ARBELA
The life of Alexander the Great is of perennial interest, for it
holds in epitome the life of the world when the world was young.
Plutarch tells with quaint truthfulness what cannot now be told
without a smile of wondering incredulity.
Alexander spent the night before the battle of Arbela in
consultation with the diviner Aristander, and in sacrificing to the
god Fear. What does that mean? The conqueror of the world would
placate Fear; would render it favorable to him, adverse to the
enemy. Terror, recoil from death, panic-madness of a multitude of
men, rout, ruin--from _that_ deliver my army, O great god Fear; but
let it come upon my enemy. Thus prayed Alexander as his gaze rested
upon the moving plain gleaming with a million torch-lights where
Darius, prepared for a night attack, was reviewing his forces.
And well might Alexander so pray. Fear that blanches the lips and
freezes the blood in the heart, contagious Terror irresistible,
dread recoil from butchering death--these were, indeed, effects of
causes proportionately terrible. A million men were in the enemy’s
ranks, three hundred chariots armed with scythes; rivers were in
the rear, and beyond a hostile country.
“Alexander,” says Napoleon, “deserves the glory which he has
enjoyed for so many centuries and among all nations; but what if he
had been beaten at Arbela, having the Euphrates, the Tigris, and
the deserts in his rear, without any strong places of refuge, nine
hundred leagues from Macedonia!”
After the sacrifice to the god Fear, as Plutarch gravely assures
us, Alexander seemed jubilant in spirit, and returning to his
tent, made ready to take his rest. Parmenio, his oldest and ablest
general, sought him there and suggested that a night attack be
made, urging that their army would grow faint at heart could they
see as in broad daylight the countless hosts arrayed against them.
In conclusion Parmenio respectfully said, “And if I were Alexander
I would attack the Persians tonight.”
To this Alexander ironically replied “And so would I if I were
Parmenio.” On further remonstrance being made Alexander curtly
replied, “I will not steal a victory.” At this Parmenio withdrew
and Alexander lay down to rest.
A profound and most refreshing sleep came to Alexander. Morning
dawned and it seemed proper to rouse the men to breakfast and to
preparation for battle, but Alexander still slept. In the words
of Plutarch: “But at last, time not giving them leave to wait any
longer, Parmenio went to his bedside and called him twice or thrice
by his name, till he waked him, and then asked how it was possible,
when he was to fight the most important battle of all, he could
sleep so soundly as if he were already victorious. ‘And are we
not so, indeed,’ replied Alexander smiling, ‘since we are at last
relieved from the trouble of wandering in pursuit of Darius thro’ a
wide and wasted country, hoping in vain, that he would fight us?’
And not only before the battle, but in the height of the danger, he
showed himself great, and manifested the self-possession of a just
foresight and confidence.”
Alexander’s full front battle line was not so long as Darius’
center. And this so seeming fatal arrangement yet turned out to
be most favorable for Alexander. For instead of attacking the
Persian center where Darius commanded in person and where the
ground in front had been smoothed and prepared for the rush of
the three hundred scythe-chariots, Alexander attacked vigorously
the left wing, driving them in front of and towards the center.
The onslaught of the Macedonian phalanx was irresistible and the
Persian army, dominated by the god Fear, was in panic rout before
Darius could get his unwieldy forces full into action or send forth
the chariots upon which he so much relied.
Alexander pursued the fleeing enemy until urged back by messengers
from Parmenio saying his wing was surrounded by the Persians.
Alexander reluctantly returned and full victory for the Macedonian
army was soon proclaimed upon the field.
Darius, seeing that all was lost and that his chariot, wedged in
among dead bodies high as the shoulders of the horses, was unable
either to advance or to turn back, hastily leaped from his seat
and seizing a riderless mare, he galloped as best he could over
the bodies of the dying and the dead and thus escaped from the
battlefield.
The break in the friendship between Alexander and his ablest
general, Parmenio, began with the battle of Arbela. Was there
jealousy, cruel as the grave, in the heart of the older man as he
saw success after success crown the brow of the young commander?
Granicus, Issus, Arbela--Europe, Asia, Africa, the world--had gone
down successively under the Conqueror. Jealously is incipient hate.
“He who ascends to mountain heights will find
The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow;
He who would conquer or subdue mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.”
--_Byron._
HUMAN, TOO HUMAN.
All that the literatures of the world hold treasured in amber;
all that life, the primal fount of literature, holds as its human
heritage--find fitting application to Alexander the Great. The
color scale--from white thro’ tints to standard, and from standard
thro’ shades to black--of every emotion and passion of the heart of
man is fixed fadelessly upon the name and fame of Alexander.
Yet how human and dearly human it all is! We understand it today
even as Callisthenes understood it, and as the age B. C. and the
early age and the middle age understood it. We haven’t advanced
even yet very far from the primitive. The heart that in drunken
rage slew Clitus his friend, and then mourned his deed inconsolable
in his tent for three days--is easily cognizable today.
That quarrel between Alexander and his tried and true Macedonians,
with its subsequent reconciliation, has in it a ring of the old
young-world. For when Alexander returned to Susa with his worn out
troops, he at once sought out the thirty thousand boys whom he
had left there in training. Great was his delight at the progress
they had made in his absence; at their military bearing, their
ability to ride and hurl the javelin, and to perform other adroit
manœuvres. Alexander then thought to reorganize his army and send
home all the Macedonians who were in any way disabled, or who,
when urged to cross over the Ganges, had begged to be taken back
to their wives and children. But the sturdy veterans were sorely
offended at this proposal, and breaking out into a rage, declared
that they had been most unjustly dealt with, and that every
Macedonian would at once abandon the army, and that, perhaps, with
his pretty boys he might be able to keep the world which their
good swords had won for him. To this Alexander responded in deep
wrath that it should be as they said. He at once dismissed from his
service all the Macedonians and filled their places with Persians.
Now when the Macedonians saw that it was done even as they had
said, the scales of jealous anger dropped from their eyes and they
were deeply repentant. So laying aside their arms, and dressed
only in short undergarments they sought suppliantly the tent of
Alexander. But it opened not to their importunities. For three days
they stayed there neither eating nor drinking, but sorely longing
for the light of the countenance of Alexander, for every man loved
him. And at last the tent door opened and Alexander came forth, and
going affectionately among them he sat down and wept; and they wept.
Then Alexander, thinking it wiser that the maimed should embark
in the waiting vessels, spoke to them most kindly, praising their
valor and declaring that their deeds should be known throughout
the world: saying also that he would write concerning them to his
mother Olympias and to the Governor of Macedonia, giving orders
that the first seats in the theatres should be reserved for them
and that they should therein be crowned with chaplets of flowers.
Moreover every soldier’s pay should continue to him, and the pay
due to the fallen should be regularly sent to their wives and
children. And thus was reconciliation between Alexander and his
Macedonians happily effected.
How childish it all is--that jealous hate and the hasty reaction;
the humiliating importunities of barbaric love; the Conqueror
conquered and--in tears; the generous re-fusion of the old warm
feelings; the magnanimity of the Great; the joyous departure of the
honored veterans, their sitting in the seats of honor crowned with
a chaplet of flowers: childish? well, yes, but we older children
can understand and even dimly--remember.
A DEITY.
Did Alexander believe himself descended from Jupiter Ammon? No. On
one occasion being wounded he said “This, my friends, is real blood
flowing not Ichor,”
“Such as immortal gods are wont to shed.”
Yet if the reply of the gymnosophist be admitted as true,
Alexander was not a mortal. The Gymnosophists, or wise men of
India, were entertained at the court of Alexander, and among the
questions proposed to them by the young lord of the world was, how
a man might become a god: to this the sage replied “By doing that
which was impossible for men to do.” The deeds done by Alexander in
his brief thirty-two years seem beyond the merely human: and it is
certain that he was honored as a deity in the latter years of his
life. He had his friend and biographer, Callisthenes, tortured and
put to death because he had derisively laughed while the servile
court prostrated before the “present Deity”, and had refused to
follow their example.
“Man, vain man dressed in a little brief authority does cut such
capers before high heaven as make the angels mourn.” The awful
punishments inflicted upon Thebes, Tyre, Gaza; the maniacal madness
that satiated itself in the life-blood of Clitus--a warrior,
comrade, and friend, a soldier who at Granicus had thrust his own
body between Alexander and the down-plunging slaughtering sword
and so receiving in his own flesh the blow, had saved the life of
the man who should later slay him; the deadly ingratitude which
could forget the lifelong services of Parmenio, his father’s ablest
general, his own boyhood’s adviser, admirer, and friend, and, in a
fit of jealous rage, condemn to death Philotas, son of Parmenio,
and Parmenio; the hate-exultation which, triumphant at last, had
the feet of Batis, late satrap of Gaza and a bravely fallen foe,
bored thro’ and thereby tied to his chariot; then Alexander,
descendant of Achilles, drove three times thro’ the streets of
Gaza, dragging his living victim--naked, torn, bleeding, broken,
dying--thro’ the town in which so late he has reigned as Persian
satrap: surely at capers such as these well might the angels mourn.
Yet these atrocities are well nigh balanced by acts of heroism,
repentant generosity, benignity, magnanimity: and it is an open
question whether any other of the race of mortals, having the
world of his time absolutely in his own hands, would have acted as
wisely as Alexander.
The eunuch escaping from the Macedonian camp and bearing to Darius
the news of his wife Statira’s death, extolled the forbearance
and chivalrous courtesy of Alexander toward the Persian captives
and admiringly cried out “Alexander is as gentle after victory as
he is terrible on the field.” And Darius, so late King of Persia,
tallest and handsomest man of his time, husband of Statira, most
bewitchingly beautiful woman of Asia; but now alas! an uncrowned
king, loser of Arbela, a fugitive, bereft of sons, daughters,
wife--nevertheless on hearing of Alexander’s generous conduct
towards the royal captives exclaimed in tears, “Ye gods of my
family, and of my kingdom, if it be possible, I beseech you to
restore the declining affairs of Persia, that I may leave them in
as flourishing a condition as I found them, and have it in my power
to make a grateful return to Alexander for the kindness which in
my adversity he had shown to those who are dearest to me. But if,
indeed, the fatal time be come, which is to give a period to the
Persian monarchy, if our ruin be a debt which must be paid to the
divine jealousy, and the vicissitude of things, then, I beseech
you, grant that no man but Alexander may sit upon the throne of
Cyrus.” And when slowly bleeding to death from wounds inflicted by
his base betrayer, Bessus, satrap of a province into which Darius
had fled for safety--the dying monarch begged of Polystratus, a
chance attendant, for a little water: and on receiving it he said
that it had become the last extremity of his ill fortune to receive
benefits and not be able to return them. “But Alexander,” said he,
“whose kindness to my mother, my wife and my children I hope the
gods will recompense, will doubtless thank you for your humanity
to me. Tell him, therefore, in token of my acknowledgment, I give
him this right hand,” with these words he took hold of Polystratus’
hand and died.
The man who could inspire such sentiments of grateful admiration
into the heart of his dying enemy was more than mortal.
Plutarch tells us that Alexander, coming up at that moment, gazed
with painful emotion upon the dead form of Darius. And taking the
cloak from off his own shoulders he covered with it the prostrate
form of his late foe, and gazing down upon the fierce dead comely
face--he wept.
PHILOSOPHIES.
All the philosophies of the sleepy East and their antitheses
of the aggressive West seem to have receptively influenced the
myriad-minded Alexander.
Pride, not vanity, but pride essentially one with the chords of
being, expressed itself in the words “And were I not Alexander
I would be Diogenes.” Either highest or lowest, all or nothing.
Earth as kingdom or--a tub; no compromise, no half way, absolutely
and unconditionally either one extreme or the other: this seeming
perversity in the makeup of many men of genius has not been
sufficiently considered; it is not psychologically understood;
there is something humanly attractive about it; something
young-world young and something old, old as the heart of man. And
this perverse pride was the common link between Alexander and
Diogenes, and by it each understood the other: to the former,
indeed, fate awarded the earth-kingdom and to the latter--the tub;
but these extremes were, by the common link, essentially one.
The Gymnosophists, or wise men of India, whom Alexander consulted,
could not have deeply impressed the mind of the pupil of Aristotle,
for, as Plutarch tells us, he laughed at them and sent them away
with many presents.
Yet the sacrificial death of Calanus, one of these seers, could
not fail to affect forcibly the susceptible mind of Alexander.
Jests, dreams, auspices, oracles, theories, sophisms, philosophies,
metaphysical speculations in general--well, these are agreeably
adjustable; maybe so maybe not so; and when looked at too logically
they can all scamper away and hide themselves elusively in
Symbolism: but death, death in flames, self-sought, self-devised,
self-suffered--that is real, that is awful.
On the day of his death and whilst erecting his funeral pile
Calanus talked cheerfully with the Macedonians and urged them to
drink deep and enjoy the passing hours. He commended himself to
Alexander, whom, he said, he doubted not but that he should soon
see again at Babylon. Then when the pyre was finished, he set it
on fire, sprinkled himself, and cutting off some of his hair,
threw it into the flame as a first-offering of the sacrifice: he
then mounted the pyre, lay down calmly and covered his head in his
robe. He moved not as the crackling flames drew near, nor might
any one note the least tremor of fear in his limbs as the fire fed
on them, nor did any sigh or moan escape from his lips: tho’ what
contortions of agony may have twisted themselves on his face could
not be known for his head and shoulders were hid in his robe.
Alexander stood by and watched the scene. At first he thought to
interpose, but learning that such was the custom of the country,
and that the seer, by this sacrificial death, drew to himself
high honor and special veneration from the people, he forbore.
Alexander’s brow was clouded as he watched the full-fed flames:
in his mind re-echoed the threefold question of the Indian seer:
_Whence are we come; whereby do we live; whither do we go?_ Ah,
whither! in his heart ten thousand recriminative contradictory
questionings seethed voiceless, answerless. Alexander turned
dejectedly away and retired within his tent.
That night violent reaction from the depression of the day seized
upon Alexander. He ordered that all his army should rest and feast.
_Carpe diem_ was the dominating animus of the ensuing debauch. In a
delirium of drunken joy Alexander proposed a drinking bout offering
a crown to the victor. Promachus drank twelve quarts of wine and
to him was awarded the prize. But Promachus did not live long to
enjoy his reward, three days after he died from the effects of the
debauch as did forty others who had taken part in the drinking bout
at the great court feast.
There is undoubtedly a strong tendency in human nature to rush
from one extreme to the other. The best by corruption become
the worst; no one can fall so low as he who has been highest.
But from the lowest which has known the highest there rush at
times instantaneous recoil, re-ascent, re-attainment--momentary
tho’ it be--to the highest. Then when genius gilds that lowest,
that recoil, re-ascent, re-attainment--the thoughtless world is
thrilled, it listens anew, it understands.
Some of the chastest lyrics of the language have been written in
recoil from, in liberation and glad bird freedom from the slough of
sensuality.
The significant charm of Francis Thompson’s _Hound of Heaven_ lies
in what it connotes rather than in what it tells. Soul-struggle is
enmeshed in the lines, and defeat is heard in alto moan with every
note of victory. It is the violent rebound to the height gilded,
perhaps goldened, by genius.
ALEXANDER’S FEAST.
The ode _Alexander’s Feast_ by Dryden is one of many contributions
to literature inspired by the Macedonian Madman.
“Great genius is to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”
--_Dryden._
Perhaps the taking of Persepolis and the mad orgy of triumph there
indulged in, mark the flood-tide of Alexander’s good fortune and
likewise the fateful turning and re-flow of the tide. But what a
tide!
Given the effects of generous wine; and the warrior, the military
genius, the poet-philosopher, the dreamer of dreams, the world
conqueror, the fair-haired favorite of Zeus, is, indeed, in that
wondrous triumph-hour--a deity. That sycophant court-adulation,
that lulling love, that music, that wine might well “raise a
mortal to the skies or draw an angel down.” O music, elf of a lost
paradise, we remember with you, we lament, we love, we pity, we
deplore, we--weep. With young-world Alexander touched to tears by
old Timotheus’ lyre, we too lament a bravely fallen foe:
“He sang Darius great and good
By too severe a fate
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood.”
We too deplore human ingratitude:
“Deserted in his utmost need
By one his former bounty fed--
On the bare earth exposed he lies
With not a friend to close his dying eyes.”
We too muse mournfully perplexed o’er all this sorry scheme of
things and mingle our tears with those which thus perplexedly
flowed so long ago:
“With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his altered soul
The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole
And tears began to flow.”
Lyre of old Timotheus, wizard violin, symphony concert--for the
hour at least, we are what you make us, and whither you lead we
follow. Sadness, remorseful sorrow-love, youth and beauty caught
coiled in icy death--are these, as Poe asserts, the essential
elements of supreme beauty? Poe’s magically beautiful _Lenore_,
_Raven_, _Ullalume_, _Annabel Lee_ confirm the poet-critic’s
dictum. Love in sorrow, beauty in death, mutability, vicissitude
are the dominant chords in music, in literature, and in life.
But reaction follows depression, and violent activity succeeds
to passivity. And this the old musician knew who played so well
upon the all too humanly receptive heart of Alexander. The wail of
the Grecian ghosts “that in battle were slain and unburied remain
inglorious on the plain” call for vengeance and point out the
abodes of the Persian gods.
Thais leads the way, and Alexander, drunk with wine and with the
madness of music, follows whither she leads him; and soon the
temples of the gods, the palaces of the Persian kings, the city
Persepolis--are in crackling flame.
Suddenly Alexander is again Alexander. With shame of soul he sees
the ruin he has wrought and frantically strives to undo what he has
done. But too late; countermands clash with commands, confusion
feeds the flame, Persepolis falls.
Thus culminated the triumph-banquet held in honor of Alexander’s
conquest of Asia and immortally sung into song by John Dryden in
one of the best odes of the English language, _Alexander’s Feast_.
HELLENISM.
Alexander died in a comparatively short time after the battle
of Arbela and his world empire fell to pieces. What, then, was
the permanent good or decisive effect of his conquests? To this
question historians reply that the Hellenization of the Orient with
subsequent spread of Greek culture among the Arabian Saracens,
thence as vital principle re-animating the Renaissance--was the
result of Alexander’s conquest of Asia.
More than seventy Greek colonies were established along the route
of the Conqueror. These continued to flourish long after the far
seeing mind that planned them had ceased to foresee and plan.
Vigorous Hellenism was easily dominant over sleepy Orientalism.
And thus was bloodlessly won thro’ the slow centuries, the
great victory of freedom, civilization, culture, art, science,
philosophy--Hellenism. From Arbela (B. C. 331) to the sixteenth
century Renaissance is a conquering span that might well delight
the gaze of the young warrior who once wept because there were no
more worlds for him to conquer. As Napoleon’s crucial defeat was
not at Waterloo but in Moscow; as the British Revolutionary forces
lost the colonies not at Yorktown but at Saratoga; as Carthage of
old went down under world-conquering Rome not at Zama, but at the
Metaurus; so the incipient death blow to Alexander was inflicted
not in Babylon but at the banks of the Ganges. When his army
refused to follow him any farther; when his brave Macedonians wept
for their far away homes and begged to be taken back to their wives
and children; when his best friends and admirers saw in the wide
rolling Ganges and the enemy bristling the opposite bank, obstacles
insuperable even to Alexander; when at last the Conqueror turned
away unconquering, turned back, yielded--then came the fierce
chagrin-humiliation, the mad beginning of the end. The world marks
only the collapse-crash, but deeper insight sees sympathetically
the fatal bend or twist or crack or break having in it inevitably
the tragic collapse-crash.
The death of Alexander has been variously described. Some say he
died of poison; others, of the exceeding coldness of the waters of
the river in which he bathed; others, that his death is directly
attributable to the excesses, the mad orgies of sensual indulgence
into which he plunged himself as result of his chagrin at turning
back from the Ganges, and of his wild grief at the untimely death
of Hephaeston his favorite and friend. Doubtless the subjectivities
of the various biographers have obtruded themselves over the
objective reality and the simple truth will never be known.
Alexander died at Babylon, 323 B. C., aged thirty-two.