In the spring of 324, after several months crowded with these activities, he made his way towards the beautiful hill palace of Ecbatana, the Persian kings’ summer resort. Probably he felt the need of rest. At all events, he had one of his longings, to explore the Tigris; it would take him the first stage by boat, while the army marched under Hephaestion’s command. Before making for the hills, they were to rendezvous at Opis. This river town lay on the Royal Road to the Mediterranean; and it was here that Alexander planned to discharge his oldest veterans, with substantial long-service bonuses. It took him a good deal out of his way; but it was unthinkable to him that anyone else should see them off.
After a couple of weeks of almost unprecedented leisure, doing nothing more active than seeing waterways cleared, he got to Opis and ordered the parade. But in his short absence, the Macedonians on the march had had time to work up their grievances. Once freed from the disagreeable prospect of the Ganges campaign, and fresh after the easy return west with the inland contingent, tough old sweats in their seventh decade had no wish whatever to be discharged; they took it as an insult, prompted by his barbarian leanings, and they had enlisted their comrades’ sympathy. Unsuspecting, Alexander mounted the dais on the parade ground, and thanked them for their faithful service. He had just promised them bonuses which would make them the envy of their neighbours at home, when the storm broke about his head. His voice was drowned by furious shouts from the serving troops of “You can discharge the lot of us!” and “Go marching with your Father!”
This was the kind of situation in which Roman emperors were to die like butchered boars; or, if strong enough, restore control with a bloodbath of decimations, beheadings, floggings to death. What Alexander did was to leap straight down off his dais at the yelling crowd.
His generals jumped down after him. (Hephaestion, standing next him, would have been the first.) If he had been mobbed, there would have been nothing they could do but die with him. Nobody touched him. Striding here and there he pointed out the ringleaders (so Arrian says, and Ptolemy must have been down there) and ordered their arrest. They were led away, no one obstructing. He then went back on the dais and made a speech. The army listened. Whether, in the short remainder of his life, he looked back on this as more remarkable than the storming of the Birdless Rock, there is no knowing. Perhaps he simply took it for granted.
It would be strange if his speech had not stuck in Ptolemy’s memory till old age. It is magnificent, with a natural momentum far different from the frigid, baroque flourishes of Curtius’ compositions; it should be read in full in Arrian. They could discharge themselves one and all, he told them; but let them first remember how Philip and Alexander had raised them from the poverty of mountain shepherds harassed by neighbour enemies (“of whom you were scared to death”) to be masters of the world. It was a resounding roll of victories. He challenged them to name any wealth he had not shared with them, or hardships either. (“See here—let anyone who has wounds strip and show them, and I’ll show you mine. I’ve no part of my body without them—at least, in front.”) He reminded them that not a man had been killed in flight as long as he had led them. After a ringing peroration, he bade them go back and boast in Macedon of having abandoned him among the races they had conquered. “You will be famous among men and a pleasure to the gods when you tell the story. Go!” He flung off the platform, rode back to the royal lodging, and slammed his door.
He had made his impact. The Macedonians hung about in camp, not knowing what to do with themselves next. Nobody left. For two days he did not appear. Then Persians were seen going in. Rumour came out. He had taken the troops at their words; he was replacing them. Alongside the great traditional Macedonian regiments, the Foot Companions, the Silver Shields, the Companion Cavalry, there would be Persian corps bearing their names. Only those who were now his kindred (the Royal Kin of the Persians, and his fellow bridegrooms) were entitled to give him the greeting kiss. The Macedonian rank and file, many of whom had joined the shouting in a mere gust of crowd excitement, now pictured young Successors marching under their old standards before they had reached the sea.
Then came the climax of this extraordinary episode. The Macedonians ran in a body to the royal terrace. They flung down their weapons and their shields, the sign of surrender in the field. As unarmed suppliants, they stood before the doors, crying to be let in. They promised to condemn the men who had incited them. They vowed to remain there day and night, till Alexander pitied them. After a while he came out. By then they were weeping, and he could not hold back his tears. He stepped forward, struggling for words. A cavalry officer called Callines spoke first. What had hurt them, he said, was his having made Persians his kin with leave to kiss him, a privilege no Macedonian had enjoyed.
Alexander answered, “But I make you all my kinsmen, I call you that from now on.” When he had said this, Callines came up and kissed him, and anyone kissed him who wished. Then they took up their arms again, and went back cheering and singing paeans to the camp.
The instigators of the mutiny were condemned to death as agreed. Arrian comments on Alexander’s having ordered their arrest, “For his temper had worsened at this time”; a startling light upon his earlier tolerance, but probably true; increased fatigue and recurrent pain do make for irritability. T. E. Lawrence says in The Mint, “After that Handley crash in Rome the X-ray showed one rib furred like the bristles of a toothbrush against the wall of my chest, and much lung-pumping thrusts its thin dagger-pain into my heart.” The wall of Alexander’s chest had been perforated; his rib is more likely to have had spikes than bristles; and his X-ray would probably have shocked a thoracic surgeon. But whatever his recent anger, its sequel had deeply touched the romantic in him. He had made it up like a lovers’ quarrel; but it needed a bigger gesture. With his usual mixture of drama and practicality, he offered public thanksgiving at which both Greek seers and Persian magi officiated, followed by an enormous open-air feast of reconciliation. All the Macedonians (Arrian must mean all the officers) sat round him; next came the Persians; the foreign auxiliaries took precedence by their military records. He and his comrades drank from the same loving cup. “And he prayed for all kinds of blessings, and for harmony; above all between Greeks and Persians in their common land. It is said that nine thousand shared the feast.”
After this, 10,000 elderly mercenaries were affectionately seen off without trouble; paid for their travel time, with a bounty of a talent each. Alexander took into his care the children of their campaign wives; he knew what their lives would be as foreign bastards in Macedon, and promised to have the boys brought up as Macedonians and good soldiers. He would present them to their fathers when they were men. Why not? He was only thirty-two.
Contained in the veterans’ departure was an act of great political significance. They went under the command of Craterus, allegedly in need of sick leave (perhaps really so; he was given a deputy in case of his incapacitation); but appointed, when he reached Macedon, to assume the Regency.
Antipater had held this office ever since Alexander’s boyhood in every absence of two successive kings, except when it was held by Alexander. For ten years he had been the virtual master of Greece. He was now ordered to come out with the draft of fresh troops from Macedon. What plans Alexander had for him is uncertain, since he never came. Alexander may have merely wished to separate him from Olympias as he had once temporarily separated Craterus and Hephaestion. The constant friction between Queen and Regent was an old story; but new factors had accumulated. There was the restoration of the exiles thrown out by Antipater’s puppet regimes; there was his continued close friendship with Aristotle, from whom since the squires’ conspiracy Alexander had been estranged. Olympias, though mischievous, was not a fool, and may have sent information which her son took seriously. Arrian says that he never at any time expressed the least ill will to Antipater; who, however, was extremely perturbed when the royal courier reached him. While Craterus was crossing Asia at the easy pace his health and his veterans’ needed, the Regent sent off his son Cassander to plead his cause. The two men must have met somewhere along the road; and the encounter can hardly have been amicable.