However experienced the officers, this was a manœuvre quite new to the Macedonian army; its broad strategy and comprehensive grasp of detail must belong to Alexander. On the far bank the infantry advanced through high standing corn, flattening it by holding their sarissas sideways (they must have been extremely well drilled) to make a path for the cavalry. On open ground beyond, Alexander deployed his forces. But the local Getae were so shocked by this uncanny arrival in the dawn that they fled before the cavalry, first from their town, then on into the wilderness with such women and children as they could take on their horses’ cruppers. The Macedonians took the town and “as much plunder as the Getae had left behind”; which, in fourth-century terms, would include any remaining women and children. For such victims, massacre or slavery were the universal alternatives. These were enslaved.
On the Ister shore, Alexander sacrificed to Zeus the Preserver, to Heracles, and to the spirit of the river for graciously granting them passage. Having got everyone back across without a single drowning, he sat down to await results. Soon respectful embassies arrived from the tribes along the river. Their reception must have gone on for some time; for the last arrivals were Celts, from some distant settlement near the Adriatic. Men whom even the Macedonians thought very tall, they towered over the rumoured conqueror they had come to placate. Either from vanity or curiosity, he asked them what thing on earth they dreaded most. They feared nothing, they said, unless that the sky should fall on them. Amused by this gasconading brag (one he never made for himself) he sent them home with a pact of friendship.
Still in the north, he got news that the formidable Illyrians had risen; and that an intermediate tribe, the Antariates, planned to fall on him as he marched to meet the danger. At this the young Lambarus, still at hand with the pick of his Thracian warriors, told him to forget the Antariates at any rate; they were worth nothing as fighters, he would invade them himself and keep them occupied. Moved as always by a spontaneous act of friendship, Alexander loaded him with gifts of honour, and promised to join them in kinship with the hand of Cynna, one of his bastard sisters. They never met again; Lambarus, after a devastating performance of his mission, went home, fell ill and died. Whether or not Cynna shared her brother’s grief, the Agriani remained the most loyal of his auxiliaries.
Making haste over now familiar ground he reached the Illyrian frontier ranges. Cleitus, the Illyrians’ chief war lord, held the hill town of Pelium and the heights commanding it. The troops outside fled at sight of the Macedonians, leaving behind the freshly killed bodies of nine victims just sacrificed for victory—three black rams, three boys and three girls. (No wonder Alexander did not care to dwell on his Illyrian exile.) He invested the town; just avoided being encircled by a large relieving force; led out a troop to rescue Philotas, who was commanding a guard over the draught animals; but after doing so was himself dangerously trapped in a narrow pass between hills and river. This situation he met with sheer bravura. He had guessed from the Illyrians’ earlier flight that his name had run before him—in those parts he had been known for years—and he threw what troops he had into a polished display of aggressive drill. Their expertise and unknown intentions so dismayed the tribesmen that they started falling back. He ordered his men to yell and beat on their shields. The enemy abandoned their vantage points and bolted for the fort.
Still in difficult country, and harassed as he crossed a river, he got his archers firing from midstream, and set up his light catapults—a very smart operation, since they were taken apart for mule transport. His men were extricated in a fighting withdrawal, never once presenting their defenceless backs. Shortly after, taking advantage of the Illyrians’ indiscipline, which he must have known well, he put on a night attack and routed them out of the town. The west was settled; but he was to have no respite. A still more serious danger now threatened from the south.
Word of the risings had spread. The new King of Macedon, after a brief appearance at Corinth, had vanished into the wilds whence no news came. After no long delay, Demosthenes emerged and, contacting Darius and his leading satraps, offered, if they would finance him, to keep Alexander tied down in Greece. The Greek cities of Asia were tacitly written off to bondage; Demosthenes’ democratic principles were strictly parochial. So eagerly did Darius respond that his account rolls, when captured later in Sardis, showed disbursements to his ally of 300 talents.
Presently it was learned that the Thebans had admitted some anti-Macedonians whose lives Philip had spared after Chaeronea on condition of their exile, murdered two Macedonian commanders who in peacetime laxity had gone outside the citadel, and proceeded to invest the garrison within it. Elated by this news, and well supplied with funds, Demosthenes sent Thebes a large consignment of arms. Continuing to assure the Athenians that Alexander was a strutting boy, he urged them to join the war. They voted to do so, and started to prepare. Still no word came from the hinterland. Then rumour announced that Alexander was dead.
No sickness or wound had caused a genuine error. Demosthenes produced a man who swore to having seen him fall. On the strength of this, the Thebans openly proclaimed alliance with Persia against Macedon. When, within a week, they heard that an army led by Alexander was coming down through Thessaly, they refused at first to credit it. At all events, it could not conceivably be that Alexander. It would be Alexandros of Lyncestis. (They must have supposed him the new king.)
They were swiftly disillusioned. Alexander had brought his forces down from Pelium, through a series of mountain passes, a distance even by air of a hundred miles, in a six-day march. Scarcely pausing to pick up his allied troops from central Greece, in another six he was already in Boeotia. He appeared before Thebes next day.
Had he in fact been dead, it would have cancelled the Thebans’ treaty. His early forbearance may have come from knowledge of the rumour. For reasons which may have been emotional or religious, he encamped by the precinct of the hero Iolaus, Heracles’ charioteer and beloved companion, at whose shrine the couples of the Sacred Band used to take their vows. He sent an envoy to the city, offering to accept their surrender on terms if they would give up the anti-Macedonians who were there illegally. The Thebans refused, with a mocking counter-demand for Philotas and Antipater. They made a sortie against Alexander’s pickets, some of whom they killed. He now moved to a strategic position, near the gate that faced towards Attica and gave him the nearest approach to the beleaguered Macedonian garrison.
It was also the approach route from Athens, of whose intentions he would by now have heard. But in that respect his vigilance was needless. No troops from the south appeared. The alarming speed of his march had brought painful second thoughts. Without protest from Demosthenes the Athenians closed their gates, leaving the Thebans to weather the storm alone.
It did not yet break. Alexander still awaited a parley. He had collected on his southward march contingents of troops from Macedonian satellites, chiefly Phocians and Plataeans. The latter, it will be remembered, were the descendants of the Marathon heroes, inheritors of their perpetual Athenian citizenship, whom Demosthenes had traded to the Thebans on the eve of Chaeronea.
Alexander kept close to the Theban siege lines, at their nearest point of approach to the Macedonian garrison, trapped inside the Cadmea. This, as can still be seen, was no acropolis perched on natural rock; it relied for defence on its massive walls. For the next sequence of events, which Arrian gives in vivid detail, he expressly says that his source is Ptolemy, who must have taken part. He claimed that Perdiccas, still at that time holding only a small command, was posted next the siege works. For some reason, without awaiting orders, he rushed his men to the palisade and started to tear it down.