since Chaeronea had improved his appearance: his face, though still beardless, had lost its adolescent softness, and the spots were gone. His waxy hair shined in the lamp-light in a way that could be taken for blond.
“Perhaps we can help each other in our projects, you and I.”
He was distracted by a servant who whispered something in his ear. I was just able to hear the message: his mother Olympias had requested to see him. With a sigh that indicated more than simple weariness, he rose to go to her.
“We’ll talk together later,” he promised.
I didn’t see him again for some time, after the third round of craters had been brought in. In the interim I sat alone, attracting stares more frigid than the ice in the wine coolers. As a precaution against the Eye, I clenched the fingers of my right hand around my thumb and spat on the ground. The Macedonians around me responded by spitting on the ground too. This set off the revelers around them, in a wide concentric ring of spitting, until men all over the great tent wet the floor.
A man, gray-haired and heavily scarred in his face, finally approached me. Without introducing himself, and listing with drink, he set his feet and pointed an accusing finger at me.
“I saw you in Boeotia! You held a line of hoplites against three wedges of horse!”
Not knowing what to say, I shrugged. The drunk then leaned forward, an expression of surprised gratification spreading over him.
“You know how to fight!”
He raised his cup, drank to me, and staggered off. Much later, I learned that I had been addressed by Cleitus son of Dropidas, so-called ‘Black Cleitus,’ and that praise from him was a rare honor.
Alexander returned. Taking his place on the couch again, he resumed our conversation as if there had been no interruption.
“I already have an historian for the trip to Asia. Have you heard of Callisthenes of Olynthus?”
“The son of Aristotle?”
“The nephew.”
“I know nothing of him except his name.”
“I will tell you that the Queen Mother doesn’t like him. I will not bore you with the reasons…except to say that he is no soldier…give it here, son!”
He intercepted a servant with a wine pitcher, taking it from him to fill his cup. As anachronistic as the Macedonian court seemed to Athenian eyes, it was informal enough to obligate the King to chase after his own drinks. By comparison, Darius of Persia probably had three flunkies dedicated to the management of his potations.
We sat together, watching his officers carouse. Here and there, cups were drained down throats or down chins, and the cithara players swayed in their pleated costumes, and the blouses of the female entertainment were peeled away in happy, innocent debauch. The King tapped my cup with his own, asking “Don’t you feel like a demigod among savages, when you sit with these Macedonians?”
How could I answer this peculiar question? It sounded like an invitation to insult him. Instead, I kept my silence.
“So tell me, Machon, if you might join our party.”
“That is why I was sent.”
“Not as a commander. I have enough of those! I need officers along who can carry a pack, but who can also marshal ranks and files of a different kind-the kind that goes on scrolls. Do you favor my metaphor?”
It took me a moment to realize that he was asking this question in all seriousness. I said I admired his metaphor very much, of course, which clearly pleased him.
“How long a campaign do you envision?”
“To free the Ionian cities for good, no more than two years. Can you ride a horse? No? Shall we make you an officer of the Shield-bearers? Ptolemy, is he tall enough for First Company?”
“No!”
“Then it’s Second Company! Fetch him a helmet!”
The order was passed from couch to couch and out the door, and drew back a peaked Phrygian helmet from the armory, which was likewise handed toward me from man to man.
“My lord Alexander, while I appreciate that you want my services, I have seen too much fighting in the ranks to be made a retainer.”
“Our Shield-bearers are not retainers,” Hephaestion said with some impatience. “In our army, they are the light infantry that keeps the cavalry in touch with the phalanx. You are being honored.”
Alexander dumped the helmet in my lap and clapped me on the back.
“Welcome to the king’s Hypaspists, Machon son of Agathon!”
I sat through the rest of the party with only the helmet for company. It was old, with enough chips and dents to tell the story of Philip’s seventeen years of unrelenting raids, battles, and sieges. And now it seemed the pattern would be repeated with the son. As to many of you, it came as a relief to me that the Macedonian juggernaut would at last be directed east, against the barbarians. Meanwhile, while the post of expedition historian was not the role I came to play, it would give me ample opportunity to observe and report to the Assembly.
My decision to accept this offer was vindicated when all the Athenians but me were sent home. While he had the greatest esteem for the artists and philosophers of Athens, he held the soldiers of our city to be in a kind of bad odor. Aeschines suggests that he feared betrayal, but I don’t agree: there were contingents from plenty of Greek allies, such as the Thessalians, whom he kept at his back without any such concern. Instead, I think he and his comrades dreaded the air of defeat they perceived around Athenian arms. The Macedonians had known nothing but victory for a good many years, and standing at the opening of a difficult campaign, and of provincial and superstitious minds, they simply wanted nothing but winners around them.
The chronicler’s post turned out to have enormous advantages. Alexander, desperate as he was for acclaim, put few limits on where I could go, or to whom I might talk. By this he did not intend that I would write embarrassing things about him. There would be an official version of every major event on the march. However, the enforcement of his legend was accomplished most through immersing the writer so completely in the affairs of the King, his trials and his joys, the day-to-day substance of his great endeavor, that the historian could not help but sympathize with his subject. There was power in being allowed within the charmed circle of Companions-a power that Alexander used well. As evidence, I point to the manuscripts of Callisthenes that had already appeared at the bookstalls. Yes, even Callisthenes, who was eventually murdered by Alexander, casts his subject as history’s finest hero.
My first sampling of this privilege came just before the army left for Asia, as I became aware of troubling reports from the inner court. Alexander had only recently finished erecting a splendid tomb for his father, which he accomplished at the cost of much time and money. Though father and son had been estranged in recent years, the young King discharged his duty with great devotion, showing the reverence for custom that marked his conduct in the years to come. I was at the royal cemetery in Aigai before the tomb’s fine painted facade was closed forever and buried under the hill. Having retrieved Philip’s bones from the pyre and bathed them in wine, Alexander installed them in their gold box and sealed the inner chamber. With his own hands, Alexander placed a pair of Philip’s greaves at the door to his resting place, leaning them there as if his father had just stepped inside for a nap.
Cynics may do their best to impugn his motives. They may say that he made such a lavish dedication to his father’s memory not out of genuine feeling, but to prove to the Macedonian nobles that the estates and privileges they gained under Philip were safe. Yet it still cannot have been easy for any son to face the premature death of his father. Add to this the suspicion that Philip was seeking by the end to delegitimize Alexander’s claim to the throne by marrying again, and we might begin to understand the welter of feelings in the young man. Yet it seems that Olympias only added to his troubles with a solemn announcement: Philip was not Alexander’s father after all!
Of this scene I have only rumors, but they have the ring of truth. The Queen, who was still beautiful, had claimed for herself a new visibility with the ascension of her son. She was no longer Olympias at all, it seems, but Athena-of-the-flashing-eyes, striding around the palace in boots, perfumed helmet, and a cuirass made of crane feathers. Alexander’s legitimacy, she declared, did not stem from her marriage to Philip, who was just a mortal after all, but from her union with the very King of the Gods. She then attempted to justify her account with inexcusable details. Zeus’s cock, she reported, was as wide around as a man’s forearm, and hung slightly sinister. With mortal women he fucked like Pan, from behind. When he came the oak trees swayed, and thunder rolled along
