Philip read levelly, without anger; the lines of his face only deepened into seams. He laid down the scroll by his dish, and said, “Well, if they will have it, they will have it.”
“I’m sorry, Father; I suppose it had to be.” Could he not see that however the Thebans had voted, Athens would still have hated him? That there was no way he could have entered her gates, but as a victor? How had he nursed so long this insubstantial dream? Better leave him in peace, and think about realities. It would be the second war-plan, now.
Athens and Thebes made ready at fever-heat to meet Philip’s southward march. Instead he went west, into the mountain ribs and gorges that fringed the Parnassos massif. He had been commissioned to drive the Amphissians from the sacred plain; this he would do. As for Thebes, let it be said he had only tested a doubtful ally’s loyalty, and knew the answer.
The young men of Athens, roused for war, prepared to go north to Thebes. The omens were taken; the fires smoldered, the diviners misliked the entrails. Demosthenes, finding the dead hand of superstition raised against him, declared these portents were meant to reveal the traitors in their midst, paid by Philip to stop the war. When Phokion, back from a mission too late to change events, urged that the city should get an oracle from Delphi, Demosthenes laughed, and said that all the world knew Philip had bought the Pythia.
The Thebans received the Athenians as the Lynkestids had welcomed Alexander, with careful courtesy. The Theban general disposed his joint force to guard the southern passes, and to block Philip from Amphissa. All over the wild stony uplands of Parnassos, and in the gorges of Phokis, the armies scouted and maneuvered. Trees turned brown, then bare; on the tops the first snows fell. Philip took his time. He was busy rebuilding the forts of the impious Phokians, who gratefully leased them to his men, in exchange for a cut in their fines to the plundered god.
He would not be tempted into a major battle. There was a skirmish in a river gorge, another in an upland pass, both broken off when he saw his troops being drawn into awkward country. Athens hailed them as victories, and thanksgiving feasts were held.
One winter night, Philip’s tent was pitched out of the wind against a cliff-face, above a river in snow-spate churning its stony gorge. On the slopes between, a pine wood had been felled for cook-fires. Dusk was falling; eddies of pure mountain air pierced through the heavy mingled smells of wood-smoke, porridge, bean broth, horses, crudely cured tent hides, and many thousand unwashed men. On leather camp-chairs, Philip and Alexander sat warming their wet boots at the glowing crumble of their fire. The steamy reek of his father’s feet blended for Alexander with the other homely and familiar scents of war. He himself was no more than fairly dirty; when streams were hard to come at, he would rub himself down with snow. His attention to these things had created a legend, of which he was still unaware, that he was endowed with a natural fragrance. Most of the men had not bathed for months. Their wives would scrub them, when they returned to the marriage bed.
“Well,” said Philip, “didn’t I tell you Demosthenes’ patience would wear out before mine? I heard just now. He’s sent them.”
“What? How many?”
“The whole ten thousand.”
“Is the man mad?”
“No, he’s a party politician. The voters didn’t like to see paid troops drawing pay and rations in Attica, while citizens went to war. They’ve been on my mind; trained men, and too mobile where they were, too mobile by far. At the clinch, ten thousand extra men is a good many. Now we can deal with them first; they’re being sent direct to Amphissa.”
“So we wait till they’re there. Then what?”
Philip’s yellow teeth grinned in the firelight. “You know how I slipped away at Byzantion? We’ll try that again. We’ll have bad news, very bad news from Thrace. Revolt, Amphipolis threatened, every man needed to hold the frontier. I shall reply, in good clear writing, that we are marching north with all our forces. My courier will be captured, or maybe sell the letter. The enemy’s scouts will see us starting northward. At Kytinion we’ll go to ground, lie low, and wait.”
“Then over the Grabian Pass, and attack at dawn?”
“A stolen march, as your friend Xenophon says.”
They stole it, before spring thaw had drowned the river-crossings. The mercenaries of Athens did their duty, as long as there was hope in it; after that, being professionals, they either got away to the coast, or asked for terms. Most of these last ended by enlisting with Philip, had their wounds dressed, and sat down to a good hot meal.
The Amphissians surrendered without condition. Their government was exiled as the Sacred League had decreed. The holy plain was stripped of their impious husbandry, and left fallow for the god.
In the first warmth of spring, at the theater of Delphi, the steep pale eagle-cliffs of the Phaidriades behind them, the great temple of Apollo before, and the vast gulf beyond, King Philip was crowned by the League with a golden laurel crown. He and his son were eulogized in long speeches and choric odes; a sculptor sketched them, for statues to adorn the temple.
Afterwards, Alexander walked with his friends on the jostling terrace. It hummed and stank with the throng from all over Greece, and as far as Sicily, Italy and Egypt. Rich votaries marched with their offerings displayed on the heads of slaves, goats bleated, doves moaned in wicker cages; faces eager, devout, relieved, drawn with anxiety, came and went. It was one of the days for the oracle.
Under the noise, Hephaistion said in Alexander’s ear, “Why don’t you, while you’re here?”
“Not now.”
“It would set your mind at rest.”
“No, the time’s not right. One should take the seer by surprise, I think, in a place like this.”
A sumptuous performance was put on in the theater; the protagonist was Thettalos, renowned for his heroic roles. He was a handsome ardent young man, whose Thessaliari blood was mixed with some Celtic strain; his training in Athens had contained his fire in good technique, and his natural rashness in good manners. He had often played in Pella, and was a favorite with Alexander, for whom he conjured some special vision of the hero’s soul. Now in Sophokles’ Ajax, doubling Ajax and Teukros, he made it unthinkable the one should outlive his honor, the other fail in loyalty to the dead. Alexander went round afterwards with Hephaistion to the skene-room. Thettalos had pulled off the mask of Teukros, and was toweling the sweat from his strongly carved face and short curly chestnut hair. At the sound of Alexander’s voice he emerged and glowed at him with large hazel eyes, saying, “I am glad if you were pleased. I was playing it all to you.”
They talked awhile about his recent travels. At the end he said, “I get about a good deal. If ever you have any business, never mind what, and need someone you can trust, you know it would be a privilege.”
He was understood. Actors, the servants of Dionysos, were protected persons; often used as envoys, as secret agents even oftener. Alexander said, “Thank you, Thettalos. There is no one I would sooner ask.”
When they were walking away towards the Stadium, Hephaistion said, “You know that man’s still in love with you?”
“Well, one can at least be civil. He’s sensible, he doesn’t misunderstand. Someday I might need to trust him, one never knows.”
With good spring weather, Philip moved down to the Gulf of Corinth, and took Naupaktos, which commanded its outer strait. In summer, he moved about in the country behind Parnassos, strengthening strongpoints, keeping alliances warm, making roads, feeding up his cavalry mounts. Now and again he would make feints to the east, where Athenians and Thebans tensely manned the passes. Then he would march away, leaving them flat and stale, and would hold maneuvers or games, to make sure his own men were neither.