Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [23]
The foot soldiers had thus seen huge changes during their decade or more of service, and they had changed as well. Hardened by constant warfare, emboldened by their successful mutiny in India, they had become headstrong and intractable, demanding of pay and perquisites. They still revered the Argead monarchy and the towering figure of Alexander, but their reverence was more grudging than before, like that paid by a half-wild dog to a master who can hit it on the snout. The commander they loved, by contrast, was Craterus, the soldier’s soldier, who had given voice to their own feelings on several occasions when he had challenged Alexander’s Asianizing policies. In their eyes Craterus stood for a culturally pure past, when their identity, and that of their foes, had been both clear and morally gratifying.
Meleager, the top officer leading the infantry, had also criticized Alexander’s internationalism, and his plain speech had cost him dear. Years before, in India, Meleager had attended a banquet celebrating Alexander’s new alliance with Ambhi, a local raja. Alexander had lavished gifts on his Indian host, including the huge sum of one thousand talents of silver. Drunk, and embittered at seeing such wealth bestowed on a barbarian, Meleager let his irritation show. “How nice for you,” he sneered at the king in the hearing of all, “that finally in India you found a man worthy of one thousand talents.” Thereafter, Meleager’s career had languished. Of all those who started the Asian campaign as taxiarchs (captains of infantry brigades), only Meleager had stayed in that mid-level post, rather than moving up to the more distinguished cavalry.
It was no coincidence that Meleager, in the council session at the palace, had backed Arrhidaeus as successor at the same moment that his infantry battalions, meeting elsewhere, made the same choice. In both cases, the preference for Arrhidaeus over Rhoxane’s unborn child sprang from a longing for the past. Arrhidaeus, as a son of the great Philip, evoked the days before Alexander when Asians had still been enemies and slaves, not comrades-in-arms. The foot soldiers who anointed him left no doubt about their hopes for his reign. They took the step, unprecedented in their history, of changing the new king’s name, dubbing him Philip after his revered father.
Meleager knew why his infantry comrades had hailed Arrhidaeus as monarch and rejected Rhoxane’s unborn child, whose mixed blood embodied the hated program of Euro-Asian fusion. He shared their feelings, yet he had been sent to their camp to persuade them to reverse course. Perdiccas was counting on him to reconcile his men to the choice made by the cavalry. He was the perfect go-between, since his stalled career gave him unmatched credibility among the infantry; he was the one officer who had stayed in their ranks. He had a fair chance of quelling their revolt if he spoke in support of the generals and their fetal king.
But he also had a fair chance of leading that revolt to victory if he followed his own inclinations. As he entered the infantry camp, where the foot soldiers were hailing the newly renamed Philip, Meleager took stock of the opportunity before him. Here was an incompetent king who needed a guardian to tend him; here was an army that already regarded him as its chief, troops far more numerous than those of Perdiccas. Leading this army, championing this king, Meleager could grasp supreme power as easily as Perdiccas, indeed more easily, since he would stand beside a flesh-and-blood monarch, not a mere