Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) (57 page)

Following those words there came a great explosive roar, the clangour of swords being beaten against shields, singing and shouting and cries of joy.

Four days later, the convoy led by Craterus set off on its march towards the Euphrates and the sea. Alexander stood there watching until the last man disappeared over the horizon. ‘They have taken part of me with them.’

‘You are right,’ replied Eumenes, ‘but the decree you have issued is excellent. They will all be there at the theatre, even those who have never set foot in one before, so as not to miss any chance of sitting in the special seats reserved for them, wearing in public the golden crown you have given them.’

‘How do you think Antipater will take it?’

‘Being substituted by Craterus? I don’t know. He has always been loyal, he has served you faithfully. He may feel bitter, this is true, but it will pass. After all, he is the last one left of your father’s old guard. What do you plan on doing now?’

‘Do you remember the Ouxians?’

‘Who could ever forget those savages?’

‘To the north, there is an even more savage tribe that has supported attempts at restoring the Persian empire – the Cossaeans. I must sort out this business and then we will go to Ecbatana, the final capital, to reaffirm our authority, to check up on the royal treasure and to put the corrupt governors on trial. Then we will march on Babylon, the future capital of the empire.’

‘How long do you think it will take?’

‘Two, perhaps three months.’

*

Alexander was wrong – it took all spring to subdue the Cossaeans and he remained at Ecbatana for much of the summer. Three high-ranking Macedonian officers – Heracles, Meleager and Aristonicus, were found guilty of corruption, theft and sacrilege with regard to the Persian sanctuaries and were immediately executed. In this way the King showed that he made no discrimination between Macedonians and Persians. Indeed, more than a few Persians who had proved to be corrupt administrators were condemned. In all these cases Eumolpus of Soloi’s information proved to be correct.

Once these operations were complete, the King decided to organize a celebration with games and performances because some three thousand athletes, actors and impresarios had arrived from Greece. He then settled in the royal palace with Roxane. Stateira, in the meantime, with her sister who had married Alexander, had taken up residence in the palace at Susa. Thus they circumvented Roxane’s jealousy, which became ever greater because she began to realize just how much power she wielded over her spouse – in his heart Alexander could never deny her anything. One evening, after having made love, while she lay alongside him as usual, leaning her face on his chest, she said, ‘Now, I am truly happy,
Alexandre.’

The King embraced her tightly. ‘For me too this is a moment of great happiness. My fleet has returned safe and sound, I have completed all my military operations, I have made peace with my soldiers, I have united two races through marriage and soon I will have a son.’

‘Wait a moment,’ Roxane laughed. ‘It might just be a daughter.’

‘Oh no,’ replied Alexander. ‘I am sure it will be a boy – Alexander IV! You will be mother of my heir to the throne, Roxane, and to celebrate this moment I will proclaim great feasts, races and dramatic performances in the Greek manner. These are things that you have never experienced, but I am sure that you will immediately learn to appreciate them. Imagine hundreds of four-horse chariots racing round a track at breakneck speed, imagine stories represented on artificial stages with real men who pretend to be the characters in the stories, imagine athletes competing in races, wrestling, jumping, javelin throwing. And then dancing, music, singing . . .’

The girl looked at him, rapt with admiration. Since leaving her mountain home, peopled only by shepherds, she had seen all sorts of marvels and her life with Alexander, who in her eyes appeared omnipotent, was like an endless dream.

Thus the celebrations and the banquets began, but during these Hephaestion fell ill. As soon as Eumenes gave him the bad news, the King immediately ran to his bedside.

‘What is wrong with him?’ he asked straight away.

‘High fever and nausea,’ replied Eumenes.

‘Call Philip.’

‘Have you forgotten that we left him in Susa? I have sent for Glaucus – he is an excellent physician.’

Although feverish, Hephaestion was still able to joke: ‘I don’t want doctors – send me an amphora of Cypriot wine and I’ll cure myself

‘Don’t be such a clown,’ replied Alexander. ‘You’ll do exactly what the doctor tells you to do.’

Glaucus arrived quickly, uncovered the patient’s chest and listened to it. ‘Why is it that doctors’ ears are always freezing?’ exclaimed Hephaestion.

‘If you want a doctor with warm ears all you have to do is ask,’ joked Eumenes. ‘Your friend is master of the world and he can find anything you want.’

Glaucus now began examining the abdomen and found it to be swollen and tense. ‘I think he has eaten something that’s had a bad effect on him. I’ll prescribe a purge and then he’ll have to fast for at least three days, drinking only water.’

‘Are you sure this is the right cure?’

‘I think Philip would tell you the same thing. If we weren’t so far away, I would send a messenger for a consultation, but I really don’t think it’s necessary. An illness of this kind should clear up in less time that it would take the messenger to reach Susa.’

‘That’s fine, but make sure you keep an eye on him. Hephaestion is my dear friend. We have been close ever since we were children.’ As he spoke Alexander’s gaze fell on the golden pendant Hephaestion wore on his neck with a small tooth mounted on it – the King’s own milk tooth. Around his own neck was Hephaestion’s tooth – the first token of eternal friendship they had exchanged.

‘Have no fear, Sire,’ replied the physician. ‘We’ll have Hephaestion back on his feet in no time.’

Alexander left and the doctor immediately had his patient swallow the purge and left instructions for his diet.

‘In three days’ time, if everything is going well, you’ll be able to take some chicken broth.’

Indeed, three days later Hephaestion was better – the swelling in his abdomen had receded, and the fever had relented, although towards evening his temperature always rose slightly. That particular day the schedule for the games included the four-horse chariot race and Glaucus, who was particularly keen on horse racing, stopped by to examine his patient. On finding Hephaestion much improved, the physician asked if he might take a few hours off. ‘General, there is an exciting chariot race taking place today. If you do not object, I would like to see it.’

‘Of course I have no objections,’ replied Hephaestion. ‘Go and enjoy yourself

And I can go without worrying? You will look after yourself?’

‘Of course,
Iatré.
After everything I have been through in ten years of this military campaign, I’m certainly not afraid of a fever.’

‘In any case, I will be back before nightfall.’

Glaucus left and Hephaestion, tired of fasting and the purges, called a servant and ordered him to roast up a couple of chickens and serve them with chilled wine.

‘But, my Lord . . .’ the man started to object.

‘Are you going to obey me or do I have to have you whipped?’ Hephaestion reprimanded him.

The servant found himself left with not much of a choice and he did what he had been ordered to do; he roasted the chickens and went to prepare the wine kept in pressed snow in the cellar.

*

The sun was setting and Glaucus was in excellent spirits as he entered his patient’s bedchamber. ‘How is our valiant warrior?’ he asked, but his gaze fell immediately on the remains of two chickens and an empty amphora that had rolled into a corner. All the colour left his face. He turned slowly towards the bed – Hephaestion had not even managed to reach it. Alexander’s friend lay on the floor where he had collapsed. Dead.

A
LEXANDER WAS GIVEN
the news immediately and he rushed to his friend’s house with the hope that there had been some misunderstanding. When he arrived Eumenes, Ptolemy, Seleucus and Perdiccas were already there and, from the looks on their faces, from their eyes, he realized there was no hope at all.

His friend had been placed on the bed now, combed, shaved and dressed in clean clothes. Alexander threw himself on the body, shouting and crying in desperation. Then, having given vent to the sharpest grief, he sat in a corner with his head in his hands, crying silently, and he remained in that position all night and all the next day. The friends who were waiting outside the door heard him moan every now and then, his breath a dull rattle, or bursting out more than once into inconsolable sobbing.

At sunset on the following day, they decided to enter.

‘Come,’ said Ptolemy. ‘Come away from here. All we can do for him now is prepare his funeral.’

‘No, leave me be, I cannot abandon my poor friend!’ shouted the King in his despair, but his companions forced him to stand up, almost bodily, and dragged him out to make way for the Egyptian embalmers who were waiting to prepare the body.

‘It’s my fault, it’s all my fault,’ moaned Alexander. ‘If I hadn’t left Philip in Susa he would have saved him and he would be alive now.’

‘Unfortunately it was simply a momentary distraction,’ said Seleucus. ‘The physician left him alone while he went to the races and—’

‘What did you say?’ asked Alexander with an expression of utter horror on his face.

‘That’s what happened, unfortunately. Perhaps he thought there was no danger, but as soon as he found himself alone Hephaestion ate and drank too much – meat and chilled wine and—’

‘Find him!’ shouted Alexander. ‘Find that rat and bring him here to me immediately!’

The poor doctor was rooted out by the guards who found him hidden away in the cellar, and they brought him before the King, white as a sheet, trembling all over. He sought to stutter some excuse, but Alexander shouted, ‘Silence, you wretch!’ And he hit Glaucus full in the face with his fist, so hard he sent him rolling in the dirt with his lip split.

‘Have him executed straight away,’ he ordered and the guards carried him away as he cried and begged for clemency. They led him down into the courtyard and propped him up against a wall where he continued to cry and beg. The officer shouted, ‘Now!’ and the archers all let fly at the same instant.

All the arrows hit their mark and Glaucus collapsed into a pool of blood and urine without uttering a sound.

Alexander was in total despair for days. Then, all of a sudden, he found himself in the grip of a strange, frenetic desire to honour his dearest friend with the most impressive funeral that had ever been celebrated in the entire world. He sent a delegation to the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa to ask the god if it was admissible for him to offer sacrifices to Hephaestion as one would to a hero, then he gave orders to the army to set off towards Babylon and to take with them the embalmed body of his friend to celebrate the funeral rites there.

Not all of his Companions understood this extravagant manifestation of grief, even though they had all loved Hephaestion. Leonnatus failed to see the point in Alexander’s having sent the request to the Oracle at Siwa.

‘Alexander is creating the religion of his new world,’ Ptolemy explained, ‘with his gods and his heroes. Hephaestion is dead, but he wants him to be among the very first of these heroes, so that he might live on as a myth. He has already started to carry us into the realm of legend. Do you understand?’

Leonnatus shook his head. He died of indigestion; I don’t see anything heroic in that.’

‘It is for this reason that he is preparing such an elaborate funeral ceremony for him. In the end this is what will remain in the people’s memory: Alexander’s grief for the death of Hephaestion is like Achilles’ grief for the death of Patroclus. It doesn’t matter how Hephaestion died, what is important is how he lived – as a great warrior, a great friend, a young man struck down by fate before his time.’

Leonnatus nodded, even though he was not at all certain he had understood exactly what Ptolemy was trying to say, but instinctively he thought that Thanatos had worked his way into Alexander’s troop, carrying off the first of the seven of them, and he wondered now who would be next.

During the march to Babylon, some Chaldaean seers came to warn Alexander not to enter the city – if he entered through its gates then he would never leave. He then consulted Aristander and asked him, ‘What do you think?’

‘Is there anything that might prevent you from doing the things you have decided to do?’

‘No,’ replied the King.

‘Go then – our destiny is in any case in the hands of the gods.’

They entered the city at the beginning of spring. Alexander took up residence in the royal palace and began giving orders to prepare the pyre – a tower some one hundred and forty cubits high, resting on an artificial platform measuring half a stadium on each side.

The plan and the construction work were overseen by Alexander’s chief engineer, Diades of Larissa, and by an army of carpenters, painters and sculptors. The magnificent structure rose up to five storeys in height and was adorned with statues representing elephants, lions and all sorts of mythological creatures, with great sculpted panels carrying scenes of gigantomachy and centauromachy. Enormous torches of pure gold laminate protruded from the corners and at the very top life-size statues of sirens supported the catafalque.