Nicholas Nicastro - Empire of Ashes - A Novel of Alexander the Great

I came up to attend the King at Dion, the Macedonian sanctuary of Zeus. At the time I arrived he was feasting his officers under a great tent not far from the theatre. It was a grand affair, in the style of all his celebrations: the tent covered an area larger than this building, and was lined with row upon row of gilded couches arranged around a royal loggia, where King Alexander reclined. Surpassing all other symposiasts, he served his guests the finest Chian wine from craters lined with snow fetched down from Olympus; the toasts were made with golden cups studded with jewels. One side of the tent was given over to trophies from his recent expedition against the Danuban Triballi-heaped pelts of bears and oxen, shields hewn from single enormous logs, belts dripping with amber beads. There was no loot from the sack of Thebes, however. Nor to my knowledge was this event ever mentioned.

“Machon, my friend! Come here and embrace me!”

He greeted me like an old comrade, biding me to sit beside him. His enthusiasm was unique in that company. When they bothered to look to me at all, the rest of the Macedonians cast their eyes on me with obvious suspicion. Hephaestion regarded me unflinchingly from a nearby couch, his hostility unconcealed.

“So tell me of your book! Have you completed it?”

“Honestly, no. All I have so far is a prologue.”

“You lack a protagonist!”

He looked at me with some sort of great significance in his eyes, rolling his cup between his hands. The years 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.