Christian Cameron - God of War - The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

I see your question, young man – how could all these picked men not know how to function as soldiers? Why weren’t those woodsy mountaineers clever enough to get firewood and cook?

I’m sure that alone in the mountains, they’d have had their shelters rigged in no time. But when you march with ten thousand soldiers and as many slaves and grooms – twenty thousand men and some prostitutes and hangers-on – foraging is a skill. Getting firewood is a skill. Cooking – quickly and well, with minimal wood use and very few pots or utensils – is a skill. Men going into the mountains take a pot – wealthy men have a copper or bronze pot. Soldiers need time and expertise to collect such things – they need to pool money and resources to get a slave, to buy a pot for that slave to carry, to find, buy or steal food to put into that pot . . .

We hadn’t given my boys time to do any of that. There were twenty messes without a cauldron of any kind. I know – I walked around and looked.

But I saw something that suggested that there was hope. I saw one file cook and then hand its cauldron over to another file. They ate late, but they ate.

The army was fed by markets – our own army agora. When we were on home ground, scouts – the Prodromoi – would ride out and warn the farmers for stades around the projected evening camp, and they would bring their wares to the camp before the soldiers even arrived. They’d be set up when the soldiers marched in, and one or two men from every mess would go to the market and buy food – a little meat, some grain for bread, some oil, a little wine.

A lucky or skilful mess had a slave or two. That would ease the process greatly, because the slave didn’t have to be with the column. In friendly country, a really good slave – a trusted slave – would go out on his own, buy food in the countryside (where the prices were lower) and maybe even have the fire going when the men marched in. A slave who has reason to believe that expert service will bring freedom – which is a Thracian concept of slavery and something Macedonians practise well – will do all this every day for a year or two. But in the end, the file has to free him, of course, and then they need to pool their cash and buy another.

Or just take one in battle.

And let’s just add to this. A victorious Macedonian army accreted slaves – bed-warmers, foragers, cooks, baggage-humpers. And the duty of the footslogger gets easier and easier. He’s got a slave to carry his gear, a donkey, two cook pots per mess to make the food more interesting, more cash to buy better food, wine every night and a girl. Or a boy. Or both.

One defeat, and all that is gone. If you lose a fight with the Thracians, they take your camp and all your slaves, all your baggage animals, all your bed-warmers. Gone. And you are back to humping your own gear.

That’s the life of an infantryman. I’ve embarked on this long discourse so that you understand that, despite their status as ‘household’ troops, my hypaspitoi were pretty much at the bottom of the barrel as we marched out of Pella. We had very few slaves, insufficient cook gear, no tents, no baggage animals at all.

So when my men marched in their chitons, they still had to hump all their gear on their own shoulders, and that was painful. I was not happy to carry my own kit, and my decision to do it allowed Polystratus a long laugh at my expense.

‘I dreamed of this, when I was your slave,’ he said.

I grunted.

Day two was worse than day one. Luckily, I really don’t remember any of it.

But towards afternoon, I took my new palfrey – a nice little Thracian mare with no good blood but lots of heart – and rode up the column, saluted the king and then went north with the Prodromoi. We were in my land, and we’d be camping on my farms. I rode into Ichnai with Polystratus, embraced Heron and sent out my orders.

When the hypaspitoi marched into camp – and they weren’t any better off than they had been the day before – they found their fires already lit and their food in bronze cauldrons by their lit fires, ready to cook. Every mess had a fire. A fire, two donkeys and a slave.

It’s good to be rich.

After they’d eaten, I collected the whole regiment in a mob outside my tent. I had a tent and I was not going to go without it. There are limits.

‘Good evening, hypaspitoi!’ I shouted, and that night I got some response besides grunts. ‘How was the lamb?’

Shouts of approval. ‘More like mutton than lanb!’ said somebody. There’s always one.

‘Tomorrow, you can find your own!’ I shouted. ‘Those slaves are yours – to keep.’

One hundred and twenty prime male slaves. Even I felt that as an expense. And I’d just stripped four of my farms of workers.

But the grumble from my men had another tone entirely.

‘And the donkeys,’ I said. ‘And the cook pots.’

Cheers.

‘On the other hand,’ I shouted, and they laughed. ‘On the other hand, tomorrow we march in armour, with our shields on our shoulders.’ Silence.

I was standing on a big wicker basket stood on end. I raised my arms. ‘We’re going to be the elite of this army,’ I shouted. ‘We will march under arms every day, and we will run every day, and we will fight when called upon and still march and run, every day. Use the donkeys to carry your loot, my friends, because they will not be carrying your aspides. Tomorrow we will be the first taxeis on parade. Your slaves will waken you with hot wine when it is time. If you quarrel with them, you are quarrelling with me. Understand?’

We were back to grunts. And scowls.

So be it, I thought.

The fourth day out of Pella. My lads had their shelters built and their food cooked before darkness fell for the first time. I gathered them all under an old oak tree and shouted at them. I asked every mess to send me their best singer.

The phylarchs – a hundred and twenty of them – stayed behind when I dismissed my men to their blankets. Most of them had another man with them – the best singers of their files. Almost all Agrianians.

‘How many of you can read Greek?’ I asked, and the result was to cut my meeting from three hundred to about thirty in one go. I told the rest of them to go to bed.

I gave the thirty men left a speech from Mnesimachus. ‘Put it to music,’ I said. ‘We’ll make a song of it.’

That got a lot of nods.

‘Tomorrow, we’ll throw javelins after dinner,’ I said to the phylarchs. They groaned.

Have you any idea

What we’re like to fight against?

Our sort make their dinner

Off sharp swords

We swallow blazing torches

For a savoury snack!

Then, by way of dessert,

They bring us, not nuts, but broken arrows, and splintered spear shafts.

For pillows we have our shields and breastplates,

Arrows and slings lie under our feet, and for wreaths we wear catapults

As it turned out, Marsyas, one of the former pages, turned his hand to writing my song. Marsyas was always bookish – he was the one royal page besides Alexander himself who would happily debate Aristotle, and his lyre-playing was nearly professional in its polish and he played better than the king, who played better than anyone else in Macedon. Nor was he a poor soldier – in fact, his particular skills were raid and subterfuge, and he thought nothing of lying all night in an ambush, because he was a Macedonian, not some lily-handed minstrel. We were two years apart, so we’d never been close, but he was a good friend to my young scapegraces Cleomenes and Pyrrhus. Indeed, the three were inseparable.

And since I didn’t go to eat with my former mess, they came to eat with me. The next morning I had all three of them to breakfast when a hesitant Agrianian sang his version. It was rich and dramatic, but hopeless as a marching song, and sounded as if it had been sung through his nose. Still, it was a good effort, and I gave him a silver four-drachma piece.