Child of a Dream Read online

  Alexander, too, would have liked to take part, but his mother told him he was still too young and that he and Hephaestion could play with the ceramic soldiers that she had had made for him by a potter in Aloros.

  That evening, after the banquet, Philip invited his brother-in-law to a private room to talk about politics and Olympias was doubly offended – firstly because she was the Queen of Macedon and secondly because the King of Epirus was her brother.

  In truth, Alexander was only King in name, not in fact. Epirus was actually in the hands of his uncle, Aribbas, who had no intention of stepping down, and only Philip, with his strength, his army and his gold, would ever have the power to install Alexander firmly on the throne.

  To do so was certainly in Philip’s interests because he would thus keep the young King tied to him and at the same time dampen Olympias’ ambitions. She often felt that her husband neglected her and in the exercise of power she had found some satisfaction in a life that was otherwise colourless and monotonous.

  ‘You must be patient for a few more years,’ explained Philip to the young King. ‘Just for the time it will take me to drum some sense into all the cities on the coast that are still independent and to make sure the Athenians understand who is strongest in this area. I have nothing against them as such, it’s just that I do not want them in the way here in Macedon. And I want control of the straits between Thrace and Asia.’

  ‘Whatever you say, my dear brother-in-law,’ replied Alexander, who felt flattered at being treated, at his age, like a real man and a real king. ‘I realize that there are more important things for you than the mountains of Epirus, but if one day you are able to help me, I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life.’

  Although only just adolescent, the youngster had a fine head on his shoulders and Philip was most favourably impressed.

  ‘Why not stay here with us?’ he asked. ‘The situation in Epirus will be increasingly dangerous for you and I would rather be sure that you are safe. Your sister, the Queen, is here, and she has your best interests at heart. You will have your apartments, your royal income and all the prestige befitting your rank. When the time comes I will personally accompany you to take possession of your father’s throne.’

  The young King accepted willingly and so he remained in the palace at Pella until Philip completed the political and military programme through which Macedon was to become the richest, the strongest and the most feared state in Europe.

  In her resentment Queen Olympias had gone to her rooms where she waited for her brother to come and say goodnight and pay his respects before retiring. From a room nearby came the voices of Hephaestion and Alexander playing with their toy soldiers and shouting:

  ‘You’re dead!’

  ‘No I’m not! You’re dead!’

  Then their voices subsided into silence. The energies of the little warriors soon dwindled into sleep as the moon made its appearance in the sky.

  5

  ALEXANDER WAS SEVEN and his uncle, the King of Epirus, was twelve when Philip attacked the city of Olynthus and the Chalcidicean League, the association which controlled the large trident-shaped Chalcidice Peninsula. The Athenians, allies of Olynthus, sought to negotiate, but Philip proved to be quite intractable.

  ‘Either you leave here or you will have to chase me out of Macedon,’ was his answer, which on the face of it did not leave much room for manoeuvre.

  General Antipater tried to make Philip consider other aspects of the problem and as soon as the Athenian envoys, all of them furious, left the council room, he said, ‘This attitude, Sire, will only help your enemies in Athens, especially Demosthenes.’

  ‘I am not afraid of him,’ said the King, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘Yes, but he is an excellent orator as well as a skilful politician. He is the only one to have understood your strategy. He has noticed that you no longer use mercenary troops, that you have created a national army which is united and motivated, and you have made this the key feature of your reign. He is convinced that this makes you Athens’ most dangerous enemy. An intelligent opponent always merits consideration, Sire.’

  Right there and then Philip was lost for words. All he said was, ‘Keep an eye on Demosthenes through some of our men in Athens. I want to know everything he says about me.’

  ‘It shall be done, Sire,’ replied Antipater, and he immediately alerted their informers in Athens, telling them to make sure they sent news of Demosthenes’ activities rapidly and effectively. Every time a text of the great orator’s speeches arrived in Pella, however, there was trouble. The King always asked for the title first.

  ‘Against Philip,’ came the inevitable reply.

  ‘Again?’ he would shout, his temper boiling. These readings would upset him so much that if the bad news arrived just after a meal, it meant instant indigestion. He would stride up and down the room like a caged lion while his secretary read the speech out loud, and every now and then he would interrupt, shouting, ‘What was that? Damnation! Repeat it . . . read that bit again!’ His reaction was so fierce that the secretary came to feel that the words he was reading were actually his own.

  The thing that drove the King to distraction more than anything else was Demosthenes’ insistence on calling Macedon ‘a barbaric or second-class state’.

  ‘Barbaric?’ he shouted, sweeping everything off the table onto the floor. ‘Second-class? I’ll show him second-class!’

  ‘You must bear in mind, Sire,’ the secretary pointed out, trying to calm him, ‘that, as far as we know, the people’s reaction to these diatribes of Demosthenes is rather lukewarm. The people of Athens are more interested in knowing how problems in land ownership and the distribution of lands to the peasants of Attica will be resolved. They could not care less about Demosthenes’ political ambitions.’

  The passionate speeches against Philip were followed by others in favour of Olynthus, an attempt to convince the people to vote for military aid for the besieged city, but even this approach brought negligible results.

  The city fell the following year and Philip razed it to the ground to provide a clear, unequivocal message for whoever dared challenge him.

  ‘This really will give Demosthenes good reason to call me a barbarian!’ he shouted, when Antipater invited him to reflect on the consequences, in Athens and in Greece, of such radical action.

  Indeed, this drastic decision made the conflicts in the Hellenic peninsula even more acute: throughout Greece there was no city or village that did not have both a pro-Macedonian and an anti-Macedonian faction.

  Philip, for his part, felt ever closer to Zeus, father of all the gods, in terms of glory and of power. He felt this way even though the continuous conflicts into which he threw himself ‘like an angry ram’, to use his own words, were beginning to take their toll. He drank heavily during the intervals between one campaign and the next and he let himself go in excesses of all kinds during binges that lasted from dusk to dawn.

  Queen Olympias, however, was becoming increasingly withdrawn, dedicating herself to caring for her children and to religious worship. Philip came to her bed rarely now and when he did there was no satisfaction for either of them. She was cold and distant and he would leave humiliated by the meetings, realizing that his desperate and hurried passion left the Queen unmoved and numbed.

  Olympias was a woman whose character was no weaker than her husband’s, and she guarded her own dignity jealously. In her brother, and in her son especially, she saw the young men who one day would be the true custodians of that dignity, restoring to her the prestige and the power that were hers by right and which Philip’s arrogance stripped from her, day by day throughout his reign.

  Official religious functions constituted an obligation for the Queen, but they were clearly lacking in any real meaning for her. She was sure that the gods of Olympus, if they had ever existed, had no interest in human affairs at all. She was more intrigued by other cults, especially that of Dionysus, a mysterious god ca
pable of taking hold of the human mind and transforming it, dragging it into a vortex of violent emotion and atavistic feeling.

  Word was that she had been secretly initiated and that by night she took part in the god’s orgies which involved drinking wine mixed with potent drugs and dancing to the point of exhaustion and hallucination, all this to the rhythm of primitive musical instruments. In this state she felt as though she were running through the woods at night, her fine royal vestments left torn to rags on the branches as she chased wild beasts, caught them and ate their still-throbbing flesh. Then she would fall exhausted, succumbing to a leaden sleepiness, on what seemed to be a blanket of fragrant moss.

  And in this state of semi-consciousness she saw the divinities and the creatures of the woods come timidly out of their dens: the nymphs with their skin as green as the leaves of the trees, the satyrs with their bristly coats, half-men and half-goats, approaching a simulacrum of the god’s gigantic phallus, crowning it with ivy and vine-leaves, soaking it with wine. And then the orgy exploded, all of them drinking undiluted wine and throwing themselves into feral couplings that would lead them into direct contact, in that frenetic ecstasy, with Dionysus himself, possessed by his spirit.

  Others came closer furtively, their phalluses enormously erect, avidly ogling Olympias’ nudity, eager to satisfy their animalistic lust . . .

  And so the Queen, in secluded places known only to the initiates, abandoned herself to the depths of her wildest and most barbaric nature, to the rites that liberated the most aggressive and violent elements in her soul and body. Apart from these more extreme manifestations her life in truth consisted of all the usual things expected of any woman and spouse, and she was able to return to that life as though closing a solid interior door that cut out all memory and all feeling.

  In the quiet of her rooms she taught Alexander all that a young boy could possibly learn of those cults; she told him of the adventures and journeys of the god Dionysus who had travelled – together with his cortege of satyrs and sileni wearing crowns of vine-leaves – as far as the land of tigers and panthers, as far as India.

  But if his mother’s influence was important in moulding Alexander’s spirit, even more so was the daunting education administered according to his father’s will and wishes.

  Philip had ordered Leonidas, official director of the boy’s schooling, to organize his son’s learning without neglecting anything and so, as Alexander progressed, other teachers, trainers and instructors were summoned to court.

  As soon as Alexander was able to appreciate poetry, Leonidas began to read him the works of Homer, particularly the Iliad, because it presented the codes of honour and bearing that were appropriate to a royal prince of the house of the Argeads. In this way the old teacher began to win not only the minds of Alexander and his young companions, but their hearts too. However, the rhyme that announced Leonidas’ arrival in class was still to be heard echoing through the corridors of the palace:

  Ek korì korì koróne!

  Ek korì korì koróne!

  ‘Here he is, here’s the old crow!’

  Together with Alexander, Hephaestion listened to the poetry of Homer, and the two boys, enrapt, pictured in their minds’ eye all those extraordinary adventures – the story of the titanic struggle in which the strongest men and the most beautiful women in the world had taken part, joined even by the gods themselves, all of them with parts to play and sides to take.

  By now Alexander was perfectly aware of who he was, of the universe that rotated around him and the destiny for which he was being prepared.

  The models presented to him were those of heroism, of resistance to pain, of honour and respect for one’s word, of sacrifice to the point of offering one’s life. And he followed these models day after day, not out of the diligence of the disciple, but out of his own natural inclination.

  Gradually his nature revealed itself for what it was: at one and the same time it displayed the brutal aggressiveness of his father – the royal temper that could flash like lightning – together with the mysterious charm of his mother, her curiosity for the unknown, her hunger for mystery.

  He cherished his mother deeply. It was an almost morbid bond, while he held his father in limitless esteem. Over time, however, this admiration gradually evolved into a desire for competition, an ever stronger will to emulate him. Indeed, there came a day when the frequent news of Philip’s successes seemed to sadden rather than please Alexander. He began to think that if his father conquered everything, then there would be no space left for him to demonstrate his own worth and valour.

  He was still too young to be able to understand just how big the world is.

  Occasionally, on entering Leonidas’ classroom along with his companions for their lessons, he would bump into a sad-looking youngster, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age, who always rushed off without stopping to speak.

  ‘Who is that boy?’ he asked his teacher one day.

  ‘That’s no concern of yours,’ replied Leonidas, briskly changing the subject.

  6

  EVER SINCE BECOMING KING, Philip’s greatest ambition had been to bring Macedon into the Greek world, but he well knew that to achieve this goal would inevitably require the use of brute force. For this reason he had dedicated all his resources to making his country a modern power, pulling it up out of its condition as a tribal land of herdsmen and livestock farmers.

  He had developed agriculture on the plains, bringing skilled experts from the Greek islands and cities of Asia Minor, and he had intensified mining activity on Mount Pangaeos, extracting up to a thousand talents per annum of gold and silver.

  He had imposed his authority on the tribal leaders and made them dependent on him either through force or through matrimonial alliances. He had also created an army the likes of which had never been seen before, consisting of enormously powerful heavy infantry, extremely mobile light infantry and squadrons of cavalry that had no reason whatsoever to fear any force in the Aegean area.

  But all this had not been enough for him to be accepted as Greek. And not only Demosthenes, but also many other orators and men of politics in Athens, Corinth, Megara and Sicyon continued to call him Philip the Barbarian.

  For the Greeks the Macedonian accent, which was influenced by the speech of the uncivilized peoples pressing on Macedon’s northern borders, was something laughable. Macedonian excesses in drinking, eating and lovemaking during their feasts, which regularly deteriorated into orgies, were similarly scorned. A state still based on blood ties rather than rights of citizenship, ruled over by a king who governed absolutely and was above all laws, was considered barbaric.

  Philip attained his objective when he finally defeated the Phocaeans in the sacred war and had them expelled from the council of the sanctuary, the noblest and most prestigious assembly of all Greece. The two votes held by their representatives were assigned to the King of Macedon, who was also granted the great honour of being appointed president of the Pythian Games, the most important after the Olympics.

  This was the crowning glory of ten years of concerted effort and it coincided with the tenth birthday of his son, Alexander.

  In that same period a great Athenian orator by the name of Isocrates delivered a speech in which he praised Philip as protector of the Greeks and as the only man who could ever hope to quash the barbarians of the Orient, the Persians who for over a century had threatened Hellenic civilization and freedom.

  Alexander was kept fully informed of these events by his teachers and the news worried him greatly. He felt grown up enough now to take on his role in the country’s history, but he well knew that he was still too young to be able to act.

  As the Prince grew, his father dedicated more and more time to him, almost as though he considered him a man, while still keeping him out of his most daring projects. Philip’s objective was not in fact domination of peninsular Greece: that was only a means. His ambitions lay much further, beyond the sea, towards the limitless
territories of all Asia.

  Sometimes, during his periods of rest in the palace at Pella, he would take Alexander up to the highest tower after dinner and would point towards the eastern horizon, where the moon was rising over the wave-furrowed sea.

  ‘Do you know what’s over there, Alexander?’

  ‘Asia, Father,’ came the reply. ‘The land where the sun rises.’

  ‘And do you know how big Asia is?’

  ‘My geography teacher, Cratippus, says it’s bigger than ten thousand stadia.’

  ‘He’s wrong, my son. Asia is a hundred times bigger than that. When I was fighting on the River Ister, I met a Scythian warrior who spoke Macedonian. He told me that beyond the river there extends a plain, vast as a sea, and then mountains so big they pierce the sky with their peaks. He explained that there are deserts so wide it takes months to cross them and that on the other side there are mountains rich in precious gemstones – lapis lazuli, rubies, cornelian.

  ‘He told me that on those plains run herds of thousands of fiery-tempered horses, indefatigable, capable of running for days over the infinite expanses. “There are regions,” he said, “gripped in the ice, locked in the dark bitterness of night for half the year, and then others burned up by the blazing sun throughout the seasons, places where not even a blade of grass grows, where the snakes are poisonous and the sting of a scorpion kills in an instant.” That is Asia, my son.’

  Alexander looked at his father, saw his eyes smouldering with dreams and understood what was burning in his soul.

  More than a year had passed since that night in the tower when one morning Philip suddenly entered Alexander’s room: ‘Put on your Thracian trousers and get yourself a rough woollen cloak. No insignias and no ornament. We leave immediately.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I have already had them prepare the horses and the food; we’ll be away for some days. I want to show you something.’