Alexander had now to break the news to his men that even Darius’ death had not ended the war. He assembled the Macedonians and convinced them with “effective arguments” which must have come down to sheer personality, there being no question of force. Even the Greek auxiliaries, offered free choice and their expenses home, did not all depart. Those who signed on again got three talents each; gifts to the Macedonians were on the same dazzling scale. Such occasions were among the major pleasures of Alexander’s life.
He was now to march into the unknown wilds of central Asia with the vast accretions of his court and army, which the Persian Romance remembers. “A moving world was his camp … the market that followed him was like a capital city’s; anything could be bought there, were it as rare as bird’s milk.” There were the secretariat, the engineers, craftsmen, stewards and doctors and grooms and slaves and architects and armourers in his actual employ; a horde of independent speculators who lived off the well-paid troops; the womenfolk of soldiers and civilians who with their children were almost a second army. His lines of communication would be indefinitely extended; there was no knowing what supplies the country would provide. The holding force he must leave behind would be vital to them all as a diver’s airpipe. This command he gave to Parmenion. He was now about seventy; rough campaigning lay ahead; the appointment, honourable and suited to his years, also probably solved for Alexander a longstanding problem. The old general was given his own army, partly of mercenaries (including perhaps the new Greek conscripts) and access to the Ecbatana treasure for his own needs, and those of Alexander’s commissariat.
When still in Hyrcania, Alexander had mounted a small operation against the Mardians of the mountain forests, notable only for Bucephalas’ penultimate appearance in history. While being led through the woods by the royal squires, whose charge the King’s horses were, he and the rest of the string were carried off by local raiders. He was now twenty-five, and his likely fate all too obvious. The old horse had probably saved the life of his master, boy and man, half a dozen times; the thought of his ending his days as a broken-down beast of burden so appalled Alexander that he sent out heralds to threaten general devastation if he were not returned. The effect was prompt; the friends were reunited; in his relief, Alexander even gave the robbers a reward.
The royal squires, among whose services to the King was that of bringing him his spare horses in battle, were the teen-aged sons of Macedonian aristocrats. In earlier troubled reigns they had been hostages for their fathers; now their duties were something between those of page and esquire in a medieval castle, except that there was no special body-squire for the King. There were enough of them—perhaps something near fifty—to take their watches in rota, and they guarded the royal room or tent at night. When fresh troops came out from Macedon to Hyrcania, new squires probably came too, for the batch Alexander had brought out with him would be grown men. The cherished Bucephalas’ ordeal may have started some of the newcomers off with a bad mark, and begun momentous events.
Unlike medieval princes, who trained their esquires only in war and manners, Alexander had his educated, even when on campaign. Their schooling was the charge of Callisthenes, a figure of some importance in Alexander’s history. He was a great-nephew of Aristotle, who had recommended him for the post of royal archivist. (Hence the use of his name by the Pseudo-Callisthenes author.) He was a literary dilettante, who had written a history of Greece up to the time of Philip’s accession, and is quoted by later writers for antiquarian notes, especially on the Homeric sites. Alexander, like his contemporaries, treated the Iliad as history; he probably delighted in visiting the reputed scenes of the heroes’ birth or exploits in Greek Asia. Many ancient writers accuse Callisthenes of flattery without defining it, and no direct quotation from his work survives. Probably he stressed Alexander’s descent from the paladins of both sides in the Trojan War, and likened his deeds to theirs. If the flattery consisted in a florid presentation of substantially real achievements, it did him a disservice which he may have perceived as his mind matured.
Meantime, Callisthenes had remained in close touch with the Lyceum, though henceforth correspondence would take much longer on the road. It does not appear that his sycophancy was rebuked by Aristotle, who had many ties with Macedon, especially a close friendship with Antipater which as yet involved him in no conflict of loyalties. He is quoted as having said of Callisthenes that he had a good intelligence but not wisdom; and on another, probably later, occasion that he was not likely to live long; a deduction, perhaps, from indiscretions in his private letters. Certainly he believed, like Aristotle and his school, that Persians were destructive, corrupt barbarians, and that Alexander’s proper mission should be of conquest and revenge. Uneasiness must have crept in when old Artabazus was received as a guest of honour; when a Persian prince appeared in the Companion Cavalry; when satraps were reappointed after surrender; when Darius’ favourite castrato, a being regarded by conventional Greeks as less than human, found his way into the royal bed. The demeanour of a Greek conqueror ought to have been an ostentatious display of Greek superiority, a proper sense of contrast.
Instead of this a further shock awaited him. Alexander began to experiment with Persian dress.
What he wore is rather vague, as is also what he adapted it from. His own version was more “modest” than the Persian, more “stately” than the Median. The dignitaries in the Persepolis reliefs date from more than a century earlier, and the fashion cannot have been quite static. The Medes wear coats and trousers, the Persians long robes (court dress no doubt) and fluted top hats. Nobody wears the “Persian sash” adopted by Alexander. Persians, like Medes, wore trousers in daily life, but Plutarch assures us that Alexander refrained from the barbarism of encasing either his upper or his lower limbs. He wore some kind of long robe, with a sash, and probably a cape over the arms, in the royal colours later used by the Roman Caesars, purple and white. He also wore the mitra, which strictly speaking was a headband in these colours. But since the fillet by itself was such common headwear among Greeks that it cannot have been controversial, he must on state occasions have worn it tied around the kyrbasia, like other Persian kings. The upright point of this helmet-shaped bonnet was an important symbol of royalty.
Herodotus remarks of Persian dress that the shoes allow for something to be slipped inside them, to make the wearer look taller. This may have had influence too.
Alexander used this outfit at first for audiences with Persians; then for private parties; then he started to go out in it; riding, Plutarch says; presumably in a chariot. The Macedonians did not like it much, but thought it a pardonable fad, like Bagoas, for which he had earned indulgence. No one complained aloud.
Towards Persians it was good policy; but policy was never the whole story with Alexander, who was complex, emotional, and much affected by human contacts. If Persians had repelled him on acquaintance, he was incapable of sycophancy to them, and would soon have resumed with emphasis the conquering Greek. Clearly they had attracted him. Their sense of style, their dignity and good looks, the courage so cruelly wasted by their king, the integrity of old Artabazus, Bagoas’ delicate tact, had made their mark. He wanted to come before them as an aristocrat in their own terms; and guidance was easily had. Oxathres and Artabazus knew all the ceremonial; and trifles they could not be asked about without some loss of dignity could be learned in relaxed intimacy from Bagoas, versed in every detail of the royal day and night. Bagoas’ influence is one of history’s imponderables. It did not grow less as he passed out of adolescence; but this, like the talent of Hephaestion, is a thing Ptolemy can be relied upon to ignore.