From this time begin the tensions between the concepts of king and conqueror. In the latter the Macedonians had invested their racial pride; and, as important, the prospect of going home, leaving behind a colony to supply tribute and slaves. On the Persian side feelings were divided. The legitimate Ochus and his heir had both been murdered; the makeshift Darius had been an unmitigated disaster; Bessus was for some a hero, for others a regicide beside whom this foreign conqueror was no great change for the worse since he seemed willing to grow civilized. Though they had never known democracy they valued justice, and thought him just.
Bactria, still loyal to its satrap, would give him some hard fighting. The days of pitched battles were over till he got to India. For the next two years he would be campaigning in rough country, against tribesmen familiar with it, and often established in precipitous strongholds. Sometimes a satrap who had sworn him fealty and been his guest would revolt when his back was turned; the chivalric code of honour he had brought from home was to suffer rude disillusions. If he began to trust his experiences before his hopes, it was not illogical. He was dealing with one of the most serious of these rebellions when an act of greater treachery, much nearer home, produced a major crisis of his life.
While quartered in the royal stronghold of Drangiana, he learned that a plot to murder him had been connived at, if no worse, by his boyhood friend Philotas.
Alexander had taken no steps about the earlier warnings. He assessed the loyalty of his friends by his own to them. (One cause of this optimism had no doubt been the bedrock constancy of Hephaestion, a certainty since boyhood.) Philotas, losing no position of trust, had assumed a good deal of pomp and luxury, with a nouveau-riche flamboyance that had made him enemies. He was now the only survivor of Parmenion’s three sons, the second having lately died of sickness. Parmenion’s posting in the rear, considering his age, was no just cause for resentment; but it did diminish the family power at court.
Little is known of the plot to kill Alexander, nothing of the means designed. Its known instigator was an obscure Dymnus, elsewhere unmentioned, apparently on the fringe of Alexander’s personal circle, who complained of some unspecified slight. He tried to recruit a youth called Nicomachus, whose lover he was but who, horrified at what he heard, at once told his elder brother. The two, impatient to discharge their perilous knowledge and clear themselves, went to Philotas as someone close to the King. All sources agree he did not report it. Diodorus, Plutarch and Curtius say he promised to do so two days running, and excused himself on the ground that Alexander had been too busy, though in fact he had talked with him freely. The brothers were growing desperate, and suspicious. The elder now went direct to the royal rooms, and informed the squire in charge of Alexander’s weapons. He, unlike Philotas, burst straight in upon Alexander during his bath. He questioned the brother, learned there had been delay, and was told the reason.
Reacting with customary speed, before doing anything else he had the whole camp cordoned round to keep news from leaving it. Then he sent a squad to arrest Dymnus, who certified his guilt by killing himself before he could be seized. He had apparently disclosed to Nicomachus the names of some other conspirators, one of them in the Royal Bodyguard; which certainly would suggest something more than the personal anger of a private man. Philotas’ known conduct had been clearly treasonable. All sources agree that he admitted having been told of the plot; his defence was that he had not believed in it. (Some historians, in periods more peaceful than ours, have even accepted this; it can now be agreed that honest men, warned of a bomb upon a plane, do not take chances.) Though Nicomachus would not have approached him had he known him to be involved, Dymnus may only have told as much as he dared.
Till the camp had been enclosed, Alexander was forced to keep up a normal manner with Philotas, much against his nature. He then had all the accused arrested. Arrian, citing both his sources, says Philotas had a public trial before the Macedonian Assembly, Alexander himself speaking for the prosecution—he was a material witness, as having been available when Philotas said he was not. Philotas spoke in his own defence (Curtius’ florid artifice makes his version useless). The Assembly judged him worthy of death. Arrian says nothing of his interrogation by torture, to which Diodorus, Plutarch and Curtius all refer.
Before deciding that Ptolemy was whitewashing, we must ask as always whether he would have seen a need for it. Almost certainly not, in an ordinary treason trial, as he shows elsewhere. Torture in such cases was general throughout Greece, with one exception. The democratic Athenians, exempting their own citizens, let them offer their slaves instead: if torture produced no evidence, it was taken that they had witnessed nothing amiss; accused citizens who did not make use of this facility were highly suspect. In Philotas’ case, his high rank and his war record may have caused Ptolemy to keep quiet, and the question remains open.
There were several more trials, some ending in acquittals. Among those condemned, “lacking words to defend himself,” was the long-suspect Alexandros of Lyncestis. Of royal descent, he had probably been chosen, whether or not he knew it, as a suitable puppet king. The Macedonians traditionally executed in public those they had condemned; in this case it was done with javelins. There was no arbitrary purge. But Alexander was now faced with a dreadful choice.
Whether plotter or callous opportunist, Philotas had been a traitor. No army in hostile country could afford to let him live. Still less could it now afford to carry, on its lifeline of communications, a father on whom had devolved the archaic duties of the blood feud.
Prince Oxathres had joined a foreign invader to avenge his brother; Prince Bistanes to avenge his father. There could be no surety that Parmenion, whether or not his son’s accomplice, would not change sides when his death was known. This had been Alexander’s first thought when he threw his ring round the camp. The ancient laws of Macedon provided that the close male relatives of any traitor should share his death. It was not mere frightfulness; it did not presume their collusion; it simply recognized the blood feud, which would make all who survived into enemies of the King.
It would be strange if at this moment Alexander did not remember Attalus. A proven traitor, he had been secure from arrest among his own tribal levies. The practical problem here was just the same. Two factors only were altered: on the one hand, Parmenion’s guilt was not established; on the other, he was infinitely more dangerous.
Till now the young conqueror had known only the rewards of power; glory, homage, splendour, limitless wealth and the pleasures of generosity; admiration, love. They had cost him only the hardships and dangers which were his pride. For the first time he learned power’s terrible necessities. He knew them when he saw them; yet it is possible he kept a last option open.
Three agents on racing dromedaries were sent out on the guarded road. They carried such a royal warrant as had protected the slayer of Attalus. This they gave to Parmenion’s senior officers at Ecbatana. In the private park of the palace where he had his residence, one envoy whom he knew offered him first a letter from the King, then one forged in Philotas’ name. He was reading the second “joyfully, as could be seen from his countenance,” when they struck him down.