“He’s as dead as Cyrus the Great! Better fetch the dog food!”
Alexander was furious when he heard the news. But since Rathaeshtar met his end on a dispute of honor between two officers, he could do nothing then to punish Cleitus. I leave it to you to decide whether this incident has any bearing on what occurred later.
XIII.
Alexander was as sentimental a drunk as Cleitus was an angry one. Blaming himself for his quarrel with his old companion, he wept openly as they led him to his bed. Nor did his dejection lift when his head cleared: his army was unnerved to hear the bitter sobs of the King of Asia through the tent fabric for three whole days, bewailing the loss of his faithful right arm, begging the forgiveness of Cleitus’s sister Lanice, who was once Alexander’s wet nurse. “You lent me your sweet breast, and see how I’ve repaid you, with the death of your very own brother!” he cried. When gently reminded of the public duties of his kingship, he refused to appear before anyone, saying that a murderer of his friends deserved no crown.
He ate and drank nothing. Most worrying, the local tribes between the Oxus and the Jaxartes rivers were in open revolt, using raiding tactics to harass Macedonian garrisons. Informed of these attacks, which usually provoked him to immediate action, Alexander only sank into a deeper state of immobility.
Aeschines is correct to say that we all feared for his sanity. It is also true that Hephaestion was beside himself with worry, and that Bagoas attempted, but failed, to lift the king out of his funk. It was interesting to me that another person who might have helped, the divine Thais, did not make an appearance at this desperate hour. By that time she was already adorning the tent of Ptolemy, who came to me for the first time as a supplicant.
“We want you to go to him, because he has an affinity for scribblers.”
“Thais might do better.”
Ptolemy ignored this suggestion, but went on somewhat darkly:
“We still need him. Go now.”
Of the precise identity of ‘we’, and the nature of their need, I chose not to ask, but did what I was told.
For my part, I truly believed Alexander would harm himself. For the first time, then, I built up in his mind the idea that he was not only a god, but that he partook of the prerogatives of Zeus himself. Maybe this is what Aeschines is basing his story upon-he gets it so wrong it is hard to tell. For we did not speak throughout the day, but for less than an hour, and I did not meet with him before Sisygambus did, but after.
I began by alluding to Hesiod, who describes the goddess of justice-Dike-as the companion of Alexander’s divine father, Zeus. Where justice points out the crookedness in a man’s heart, the Father deals out retribution. But would it not be implausible, I suggested, if the king of heaven merely did what Dike told him to do, without expecting any service rendered to him in return? Clearly, Dike sits at Zeus’s right hand not only to dictate, but to watch and heed the acts of the god. Those acts are the very standards by which justice is measured. It can only be agreed, then, that a king’s acts must be just, simply because he has done them.
Alexander looked askance at me.
“Tell me plainly what you are saying, Machon. Do you think me entitled to murder my friends?”
“I suggest that is not the way to think of it.”
“The murder?”
“Your privileges have nothing to do with who you are, personally. Think of Darius…what sort of man was he? Yet to the Persians he was the pillar holding up the vault of the sky. Someone must set the limits who is not submerged by them. Otherwise…”
“Otherwise?”
“The men around you will drown.”
Alexander sat up on the cushions. Those eyes, so wide-set they seemed to be staring at me from around both sides of a corner, fixed on me with a peculiar sadness.
“I believe, my dear Machon, that you will come to regret making this argument to me.”
“By my oath to my countrymen, I can offer you only the truth,” I said.
“So be it, then.”
At the risk of seeming to magnify my influence, it did appear that from this point Alexander fought with a new ferocity. From his base at Marakanda, he waged a war of extermination against his enemies. The natives there had little taste for pitched battle, but instead bled the Macedonians white by attacking Alexander’s garrisons, supply caravans, and foundations. One chieftain in particular, Spitamenes, led a clever campaign of raids that tied down a Greek army ten times the size of his own. All but the largest concentrations of troops were targets: in a disaster that was never reported to the rest of the army, Spitamenes’ cavalry slaughtered 2000 Foot Companions and 300 cavalry at the Zeravshan River. But such losses could not be hidden for long. The Macedonians began to whisper of a war that would never end.
Alexander was comprehensively cruel in his reprisals. As a matter of policy, all the males of any town or village suspected of aiding Spitamenes were slaughtered. The Macedonians sent out small groups of mobile raiders who saw little success against Spitamenes, but were very good at terrifying the defenseless. Food stores were appropriated or destroyed, fields burned, families scattered. When Alexander at last marched for the Indus it was because he left little intact behind him. Spitamenes himself was finally betrayed and murdered, just as Darius and Bessus had been in their turn.
The chiefs of Sogdia were particularly contemptuous of any central authority, due in large part to their possession of several rock-cut fortresses that had never been taken by storm. The biggest of these was known simply as the Rock of Sogdia-a great stone pinnacle five stades high, with sheer walls and a snow-capped peak. The fortress of the chief, Oxyartes, was chiseled into the Rock, with no approach except along a narrow ledge. It had never been attacked by the Persians, much less taken. For this reason alone Alexander burned to make it his.
When the Macedonians arrived, Alexander was visited by emissaries of the Sogdian chief, cheekily demanding to know why the Greeks had violated his-that is, Oxyartes’s-territory. Alexander, through his interpreter, demanded the surrender of the Rock, on pain of death for all upon it. At this, the emissaries examined the backs of the Macedonians, as if assuring themselves of some fact.
“What are you doing?” the King asked them.
“You appear to have no wings,” they replied, “so your threats mean nothing to us!”
This remark reminded Alexander of the arrogance of the Tyrians, before he humbled their city. He told the emissaries to prepare their defenses for a siege. They laughed at him, asking what rock ever needed preparation to resist the wind? The fortress, they pointed out, was too high to be troubled by catapults or missile weapons of any kind. It was also blessed with abundant snowmelt and enough supplies to outlast a twenty-year assault. Alexander reminded them of similar boasts at Tyre and Gaza. The emissaries’ reply was a final insult, suggesting a place for the Macedonians to encamp that was sheltered from driven snow in the winter and received cool breezes in the summer-“for your pride will keep you here a very long time,” they assured him.