He loved music and theatre; artists braved immense hard journeys to appear before him, and were received as guests, not mere entertainers. He had himself by nature the actor’s biological rhythm, liking when at leisure to sit up late and sleep on next morning; a pattern not necessarily associated with heavy drinking, as every man of the theatre knows.
He could not live without books, which he had sent out to him in the heart of Asia, adding to the favourites he carried along. Next after Homer, it seems the chief of these was Xenophon, whose influence shows unmistakably again and again. He heartened his men by reminding them of the Anabasis with its resolute Ten Thousand and its accompanying exposures of Persian inefficiency. The young Xenophon himself, who got out of bed on a night of despair to rally the army, because his seniors were dead and nobody else was doing it, must have been a man after Alexander’s heart (and Shakespeare’s, who transferred it to King Harry on the eve of Agincourt). No doubt the treatises on horsemanship and hunting were valued too; but above all Alexander, with his high sense of theatre, showed in the drama of his life where his chief debt lay: to The Upbringing of Cyrus, the author’s sole work of fiction.
He must have read it first as history. Later when in Persia he would have learned of some discrepancies; but that the real Cyrus had died in battle, instead of in Socratic composure, probably endeared him all the more. The image of a conqueror brilliant, powerful and merciful, making friends of enemies, hailed as a father by the conquered, does not conflict with the fragmentary Persian records. Alexander had no need to discard his hero cult, as is seen from the devotion he lavished on Cyrus’ tomb.
The military lore in the Cyropaedia he probably skipped as elementary; his own father had been a far more sophisticated teacher. But Xenophon claims to present not maxims for generals, but the pattern of an ideal ruler, governing his conquered peoples in a vast extended empire.
He ruled over these nations, though they did not speak the same tongue as he, nor one nation the same as another’s; yet he was able to stretch the dread of him so far that all feared to withstand him; and he could rouse so eager a wish to please him that they all desired to be governed by his will.
… A ruler should not only be really better than his subjects; he should cast a kind of spell on them.
The astonishing corpus of the Alexander legends bears tribute to this last precept beyond anything dreamed of in Xenophon’s philosophy.
Kindled by a spontaneous sense of affinity, admiration for Cyrus must have been a powerful antidote to Aristotle’s insularity. Again and again Alexander’s conduct displays his debt to what has been called the first historical novel of the Western world. The following excerpts could be taken for quotations from an Alexander history.
And on campaign, the general must show he can bear better than his men the heat of the sun in summer, the cold in winter, and hardship on a difficult march. All these things go to make him loved by those he leads.
When the rest went to dinner at the usual time, Cyrus stayed [among the wounded] with his aides and doctors, for he would not leave anyone uncared for.
The gods, like men, are more likely to incline to us if we pay them attention during our height of fortune, not just toady to them in adversity. And this too is the way to cherish one’s friends.
He showed them always as much kindness as he could; for he held that just as it is hard to love people who seem to hate us, or have goodwill to those who are ill-wishing us, in the same way one who is affectionate and well disposed could not be hated by those aware of love. He tried to win the devotion of those around him by taking thought and trouble for them, showing gladness in their prosperity and sympathy in their misfortunes.
You [his men] possess in your souls what is fairest and most soldierlike: you rejoice above all in being praised. All men in love with praise feel constrained to endure any hardships and any dangers.
Cyrus was most handsome in person, most generous in his soul, most fond of learning, most in love with honourable fame, so that he would bear all suffering and all dangers for the sake of praise.
These last two extracts are central to an understanding of Alexander. Moderns who have accused him of “an unpleasant concern for his own glory” are thinking in terms of another age. Greek literature up to, and on, its very highest levels is permeated by the axiom that to be fameworthy is the most honourable of aspirations, the incentive of the best men to the best achievements. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle all accepted it. Its ethos outlasted Greece and Rome. The last word of our single English epic is lofgeornost—“most eager for fame.” It closes the lament of the warriors for the dead Beowulf.
Alexander III opened his reign in the traditional Macedonian way, by removing those who endangered his succession.
Plutarch and Diodorus agree that he sought out and punished the conspirators to his father’s murder. Neither describes the process of this inquiry. The purge was not discriminate. Its most important victim was his cousin Amyntas, Perdiccas III’s son, who under more ordinary succession laws would have been the reigning king. He was a full-blooded Macedonian, unlike Alexander with his unpopular Epirote mother. Philip must always have seemed a usurper to Amyntas; he was the natural choice had the coup succeeded, but whether he was killed on evidence or suspicion is unknown. Alexander deserves the benefit of the doubt, for in spite of his own humiliation over the Carian marriage intrigue, he did nothing to his half-brother Arridaeus, a harmless pawn on whom he felt it demeaning to take revenge. He was a dangerous pawn, however, to leave on the Macedonian chessboard. Alexander simply attached him to his court and took him on its travels. He must have been well cared for; he was the longer-lived of the two.
Two princes of Lyncestis, a family of once-independent kings in west Macedon, were executed. They may have hoped to recover their former sovereignty. But the eldest, another Alexandros, was let off because after the murder he had at once hailed Alexander as king. At some stage it seems to have emerged that the plot had been financed with Persian gold. This was probably true, whether it was supplied through Demosthenes or direct from Darius himself, who had good reason to dread Philip and no suspicion of what he would get instead.
Attalus, a declared and dangerous enemy, presented a special problem. He was on campaign in Asia Minor, among his own troops, many of them bound to him by tribal loyalties. He was believed, correctly, to be planning treason. Alexander wanted him brought for trial according to Macedonian law, but could not risk his leading his army over to the other side. An officer called Hecataeus was therefore sent on a secret mission, to take him prisoner if possible; if not, to kill him. Attalus was already in correspondence with Demosthenes with a view to joining Athens; but, perhaps alarmed by Alexander’s swift initial successes—the sequence of events is uncertain—he lost his nerve, and sent Demosthenes’ letter to Macedon with a plea for pardon. Hecataeus, however, had meantime decided he could afford to take no more chances, and killed him out of hand. In these circumstances there were no complaints that the letter of the law had not been observed. Hecataeus would of course have been supplied with a royal warrant, which he could present before or after the deed to Attalus’ officers and to the other general of the expeditionary force, Parmenion.