Time’s Eye

Hephaistion was commander of this army group. But Eumenes, as Royal Secretary, had his own hierarchy that ran in parallel to the army’s command structure. He had subsidiary Secretaries attached to each of the main army units—the infantry, the cavalry, the mercenaries and others—each assisted by Inspectors who did much of the detailed information-gathering. Eumenes prided himself on the accuracy and currency of his information: quite an achievement in the service of Macedonians, most of whom, even the nobility, were illiterate and innumerate.

But Eumenes was well equipped for the task. Older than most of the King’s close companions, he had served the King’s father Philip, as well as the son.

Philip had seized Macedon three years before the birth of his heir. In those days the kingdom had been a loose coalition of feuding principalities, under threat from the barbarian tribes to the north and the devious Greek city-states to the south. Under Philip the northern tribes had soon been subdued. A confrontation with the Greeks had been inevitable—and when it had come Philip’s crucial military innovation, a highly trained, highly mobile cavalry division called the Companions, had sliced through the Greeks’ slow-moving hoplite infantry.

Eumenes, himself a city-state Greek from Cardia, knew that resentment against the Greeks’ barbarian conquerors was unlikely ever to fade. But in a time when civilization was limited to a few pockets surrounded by great seas of barbarism and the unknown, the more politically aware of the Greeks knew that a strong Macedon shielded them from worse dangers. They lauded Philip’s wider ambition to invade the immense empire of Persia, ostensibly in order to revenge earlier Persian atrocities against Greek cities. And the education of the King’s son at the hands of Greek tutors, including the famous Aristotle, pupil of Plato, had served to reinforce an impression of Philip’s Hellenism.

It had been just as Philip was preparing for his great Persian adventure that he had been assassinated.

The new King was just twenty, but he had shown no hesitation in continuing where his father had left off. A series of rapid campaigns had consolidated his position in Macedonia and Greece. Then he had turned his attention to the prize that had been almost in Philip’s grasp. The Persian empire sprawled from Turkey to Egypt and Pakistan, and its Great King could field forces that could number a million. But after six years of a short, brutal and brilliant campaign, a King of Macedon had mounted the throne of Persepolis itself.

This King had not wanted simply to conquer, but to rule. He had sought to spread Greek culture through Asia: he had planted or rebuilt cities to the Greek model throughout his empire. And, more controversially, he had tried to weld together the disparate people who now came under his rule. He had adopted Persian dress and mannerisms, and shocked his men by kissing Bagoas the eunuch on the lips in their sight.

Meanwhile Eumenes’ own career had advanced with the King’s. His efficiency, intelligence and political subtlety had earned him the King’s undying confidence—and his responsibilities had swollen with the growing empire, until Eumenes felt as if he was carrying the burden of a world on his shoulders.

But a mere empire was not enough for this King. With Persia won he had launched his battle-hardened army, all fifty thousand of them, to the south and west, toward the rich, mysterious prize of India. They headed ever east into unexplored and unmapped country, heading for a coast that would, the King believed, be the shore of the Ocean that ran around the world. The country was strange: there were crocodiles in the rivers, and forests full of gigantic snakes, and there were rumors of empires nobody had ever heard of before. But the King would not stop.

Why did he go on? Some said he was a god in mortal flesh, and the ambitions of gods transcended those of men. Some said that he sought to ape the achievements of the great hero Achilles. There was curiosity too; a man who had been tutored by Aristotle could not help but grow up with a deep desire to know the world. But Eumenes suspected the truth was simpler. This King was his illustrious father’s creation, and it was no wonder that the new King had wanted to eclipse his father’s very ambitions, and so to prove himself the greater man.

At last, at the river Beas, the troops, exhausted from years of campaigning, had rebelled, and even the god-king could go no further. Eumenes believed that the men’s gut wisdom was sound. Enough was enough; they would do well to hold what had already been taken.