God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

had become deeply concerned by Alexander’s little ways – with sex. It was known to every one of us that Philip thought that his son was soft – possibly effeminate. A gynnis. There had been loud words exchanged on the subject, and Olympias – never a subtle woman – sent Alexander a hetaera, a courtesan, named Calixeinna.

She was outrageously beautiful, with the sort of body – high, perfectly round breasts, a tiny waist, a long, sculpted face with small, thick lips for kissing and enormous eyes – the sort of body that drives men mad.

All of us – even the prince – lived in the Macedonian version of a Spartan barracks, in messes of ten boys – five oldsters and five youngsters. Some oldsters slept alone, some with each other, some with the younger boys. Some were just sharing cloaks for warmth. Eh? And some weren’t. Until Calixeinna came.

The poor thing was appalled to be the only woman in what must have seemed like an armed camp with academics. She was quite intelligent – she could recite great swathes of the Iliad – but the idea that she had no room of her own, that she had to dress and undress with forty boys, made her angry. She threatened to leave.

Alexander refused to live outside the barracks.

Aristotle bit his lips, cursed and found women for us all, or, if not all, at least a few per mess. Country girls – not prostitutes, no one’s father would have allowed that. The king offered them all dowries and regular pay, and I suspect there was no shortage of volunteers – we were good-looking, clean and noble.

Of course, this was also the occasion for his famous lecture on the life of hedonism versus the life of restraint and self-control, too.

The truth is that our barracks life improved immeasurably when the women moved in. The clothes were cleaner, the conversation was better, and the youngsters began to laugh and play – the women wouldn’t allow them to be abused. Women exert a subtle influence – not so subtle, sometimes. They will say things without fear that even a warrior might fear to say.

At any rate, I had a regular bed-warmer from the first. She was named Iphegenia – some parents need a better classical education – and she was pretty enough, with large hips and smooth muscles and breasts. She was scared the first time we were naked together, and after that, not – and she was never put off by my scars. I can’t say I loved her – she was the most selfish woman I’ve ever known well – but she took good care of me, bore my first bastard and my pater put her on a farm for me. I hope she lives yet.

Oh, I’m an old man. I love to think of Genny stripping for bed – the only sign I ever had that she was as eager as I was the way she’d incline towards my sleeping roll like a hunting dog pointing to the prey. Hah!

But Alexander appeared to want nothing to do with his courtesan. She was in his sleeping roll most nights, and a few times I saw her under his cloak, once even wrapped in his arms. He was gracious to her. But that was the limit, and Aristotle openly admonished him against her.

Olympias sent notes explaining how men and women had sex, and how much better sex with a woman was than sex with a man. Just picture getting this lecture from your mother, herself a famous beauty, a veritable avatar of Aphrodite. Zeus, god of kings, what a horror that woman could be, and how much of Alexander can be laid at her door. Sober, she was brilliant and scary, and drunk, she was a lascivious predator with no scruples and a poisonous memory. And her power to manipulate – she was quite brilliant . . .

She was very beautiful, with sparkling eyes and curly brown hair, tall, elegantly limbed – please don’t imagine her as somebody’s mother. She bore Alexander at the age of fourteen, and when I first met her – not first saw her at court at a distance, but actually stood in her presence – she was twenty-five years old, in the prime of her beauty. Her skin glowed, and she herself had a sort of radiant vitality that she passed unmarred to her son. I’ve known men who hated her, and I’ve heard magnificent tales of her debauchery, and I know some of them to be true, but let it be said – Macedonian men disliked powerful women, and she was a powerful woman who added to beauty and charm an indomitable will and an almost unbreakable bond with the king that allowed her to call the tune at court. She had many enemies.

She was fiercely protective of Alexander and her protection extended to his friends and companions, and despite having several skirmishes with her myself, as you will hear, I have to admit that she was often our ally against Philip and his companions – the older men who saw us first as children and later as dangerous rivals.

But I digress. That winter, she had got it into her head that Alexander needed a woman, and she decided that the woman of his dreams would also be a useful tool to manipulate him – this is a fine example of how her mind worked.

Anyway, she and Aristotle were adversaries. These days, it has become popular to suggest that Olympias and Philip were the enemies, but I never saw that. It seemed to me that Olympias and Philip were united in wanting their boy to grow up to be a good, solid, dependable Macedonian nobleman – something, I’d like to note, that Philip never was – and Aristotle wanted something more – a great king, an Athenian-style philosopher who had the mettle of Achilles and the mind of Socrates.

Calixeinna became their battleground. She could flirt, a talent wasted on young men, and she could play the lyre and the flute and recite poetry. She could also do geometry, and this fascinated Alexander and even Aristotle. She was not without weapons. Nor was Alexander indifferent to her. He loved beauty, and she was beautiful.

One day, Alexander was paired with me in a war game. We were to live without supplies for three days, stealing food from the kitchens or outlying farms. This was in emulation of the Spartan training, and deeply unfair – if we were caught, I would be beaten. Alexander was never beaten.

We were taken some miles from the Gardens of Midas, and our horses were taken by slaves. We were to live three days off the country, never being caught or even seen, and then we were to steal food from the manor itself, and finally, we were to surrender ourselves to Aristotle at a set time.

Alexander wanted to be paired with Hephaestion, but for whatever reason, he was paired with me. We were taken into the chora, the farmland west of the manor, and left at the edge of the forest without food, water or weapons of any kind.

Perhaps this sort of thing challenges Spartan boys. Alexander and I had a very pleasant three days. We lay up until dark, stole into the first farm and took the dog leashes off the wall of an outbuilding we’d observed at last light. We slept together for warmth and in the morning we unwove the hemp leashes and made slings. Instead of going into the chora, we went up into the hills and killed every rabbit we wanted. There were ripe berries on the bushes, and Alexander got us not one but two magnificent trout out of a stream by standing stock still in the freezing water until the trout trusted him – and then he abused that trust. He was very proud of his feat and I praised him extravagantly, both while I cooked the fish in clay and later, when my belly was full.

Trout, rabbit – by the gods, we ate more than we ate in the pages’ mess, and we slept as long as we wanted. It makes me laugh to think of it.

The second night, we were watching the stars come out. We’d been talking about war – as a generality.

‘I want to conquer Persia,’ he said, as if the stars had just told him.

My belly was full and I was sleepy. ‘I want a cup of good wine,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Don’t be an ass,’ he said. ‘Pater is not going to get the invasion together until Athens is subdued. Athens can’t be subdued until the Chersonese is cleared. The Chersonese can’t be cleared until the Athenian fleet is neutralised. The Athens fleet can’t be neutralised until Persia is conquered. Persia can’t be conquered until Athens is subdued.’

He grinned, proud of his deliberately circular logic.

‘But this season he’s campaigning in Thrace, against the Scyths and the Thracians,’ I pointed out.

Alexander laughed. ‘You know as well as I that fighting the Thracians and the Scyths is merely an extension of fighting for the Chersonese.’

I did know that, so I laughed. ‘But we don’t have to beat Athens,’ I said suddenly.

‘Why not?’ the prince asked.

‘Athens is a democracy,’ I said.

Alexander nodded. ‘Good point.’

This was, I have to add, one of the chief features of discussing anything with Alexander. He was so intelligent that when you did make a good point, he always – or almost always – understood immediately, which had the boring effect of keeping the rest of us from ever getting to explain ourselves. What I had meant was, Athens is a democracy, and sooner or later one of their factions will screw up their alliance with Persia, or lose interest in the war, and then we’ll have them. And the moment I said it, Alexander understood.

It saved time in argument, anyway. But our conversations may have seemed stilted to outsiders. The insiders