Part 9

There can be no question of the influence of Aristotle in determining the literary interest and taste of Alexander. It seems also clear that the young prince came at least to know, and probably to share, his teacher's curiosity as to natural history; for he afterwards sent specimens back from Asia for Aristotle's botanical and zoölogical collections. This being the case, it seems incredible that he should have received from him no instruction in politics; that Aristotle, the pupil of Plato, who had himself gone to Sicily to educate the young Dionysius II for his high place, should have failed to communicate to the future ruler of Macedon and of Greece the ideas which he had formed as to the best kind of government. We can imagine the thousand opportunities which their three years of close association in the country seat at Mieza offered for the discussion of politics: how Aristotle explained that virtue or merit or political capacity, or however the elusive Greek word _arete_ be translated, gave the best claim to leadership, and that the best of all forms of government was that in which the man of the highest virtue ruled; "that," to use his own words,[61] "wherever there is, as it happens, a whole family or an individual so superior in virtue to all the rest that the virtue of this individual or family exceeds that of all others in the state, in that case it is but just that this family should enjoy a regal or supreme position and that this individual should be king. For ... this is not only in accordance with the principle of justice usually alleged by the founders of polities, whether aristocracies, oligarchies, or democracies, in all of which the claim to rule is dependent on superiority, although the superiority is not the same; but it accords also with the theory we laid down before. For assuredly it is not proper to put to death or outlaw or even ostracize this preëminent individual or to require him to become a subject in his turn.... The only alternative is that they should yield him obedience, and that he should be supreme, not on the principle of alternation, but absolutely.... It will be a wrong," he urged,[62] "to treat him as worthy of mere equality, when he is so vastly superior in virtue and political capacity, for any person so exceptional may well be compared to a deity upon the earth." Again and again, in season and out of season, often doubtless to the annoyance of the impatient young prince, who feared lest his father's victories should leave him nothing to do, Aristotle[63] must have harped on the theme that "man is naturally a city-dwelling animal and that one who is not a native of a city, if the cause of his isolation be natural and not accidental, is either a superhuman being or low in the scale of civilization, as he stands alone like a 'blot' on the backgammon board. The 'clanless, lawless, hearthless' man so bitterly described by Homer is a case in point; for he is naturally a native of no city and a lover of war." We can imagine the philosopher insisting that just as city life was synonymous with civilized life, so city was synonymous with state; that the highest of all human activities, the exercise of political functions, was destroyed the moment a city became dependent upon an outside power; that subjects could not exist permanently unless the conquered were natural inferiors like the Asiatics; that it was, however, to the interest of such persons that they should be ruled by their superiors, in the case of Asiatics, by the Greeks. Such were the oft-repeated maxims of the political philosopher in whose age Philip rejoiced, it is said,[64] "that his son was born, since his teaching would make him worthy of his father and equal to the position to which he was to succeed." Such was the literary and political education of Alexander: his military training and his knowledge of affairs he got in the unrivaled school of his father; but in this connection it is well to remember the admission of Napoleon:[65] "War is a singular art; I can assure you that fighting sixty battles taught me nothing I did not know at the first one. The essential quality of the general is firmness, and that is a gift from heaven."

It is not my purpose to give a biographical sketch of Alexander, nor yet to tell the story of his marvelous conquests, or to estimate the consequences of his work on the later course of history. I have had in mind while preparing this chapter first to emphasize such features in his family and education as help to explain his political thinking, and then, somewhat in Plutarch's fashion, to pick up such incidents in his career as show concretely how precisely he aimed to organize his world empire.

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Where the political sagacity of Alexander stood forth most conspicuously, according to Napoleon, was in the skill with which he appealed to the imagination of men. Love of symbolism was ingrained in his nature. By an act which he went deliberately out of his way to perform he contrived again and again to illumine an entire situation, to drive home a lesson, to reveal a policy. In a way it was a kind of advertising; a means of conveying to the world at large in an unmistakable manner the will and attitude of the monarch. But it was more than that. It was the application in the world of politics of a mode of expression with which the Greeks were familiar in the world of the plastic arts.

The first instance of this sort of thing was the destruction of Thebes in 335 B.C. At the accession of Alexander a year earlier, all Greece had seethed with insurrection. Philip was dead in the full vigor of manhood, and a stripling of twenty was about to take his place. By a prompt advance southward Alexander nipped the threatened revolt in the bud; and to secure himself for the future, he put a garrison in the citadel of Thebes, where the most manifest disaffection had existed. A few months later, however, while he was cleansing his northern frontiers, preparatory to attacking Persia, the Thebans, acting on the false report that he had fallen in battle, and in conjunction with Athens and other Greek cities, revolted a second time. With almost incredible secrecy and celerity Alexander came upon Thebes, took it by assault, sold the inhabitants into slavery, and razed the city to the ground. No such disaster had overtaken a Greek city (outside of unhappy Sicily) since the destruction of Miletus by the Persians in 493 B.C. It showed beyond the shadow of a doubt what the Greeks had to expect if they continued to make trouble while Alexander was absent in Asia. And on this occasion one object lesson was contained within another: by sparing the house of Pindar, the destroyer of Thebes proclaimed his regard for Hellenic civilization; distinguished himself clearly from the destroyers of Miletus and other barbarians.

Next year, when about to open his attack on the Persian empire, Alexander sent his army across the Hellespont by the usual route from Sestus to Abydus; but he himself proceeded to Elaius where he sacrificed at the tomb of Protesilaus, and prayed that he might have a better fate than was his who first of Agamemnon's men set foot on the soil of Asia. Then crossing the Hellespont to Harbor of the Achæans, he went up to Ilium where he dedicated his armor to Athena Ilias and took in its place some weapons said to have been used in the Trojan War. After appeasing the _manes_ of Priam and entreating them to forgive him, a descendant of Neoptolemus, Priam's slayer, he laid a wreath on the tomb of Achilles, while his bosom friend, Hephæstion, laid another on that of Patroclus. Whereupon he proceeded to rejoin his army. The incident stirred in every Greek a thousand memories. He saw another Agamemnon set out to take another Troy; another champion of the Hellenes in their eternal struggle with the peoples of Asia. In no way could Alexander more clearly identify his undertaking with the long cherished dreams of the whole Greek race. It was the nearest that a ruler of that time could come to proclaiming a holy war.

At Gordium, where Alexander's troops spent their first winter in Asia, there stood on the citadel the cart in which, according to the story, Midas, a peasant's son, had driven to the meeting-place of the Phrygians on the day when unexpectedly he was proclaimed their king. The legend had spread thence around the country that whosoever unfastened the knot of cornel bark which held the yoke to the shaft of this cart would become king of Asia. This task Alexander essayed in vain. Then he drew his sword and cut the thong in two. Thereby he announced both his departure from the policy of Philip, which had been simply to emancipate the Ionian Greeks, and the forthcoming execution of his own policy, which was to take from the Persians their dominion over Asia.

After his first victory at the Granicus River Alexander advanced along the Ægean seaboard as far as Cilicia, securing as he went all the coast towns in Asia Minor which had contributed ships to the Persian fleet. This plan of campaign he adhered to after his second victory at Issus over Darius, when, instead of keeping in touch with his defeated enemy and of following him into the interior, as the ordinary common sense of war commanded, he let the King go, and spent a year in seizing the naval towns between Cilicia and Cyrene. This he did in order to destroy the Persian fleet, an end which he could not otherwise attain, since he had no ships of his own. To leave the enemy's fleet in possession of the Mediterranean, however, while he was campaigning far in the heart of the continent would have been to jeopardize all that he had already accomplished, and, in particular, to leave to the Persians the means of causing a general insurrection among the Greeks, whom he rightly feared more than the Persians. This long détour southward to Egypt is, accordingly, amply explained by sound strategical considerations. That, however, cannot be said of Alexander's sensational march through the Sahara to the oasis of Siwah in the hinterland of Cyrene. There, in mysterious aloofness, lay an oracle of the Egyptian Ammon whom the Greeks called Zeus. Just as Dodona in Epirus had been eclipsed in times past as an oracular seat by the shrine of Apollo at Delphi, so this in turn had waned in prestige and credit when it became known gradually to the Greeks that Zeus Ammon revealed unfailingly the future to his priests at Siwah. For more than two generations prior to Alexander's visit the Ammonium had been the Mecca of pilgrims, and the recipient of gifts from all parts of the Greek world. Athens had even built a sacred trireme, the so-called "ship of Ammon," to carry public messengers to and from the oracle. In Egypt the Ammon of Siwah was of no account as compared with the Ammon of Thebes; but among the Greeks the Ammon that was known and revered was, to speak with Plato, the Ammon of Cyrene. Alexander knew well the impression which would be produced in the official and pious world of Hellas should the priests of Ammon greet him as the son of their god. This, however, they were bound to do on his arrival at the temple, since to omit this formality would have been to refuse allegiance to the new Pharaoh who had just been recognized in Egypt; for every Pharaoh from time immemorial was officially a son of Ammon. It was the peculiarity of Siwah that the ruler greeted there as the son of Ammon was presented authoritatively to the Greek world as the son of Zeus.

The march across the desert to Ammonium was accomplished only with supernatural assistance, according to the official report; and deliberate mystery shrouded the interview of Alexander with the god. It is with no impropriety, as we shall see presently, that Tennyson brings his fine poem on the great king to a climactic close with an allusion to the occurrence:--

"High things were spoken there, unhanded down; Only they saw thee from the secret shrine Returning with hot cheek and kindled eyes."

One thing, however, was stressed in the official version of what happened: the desired greeting was given publicly to Alexander by the eldest of the priests. And its import was enhanced by the arrival of messengers to say that oracles to the same effect had been given simultaneously by the Sibyl of Erythræ and Apollo at Branchidæ, where a long silence of over one hundred and fifty years was interrupted thereby. As to the private interview Alexander wrote to his mother that "secret things were divulged to him which he could communicate only to her personally."

I shall revert to the significance of the visit to Siwah presently. Meanwhile, it will suffice to note that it was quite in character with the methods already adopted by Alexander that he should seek in this bizarre way to impress upon the imagination of men a new idea; to disclose by a sensational action of this kind an important change of policy. And it is paralleled by several incidents in his later career.

Twelve months after leaving Siwah, Alexander was master of Persepolis. This was the capital of Persis, a land of some half a million inhabitants whom Cyrus and Darius had made lords of a subject population not much below that of the Roman empire. For over two hundred years forty millions of people had looked to Persis and Persepolis as the seats of the mighty. The "city of the Persians" and the palace of their kings which it contained were the manifest symbols of empire: the one Alexander gave over to his soldiers to pillage, the other he fired with his own hand, thus proclaiming to the world that the end of a dynasty had come. His own part in this catastrophe--which affected the imaginations of men in some such way as did the capture of Rome by Alaric in 410 A.D.--was taken conspicuously. Starting up from a banquet, he and his companions, among whom was the beautiful Athenian courtesan Thais, went in Dionysiac revel to the sound of flutes through the streets to the palace, and threw the torches which they had taken with them from the feast upon the cedar beams of the roof. Once the flames had shot up and the desired effect had been produced, Alexander ordered the fire to be extinguished.

Early in the following year Alexander entered Ecbatana, the summer capital of the Persian empire, and Darius became a fugitive. Up to this point Alexander had been hegemon of the Hellenic league as well as king of Macedon, and, on liberating the Greek cities in Asia from Persian control, he had added them to the league. Now that the war against Persia, for which the league had been ostensibly formed, had ended, Alexander thought the time had come to relieve himself of the partnership into which, following the policy of Philip, he had entered at the opening of his reign. This he did in his usual dramatic way. He discharged all the Greek troops put under his command by the league, and made elaborate provision for their transport back to the coast and across the Mediterranean to Greece. To every Greek city which had sent him a contingent, its return was a message that Alexander was no longer bound by the treaties made when the league was formed. This did not mean, as he took pains to show, that it was freed thereby from all obligations toward him. Over the Macedonians he ceased at this point to be hegemon, but he still remained their king.[66]

A little later he appeared before his astonished Macedonian officers clad in what pleased him of the costume of the Persians. The tiara and the sleeved jacket and the baggy trousers he did not adopt, but he took their soft undergarments, and, as the symbol of authority, the diadem. He also remodeled his court in the Oriental fashion, adding purple to the uniform of the guards, chamberlains, and, if a dubious report is to be trusted, a harem. Finally in 327 B.C., shortly after his romantic marriage with Roxane, a Persian princess of the Sogdian nobility, he added the requirement that all who were admitted to his presence should kneel at his feet and kiss the dust before him. "Chares of Mytilene,"[67] who was master of ceremonies when this custom was inaugurated, "says that Alexander, while drinking at a symposium, offered his goblet to one of his comrades, who, taking it, rose and went to the hearth, where, quaffing it off, he first knelt and kissed Alexander's feet, then kissed his cheek and returned to his couch. All present did the same except Callisthenes," who proffered the kiss on the cheek without first kneeling and thus earned the disfavor of the king. With this rather lame conclusion was enacted the prologue of what his old Macedonian nobles regarded as a great tragedy.

"It has been thought," says Eduard Meyer,[68] "that _proskynesis_"--to use the technical term for this ceremony--"was only the natural expression of the fact that by the arbitrament of battle Alexander had become lord of the Persian empire and legitimate successor of Darius. And, indeed, there is truth in this idea. But the meaning of the requirement, and the historical significance of the occurrence and of the conflict which it occasioned, are by no means exhausted when proskynesis is regarded as a harmless concession to the views of his Oriental subjects. The essential point is that Alexander demanded it of the Macedonians and Greeks also. It is precisely in this matter, however, that the views of Orientals and Europeans collide most squarely and typically. Herein exists an antagonism which is independent altogether of race and nationality. We cannot say how it arose, but it dominates the whole course of the cultural and political development of the regions in question. The Oriental, be he a Semite, an Egyptian, an Indo-European, a Chinaman, or of any other stock, finds it natural that in intercourse with others he has to humble himself; that he call himself their servant, them his masters; that he kneel in the dust, not only before the king, but before all superiors, without lessening thereby the sense of personal pride with which he, too, may be animated.

"To the European, on the other hand, such demeanor involves the destruction of his own personality. Never will a free man call himself the slave of another. Rather, he will always speak of himself in confident tones, with a strong feeling of; his own worth.... Prostration and kissing the dust are due, in European thinking, only to a god who is thereby acknowledged to be the lord of the worshiper, in whose presence the worshiper can have no will of his own.

"It was among the Greeks, in their free republics, that this feeling developed to its full strength. It finds typical expression in the story of the Spartan heralds, Sperthies and Bulis, who, although they had surrendered themselves to the Persian king to be executed, refused to prostrate themselves before him; 'for in their country,' Herodotus makes them say, 'it was not customary to kiss the dust before a man, nor had they come for that purpose.' The stories of Themistocles who rendered the required homage, and of Conon who on its account avoided an audience with the King altogether, despite the high value it would have had for him, are similarly significant. In demanding proskynesis, accordingly, Alexander offended Greek sentiment violently. Rather, what he thereby demanded was the acknowledgment that officially, in his capacity of king,--his private position is a different matter altogether,--he was no longer a man, but a god."

In other words, when Alexander demanded that Greeks and Macedonians fall at his feet and kiss the dust before him, he demanded that they recognize him as a god, as in fact the son of Zeus. This ceremony had no such implications for the Persians; but, as we shall see in a moment, in Alexander's thinking, the Persians were to cease to exist; they were to be made Hellenes by education.

Alexander set out for Asia with a firm belief in the absolute superiority of Hellenic culture; and in this belief he remained fixed to the end. To establish Hellenic life throughout Asia, he regarded as the main object of his conquests. His Hellenic ideals he revealed to the astonished natives at almost every halting-place on his march; for on such occasions he again and again held gymnastic and musical contests after the Greek pattern. As we have seen, he had learned from Aristotle that city-life and Hellenic life were synonymous, and that without political activity city-life was animal rather than human in character. Accordingly, he displayed a feverish energy in founding Greek city-states everywhere in the conquered territory, but particularly in the regions of the Far East where urban life had been hitherto lacking. Like mushrooms overnight, towns by the scores sprang up behind him on his line of march; so vast was the immigration into Asia from Greece and Macedon even during the thirteen brief years of his reign.

The fact was that by founding cities Alexander lessened enormously his military and administrative difficulties. For every city took from his shoulders responsibility for maintaining order, collecting taxes, and dispensing justice in the territory assigned to it--necessary tasks, now that a European state was arising in Asia, which could be performed otherwise only by the creation of a bureaucratic system of officials. This, however, was a non-Hellenic institution for which Alexander had naturally no liking. In the future he saw the whole world--that of Asia which he had already conquered and that of the Far West which he meant to conquer--honeycombed, like Greece itself, with a multitude of city-states, each a separate cell with a town in its centre, each possessed of a general assembly and a council, magistrates of its own choosing and laws of its own making or adoption, each the home of free men speaking the Greek language, fostering Greek art and letters, and fighting with Greek arms and tactics. It was a grand vision, which failed of realization in Alexander's time and thereafter; but it set forth an ideal toward which future generations moved for over five centuries.

It is clear that Alexander never lost faith in the absolute supremacy of Hellenic culture. Certainly the place of unlimited authority which he reserved for himself above the world of city-states and their law-bound citizens, was the one prescribed for the ideal wise man, the man of supreme political ability, by Aristotle his tutor. That Aristotle thought of a different _pambasileus_ for each city-state and Alexander of a single "absolute monarch" for all, is a non-essential difference, and it is simply in the institutions which Alexander found necessary to translate the idea of the philosopher into the world of reality that Hellenic practice and custom were violated.

These outlandish institutions, however, Alexander employed as means for the better dissemination of Greek life and thought, without being conscious, perhaps, that they were destructive of the spirit which they were intended to preserve.

On the other hand, it is indisputable that Alexander revised his tutor's, and his own youthful, opinion as to the worth of the Asiatics. What he came to think of Semites and Egyptians we do not know; and it may be that he continued to regard them as naturally servile and, hence, condemned them to remain forever hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Hellenic or Hellenized citizens in whose cities they were to live. But as to the Medes and Persians and the kindred Iranian stocks of the Far East, the views of their conqueror changed radically when he came really to know them, and to appreciate fully the magnitude of the task which he had undertaken.