“After this,” says Arrian, “he was seized with a longing to visit Ammon in Siwah.” Though this oracular shrine was renowned throughout the Greek world, it had neither political nor strategic value. No Pharaoh, we are told, had ever been there before. In Persia, Darius was mobilizing; and, Egypt now secure, the sooner he was met the better. Yet on this pilgrimage Alexander was determined. He may have heard things from the priests at Memphis which made it indispensable to him; it is equally likely that he had heard something at Dodona.
Various reasons are offered on his behalf; that Perseus, a maternal forebear, and Heracles, a paternal one, had both sought before great labours the advice of Zeus-Ammon. He was their common ancestor, and therefore Alexander’s. But Arrian adds that he went “hoping to know more truly about himself, or at any rate to say he did.”
He turned from the coast to the dangerous inland route, where, if a dust storm rose, it could engulf an army, and was said once to have done so. As they toiled through the sand, water ran short, but rain came to save them. Ptolemy (here proprietorial) averred that two serpents guided them, speaking with human voices. Before calling him a charlatan it should be remembered that desert sands can emit uncanny sounds. At all events, they reached the green shady oasis of Siwah. The High Priest, used to Greek pilgrims and probably speaking some Greek, hailed Alexander as “Son of Ammon.” This formal address, which by now must have been familiar to him, was noted by his friends, who were admitted to the forecourt after ritual purifications. The divine Pharaoh, whose person could bring only sanctity, went in as he was, and entered the holy of holies quite alone.
The oracle worked on a peculiar principle: that of planchette on an immensely impressive scale. Originating in the Ammon temple at Thebes, its antiquity was immemorial. The symbol of the god, a round navel-shaped object, was carried in a kind of boat hung with precious vessels; long carrying poles rested on the shoulders of many priests. Under the god’s direction they would turn, halt or bow; from these movements the seer would read the god’s response. (A similar ritual is still carried out in Alexandria by a Muslim sect, though of course without the idol; the devotees say that divine guidance comes as pressure on their shoulders.) This strange procession may have been visible from the courtyard. Its meaning, however, was revealed to Alexander only, within the shrine. If he had indeed intended, as Arrian said, to declare what he had learned about himself, the solemn experience changed his mind. His sole comment was that he had had the answer his soul desired. He never told what the question was.
He is said to have written to Olympias that he would tell her in private when he got back to Macedon. Anything he would tell her, he probably told Hephaestion; if so, he was as silent as the grave to which he took the secret.
If the letter was written, Alexander’s main question must have concerned his origins. From this time, his sense of destiny acquired a daimonic force. Scientific rationalism is here anachronistic. Greeks (including philosophers) saw in all outstanding qualities a touch of the divine. He had excelled all other men again and again in leadership, courage, contrivance, endurance; and what he already felt in himself had been confirmed. He continued to acknowledge Philip as his human father, assuming perhaps a kind of dual fatherhood of seed and soul; a matter he must often have pondered without imparting his thoughts to anyone. But that he did henceforward regard himself as in some sort Ammon’s son is certain, and was commonly known. It was not irreconcilable with the mortality witnessed by his battle scars; god-begotten men died, but were received into the heavens.
No one, of course, in his lifetime supposed he could have been begotten by the pharaoh Nectanebo. This freak of later legend stems solely from his high prestige in Egypt. Folklore, which can be neither enforced nor bought, should never be ignored.
Alexander returned to Memphis by the ordinary and safer pilgrim route. Here he received Greek embassies graciously, sacrificed to Zeus, held a parade, and more contests for athletes and poets, the latter being at little loss for a theme. Getting down to the business of government, he gave as usual the civil posts to native governors, the garrison commands to officers of his own, and restored all rites and customs which the Persians had suppressed.
At some time in Egypt, Philotas was accused to him, by persons unknown, of some unknown disloyalty. This may have been when his fair captive from Damascus, Antigone, began to talk. Philotas, she widely revealed, was forever bragging that he and Parmenion his father had done all the real work of conquest, though its credit went to The Boy. Such careless gossip hardly suggests devotion; and it cannot have amazed her when the loyal Craterus brought her for a private interview with Alexander. He did nothing about it—it must have struck him as just Philotas’ usual style—merely telling her to warn him of anything serious. She returned to Philotas, in whom she did not confide.
His younger brother, Hector, to whom Alexander had been much attached, had lately lost his life when a crowded ferry foundered in which he was trying to catch up the royal barge. Alexander had given him a splendid funeral. Perhaps there had been a love affair, of which Philotas had not much approved; and after his bereavement it would be a time for tact.
From Egypt Alexander marched to Tyre, now refortified for Macedon. The Persian fleet, without a base in the Mediterranean, already mostly captured or dispersed, was no further threat. It was time to turn east. He sacrificed to Melkart-Heracles—he had Herculean labours ahead—and held more games. The theatre was splendidly represented, two of its sponsors being tributary kings. One lavish production starred the now famous Thettalus, Alexander’s devoted envoy to Caria. Keeping his eager partisanship to himself, he was bitterly disappointed when the judges, whom he had scrupulously refrained from nudging, gave someone else the award. Only later in private did he confess he would have given half he had to see Thettalus win the crown.
It was in the same spirit, and at about this time, that he made one of his few bad misjudgments of men. Among his friends exiled by Philip had been one Harpalus, a Macedonian aristocrat; whose attachment can only have been genuine, for Alexander could then offer no material return. Those days were over; Harpalus, recalled at the accession, and prevented by lameness from serving in war, was put straight into a treasury appointment. He had probably never had his hands on money before. During the Issus phase of the campaign he had got into some unspecified scrape, presumably financial, and gone off to Greece with an obscure accomplice. Alexander, loyal and grateful, apparently convinced he had been led astray, sent a “come back, all is forgiven” message. He reappeared; he must have had considerable address, was a cultivated person on whom Alexander relied to send him books, and may really have been touched and penitent. To prove that all was indeed forgiven, Alexander returned this luxury-loving man to the temptations which had lately overset him, and put him in charge of the whole army chest. For a time he accompanied the expedition. Lack of opportunity, and the old easy charm, confirmed Alexander’s misplaced confidence. Disillusion would be long delayed.
Western Asia, Egypt, and all his communications with Macedon were now secure. He turned east to meet Darius; leaving forever the Greek world, except what he took with him.
Persia
FROM THIS TIME ON, Alexander’s chroniclers record outstanding events, between which weeks will have passed, occupied in the mere conveyance of a huge court, administration and army from place to place, or planning and populating a new city, or resting his men after a hard campaign. Over the vast and varied landscapes of Asia, amid the excitements of exploration and war, he evolved a kind of daily life which he pursued when nothing interfered with it. Plutarch has most to say of it, probably drawing on the vanished memoirs of Chares, the court chamberlain.