The World

In July 336, at Aegae, the family was again together for the wedding of Alexander’s sister Cleopatra to his mother’s brother, Alexander of Epiros (the clan had a lot of Cleopatras and Alexanders). Philip was exuberant: his new wife had just given birth to a daughter. The day after the wedding, he presided over games, then entered a theatre to watch a show accompanied by the two Alexanders, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd. Suddenly one of his Bodyguards Pausanias lunged and stabbed him in the heart. Attended by Alexander, he died as Pausanias was chased by the guards. Pausanias’ motives are mysterious. He had been Philip’s lover, but when the king moved on to another youth Pausanias had mocked the new boy as a ‘hermaphrodite’. The new lover had complained to his friend Attalus, who trapped Pausanias, raped him and then handed him over to his slaves, who gang-raped him. Argead court life was not for the fainthearted. Olympias was more than capable of suborning an assassin. Philip had already decided that Alexander would remain at home as regent, missing out on the Asian adventure – for Alexander the last straw. The Bodyguards caught and crucified Pausanias before he could speak.

Alexander was led out of the theatre by his father’s general Antipater and proclaimed king, whereupon he ordered the murder of rival princes – and of Attalos. Then Olympias murdered Philip’s baby daughter, and her teenaged mother Cleopatra committed suicide. Philip was cremated on a pyre, his bones then washed in wine and placed in the gold larnax box in the family’s Aegae tomb. Hearing of this in Susa or Pasargadae, Darius III must have reflected that Philip had ruled Greece for scarcely five years before Macedonia dissolved in blood-spattered chaos.

Alexander III, short, compact and fair, maybe redheaded like his father, was a man of action, destroying a Theban rebellion by razing the city, slaughtering 6,000 Thebans and enslaving 30,000. He was idealized thanks to his extraordinary career, but he was both exceptional and typical of a Macedonian king. He was a born killer, living in a state of ferocious, energetic vigilance, hand on sword: killing was at once a necessity, an inclination and a profession, essential for survival and success. He ruled amid an informal macho entourage of interrelated nobles, aware that their connecting threads were woven around him. These men had called Alexander’s father ‘Philip son of Amyntas’ and regarded ‘Alexander son of Philip’ as first among equals – a view that later become dangerous. Alexander’s friends served as the Bodyguards, led by his soulmate and lover Hephaistion, a capable royal page who had studied under Aristotle with him and his trusted henchman Ptolemy.

As a Greek, Alexander existed in a world illuminated by Aristotle’s philosophy but also bestridden by gods, spirits and humans descended from divinity. He believed like all his contemporaries that gods, often close at hand in their human guise, decided everything. As a king he presided over the sacrifices and regularly asked his diviners to read the livers of the slaughtered animals. He saw himself too in terms of the Homeric and mythical heroes. As a boy one of his slaves nicknamed him Achilles – and he believed it.

In spring 334, accompanied by 48,000 infantry and 6,100 cavalry, he crossed to Asia on an adventure in the footsteps of gods. He jumped off the boat and threw his javelin into the sand, then sacrificed to Zeus, Athena and his ancestor Hercules. Then he proceeded to Achilles’ shrine at Troy. By identifying with Achilles, Alexander drew attention to his own semi-divine brilliance as warrior, his leadership of a band of Companions, his friendship with Hephaistion (his own Patroclus) and perhaps his expectation of a short heroic life. If the gods blessed him, he would conquer.

When his soldiers advanced into Anatolia, they encountered first the armies of Darius’ satraps led by the Greek mercenary Memnon of Rhodes, brother of Mentor who had fought so well for Artaxerxes III and husband of the beautiful Persian girl Barsine, who had met Alexander when they were young. On the River Granicus near Troy, two Persian satraps charged at Alexander, riding at the forefront of his cavalry on his favourite horse Bucephalas, and struck his helmet, but he was rescued at the last minute by his old nurse’s son Cleitus. He won – and marched on.