Most of us are veterans of war here…do we not smell a rat? Do single riders charge entire armies and survive? How could it be that the Macedonians could cross a torrent, proceed uphill against their enemy, slash their way through the Persian lines, and lose only twenty-five men? Having seen cavalry cross muddy, miserable spring rivers, I would expect more than twenty-five to die just falling off their horses! To doubt this is not to engage in what Aeschines calls ‘sophistication.’ It is to use common sense.
What really happened was this: our scouts reported that the Persians were gathered at the Granicus River, and Alexander proceeded with his officers to inspect their position. They observed that the enemy was blocking the only fording place, and that the manner of their deployment, on a bluff above the far bank, would result in horrific casualties among the Macedonians. Parmenion therefore recommended a subtler strategy. The Persians, the old general explained, were anxious to secure their horses against theft at night, and so made a practice of tethering them by both bridle and the feet. As these precautions made it hard for them to saddle and mount in an emergency, they were obligated to make their camps far away from their enemies. In this case the Persians would bivouac overnight well out of touch with their scouts on the river. Why not wait until before dawn the next morning, asked Parmenion, cross the river in secret, and take them all by surprise?
Alexander carped, complaining that he hadn’t crossed the mighty Hellespont just to be stopped at a mere trickle. Hephaestion declared that strategizing was for weaklings, and that the barbarians would scatter at the first flash of steel. But there was no denying that the river flowed fast and deep, the Persian armor was blindingly numerous, and that the Macedonian infantrymen were spooked. Even if they managed to break through the horses, at least twenty thousand Greek mercenary pikemen waited behind them, each one no doubt desperate to redeem the reputation of Greek arms against Macedon. Perhaps most important, a defeat or a costly victory there, at the very outset of the invasion, would doom the entire enterprise.
The King took Parmenion’s advice. Overnight, swimmers were sent across to silence the Persian watchmen. And as the first blush of dawn appeared in the sky behind the enemy camp, Alexander got his Cavalry Companions across the river, and most of the pikemen, before they were observed by the Persians. A confused melee ensued in the twilight; Alexander led his horsemen forward to meet the enemy, who had been roused before their time and wore only half their armor. Marching with the hypaspists, I reached the enemy camp in time to see Alexander sitting on the ground, ministered by a doctor after he was struck in the helmet with an axe. Cleitus, who had saved Alexander at the last second, crouched with his hands on his knees, looking down at the King.
That was when I noticed something curious. Alexander was out of the action, barely conscious, but someone very much like him, with the same build, same stature, and virtually the same voice, was still directing the attack on the Persian camp. With unerring perception of the flow of forces around the battlefield, he directed cavalry and footmen into flying columns that cut the disorganized enemy to pieces. As the sun broke over the horizon, we could see scattered remnants of the Persian cavalry fleeing, and much of Darius’ Greek hirelings still in their camp clothes, surrounded.
Who was the commander who accomplished all this? Sighting him again, I followed some distance behind. His resemblance to Alexander in both movement and voice was striking, yet he wore far more armor than the King, including a muscle cuirass and greaves. Coming closer, I could see that he wore a lot of metal, but nothing else-no cloak, no tunic, no groin-flaps. His ass was bare for the world to see!
This spectacle intrigued me, to say the least, for this half-naked apparition was directing the relentless slaughter of virtually all the Greek mercenaries. By midday more than fifteen thousand bodies formed an enormous mountain of fly-strewn flesh. But in the time it took me to glance at the dead and then look back, the mysterious commander was gone. In his place was Alexander, discussing with his officers the enormity of incinerating such a mass.
To be sure, I made many inquiries into what I had seen. The Macedonians were aggressively reluctant to discuss it; Callisthenes acknowledged that he had seen the figure I described, but would not elaborate. In the months to come, using every method I could think of, including bribery, I was finally able to learn the truth.
We know of him now as Philip Arridaeus. He was Alexander’s half-brother-a bastard produced by the union of Philip and a Thessalian concubine. The official historians are loathe to speak of him, because from a young age he was an idiot, barely able to speak or take care of himself. He had other odd problems, such as an inability to tolerate the touch of other people, and a deep aversion to the wearing of clothes. Instead, he preferred the feel of metal against his skin. For this reason he wore either armor or nothing for his entire life.
Yet he did have certain talents. His memory, for instance, was prodigious. By the age of three he could recognize and name all the different units of Philip’s army. By eight he memorized the entire text of the Iliad. He knew thousands of men by name, and the names of their fathers, and could recount their deeds in battle with precise detail. Alexander, on the other hand, was a charmer, but had no head for the common man. When he was forced to interact with them, he never knew their names. Arridaeus remembered everything.
The man was in every way fascinated by war. From a young age he liked nothing better than to pore over maps, planning for his fanciful campaigns. As I will recount, he was also invincible on the battlefield, and his talents as a general turned out to be more than imaginary. But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Suffice it to say that you will never read of Arridaeus in any official history, because the combination of martial virtue and complete idiocy was incomprehensible to the Macedonians. They were, and are, deeply embarrassed by what they owe to him.
The origins of his illness are obscure. Some say he was born that way, others that Olympias, fearing competition for Alexander’s future throne, had the infant Arridaeus fed poison with his breast milk. Her intent was not to kill him, which would have been too obvious a crime, but to destroy his mind. I am told that there are preparations of mercury or arsenic that might have such effects if used in small quantities. But bear in mind that I have no proof that he was poisoned. I know only that, wherever he came from, and however he did it, he became the secret weapon of the Macedonians.
Arridaeus’s skills were discovered by accident during the assault on Thebes. Alexander didn’t expect to take the city, but instead wished no more than to teach the Thebans a lesson. Arridaeus, who was dressed in his usual armor when he appeared on the field, was mistaken for Alexander when he began to issue commands. Sizing up the situation in an instant, he dispatched troops to the weakest part of the Theban wall. The city fell.
This victory caught Alexander by surprise. In his confusion, he didn’t know what he wanted to do with the prize, so instead turned the decision over to Thebes’s petty and resentful neighbors. They, of course, wanted the city razed to the ground. Alexander acceded to their selfishness-a decision he regretted for the rest of his life.
For later battles, Arridaeus was brought out on a horse, with an escort of mounted Companions around him to conceal his presence from the rest of the army. From this cocoon the simpleton sent orders around the battlefield. With each victory of Arridaeus, Alexander’s reputation for invincibility grew. Ever resourceful, Arridaeus added his brother’s renown to his arsenal, deploying Alexander like a psychological weapon. “Send Panic over there,” he would say, or “More Terror on the right.” The only thing that was more remarkable than his generalship was the Macedonians’ refusal to acknowledge it.