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

I shook my head but followed Diodorus. Kineas stopped at the doorway. ‘My father says I should never enter a house where I’m not invited,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Good advice.’

He smiled. ‘I’ll wait here, then.’

I went in, against my judgement, to find that we were in a tiny house, far too small to hold twenty well-born men and their slaves and servants. It had a small courtyard, and in the middle of it lay an older man with an average body, a little inclined to paunchiness, naked, sunbathing.

His eyes were closed.

Alexander stood watching him.

Diogenes, if it was he, made no move to speak or welcome us. No rage, no anger, no interest, nothing. He just lay with his eyes closed.

This went on for an incredible length of time. It was excruciating – embarrassing – you have to remember that no one had ever ignored Alexander. For any reason whatsoever.

Time stretched. Men scratched themselves, spoke in increasingly loud whispers, looked around. If you want to get the measure of men, make them be silent for a long time. See what they do.

On and on.

I just watched. Mostly, I was waiting for Alexander to explode.

On and on.

Alexander stood as immobile as the philosopher.

On and on.

Back up the hill, we were building the alliance that would conquer Persia and change the world, and here in this garden, we weren’t worth the shit in our bowels. I knew that the fucking philosopher knew we were here, knew who we were, and honestly, actually, didn’t care.

Good for you, friend. Point made. Let’s go.

Or let’s gut him and leave him to bleed out and see how he feels about that.

I can be a bad man. I had some bad thoughts.

Alexander cleared his throat. I had never seen him so ill at ease.

Diogenes opened one eye. Very sporting of him – almost courteous. The pompous twit.

‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘I am Alexander,’ the king said.

‘Yes,’ Diogenes agreed.

‘I . . . admire you very much. Is there . . . anything – at all – I could do for you?’ Alexander sounded like a boy with a crush on a great warrior. I’d never heard him sound like that – all his near-mythic certainty veiled.

Diogenes closed his eyes. ‘You could get out of my sun. You are shading me.’

Hephaestion spluttered.

Diodorus fled. He didn’t want to roar out his laughter.

I got out in a hurry, because I was tempted to pummel the philosopher with my fists. Just to teach him respect for his betters. Kineas was sitting on the step, with his stick on his shoulder and one fist against his chin.

Diodorus was moving so fast he was almost running.

Kineas gave me an odd grin. ‘I take it that was bad?’ he said.

He got to his feet as Alexander emerged.

‘I could kill him,’ Alectus said, at his shoulder.

I laughed. My eyes met Alectus’s and we shared a moment of barbarism.

Hephaestion was shaking. ‘Useless, pompous bastard. I’d kick him, but it would soil my feet!’

Alexander stopped in mid-stride, pivoted and put a brotherly hand on Hephaestion’s shoulder. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you are wrong. He behaved exactly as he should. We intruded in his house. We were not invited. And we deserved nothing better. In fact,’ Alexander smiled, ‘if I were not King of Macedon, I would want to be Diogenes. And I would expect kings to stay out of my garden.’

‘You’d keep yourself in better shape,’ Hephaestion said.

Someone laughed.

Alexander looked over at Kineas. ‘What did you think, Athenian?’

Kineas shrugged. ‘I didn’t go in.’

Alexander stopped as if he’d received a blow.

‘Diogenes is very careful about his privacy,’ Kineas said, as if this statement would make it all better.

‘How do you know?’ Hephaestion asked.

Kineas shrugged. And very wisely, said nothing. It was that night that I found out that he and Diodorus had both been students here for a few months – had sat in that garden and listened to the great man.

Saying so would have been foolish, and Kineas was wise.

But Alexander told the story for the rest of his life. Once, by the Ganges, he told the part about Kineas. He looked across the river and said, ‘Perhaps the Athenian was the wisest of all.’ The king looked at the ground. He was trying to impress a passel of Indian philosophers. ‘He didn’t try to enter the man’s house.’

And one of the old Indian men shook his head. ‘There is no single answer to any question,’ he said.

The king liked that.

THIRTEEN

We marched for home. It was late in the year, and there was snow in the passes again, and the Greeks were happy to see us go.

Alexander was determined that we would march by way of Delphi so that he could consult the oracle. We marched two days through snow, and Poseidon’s mane got icy mud in it and it took me a day to comb it out, with Polystratus bringing pots of warm water. Poseidon was sick, and I didn’t want to lose him. He wasn’t getting any younger, though.

Delphi, and the Pythia, was not open for business. She only prophesies a few months a year – the Pythia then, an older woman named Cynthia, was quite well known and very intelligent. They are not always like that.

She had her priests send the king a respectful message explaining that she could not simply sit on the tripod and implore the god, as it was out of season. Alexander shrugged, dismounted and tossed his reins to a slave.

‘The men and horses need a rest, at any rate. We’ll be here two days.’ He looked at me. ‘Go and tell her that she will prophesy. Negotiate any way you wish, but get it done.’

I got all the glorious jobs.

So I took Thaïs, and went down to the village to visit the Pythia.

Really, she was a very ordinary woman – for a forty-year-old virgin who was well born and ferociously intelligent. We found her grinding barley behind her house. She was using a geared handmill – I’d heard of them, but never seen such a thing.

She took it to pieces in her enthusiasm to show me how it worked.

She and Thaïs were not immediately friends by any means – in fact, on balance, I could see I’d miscalculated, and this was a woman who lived and worked with men, and had little time for women. But Thaïs’s intelligence shone through, and her superlative social skills, and in an hour the three of us were drinking wine.

‘He needs you to prophesy,’ I said, finally. ‘Blessed Pythia, all Greece needs you.’

She smiled. ‘You know that the Great King is one of our patrons?’

I nodded.

She laughed. ‘He’s doomed. Do you know your Persian politics?’

I shook my head. ‘The only politics I know are those of the Macedonian court. Well – Athens. I know a little of Athens.’

Thaïs wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something bad. ‘Bagoaz is Grand Vizier,’ she said. ‘He rules by intrigue and murder. He killed Arses, who was Great King, and he’s replaced him with some minor nobleman.’

The Pythia smiled. ‘Well! Nicely put. Except that young Codoman just made Bagoaz drink poison and is now master in his own house. But he’s only a distant relation of the Great Kings of the past – and many of the eastern nobles do not accept him at all.’

I had never heard so much about Persia. To us, Persia was the great enemy, a magnificent unknown. I suppose that Parmenio knew such stuff, but up until then, I didn’t.

‘There has never been a better time to invade Persia,’ the Pythia said, sipping her wine. ‘I speak no prophecy, young man. Codoman has Greek mercenaries, Greek scribes, Greek administrators. He runs his household with Greeks. He is virtually at war with his own Mede nobles. Persia is divided internally, taxes are late coming in, and over a third of the total administration of the country is already in the hands of men sympathetic to your king.’