considering the legacy of Athenian deceit cultivated by the anti-Macedonians, the King declined to accept our contingent into his army. What a stunning dishonor for Athenian arms, to be left on the shore at the outset of the greatest campaign ever to leave Greece! But all was not lost for Machon and his scheming sponsors: Alexander, the ever-mindful, salvaged the honor of our city by accepting one Athenian-Machon-into his inner circle of Companions. It was his fatal misfortune that his magnanimity was wasted on such a man.
It seems that Machon did not owe his position on Alexander’s staff to his knowledge of military matters, but to his pen. This is curious. I am aware of no one who can attest to the defendant’s competence as an historian; Machon has neither recited nor published anything of consequence. We may well imagine, then, the torrent of lies he must have told Alexander to convince him of his talent. On this point in particular, more than any vain protestations of his innocence, I am most interested to hear the defendant’s statement!
The invasion began. Alexander was the first to leap ashore on the Asian side, claiming it all as his spear-won territory, and proceeding thence to the ruins of Troy. Wits back home chuckled at the story that he honored his ancestor Achilles with sacrifices under the ravaged battlements; they laughed when they heard that Alexander and his favorite, Hephaestion, stripped naked, anointed each other with oil, and ran around the citadel seven times. They ridiculed him outright for his presumption to borrow the armor of Achilles from the Temple of Athena. Sophisticates far and wide scorned the King’s reverence for history-but sophisticates don’t win wars. The effect of these rites on his troops was inspirational. Would that the Greeks today be a bit more reverent and a bit less sophisticated!
What the gods thought of Alexander’s obsequies was evident in his first encounter with troops in Darius’s employ. I say ‘in his employ,’ rather than ‘Persian troops’ because the greater part of the enemy was composed of Greek mercenaries. And here again, we see evidence of the decline of honor of our race, that matters have come to such a pass that Greeks would take gold to defend a barbarian kingdom. By all evidence Alexander understood this as well as Darius: in the end, Persians alone could never carry the field against him. Only Greeks can ever defeat Greeks.
The first battle was joined beneath Mount Ida. On the far side of the Granicus River, the Greeks faced an army almost as large as theirs, barring their way on high banks as strong and secure as a castle. In front were the Persian horsemen on their baleful steeds, cased in armored skins that shone in the afternoon sun, scimitars and javelins solemnly crossed upon their chests. Behind crowded the upturned pikes of twenty thousand Greek mercenaries.
At this sight, a pall of misgiving spread over Alexander’s army, for they would not only have to defeat the arrayed host of their enemy, but the swift current of the river. Parmenion, a veteran general, counseled the King to delay his attack until morning. The position of the enemy, he said, was impregnable; the banks of the river, he warned, were treacherous, so that even if a crossing could be managed in the stream, the Greeks would never find purchase on the muddy slopes as they fought uphill against mounted foes. These were wise words, to be heeded by any leader of merely mortal stature; Philip himself might have accepted them.
All looked to Alexander, who said nothing at first, but seemed lost in thought, as if unable to make a decision. But when he finally spoke, it was the words of the Poet that came out. He sang-
And the silvered fish did swirl and bite
The tender flesh of newly-dead Lycaon.
You Trojans will die to a man as I fight
To far Ilium’s hallowed towers.
Run you might, my swift blade will try your backs.
No escape for those who cower
Beneath the whirling surge of Scamander!
No sacrifice, no blooded bull on cobbled bank
Or fair-maned horse cast in the river
Will save them now, dressed in pain
Until the price in blood is settled
For Patroclus and the Greeks slain
Beside the beaked ships
While I was away…
The Greeks’ response to this was, at first, nothing. The words were familiar enough to them, of course, but only as part of a story. Alexander would use the words to write his own epic, studying them at night from the school copy of the Iliad he always kept under his pillow. He deployed Homer’s lines like files of soldiers, crying: “As Achilles fought the wide Scamander, may we churn this stream with our greaves!”
And with that, they say, he was gone, charging down the near bank-
IV.
Several hours later, and with the exhaustion of Swallow’s entire supply of cheese, Aeschines at last seemed to be winding down his presentation.
With Alexander’s passage the world paused. They say that a shadow passed over Babylon that day, and with it the sound of great wings rustling. Far to the west, over Siwah, the unprecedented sight of an eagle was seen wheeling over the Ammon temple. The very same hour, the priests attest, another eagle flew into the Zeus sanctuary at Dodona, coming to rest in the great oak of the Oracle there. The bird stayed there for some time- calling plaintively, as if for a lost brother-until it took wing again into the mountains. Finally, and again on the same day, the keepers of the Zeus altar at Dion saw a great eagle come out of the east. Swooping down to the altar, it dropped a laurel wreath from its talons, circled seven times, then ascended home to the aerie of divine Olympus. For it was on that spring day, during the archonship of Hegesais in Athens, just shy of the thirty-third year of his age, that the great Alexander died.
Aeschines paused, but not to wet his throat. He just stood there for several moments, his head bowed, shoulders slumped. Just as the jury became restless he resumed speaking again, in a voice that was very small, yet somehow carried to the very back of the courtroom.
That the King died of poison I take as granted. After his second and third marriage, his first wife Rohjane had reason to want him dead, and ample opportunity to make him so. You recall that the Babylonians had a taster sample the water she brought in to him. While it is true that this man did not die after he drank, he did suffer later from acute pains of the abdomen. Whatever caused these pains might not have been fatal to a healthy man, but could easily have been deadly to someone who was already weak with sickness. For as we all know, wise poisoners do not strike out of the blue, but wait for some natural illness to cover their handiwork.
You may judge this woman’s motives and character by what happened the very day Alexander died: Rohjane forged a letter in the King’s name to Barsine, ordering her to attend him in Babylon. This letter reached Susa before news of his death was known there. When Barsine trustingly submitted to the royal escort, which was really a gang of thugs in Rohjane’s employ, she was murdered. Like Rohjane, she was carrying a child of Alexander’s. Please understand that I do not mean to play the partisan in the current dispute over the succession. With regard to her motives, and Machon’s, it need only be said that Rohjane has since delivered a boy, and that the child now figures in this matter in a way he never would had Barsine lived.
Of Alexander himself I will say no more. I have eulogized him enough for the purposes of this prosecution. Suffice it to say that the world will never again see his like, and that he was too soon taken from us. Jealous men say he was flawed, and in that they are surely right, for whatever was divine in him, as in us all, was inevitably mixed with that which makes us mortal. I never said he was perfect-I only said he was a god.
Machon will surely attempt some sophistic assault on the charges we make against him. He will argue that it is impossible for a mortal man like himself to corrupt a divine being. For the record, I will say that I believe Machon to be a devious weakling who could not, by himself, have destroyed Alexander. My claim, rather, is that he was a corrupting influence who consistently worked to undermine that which was good in the man, and encourage that which was destructive. I remind you that Machon does not stand charged with killing Alexander. Rather, the good people of Athens accuse him of impiety before a god, and of violating his orders to support Alexander in a manner that would bring honor to this city. Athenians, tell me: having heard his story, do you feel yourselves covered with
