God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

two people who are each spurned by a third and use that as a basis for marriage.

I remember it as a golden summer. Alexander was happy – he led us on raids and long tours in person, and he was brilliant at such stuff – always a step ahead of the Thebans and the Athenians – and then back to camp, tired but happy after three days on the road, to the unstinting praise of his father.

We were shutting the enemy cavalry in a box and dominating the countryside. The Athenian Hippeis had done well against Macedonians in the past – we’d got our fingers nipped by Phokion a few times. It was heady to be better than they in every skirmish. And the Theban cavalry were a sorry lot, and we bullied them. The Athenians never got bullied.

After one encounter, where we chased the Thebans twenty stades and captured a Boeotarch, Philip allowed that, in his son, he might have discovered a second Macedonian general after Parmenio.

Now that’s flattery. And Alexander loved him for it, gave him a leg-up when he went for a ride, held his horse when he dismounted, waited on him with a cup in his hand, and was the dutiful son that he secretly longed to be.

Both of them were better men when they were successful, together.

And all the plots fell to pieces. No one at court was going to plot against rampant success. Philip, the best general in Greek history, had a son who bid fair to be his equal. We were headed for glory. Attalus took a fraction of the army and marched off to reduce Naupactus, just to keep Athens at the bargaining table, and after he left, the camp was like paradise.

Sophists and priests like to tell people that war is a terrible thing, and indeed, it can be – dead babes, children starving, horses screaming for a man to come and put them down. Horrible. But war in the summer in Boeotia, between Greeks, men of education, courage and principle, was merely the greatest sport man could invent, or the gods. Those who died, died in the flower of youth and vigour, and we feasted every shade. And those that lived were better for having eaten at danger’s table and survived. And that is the other face of war – the contest of the worthy.

It went on for months, and while we faced the allies across the dance floor of Ares, we skirmished with their cavalry every day, we rode in races, we wrestled, we ate well and every night Nike took me in her arms. And Alexander ate with our mess once a week, when he wasn’t in the field. And Nike began to organise the camp girls – not that she was one of them, but neither did she put on airs.

Good times. I never tired of her. I captured a beauty one day – captured is too strong, but my patrol snapped up a dozen boys and a girl headed into the enemy camp, and the girl was my share. Hair like honey, big tits and a tiny waist – I sent her home. I had what I wanted. And I did it as a sacrifice to Aphrodite.

The wheat was ripening in the fields and the barley was golden when it became plain that no matter what we offered, Athens intended to fight. The last straw was Naupactus, a vital Athenian naval base. Attalus took it – he was a good soldier, despite being a total shit of a man – and at that point, Athens should have wanted peace. Instead, they marched their ephebes over the mountains, brought up four hundred more Hippeis, and the cavalry war heated up.

The new Athenian cavalry were better – the best we’d faced, with excellent horses and better discipline. Of course, they were the real aristocrats, most of whom were politically in favour of Philip – members of Phokion’s party to a man. Whatever their ethics, they had superb horses and they were crafty devils.

That’s the first time I saw your pater, sprig. He was a troop leader, like me, and we tangled twice in a row, honours even. His troop was excellent – not as rock hard as my boys, but better mounted. He caught me flat-footed at the edge of the hills over towards the Kerata Pass, and I caught him the next day, his troop tired and too strung out on the road – but while the men were tired, the mounts were fine, and I got one prisoner, a scruffy peasant boy named Niceas – he was allowed as he was a hyperetes, which with us is a servant, and I slapped his arse and told him to stay out of the fighting. More fool I. Among Athenians, that made him an under-officer, the troop leaders’ right hand.

Laugh at me, will you?

It was that night, though, that Philip called all the officers together and told us he was going to attack. He didn’t make a speech – we’d lived it. We knew that we’d done our bit, and that if Athens and Thebes held us here until winter, we’d have to go home and start the whole thing again next summer, storm the Gates of Fire or some other damned pass – on and on.

So he outlined his battle plan, which was simple – that his foot would defeat the Athenian foot, and force the Thebans to open their ranks, and then the Macedonian cavalry would ride them down. And Alexander would command the cavalry.

All the younger men were silent after he announced his plan. Philip was the best general of the day – but we were going uphill into a larger army, an army with the Sacred Band, the most feared taxeis of soldiers in the world; a regiment of pairs of lovers, each bound to the other by ties stronger than steel. You know the Plato—Phaedrus speaks in the Symposium and says:

And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?

The Thebans built their regiment just that way. And they were unbeatable.

And behind or alongside them were the deeply ranked professional Theban hoplites who had beaten the Spartans, and the Athenian hoplites who, whatever their failings, were reputed as the most tenacious in the Greek world. It has become fashionable to view the Athenians as second-class soldiers. Don’t ever confuse your own propaganda with the truth. And the younger men had grown to manhood on tales of Athens’ greatness.

It didn’t sound like a great plan to us.

And the older men didn’t like it any better, because Alexander, not Parmenio, had the cavalry. Parmenio wasn’t there – he was busy holding the Chersonese and keeping the Thracians at bay – but even Antipater got a subordinate command. Alexander had all the cavalry – all the Thessalians, all the Thracians, all the scouts and skirmishers and, of course, all the companions.

Philip left his horse and went to serve on foot, leading his precious hypaspists. Demosthenes said that Philip had fucked every man in the hypaspists, and Philip retorted that Demosthenes had an extra arse instead of a face.

We moved our camp forward, and Alexander pitched his tent under an ancient oak, and we camped around him, street by street. It was a clear declaration that we were coming to fight – we knew it, they knew it and a hundred thousand men, more or less, had bad dreams, sharpened things, polished things and were afraid.

The allies tried to outflank us to the south, by the citadel, where the rising ground gave them a natural advantage. That’s where the fight started, in the first light of dawn, and I was still drinking hot wine and trying not to throw up my porridge. Luckily, I had other people to worry about – an excellent way of remaining brave.

Besides, Nike was watching me. She was right there – not a distant rumour of womanhood back in Macedon, but the living embodiment of feminine opinion, and she did a great deal to make us what we were. Young men will compete for a woman’s good opinion, if she is worthy.

Besides, as far as we knew, there was nothing of which she was afraid.

When Polystratus brought my charger, Nike held the bridle, gave me a stirrup cup, said the prayer of Aphrodite over me and poured wine on my sword – and on Nearchus’s and Philip’s, too.

She kissed me – not a long, lust-filled kiss, but a plain kiss on the lips. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. And grinned. ‘So either way, you’re covered.’

She meant that if I lived, I had a child to raise, and if I died, an heir.

Not sure if that’s what every man wants to hear as he rides to battle, but for me, it was perfect. Something dropped away, and I rode to the prince with a light heart.

To our right, in the first true light of day, the phalanx was forming. In the best tradition of all Greek warfare, our best troops were on the right – the hypaspists and then the foot companions and then the phalanx, but all formed shield to shield in one long line sixteen deep and six stades long, covering the whole of the open ground from the rocks and scrubby ground at the base of the citadel hill, to the banks of the Cephissus river. Across the fields, just a few stades that a fit man could run before breakfast, the Thebans and Athenians formed, too. They