Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [12]
The discussion that first night of Alexander’s illness focused on strategy and logistics. The army was more than adequate for the job ahead. The infantry phalanx, a massive block of warriors wielding eighteen-foot-long spears called sarissas, would form the anchor of the expeditionary force. The elite Companion cavalry, the army’s principal striking arm, would also be brought forward, and siege weaponry of all kinds—massive wheeled towers housing battering rams and drawbridges, catapults and artillery weapons newly designed by crack engineers—would be broken down into pieces and carried aboard ship. The fleet would also store provisions for the land army and materials for building the garrison towns that would dot the Persian Gulf coast, once the Arabs were subdued.
Alexander no doubt appointed the generals who would lead each unit. Perdiccas, as senior officer present, would have received command of the land army, since Alexander himself planned to travel with Nearchus’ fleet. Eumenes would assume his crucial new position at the head of a troop of Companion cavalry. No one could be sure how well a Greek would fill this role, never mind a Greek with no real combat experience, but Alexander seemed determined to find out.
When the meeting concluded, Alexander was carried out of the palace, placed aboard a ship, and taken up the Euphrates River, probably to the little Summer Palace in Babylon’s northern quadrant. Here there was what the Persians called a paradeiza (paradeisos to the Greeks, the root of “paradise”), a nature preserve and game park designed for the pleasure of Achaemenid kings, as well as cool breezes to temper the choking Mesopotamian heat. Alexander was seeking relief from the fever that had raged for a full day now, but also, in all likelihood, he wanted secrecy. After what had happened when he was near death in India, it was important that few people know how ill he was.
The senior staff who met with Alexander that first day convened again two days later, this time in the secluded quarters of the Summer Palace. The king’s condition was somewhat improved. His fever had come and gone intermittently, and he had at times been able to eat and converse. The Arabian campaign, now only two days away, was going ahead as planned.
During these days the generals must have talked about what they would face should Alexander’s condition worsen. They had reason to be anxious. The previous autumn a top officer, Hephaestion, then at the peak of health and strength, had succumbed in seven days to a fever much like Alexander’s. Moreover, both men had fallen ill after a bout of drinking, which raised the question of poison. At some point the generals must have acknowledged, to one another or to themselves, the possibility that Alexander was the victim of an assassination plot.
There were many who would be glad to see Alexander dead. The conquered Persians bore him little love, though on the whole they seemed a passive lot, content with the share of rule—a rather large share—Alexander had allotted them. Alexander’s Greek subjects, however, were feistier and less easily appeased. From their city-states in Europe they had mounted two rebellions already and were at that moment, as would soon be revealed, preparing to launch a third. Alexander had been taught by Greek tutors, including the philosopher Aristotle, and tried to show a commitment to Hellenic ideals, but his style was often that of an autocrat rather than a philosopher-king. Indeed, a Greek philosopher had stood against him when he proposed a plan that his courtiers should bow down to him in Persian style, and he had later found a pretext to have the man arrested or even (some sources say) executed. That man was Callisthenes, Alexander’s court historian, who happened to have been a relative and protégé of Aristotle’s. Was it possible that Aristotle, then living in Athens, had taken revenge by arranging the poisoning of his former student?
Then too there were the conservatives among the king’s Macedonian subjects, those