that we might land troops on the lower parts of the walls, but guaranteed that they would be supplied whenever they wanted them. In fact, quite early in the siege, before we’d even begun our engineering efforts, a Carthaginian fleet arrived with food and left carrying all of the city’s women and children to safety. Carthage had the largest maritime empire in the Inner Sea, and the knowledge that they would come to the rescue of their mother city was a blow to us. Watching the ease with which their thirty-ship squadrons sailed in and out enraged Alexander, who responded with a declaration of war against Carthage. Against Carthage! Because we didn’t have enough enemies!
The third night after the assassination of our envoys, Diades called the military council together to make his report.
He was a short, thick man with arms like old cables, and men called him ‘The Smith’. Other men called him Hephaestus. He was not old, but he was so careful in his speech that he sometimes sounded like a man of Parmenio’s generation. He had my Helios as an assistant, and Helios grinned at me when he set up the easel on which Diades arranged his drawings.
Diades rubbed his beard and waited for silence.
Philotas threw a bread pill at his brother, who responded by throwing a grape at Philotas. It missed and hit his father, splashing purple-red on Parmenio’s spotless uniform chiton. Nicanor paled.
Parmenio walked over with the grape and slapped it into his son’s hair. Then he rubbed it in.
Nicanor just allowed it to happen.
Alexander wasn’t the only man with a bad temper, let me tell you. At any rate, after a great deal of throat- clearing, Diades held out his hands.
‘Tyre,’ he said. His voice came out in an odd, loud, strangled way, and in the old temple – which we were using as both a temple and a meeting room – it was so loud that he frightened himself. He went on in a voice so soft that men behind the first row could not hear him.
‘Speak up!’ Alexander said.
Diades glared at him.
We all laughed. That seemed to help him. He steadied, looked around and rubbed his beard with his left hand.
‘You know how it is,’ he asked, ‘when you start a project and you don’t know if you can finish it? Those are always the hardest projects. Because you fear that all your work may be in vain. Whether that project is the pursuit of a woman, or the conquest of Asia, or the making of a fine gold seal – in every case, the uncertainty of completion is more of a limit to success than any limits to our skills – whether seduction, conquest or craftsmanship.’
I told you – Aristotle trained him. He was a brilliant thinker, when he put himself to it.
‘The siege of Tyre will be an extreme example of such a project. There is only one practical way of approaching the city, and that way will bring us into contact with the highest and stoutest portion of the wall. By my estimation, it will take us seven months merely to reach a point where we might say that the city is under siege. Until then, we will merely be building – building a causeway. And the citizens of Tyre will laugh at us. We won’t interrupt their food supply. We cannot even slow their trade! We cannot build engines whose stones will hit their walls, we cannot throw fire into the city itself, we cannot open trenches, we cannot undermine. We cannot storm the city, because we would have to walk across the ocean bottom to reach it.’
Alexander made to interrupt, but Diades, who knew his man, drove on.
‘But we
He went and sat.
Alexander rose. ‘You are talking a siege of a year.’
Diades nodded. ‘At least a year, unless a fortuitous event happens, or the gods take a hand.’
Alexander shook his head. ‘We have triumphed thus far by the speed of our advance and our reputation as invincible. How will that look if we take a year to storm one city?’
Parmenio sneered, ‘We have bypassed cities before.’
Callisthenes shook his head. ‘Not cities that have defied us. Not cities that have murdered our ambassadors.’
He directed the Military Journal, and he decided what the Greeks should be allowed to know – and he wrote the florid reports of our victories. His carefully doctored lies were essential to the way the Macedonian army was perceived. More and more, he worked directly with Thais, whom he affected to despise, and her information and his often worked together.
I disliked him. But in this case, I agreed with him.
‘I took the Halicarnassus island forts,’ I said. ‘Or rather, Helios there, by the easel, took them. It took us seven months. Until the last three weeks, none of the garrison even thought that they were in danger.’
Diades nodded his thanks to me.
Cleitus fingered his beard. ‘If we fail here . . .’ he ventured.
Diades slammed his fist on the table. ‘We do not need to fail!’ he roared, no longer timid.
Alexander looked around. It was not like him to be so cautious, but he had been shaken by the killing of the ambassadors. The very impiety of it stung him.
‘Parmenio?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you want my opinion?’ Parmenio asked. ‘Delighted to give it. March away. Always bypass strength. Except that in this case, your whole strategy is that we can take any city along the coast that can offer a harbour to the Persian fleet – isn’t it? So your strategy requires that we take this city – and every other city from Ionia to Aegypt.’ He sighed theatrically. ‘Of course, we could just march home. We’re richer than Croesus. We hold the best part of the empire. And my soldiers are tired, Alexander.’
Alexander nodded. ‘My soldiers, Parmenio.’ He looked past the old general to me. ‘Ptolemy?’
‘I lost half of my new levies at Issus,’ I said. ‘I’ve had eleven suicides and four murders in the last month.’ I looked around and saw a great many heads nodding. ‘I’m concerned that while we sit here, Pharnabazus is retaking Ionia behind us, rendering our efforts meaningless. But . . . I agree with Diades – if we put our minds to it, I’m sure we can do it. I would only hope that once we decide on a course, we set that course in stone.’ I stood up. ‘Again, let me mention the Halicarnassus forts. It will take a long time. But like many tasks, it is the task never begun that is impossible.’
Alexander frowned. ‘Do I ever change my mind, once I am set on a thing?’ he asked.
Like many men, Alexander had a vision of himself that was at odds with the reality. Some men see themselves as timely, but are forever late. Other men see themselves as great lovers, and women tell a different story. So with Alexander, who thought that he possessed a will of iron.
Parmenio guffawed. ‘You change your mind like a woman,’ he said.
Very helpful.
Diades alone stuck to his message. ‘We can build something worthy of a descendant of Herakles,’ he said. ‘Perhaps greater than any labour of Herakles.’
Alexander looked at him. Looked at Parmenio.
He was silent for a long time. And then he stood straight like a sword blade, and spoke like an orator.
‘Friends and allies,’ he began, and his full charm was on. ‘I see that an expedition to Aegypt will not be safe for as long as the Persians retain the sovereignty of the sea, nor is it a safe course for other reasons – and especially looking at the state of matters in Greece – for us to pursue Darius, leaving in our rear the city of Tyre itself. I would be precipitous if I were to advance with our forces towards Babylon and in pursuit of Darius and allow the Persians to reconquer the maritime districts – and with them in hand, to transfer the war into Greece with a larger army, considering that the Lacedaemonians are now waging war against us without disguise, and the city of Athens is restrained for the present rather by fear than by any goodwill towards us! But if Tyre were captured, the whole of Phoenicia would be in our possession and the fleet of the Phoenicians, which is the most numerous and the best in the Persian navy, would in all probability come over to us. For the Phoenician sailors and marines will not put to sea in order to incur danger on behalf of others when their own cities are occupied by us. After that – well,
