Philip returned, to await events in the south. During this interlude of peace, it seems, Alexander’s parents found time to worry about his lack of sexual interests.
Perhaps he had turned down some marriage plan. Philip, a precocious womanizer if Ptolemy was his son, would be disconcerted to find a youth approaching eighteen, forward in all else, so backward here. The bloodstained and precarious royal succession made anxiety natural that he should beget an heir-presumptive in early life (and never was anxiety better justified by events). No more than other such parents in every age did these examine their own part in his reluctance. By now the very thought of marriage must have appalled him. Olympias nagged him, and is said to have hired a famous hetaira—one of those elegant “companions” who combined the skills of the geisha and the courtesan—to initiate him. She failed.
Aristotle taught neither asceticism nor Platonic sublimation. But his doctrine of the intellectual soul as king over the lower self offered a refuge to Alexander’s pride for years. Never highly sexed, though with a deep need of affection, he had had his physical response to women frozen in childhood by his parents’ mutual hate; it would be long in thawing. Meantime he had gathered a group of close and devoted friends, nearly all his elders. Hephaestion was evidently the only one of his age who could keep up with him; none of the rest got letters from Aristotle. Of the others none can have been a lover; nor, as events were soon to prove, did the inner ring contain sycophants drawn by rank. In these friends he invested his capital of emotion; his passionate generosity, his powerful magnetism, his compelling charm. Almost all were bound to him for life.
The Sacred League opened war upon the Amphissaeans; its scratch force proved ineffective. Demosthenes, foreseeing what must come, exhorted the unwilling Athenians to counter the menace of Philip by reaching accommodation with Thebes. The neighbours’ quarrel was so old that, a century earlier, the Thebans had even thrown in their lot with the invading Xerxes. Their later overthrow of Spartan tyranny had aroused more envy than esteem. They had now a treaty with Macedon, and it was doubtful if they would denounce it.
When Philip had expelled the Phocians from the Delphic sanctuary in the earlier war, he had invited Athens, a League member, to send her own contingent. Demosthenes had secured a veto, mainly no doubt to prevent fraternization with the Macedonians, in whom fellow soldiers might discover fellow humans. When Philip’s moderation had saved the Phocians’ lives—they had to pay reparations and pull down their strongpoints—Demosthenes had denounced it as barbarity. As it now happened, the verdict against the Amphissaeans had just saved Athens herself, in the political infighting, from the dangers of a parallel charge of technical “impiety.” But this diplomatic triumph had been achieved by Aeschines, Demosthenes’ hated rival. Political commitment, and personal malice, now led him into a serious error. Next time the League met, he persuaded the Athenians to boycott it; and the meeting, unopposed by any Athenian delegate, accepted Philip’s offered help.
His moment had come. His army was trained to a pitch unknown in Greece before. His cavalry, the aristocratic Companions, were augmented en route by the expert horsemen of Thessaly. The vital pass of Thermopylae was politely taken over from its Theban garrison. Philip marched on to Elatia on the Phocian border, about two days’ march from Thebes and three from Attica.
Athens was in a panic. A beacon was built from the stalls and sheep pens of the marketplace to alert the suburbs. The citizens’ Assembly was called by blast of trumpet. All moderates who dared to recall Philip’s restraint after the Phocian War were denounced as traitors by Demosthenes’ supporters. This time a Theban alliance got the vote; he headed the embassy sent to negotiate it.
Philip too sent envoys to Thebes. Both sides were heard at one session. Thebans’ voting rights were confined to present and veteran soldier-citizens. The Macedonians cited their mutual treaty, recalled the hostile acts of Athens, and promised in return for alliance a fair share of victory gains. If the Thebans wished to be neutral, this would be granted them in return for right of passage.
Demosthenes then put up the offers of Athens. They consisted in shopping to Thebes two peoples protected by solemn Athenian pledges: the Boeotians of the neighbouring countryside, upheld against Theban rule in the sacred name of democracy; and, far worse, the Plataeans. This border tribe, Athens’ sole ally in the heroic defence of Marathon, had been granted Athenian honorary citizenship in perpetuity. The Thebans were dubious. Demosthenes, who had never set foot upon a battlefield, taunted them with cowardice. This simple expedient met complete success. The Thebans tore up their treaty (or rather broke it up, for such things were carved on marble) and voted to ally with Athens.
Philip now knew where he stood. He had wanted no war with Athens. Though, his ascendancy once established, he would certainly have expected to direct her foreign policy—the pattern of Greek hegemonies since the days of Pericles—he proved innocent of any aim to enslave her people or destroy her culture. Probably he nursed a secret wish to reincarnate Pericles in himself. His repeated overtures had been blocked by Demosthenes’ inveterate hate and rebuffed with studied insults. Reared in the traditions of Macedon, Philip took a simple and comprehensive view of leaders who led from behind. His belief that he had found one here was to prove correct.
Even now he did not march south. He first carried out the League’s commission. After a winter of manoeuvring about the Parnassan massif, he made by a ruse a lightning march on Amphissa, captured the mercenaries sent there by Demosthenes, and took the town’s surrender. The sacred fields were restored to the League. He and his son were ceremonially thanked, honoured and crowned at the Delphic sanctuary.
They did not go home. They got control of the Corinthian Gulf without trouble, fortified their strongpoints, and moved back to Elatia. Even then, Philip sent last offers of peace to Thebes and Athens. Demosthenes had ensured refusal. Another great If of history had passed its crossroads. In midsummer the forces of north and south, about 30,000 men a side, met on the Boeotian Plain of Chaeronea.
Philip commanded on the right, traditional station of Macedonian kings. The notion that the weapon-holding side is more “honourable” than the shield side is of immemorial age. It applied to the enemy as well; so Philip knew from his days in Thebes who would be the elite corps to meet the Macedonian left: the hitherto unbeaten Sacred Band. This post he entrusted to the Companion Cavalry, under Alexander.
Philip himself faced the Athenians, who had the advantage of rising ground. He lured them down from it with a feigned retreat, entrapped and routed them. Among those who fled the field was Demosthenes, getting his first and last taste of war. The other troops thinned out their line to fill the gap. Alexander had watched his moment. Now he hurled his horsemen against the Sacred Band, leading the charge.
By the standards of even the most courageous modern soldiering, Alexander exposed himself in battle as no responsible commander should. But ours were not the standards of Macedon, whose ethos was still Homeric. Not he alone, but his men, thought in terms of Sarpedon’s words before the walls of Troy. Alexander probably knew them by heart.