Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [10]
Ptolemy was there, a close comrade of Alexander’s since boyhood, a man perhaps a few years older than the thirty-two-year-old king. Ptolemy had been with the Asian campaign from the start but for years had held no command post; his nature and temperament were not obviously those of a warrior. Alexander had made him a Bodyguard midway through the campaign based purely on personal ties and thereafter began giving him combat assignments as well. In India he assigned Ptolemy his first critical missions, thrusting his old friend into ever-greater dangers. In one Indian engagement, Ptolemy was struck by an arrow said to be tipped with poison; legend later reported that Alexander himself administered the antidote, after extracting juice from a plant he had seen in a dream. Ptolemy was hardly the most skilled of Alexander’s officers, but perhaps the cleverest, as his subsequent career would prove.
Perdiccas, by contrast, had been in the army’s top ranks from the start of the campaign and had by now accrued the most distinguished service record of those in Babylon. It was he who had taken charge, probably on his own initiative, when Alexander’s lung wound was healing in India. Perdiccas was perhaps a few years older than the king, one of the aristocratic youths who had grown up at the palace as pages of Alexander’s father, King Philip. Indeed, his first act of prowess had come in his teens, when, as an honorary attendant to Philip in his final public appearance, he chased down and killed Philip’s assassin. Perdiccas belonged to one of the royal families that had once ruled independent kingdoms in the Macedonian highlands. These families had been stripped of power as Philip’s empire grew, but their offspring retained a privileged place at Alexander’s court so long as they were loyal, and Perdiccas was certainly that.
Leonnatus was another of Philip’s former pages, also sprung from royal blood, and had helped Perdiccas dispatch the king’s escaping assassin. He had risen to top commands late in the Asian campaign but in India had covered himself in glory at the siege where Alexander was shot. Leonnatus was one of the three men cut off with the king in the besieged town; he had incurred serious wounds while using his own body to shield the fallen Alexander, a signal display of heroism and devotion. Another soldier, Peucestas, had done likewise in that same action; Alexander had rewarded him with promotion to the Bodyguard, creating an unprecedented eighth slot.
Also present was Nearchus, a Greek, one of Alexander’s oldest and closest friends, but not a member of the Bodyguard (Greeks were a kindred but foreign race in Macedonian eyes and not permitted into the charmed circle of seven). Alexander had summoned Nearchus from a rear-guard post and brought him to India, eventually assigning him to captain the huge fleet that sailed down the Indus and back to Persis. It was the hardest assignment any subordinate ever received. The voyage went awry from the start, and Nearchus’ ships endured long stretches without food or water. When the fleet and the land army linked up once again, Alexander at first failed to recognize his wasted and weatherworn friend, then took his hand, shedding tears of relief.
There was another Greek at that meeting, Eumenes, thirty-seven years old with a boyish face and a slender build, who also had known Alexander from childhood but whose services to him had been of a different kind. Alexander’s father