In armour, with our spears and aspides.
I’ve won battles, and I’ve killed heroes in single combat. I’ve slept with outrageously beautiful women I had no business even looking at, and I’ve climbed mountains and travelled the world. On balance, that moment in Thessaly, standing confidently, arrogantly, despite my pains and my wounded instep and the gouge in my leg – standing bare-legged on parade, with my heroes all lined up behind me, clamouring to start their march – even the slaves all in the ranks, all our baggage packed – we, who had fought a heroic action two days before – and around us, the royal companions and the pezhetaeroi scrambled to be ready – it was one of the most satisfying moments of my life, and I grew taller and handsomer.
The king rode out to me. I didn’t see him coming until the last moment – he was riding quietly on a palfrey.
‘Splendid,’ he said. He grinned – a boyish grin I seldom saw after he was twelve. ‘You know, Ptolemy, just now, I think I’d like to trade places with you. Right now, it is you who are a god, and I am merely your commander.’
Sometimes he was impossibly arrogant, and sometimes he was impossible not to love. I took his hand and locked it in a clasp – the way warriors do. He leaned down. ‘We are going to conquer the world with these men,’ he said. The grin was still there.
The hypaspitoi began to cheer – Alaialaialaialai.
Suddenly Alexander laughed. ‘Fuck them if they’re late to parade!’ he shouted, and pumped his hand to indicate that we should prepare to march.
So we marched away from Thessaly to conquer the world. The hypaspitoi led, and all the rest of the army had to catch up.
Beat that story, lad. Those were great days, great men, doing great things.
We made forced marches across the Thessalian plain, one hundred stades a day and sometimes more. We didn’t drink wine in the stews of Larissa – we missed nothing, I can tell you – and we didn’t bother the shepherd boys on the slopes of Mount Othrys. We crossed Thessaly in five days, and the Thessalian nobles complained we were ruining their horses.
My men laughed. They were marching five parasanges a day, running a third of the distance, keeping up with the cavalry scouts and the king. They were young and strong, and after three weeks in the field, they had bodies as hard as rock. We rested at the height of the pass over the shoulders of Othrys – my men were tucked into rocks and fissures, and there was snow. Men curled up three to a cloak – or rather, three to three cloaks. The man in the middle got a little sleep.
Alexander rode into my ‘camp’, which means that he asked a few sleepy men and a sentry, and Polystratus woke me.
Alexander had only Hephaestion with him.
‘I need another dash from your myrmidons,’ the king said. ‘I need you to be at the Gates of Fire by tonight. I don’t thinkThebes has the balls to contest my passage, but once I have the Gates, we’ve got all the time in the world. Tell your boys I promise at least a week’s rest at the Gates. But I need this done now – I went to sleep thinking about it, and I woke up just now with Herakles’ hand on my shoulder.’
Fuck him.Let’s face it, I’m not at my best in freezing cold in the middle of the night after a hundred-stade march and very little sleep.
But there comes a moment – when you are building something special – when you just want to keep testing it, because you cannot really believe how good it is. I’ve seen a cutler put an edge on a razor and then test it until his thumb is bleeding – grinning like a fool because the edge is so good. That was me.
I got to my feet, smiled at the king and Polystratus bellowed, ‘Spears and armour! March in one hour!’
And they got up off their rocks and joked that marching would be warmer than lying in the snow.
We marched along the beach and through the Gates of Fire unopposed. In fact, we had time to stop and make sacrifice to the Spartans who fell there for Greece – though I knew we were better men than they ever were. After all, they were merely Greeks, without even the erudition of Athens.
But they were good, brave men, and all brave men should be brothers, even when they fight against each other. War’s bad enough without rules. I hear men say that war should be fought without rules, but I despise such weaklings. Rules in contests are the courtesies of the strong to the strong.
But I digress.
We bought sheep from the shepherds and sacrificed them, and we poured libations to the dead – Persians as well as Greeks. And while we did that, fifty picked men climbed the high pass on our right flank and another fifty prowled ahead twenty stades under Alectus, who neither knew nor cared who Leonidas had been, despite his gleanings of Greek learning.
We were ahead of the Prodromoi, so we laid out the camp – the first time that ever happened – and we got the pick of the sheep. The farmers were thin on the ground, and there wasn’t much food. I sent scouts north into Achaea looking for grain and wine and oil.
Towards evening, Alexander came with the army, looked approvingly at the small ash-altar our sacrifices had left, and dismounted immediately to add his own. His devotions were absolutely genuine – he was a very religious man, and the sacrifices of heroes – all heroes, regardless of cause or race – meant a great deal to him. Some he had to equal or exceed – he was locked in agonistic competition even with the very gods – but that didn’t mean he didn’t worship their achievements. By acknowledging them, he worshipped himself. Or that’s how I see it now.
The next morning, we slept in, and held impromptu games in honour of the Spartans. We had only four Spartans in the whole army, but they were made the judges, and we had a wonderful time, running and throwing javelins, riding horses, wrestling, fencing and reading poetry.
It was a first, but like many aspects of that campaign, it was a sign of the future. Alexander the innovator was also Alexander the conservative. He wanted the old ways restored, even at the risk of seeming a little silly to his men. The first games we held had a slightly forced atmosphere – I remember that when the first wreaths of ludicrously over-woven laurel were awarded to the distance runner, men laughed – but the laughter stopped soon enough.
Marsyas found some local girls and asked them to make us proper wreaths, and when I won the run in armour on the second afternoon – running with a spear wound in my left foot, let me add – I received a beautiful wreath, which I was proud to wear all the next day. And those of us who won wreaths ate together that night.
Astibus won the javelin throw for accuracy.
Little Cleomenes wasn’t so little now, and had long legs like a woman, and won the two-stade sprint – won it handily.
That one I remember, because Alexander watched that race with something very like lust. He wanted to compete.
I was lounging about, literally resting on my laurels. I was lying on a pallet of new straw watching men run and cheering, and I caught the king’s eye. I shrugged. ‘Go run!’ I said quietly.
He gave me a sad smile. ‘Prince Alexander might have run,’ he said. ‘King Alexander will never run again.’
It wasn’t all fun and games. As soon as he made camp, Alexander sent heralds to the members of the Amphictyonic League, demanding – in the most courteous way possible – that they meet him at the Gates of Fire.
In effect, he announced, ‘I’m at the gates of mainland Greece, and none of you have the strength of arms to stop me. Want to talk?’
And they all came.
Even before the League assembled, states around us were falling into line. Or rather, back into our allegiance. The cities of southern Epirus begged for forgiveness and insisted they hadn’t meant to revolt. Listening to their ambassadors was an education in bad rhetoric.
Alexander stunned them by giving a few of them their independence. It was a complex version of independence, wherein he kept absolute control of their foreign relations, but they had city charters and city magnates. I didn’t understand right away, and thought that he was making concessions to the realities – but in a matter of a few weeks his policy became audience. It was his father’s policy in Boeotia to liberate the smaller cities and use them as watchdogs on Thebes. Of course they were loyal Macedonian allies – they owed us everything. Plataea comes to mind.