CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Men believed that Alexander had ascended to heaven, but for the next twelve years it must have seemed equally likely that all who had helped him were under a curse. The situation at Babylon was proof of the price that a king must pay for killing all rivals at his accession, a policy which strengthens the throne briefly, then delivers it into the hands of its barons. When Alexander died, Roxane was pregnant and her baby was not due for at least six weeks; it might anyway prove to be a girl. Alexander had also left a bastard son Heracles by his first Persian mistress Barsine, but the three-year-old boy had been ignored and no Macedonian took him seriously. Officers as prominent as Perdiccas, Leonnatus or the elderly Polyperchon claimed royal blood through their local dynasties in highland Macedonia; their claims were remote, had not Philip's bastard son Arrhidacus been the only male alive in Alexander's royal family, an adult but also a half-wit. A choice had to be made, and as Alexander had bequeathed his ring to his Vizier Perdiccas, his was the first decision; disdaining the idiot Maccedonian, he encouraged the Bodyguards and cavalry to favour Roxane's unborn child. But the Foot Companions were roused by their brigadier Meleagcr to call for Arrhidaeus, a face they knew and for all his deficiencies, not of Oriental blood. The common man's hatred of Alexander's Oriental policy had not disappeared with his death. Meleager, too, had once complained of undue honours bestowed on conquered Indians.

The result was a quarrel which surprised even the officers. Perdiccas and Ptolemy fled with their friends to the chamber where Alexander was lying in state, only to find that the door was smashed in by Meleager's infantry who started to pelt them with spears; they were stopped, just, and Perdiccas withdrew with his cavalry to the fields outside Babylon where he began an insidious revenge. All food was blocked from reaching the city until Meleager and the infantry were starved into an agreement that Arrhidaeus should share the kingship if Roxane bore a son and that infant and half-wit should be guarded by Perdiccas and Meleager in partnership. According to custom, the army was then purified from the taint of Alexander's death by marching between the two halves of a disembowelled dog; when everyone was off their guard, Perdiccas had thirty of Meleager's faction seized and thrown to the elephants for execution. Meleager took his own life, seeing his cause was hopeless. All too plainly, order had broken down, although Alexander had only been dead for a week. This was indeed the 'age of paradox', for on the news of his death, the Greeks were roused to rebellion by Athens and her general Leosthenes, whereas the Persians shaved their heads and lamented the passing of a fair-minded king; Sisygambis, mother of Darius, fasted to death after only five days, mourning the man whose chivalry she had respected ever since her capture at Issus. It was the most telling tribute to Alexander's courteous way with women, and with the camp in disorder she could not be blamed for her gloomy view of the future.

Within a year the turbulence of Macedonia's baronry had burst over Asia and the Mediterranean. For many the empire was a unity, and should remain so; for a few, there were kingdoms to be carved out, whether in Egypt where Ptolemy first seized a satrapy and made it independent or in Maccedonia where Antipater's death raised hopes of a separate realm. For the next twenty years, separatism grew to overpower unity, until the world had been split into four: in Egypt, Ptolemy; in Asia, Seleucus, once leader of Alexander's Shield Bearers; in Thrace, Lysimachus, a former Bodyguard, and in Macedonia whichever king could raise and hold support. They were years of war and murder on the grand scale, and they swept men along with them; six years after Alexander's death, an army from the upper satrapies met an army from western Asia in the wild mountains of inner Media, perhaps near modem Kangavar, and began their massive battle in mid morning. When each side had routed one of the other's wings, night was already falling and they had strayed three miles from the battlefield. They rallied and by common consent drew up their lines again, elephants and all, to continue their fight by the light of the moon. Only at midnight did they stop to bury their dead; throughout there were Macedonian units slaughtering each other on either side.

The spell of disaster began at once among Alexander's associates. In Babylon Roxane sent for his second wife, now called Stateira, Darius's daughter, and poisoned her, with Perdiccas's approval. Roxane's baby turned out to be a son, Alexander IV, who was given Perdiccas as a guardian; within three years Perdiccas had been stabbed by his guards after asking them to cross the Nile against its crocodiles and sandbeds. Craterus, loved by the troops as a true Macedonian, was trampled to death in the same month, his horse having tripped in battle; his troops were conquered by Eumenes the secretary, who knifed a commander of the Shield Bearers in the course of victory. Already Ptolemy had murdered the financier Cleomenes and seized Egypt; he went on to murder Perdiccas's relations, various kings of Cyprus and Syria's satrap Laomedon, one of Alexander's oldest friends. Anaxarchus the contented refused to flatter a Cypriot king, was killed for his obstinacy and had his tongue pounded in a pestle and mortar; Peucestas was removed from Persia to the fury of the Persians who loved him; Porus was killed by a Thracian who coveted his elephants; the original Shield Bearers returned to the Asian battlefields at the age of sixty and more and fought with decisive ferocity, until one of their generals was thrown into a pit and burnt alive. The rest of the unit were dismissed to the satrap at Kandahar who was ordered to use them in twos and threes on particularly dangerous missions to be sure that they never combined and returned. Thais, meanwhile, saw her children prosper and her Ptolemy take political wives; Pyrrho the philosopher, who had accompanied Alexander, returned to Greece and founded the school of the sceptics who professed to know nothing for certain. Nobody referred to Bagoas again.

In Greece, the pattern was hardly brighter. Leosthenes of Athens died in battle and his rebellion collapsed; Demosthenes, in exile, took poison; Aristotle was driven from Athens because of his Macedonian past and ended his life in his mother's house on the island of Euboea, saying that he grew fonder of the myths in his loneliness; when Antipater died of senility, Olympias promptly clashed with his son Cassander. With the help of her Thracians she killed king Arrhidaeus and a hundred of Cassander's friends and family; to Eurydice, great niece of Philip, she sent hemlock, a noose and a sword and told her to choose; Eurydice hanged herself by her girdle, whereupon Cassander retorted. He besieged Olympias in the coast town of Pydna and reduced her to feeding her elephants on sawdust; she ate those that died, along with the corpses of her maids. After nine months she surrendered and went to a proud death; Cassander killed off her family and turned against Roxane who was visiting Greece with her son; they were murdered by his henchmen twelve months after their imprisonment. Most ruthless of Antipater's children, Cassander disgraced a brother and sister who had nothing to do with him; his brother founded a drop-out community on Mount Athos and his sister alone stood out in these savage times, defending the innocent and helping penniless couples to get married at her own expense.

While the world was ripped apart by feuding and ambition, Alexander was not allowed to rest in peace. At Babylon, Egyptians embalmed him for posterity and while his officers wondered who would befriend them, they put it about that his dying wish had been to be buried at Siwah, conveniently distant from all their rivals. Meanwhile, his last plans were