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

In fact, the next day, when Alexander dispatched heralds all over Greece to summon the cities to a meeting of the mighty League of Corinth, Philip’s tool for governing Greece, I rode away from camp alone. Thaïs wanted to explore, and she’d begun to collect her own household – a military household. She meant to come with us. She approached it intelligently, and paid Polystratus cash to coach her in her hiring, which won him over in two different ways.

I rode to Plataea. Above Plataea, to the place where Kineas’s family had an altar – high on the summit, a day’s journey to climb. A day’s journey for a man who could run thirty stades.

I climbed alone, except for Ochrid, and I left him with the horses. I went up to the top, where you can see the whole rim of the world. And there I caught a deer and killed it, my own sacrifice to Artemis and to Zeus, and I offered my own oath to protect the king.

Before I was done speaking, thunder rumbled and an eagle, borne on some rapid updraught, shot up from lower on the mountain into the sky on my right, the best of omens and a clear sign of the High God’s approval.

I came down the mountain, elated, and like many men who are elated, I suddenly wanted to talk. And I missed my way, somehow, so that instead of coming down by our horses on the northern slopes, I came down the western slopes and found myself above the ancient tomb of the Hero of the Trojan War. They say Leitus went with the Athenians, and came back after many fights and died in his bed, at peace with the gods. And that he never did anything worth recording – he was not an outstanding fighter, or a brilliant runner – except that, on that day we all know in the Iliad when Achilles sulked in his tent and Hector drove the Greeks to red ruin by the ships, Leitus rallied a dozen average men – average for the Trojan War, of course – and formed a tight little wall of shields, and their locked shields kept Hector at bay for the crucial time it took to rescue Odysseus, who had taken a wound.

Veterans go to that shrine. Leitus is the hero of every warrior who stands his ground and hopes to go home again – not the ones who seek joy and death in battle, but the sane ones who seek to show courage and then live to plough their fields and their wives. His precinct is always well kept, and there are always ten or fifteen men there at the tomb – an old Tholos beehive, high above the road over the mountain to Athens. I had gone there one afternoon with Kineas, and now I stumbled on it by accident.

An old man was sitting on the steps of the little cabin, and he had a dozen boys and adolescents at his feet, sitting in the dust and the late summer leaves. He was very fit, that old man, with neck muscles like whipcord. He was teaching them, of course.

‘What is your duty to the city, boys?’ he asked.

They all looked at me, as boys do when they want to avoid work. But I kept my face blank, and the teacher gave me a friendly nod – man to man, so to speak – and the boys guessed that I wasn’t going to stop the lesson.

The eldest stood. ‘To protect the walls. To stand our ground in battles.’

The teacher frowned, but nodded. ‘There is more to life than war, though.’

‘To defend our freedoms. To attend every Assembly ready to vote on every issue on the agenda set by our elders,’ said another boy in the sing-song voice of one who has learned by rote.

‘How is democracy like war?’ the teacher asked.

‘In war we use spears, and in democracy we fight with words and ideas,’ the boys chorused.

‘And who is the winner? The loudest?’ he asked.

‘The last standing!’ one boy called out. And they all laughed, even the teacher.

But one boy shook his head. ‘Teacher, what if the city is wrong?’

The teacher raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me more, sprout.’

‘What if the free man finds himself . . . disagreeing – with the city? What if the city orders a wrong action? Say a man goes away to fight for Alexander, and comes back to find that a tyrant has taken his city, or a madness has come over the Assembly, and they give outrageous commands?’

I laughed to hear a fifteen-year-old suggest that a man might go from Plataea to fight for Alexander. Although, of course, it was about to happen, and I knew it.

The teacher nodded. ‘It is the duty of every man who votes in the Assembly to accept the will of other men when he is outvoted,’ he said. ‘To behave in any other way is to be a bad sport, a poor loser. A cheat.’ He looked at them. ‘But despite that, there can come a time when a city, or a tyrant, or a king leaves the path of good actions. Faction can make this happen, or personal enmity, or a curse, or lust for power.’ He looked off into the distance. ‘And then a man must ask himself where his duty lies. For war is an ugly mistress, and civil war is the worst hag of the lot. But to allow yourself to be made a slave – is not to be born, is it? So there can come a moment when the freeman must accept the consequence that his state, his city, his king, has failed him.’ The old man shrugged.

The boy was amazed that he had participated in something so profound. But he was still curious. ‘But . . . what should he do?’

The old man smiled a bitter smile. ‘He should kiss his wife and child, order his burial shroud and declare himself dead. And then he should gather men of like mind, and march. Not expecting to live, but prepared to die to prove his point. Because such rebellion must never be for personal gain, but for the good of the city.’

The boys were silent. I said, ‘You sound like Aristotle, sometimes.’

The old man smiled. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘A philosopher,’ I said.

‘Ah!’ he said, and shook my hand. ‘I’m no philosopher. I was a phylarch under old Phokion, and now I teach war to the boys.’ He looked at me. ‘You don’t look like a philosopher yourself, young sir. Cavalry officer, I’d be guessing.’

‘Under Alexander,’ I said.

He grinned. ‘I fought Philip a few times.’ He laughed. ‘Outmarched his arse a few times, too!’ He looked at the boys, and shooed them away. ‘Home to the fields, lads,’ he said.

He took my arm and we walked to the edge of the clearing. ‘Being Plataean was just a status in Athens, you know. Thebes razed our city to the ground. But Philip saved us from exile, and now we’re trying to raise a generation that sees Plataea as their home – not the south slope of the Acropolis!’ He shook his head. Picked up an amphora of wine. ‘You’ve killed a man in combat?’ he asked. Except it was not really a question.

‘One or two,’ I said. I mistook his tone.

‘It’s a serious thing, taking a life,’ he said. ‘You’re just the age where it’s going to start to occur to you that every man you put down had a life. That they ain’t just meat-bags waiting to help you run up your score. Eh?’

I said nothing. I think that if I’d come on purpose, I’d have been prepared. But I wasn’t prepared. And because I was unprepared, I almost burst into tears. It was a sudden thing.

He put an arm around my shoulder.

‘Didn’t you come here to talk, boy?’ he asked.

‘Got lost,’ I said. ‘I went to the top to pray to Zeus.’ I shrugged.

‘And he sent you here. Come – let’s pour a libation together, and I’ll set you on your road.’ He grinned.

He filled a big Boeotian cup of wine, and we poured it on the rocks at the edge of the tomb.

‘I can afford a sacrifice,’ I said. I felt wonderful – elated. Hard to describe. I felt the way I felt after making love to Thaïs. Clean.

He shook his head and made an odd face. ‘No you can’t,’ he said. ‘Leitus has no sacrifice but men.’ He looked away. ‘And you, praise to Ares, ain’t the one. Sometimes a man comes, and the hero screams for his blood, and the priest puts him down at the door of the tomb.’ He shrugged.