Even now, he sent once more envoys to Thebes and Athens, offering to discuss terms for a peace. Demosthenes proclaimed that Philip, twice repulsed by their arms, must be growing desperate; these offers proved it. One good push would finish him in the south.
In late summer, when the barley between the trees in the olive orchards of Attica and Boeotia was yellowing in the ear, he went back to his base at Elateia, but left his strongpoints manned. The forward outposts of Thebes and Athens were at a pass about ten miles south. Till his offers were thrown back, he had done no more than tease them. Now he displayed his strength; they were outflanked, and could be cut off when he chose. Next day his scouts found them gone; he took and manned the pass.
The men of the cavalry looked happy, polished their gear and made much of their horses. Now, the coming battle would be in the plains.
The barley whitened, the olives ripened. By the calendar of Macedon, it was the month of the Lion. King Philip gave a birthday feast in the fort for Alexander. He was eighteen.
Elateia had been made snug; woven hangings on the wall of the royal quarters, tiles on the floor. While the guests were singing, Philip said to his son, “You’ve not named your gift yet. What would you like?”
Alexander smiled. “You know that, Father.”
“You’ve earned it, it’s yours. It won’t be long now. I shall take the right wing, that goes back time out of mind. You will command the cavalry.”
Slowly Alexander set down on the table his golden cup. His eyes, shimmering and wide with wine and visions, met Philip’s lopsided black glint. “If you ever regret it, Father, I shan’t be there to know.”
The appointment was cheered, and toasted. Once more the birth-omens were remembered: the Olympic racing win, the Illyrian victory.
“And the third,” said Ptolemy. “It’s the one I remember best, I was at the age for marvels. It was the day the great Temple of Artemis was burned at Ephesos. A fire in Asia.”
Someone said, “I never heard how it came to happen, without a war. Was it a thunderbolt, or did some priest upset a lamp?”
“No, a man did it on purpose. I heard his name once. Heiro—Hero—a longer name than that. Niarchos, can you remember?”
No one could. Niarchos said, “Did they find out why he did it?”
“Oh, yes. He told them all willingly, before they killed him. He did it so that his name should be remembered forever.”
Dawn glimmered over the low hills of Boeotia, heather and scrub burned brown with summer, scattered with grey boulders and gravelly stones. Dark and rusty like the heath, weathered like the stones, spiny like the thorn trees, the men poured over the hills towards the plain. They trickled down the slopes and silted in the river valley; the silt thickened, but steadily flowed on.
Along the smoothest inclines the cavalry came ambling, careful of unshod hooves. The horses made only a muffled thudding as they picked their way among the heather, their bare backs gripped by the men’s bare thighs. It was the harness of the men that clicked and rattled.
The sky lightened, though the sun still stood behind the great eastward bulk of Parnassos. The valley, scoured out by primeval floods and filled in with their topsoil, began to flatten and widen. Along it burbled through stones the Kephissos River in its summer bed. East of it, low on the terraced slopes, its pink-washed houses still mauve with shadow, stood the village of Cheironeia.
The flood of men slowed its onward course, paused, and spread sideways across the plain. Ahead of it was stretched a dam. Its thick line bristled, and glinted in the first slanting sunbeams; a dam of men.
Between lay a clear space of innocent fields, fed by the river. Mown barley-stubble round the olive trees was pretty with poppies and vetch. There was a noise of crowing cocks, a bleating and lowing of farm-stock, sharp cries of boys and women driving the herds away uphill. The flood and the dam both waited.
In the broad throat of the pass, the northern army made camp along the river. The cavalry went downstream, to water their horses without fouling it for the rest. The men untied their cups from their belts and unpacked their food for the noon meal; flat griddle-cakes, an apple or an onion, a crumble of dirty grey salt from the heel of the bag.
The officers looked about for unsound spear-shafts or javelin thongs, and took the feel of morale. They found a healthy tension, like a drawn bow’s; the men had caught the sense of something momentous. They were thirty-odd thousand foot, two thousand horse; the host ahead was as many; this would be the greatest battle of all their lives till now. They were aware too of the men they knew, the captain who was the squire at home, the village neighbor, the fellow tribesmen and kin, who would report their honor or their shame.
Towards afternoon the long baggage train labored down with the tents and bedding. They could sleep well, all but the outposts; the King held all the flanking passes, their position could not be turned. The army ahead could only sit and wait his pleasure.
Alexander rode up to the ox-cart with the royal tents, and said, “Put mine there.” A young oak gave shade by the river; under the bank was a clear gravelly pool. Good, thought his servants, it would save carrying water. He liked his bath, not only after a battle but, if he could manage it, even before. Some grumbler had said he would be vain even of his corpse.
The King sat in his tent, giving audience to Boeotians, eager to tell him all they knew of the enemy’s plans. The Thebans had oppressed them; the Athenians, their sworn allies, had just sold them publicly to the Thebans; they had nothing much to lose by a leap in the dark. He received them with charm, listened to all their involved and ancient grievances, promised redress, and made notes in his own hand of all they had to tell. Before dusk, he rode up the hill to look for himself, with Alexander, Parmenion, and the next in command, a Macedonian lord called Attalos. The Royal Bodyguard under Pausanias rode behind.
Below them spread the plain which some old poet had called “the dancing-floor of war,” so often had armies met there. The confederate troops spread across from the river to the southern foothills, a front of about three miles. The smoke of their evening fires was rising, with here and there a spurt of flame. Not yet in line of battle, they were clumped, like birds of different species, each city and state apart. Their left wing, which would face the Macedonian right, was based firmly on rising ground. Philip narrowed his good eye at it.
“The Athenians. Well, I must have them out of there. Old Phokion, their only general who’s good for anything, has been given the navy; he was too canny to please Demosthenes. Our luck; they’ve sent Chares, who fights by the book…Hm, yes; I must put on a good-looking assault before I start falling back. They’ll swallow it, from the old general who writes off his losses.” He leaned over with a grin to clap Alexander’s shoulder. “It wouldn’t do for the Little King.”
Alexander’s brow creased, then cleared. He returned the grin, and went back to considering the long bar of men below, as an engineer who must divert a river considers obstructing rock. Tall lank-cheeked Attalos, with his forked yellow beard and pale blue eyes, had edged his horse up nearer, but now moved quietly back.
“So, then,” said Alexander, “in the center we’ve the odds and ends; Corinthians, Achaians, and so on. And on the right…”
“The high command. For you, my son, the Thebans. You see, I’ve not stinted your dish.”