At last, however, abundant supplies were coming in from the regions round; and in Carmania he saw to it that his men were feasted, rested and amused. All the sources speak of a Dionysiac progress towards the capital, with free drinks at every halt; also of Alexander travelling with friends on a purple-winged dais lashed to two chariots. Arrian adds that Ptolemy and Aristobulus omit this last; yet it would be very like Alexander thus to disguise the fact that he had barely the strength to sit a horse. If the Mallian arrow had left him with any hope of making old bones, he had poured it away, like the water, on the Makran sands.
Any rest he got now was purely physical; he began at once to learn that while some loyal or prudent satraps had been collecting horses, camels and stores for him, others had written off his return and freely abused their powers. He heard evidence and prepared to do justice; but he kept the festival going, and found time to join in. To this we owe a remarkable testimony to the popularity which his conduct in the desert had won him, despite all that his men had suffered. Plutarch (supported by the anecdotist Athenaeus) says he watched a dancing contest in which Bagoas—who must quickly have got into shape again—carried off the prize. Still in his costume he crossed the theatre to Alexander, who kept him to sit beside him. “At which the Macedonians clapped and shouted out telling him to kiss him, till finally he took him in his arms and kissed him warmly.” This story says a good deal for Bagoas, who must have refrained from everything which gets royal favourites hated; but even more for the deep affection felt for Alexander himself, extending its indulgence to whatever he set store by, even his “barbarian” eunuch.
At about this time, Craterus arrived with his multiracial army, the elephants, Roxane, and several rebellious or oppressive satraps arrested on the way. Alexander put to death, for gross injustice to their subjects, one Persian and one Macedonian; his equal esteem passed the acid test of an equal standard. Arrian says that the chief reason for his rule being accepted by the diverse peoples he had conquered was that “he would not let them be wronged by those set over them.”
But such cares were trivial compared with his anxiety for the still missing fleet. He had marched to provision and protect it, and had done neither; the thought of all these lives, among them an old and close friend’s, being added to the toll, was preying on him. At last a local governor dashed in with the news that the fleet was beached; but in his eagerness to get in first for the reward, he had sent them no help or transport, so nobody arrived. Alexander, furious for his false hopes, had the man kept under arrest. At last Nearchus and a few friends, getting along as best they could, were passed by some of the scouts sent out to look for them, who had taken them for ragged vagrants. They made themselves known and were conveyed to Alexander, who embraced Nearchus and burst into tears, supposing them the sole survivors. When he heard the whole fleet was safe he wept still more with relief, saying that since its loss would have cancelled all his previous good fortune, this news was worth more to him than the conquest of all Asia. Few Greeks, and certainly not Alexander, cultivated a Roman gravitas; but this scene suggests the nerve storm of a debilitated system after almost unbearable strain.
There was a thanksgiving festival with a great procession, Nearchus, kempt and garlanded, riding in front with the King. Among the prizes and promotions, Peucestas, who had held the Trojan shield over Alexander at Multan, was appointed to the small top-ranking Royal Bodyguard till he could be given his real reward—the satrapy of Persia, held by a usurper with whom Alexander had yet to deal. Hephaestion was now sent off with most of the army by the pleasant coast road to Susa, to give the men from the desert a further rest. Alexander’s rest, such as it was, was over. He rode up country to the royal heartland of Persia, Cyrus the Great’s Pasargadae, Darius the Great’s Persepolis. On whether he took Roxane, the sources are silent He did take Bagoas, and Calanus the Indian philosopher; each in his own way must have proved himself in the fiery test of the desert. At Pasargadae, the satrap of Media brought him one Baraxis, perhaps a relative of the royal house, who had proclaimed himself king in Alexander’s absence. He hanged him, and executed several governors who had outraged their vassals. His severity did him no harm in folk tradition; one of his epithets in the Persian romance is “redressor of wrongs.” But it was exploited by the Athenian propagandists; and here the credulous Curtius, checked against first-hand evidence, shows how far they were prepared to go.
Aristobulus the architect described in his memoirs how eager Alexander had been to visit Cyrus’ tomb as soon as he had conquered Asia. Presumably he did, while near by at Persepolis, for Aristobulus was then commissioned to inventory its contents: a typical Achaemenean royal burial, with a gold sarcophagus on a dais, surrounded with rich grave goods, jewels, weapons, and sumptuous clothes. Alexander had continued the traditional sacrifice to the hero’s spirit of a horse a month. Most of the mausoleum still stands, and testifies to Aristobulus’ accurate description. Its builders, as a precaution against grave robbers, had narrowed the entrance after the sarcophagus was inside. But Alexander on his return found it broken into and plundered; chunks even hacked off the coffin to get it through the door, and Cyrus’ bones scattered about. Alexander would have honoured him even as an enemy (he would probably have preferred him to Darius); the callous insult to his (and Xenophon’s) ideal hero enraged him. The shrine’s guardian magi claimed total ignorance, and torture got nothing out of them. (Some time later the crime was traced to a Macedonian.) Aristobulus describes in detail how he was instructed to make all good exactly as he had first noted it, even to the ribbons spread upon the dais, and then to wall up the doorway. A later generation of robbers had to burrow under its threshold.
Alexander proceeded to Persepolis, where the usurping satrap Orxines was brought before him. He had appointed himself on the lawful satrap’s death, and his subjects now accused him to Alexander of “killing many Persians without cause,” and of plundering temples and royal tombs, presumably the rock-cut tombs of Persepolis. He was convicted, hanged, and succeeded by Peucestas, who was already thoroughly Persianized, spoke fluent Persian, and became highly esteemed.
Curtius’ version was clearly concocted a very long way from Persia. But calumny often exploits a scrap of truth, and it may be a fact that Bagoas took some part in Orxines’ trial; he had known, and could identify, Darius III’s palace treasures, some of which may have been among the looted grave goods. The Curtius story is as follows. Orxines, a noble and virtuous satrap, public-spiritedly takes charge of Persia during Alexander’s absence; and, on his return, arrives to do homage with a train of splendid gifts for him and all his retinue—except Bagoas, to whom he sends a special message that he does not honour catamites. After this typically Oriental approach to a royal favourite, the naïve and trusting Orxines awaits the reward of probity. Soon after, the tomb of Cyrus is opened (for the first time, it is here assumed); and the dead monarch, in the best traditions of Sparta or republican Rome, is found interred with only his old scimitar, bow and arrows. Alexander, utterly besotted with Bagoas, believes his lying story that Darius had told him the tomb was full of gold; this must be the source of Orxines’ wealth. On this evidence he is condemned; Bagoas approaches him as he is led away, at which he exclaims scornfully that it is a new thing in Persia for a eunuch to rule. This at a court where, not two decades back, a eunuch Grand Vizier had been supreme, and had killed two kings! It is seldom that the process of blackwashing Alexander can be traced in such close detail.