Now Bardylis, king of Illyria, was poised to strike at the Macedonian heartland while the Paeonians on the northern border were already taking advantage of the chaos by raiding deep into Macedonia. In addition to external troubles, at least five other Macedonian nobles were vying for the throne. The Thracians backed one of these candidates, the Athenians another, while each of Philip’s three half brothers also plotted to become king.

  Philip quickly arrested and executed one brother, forced the other two into exile, then bribed the Thracians to murder their favorite. Finally he struck a secret deal with the Athenians to withdraw support from their candidate, Argaeus, who soon found himself marching against Philip with only the few mercenaries he had hired with his own funds. Philip easily defeated him and made a great show of sending home unharmed the Athenians among the mercenaries. By the autumn of 359, Philip was ensconced as king of Macedonia, but his hold on the throne was tenuous at best. Illyrians, Paeonians, Thracians, Athenians, and especially other Macedonian nobles were waiting for their chance to dispose of this clever young ruler.

  Philip began that winter to build the army he had dreamed of in Thebes. Discipline came first. Troops were drilled until they could execute complex battlefield maneuvers in their sleep. Philip marched them countless miles over the mountains with full packs until they were ready to drop from exhaustion. Officers who had previously thought themselves above petty military rules soon learned otherwise. One nobleman lost his command for taking a bath in camp, another was publicly whipped for drinking a cup of water before he had been dismissed. But during that cold winter Philip’s reforms slowly began to take hold as the men and officers took pride in their newfound abilities.

  Philip knew, however, that discipline and esprit de corps would not be enough against either wild barbarians or Greek hoplites. He needed a radically new kind of army if he was to defeat hordes of screaming Illyrians or the spit-and-polish professionals of the Sacred Band. He knew his troops stood little chance in traditional warfare, especially against hoplites. The hoplites’ heavy armor was far too expensive for Macedonian farmers and goatherds—so Philip decided to change the rules. The troops of his new army would wear almost no armor and carry only a small shield, so that even the poorest young man from the hills of Macedonia could qualify for military service. This increased his pool of potential soldiers far above that of any Greek city. But how could such lightly armed peasants hope to stand against the fearsome hoplites? The answer lay in a brilliant innovation developed by Philip—the sarissa. Standard hoplite spears were eight to ten feet in length, but the sarissa was almost eighteen feet long. This allowed the Macedonian infantry to march in close formation with overlapping sarissas lowered in front of them to skewer hoplites before the enemy spears could reach them. Of course, the effectiveness of the sarissa depended on the disciplined Macedonians acting as a unit. If even one infantryman swung his sarissa too far to the left or right, the whole line would become hopelessly tangled. But control of the sarissa was made possible by the elimination of heavy armor and weapons so that Macedonian foot soldiers, unlike their Greek or barbarian counterparts, could use both hands to hold and thrust their spears to deadly effect. The Macedonians drilled to such perfection with their long spears that soon they could turn together in any direction, open and close a line in an instant, and charge the enemy with frightening speed. The sarissa was made to destroy hoplites, but the deadly formation would work equally well on barbarian warriors charging the Macedonian lines.

  Along with the development of a new kind of infantry, Philip reformed the cavalry to act in coordinated units with his foot soldiers. No longer would Macedonian nobles ride forth on their own in search of glory. In Philip’s army, the cavalry worked closely with the infantry, waiting for the sarissas to open a wide enough gap in the enemy line for the cavalry to ride through and strike at the undefended rear. Philip also was one of the first generals in history to create a highly trained corps of engineers. In time these men would be able to span raging rivers, cut roads across soaring mountains, and take any city by siege with awesome new engines of war.

  But as impressive as Philip’s innovations were on the training field, no one knew whether they could bring victory in battle. The first great test came the next year when the young Macedonian king launched an attack on the Illyrians led by Bardylis, the very man responsible for his brother’s death two years before. Details of the battle are sketchy, but we know Philip brought with him at least ten thousand soldiers—almost every man of fighting age in Macedonia. Philip was determined to secure his western border and prove his worth as a general. It was a tremendous gamble, for if he had been defeated not only would his reign have come to an end but Macedonia itself would have been fatally weakened and carved up by its neighbors.

  Even though Bardylis brought almost as many men to the field, he was hesitant when he saw the force before him and sent Philip a message offering a truce—but the Macedonian king would have none of it. He personally led his infantry forward against the Illyrians, though instead of striking their front line head-on, he employed a seemingly odd strategy of hitting the enemy with an angled formation. This meant the Macedonian front line struck the Illyrian troops on their left, while the right side of the Illyrian line watched. The Illyrian commanders tried to keep their right side in position, but the men were naturally drawn to the left to engage the enemy and protect themselves. It was exactly what Philip was counting on. As the Illyrians’ right slowly bent forward, a gap opened in the center of their line—and in rode Philip’s cavalry. The Macedonian horsemen successfully concentrated all their effort on breaking through to the rear of the Illyrian forces and throwing the enemy into chaos. The battle raged for hours, but eventually the Illyrians were completely surrounded and thousands were slaughtered on the battlefield. It was an inspired and innovative strategy that Philip would refine and use with devastating effect in future battles, as would his son Alexander.

  Bardylis sued for peace and Philip, having made his point, graciously accepted. The Illyrian leader agreed to withdraw from all the territories of western Macedoni
a that he had previously occupied. To sweeten the deal, he offered Philip his daughter Audata in marriage. As was the case elsewhere in the ancient world, marriage was used in the Balkans to guarantee treaties and seal alliances. Love was irrelevant in such political unions. The woman’s task was to bind two kingdoms together, produce children, and serve as a hostage for her country’s good behavior. The wife expected no affection aside from that needed to sire a child, preferably a son. If her husband took other wives, concubines, or boys to bed, this was no concern of hers. All that mattered to the bride in such political marriages was that her status as a queen was respected and that any son she produced was granted his proper place in line for the throne.