At the Tigris crossing they met him themselves, and, says Arrian, drew him apart from his companions. Presumably through an interpreter, they warned him not to continue his westward march, but to turn east. At that time of year this would have been the normal progress of a Persian king going to Susa. This one, however, had plans which could only be carried out in Babylon. He replied with a line of Euripides which said (whatever the interpreter made of it) that the best prophecies are those that come true. A sceptic he had never been; but he liked his own way, and had survived bad omens before. He had had one at Gaza, and had not bled quite to death; he had had one at the Oxus, and recovered from his cholera or whatever he had got. Yet at Multan, where he had been a hair’s breadth from death, he had had no warning at all. And he had a present suspicion of ulterior motives. His vast gift to the temple restoration fund at his earlier visit had produced, he heard, no temple. Bel’s tithes had been coming in ever since Xerxes’ demolition; when the new structure rose, they would have to go to its upkeep instead of to the priests. After Harpalus’ defalcations, he must have wondered about the building fund itself. Babylon had no reputation for austerity.
But even a suspect god should be given some benefit of doubt; so he decided to enter the city, at least, from the eastern side. He led his men round, but found the way barred by swamps. Floundering about in Euphrates mud, in deference to a mercenary ruse, would have been humiliating; it made up his divided mind. Arrian, perhaps here echoing Nearchus, says, “So partly from choice, and partly not, he disobeyed the god.” Not long after his entry into the city, he sent for Apollodorus’ brother, the seer Peithagoras, and asked what sign had made him send his warning. Evidently Apollodorus had been afraid to say; but one man of integrity perceived another. The omen was described; Alexander asked its real meaning, and was told, “Something very grave.” His only outward response was to express respect for the seer’s honesty. Aristobulus said in his memoirs that Peithagoras himself had told him this.
Ever since Hephaestion died and he hanged the doctor, it cannot have been far from Alexander’s mind that Achilles had not long outlived Patroclus. Immortal Thetis, reading the fate of her mortal son, had warned him that if he avenged his friend his own death came next; he had paid the blood debt, and its price. But only a part of Alexander’s mind lived with Homeric parallels. Swift-footed Achilles, a poet’s great creation, had not himself ever created anything. He had not been a king, an explorer, a builder of cities or of peoples. Alexander looked westward, and planned for his next few years.
Roxane had come to Babylon, obviously by the easy Royal Road from Ecbatana, for she cannot have gone roughing it in the winter war. She was pregnant. Odd, and perhaps very significant, is the absence of any comment from Alexander, any known word about his plans if the child were male. And here a look at the map suggests an important possibility. He had “rested his men” after the campaign; and the easy route back to Babylon would be by way of Susa. Here were installed Barsine-Stateira, the young Drypetis (perhaps only since Hephaestion’s death), and Sisygambis, whose influence had always been so great. If he passed through, he must have visited them; and he may then have decided that his heir should be of royal Persian blood. It is possible that at the time of his death, Darius’ daughter was some months pregnant. This would make Roxane’s motive for her murder much more pressing than mere revenge.
Babylon was geographically central to Alexander’s empire; he intended it for the capital. Soon after he was gone it would sink into provinciality; by the first century it was in ruins. He had created in Alexandria the true centre of the Hellenistic world. But the Babylon of his day retained the traditions of royal pomp which Persia had inherited from Assyria. He half-Hellenized and enhanced it. His state pavilion was set up in the “paradise”; around him on couches with silver feet (probably the ones from the Susa wedding) sat his chief officers and friends. Near his throne stood the perfumed incense burners, ancient protection of Persian kings from the almost universal human stink (the courtier addressing Darius the Great on the Persepolis relief is holding up his hand to ward off his breath from the royal face). The beloved Bagoas now took his doubtless exalted place in a whole hierarchy of palace eunuchs, many of whom must have held office since Ochus’ reign. Here was the royal harem, which they had probably taken upon themselves to replenish with youthful beauty of either or neither sex.
To the state pavilion came the sacred embassies from Greece, to acknowledge the son of Ammon. Their tributes were mainly the exquisite golden crowns of which a few lesser examples have survived to hint at the best; wreaths of wheat or barley ears, berried olive sprays, flowers, wrought with the delicacy of nature. Here too, at a time not exactly known, came Antipater’s son Cassander as his father’s envoy.
He was a man in his prime, very able, and with no aversion to war; yet Alexander when setting out for Asia had left behind his Regent’s eldest son. Since Antipater was no invalid needing support, a long-standing antipathy seems the only explanation. Indeed, the unsuitability of Cassander for his mission made his father’s motive in sending him dubious to the ancient world, which suspected his real task of having been more sinister. But Antipater had no one else to send, his two other sons being already with Alexander; one, Iollas, serving as his cupbearer. Ten years had passed and boyhood quarrels might have been forgotten.
Ten years had passed, for Cassander, in Macedon; excluded from the great adventure with its resplendent prizes; fighting the Spartans in a war which comparison had made to seem provincial; watching Olympias’ constant intrigues against his father, whose policies had just been undermined by the Exiles’ Decree. Then had come the shattering blow of his replacement and summons to court; to men already resentful and uneasy, a move of implicit threat. Neither father nor son had seen Alexander in a decade; both had contacts with the Lyceum to which the dead Callisthenes had belonged. Now, in the exotic magnificence of Babylon, Cassander saw the men who had been boys when he was a boy seated in state among the incense burners as generals and satraps; and enthroned in gold the precocious lad he had hated and envied in old days at Pella, a world ruler, a god.
Alexander for his part found Cassander no more attractive than before. Their exchanges became hostile almost at once. That Cassander jeered at a Persian doing the proskynesis, and that Alexander banged his head against the wall, is probably a transferred anecdote, but scarcely looks far-fetched. Long after Alexander’s death, says Plutarch, the sudden sight of his statue at Delphi threw Cassander into a cold sweat. Later he killed Olympias, Roxane and her son; that he would have liked to kill Alexander is beyond question; naturally enough he is Plutarch’s favourite suspect. Even now, in the teeth of the medical evidence, he cannot be acquitted without reluctance.
With no intention of removing the trusty Craterus from his new appointment, Alexander had small time for Cassander anyway; his own concerns were too large. His westward movement was about to start. Its first phase would be a coastwise exploration of the unknown Arabian Peninsula, in search of a navigable route to Egypt. The Egyptian end of the Red Sea he knew about already; also about Darius the Great’s canal from near Suez into the Nile, which only needed clearing to let a navy through. Among the papers said to have been found after his death was a plan for the exploration of the North African coast and construction of a road as far as the Strait of Gibraltar. His next objective would probably have been Sicily, a land then in vulnerable fission; its history had been among the books sent him by Harpalus; it would have made a good springboard for Italy. As the embassies had shown, his reputation had already half-won his future campaigns. The Carthaginians and the Romans would have given him hard work; if he lived through that, there was nothing much to stop him from getting to Britain.