Alexander the King Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Places, events, and situations in this story are purely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  © 2004; edited and updated in 2019.

  By Peter Messmore.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  First published by AuthorHouse 08/12/04

  Amazon.com published 2019

  ISBN: 1-4184-5038-3 (e)

  ISBN: 1-4184-5037-5 (sc), Library of Congress Control Number: 2004094439

  The reader is advised to consult frequently the guide, Characters, Names, Locations, and Unique Terms, used in this novel. They appear in a table at the end of the novel.

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT & PERMISSIONS

  PREFACE

  ARISTOTLE’S REFLECTIONS FROM A SPIRIT WORLD I CHAPTER 1 POTHOS

  CHAPTER 2 ALEXANDER & DEMOSTHENES

  CHAPTER 3 CONSOLIDATION

  CHAPTER 4 DARIUS

  CHAPTER 5 ANDRAPODISMOS

  CHAPTER 6 DEPARTURE

  CHAPTER 7 PERSIA

  CHAPTER 8 CONSEQUENCES

  CHAPTER 9 ISSUS

  ARISTOTLE’S REFLECTIONS FROM A SPIRIT WORLD II CHAPTER 10 SOUTHWARD

  CHAPTER 11 JEWS, EGYPT & SIWAH

  CHAPTER 12 PURSUING DARIUS

  CHAPTER 13 PERSIA’S HEART: BABYLON, SUSA & PARSA

  CHAPTER 14 HUNTING DARIUS

  CHAPTER 15 PARMENIO

  CHAPTER 16 MORTALITY

  CHAPTER 17 ROXANE

  CHAPTER 18 INDIA & THE JHELUM

  CHAPTER 19 EASTWARD TO THE BEAS

  CHAPTER 20 JALALPUR ON THE JHELUM TO PATTALA AT THE DELTA

  CHAPTER 21 THE GEDROSIAN DESERT

  CHAPTER 22 PERSEPOLIS TO SUSA

  ARISTOTLE’S REFLECTIONS FROM A SPIRIT WORLD III CHAPTER 23 ECBATANA

  CHAPTER 24 BABYLON

  CHAPTER 25 DIONYSUS’ EMPTY MASK

  ARISTOTLE’S REFLECTIONS FROM A SPIRIT WORLD IV CHARACTERS, GEOGRAPHIC NAMES, LOCATIONS AND UNIQUE TERMS USED IN ALEXANDER THE KING

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  When the Persians meet one another in the roads, you can see whether those who meet are of equal rank. For instead of greeting by words, they kiss each other on the mouth; but if one of them is inferior to the other, they kiss one another on the cheeks, and if one is of much less noble rank than the other, he falls down before him and worships him.

  Herodotus, Histories 1.134

  Preface to

  ARISTOTLE’S REFLECTIONS FROM A SPIRIT WORLD

  I speak to you from a spirit world. Others who were my peers in life, as well as the intellectual giants who preceded me, are here. We are men and women you still dismissively and arrogantly call pagans. However, the nature of my spiritual existence is not my subject.

  Instead, I will reflect on the life of a man who shaped ancient events so significantly, that he altered forever what you call civilization. The world was different then. So different, that you may find my reflections incredible.

  Alexander lived his tumultuous life with little regard of others’ viewpoints. Different though our world was, humans who lived in it shared traits that I have observed in you for over two millennia. Power and a compulsive sense of destiny consumed Alexander. Men and women in your world still exhibit these qualities.

  Yet, I am unable to tell the complete story. I only offer my reflections and, perhaps, can be your guide. You must learn what lessons you will from Alexander’s life.

  My wisdom has been centuries in the making. Insights I share were not known to me when I lived. You must also understand that my reflections have been tested and modified innumerable times since my death. I used your sad history to do this. So the tale begins. Learn of Alexander of Macedon (whom you now call Alexander the Great).

  Learn of yourselves.

  ARISTOTLE’S REFLECTIONS FROM A SPIRIT WORLD

  1

  I begin chronologically, reflecting first about my Mieza School and Philip’s Royal pages. It was a grand experiment. Educating the best young men in a nation was every pedagogue’s dream. However, it ended too soon. After only three years, Philip withdrew Alexander and the other pages and closed the school. Soon after that, they marched into battle at Chaeronea.

  The Mieza curriculum was heavily influenced by my mentor, Plato, and of course indirectly by Plato’s teacher, Socrates. The course of study there later developed into my Lyceum, which became one of the most famous Athenian schools.

  It was there, on the cool slopes of Mount Bermion that my instruction began. I had agonized for months over the nature of the school’s curriculum. Developing in my mind was an emerging model for a scientific study of everything. I was fast evolving into a fervent empiricist. Knowledge existed to be analyzed, categorized, and understood. I had long practiced, especially in Assos and on Lesbos, what I called the scientific method. In the natural sciences, the method involved collecting and testing data, formulating inductive hypotheses from the data collection, and applying a set of principles—sometimes called laws by those whose egos were bigger than their minds—by deduction to a particular condition. I had even worked on a modification of this method for politics and government with Hermias, my Persian-threatened former benefactor in Assos.

  However, Macedon, King Philip, and Alexander posed a completely different set of social and intellectual conditions that threatened the free intellectual environment I had enjoyed on Assos. I knew that my freedom to teach would be limited by Philip’s expectations—expectations for Macedon, for himself as an absolute monarch in a feudal society, and for his son, Prince Alexander. I could not advocate establishing a democratic middle class, protected from the excesses of a king by a constitution, while instructing the Macedonian royal pages. An academic accommodation had to be reached. I was also concerned with the ability of naive teenage boys to grasp the abstract cognitive and philosophical models with which I had grappled all of my adult life.

  At last, I decided to simplify for the royal pages the universal model that swirled inside my brain. I divided the Mieza curriculum into three kinds of knowledge: theoretical, practical, and productive. I explained to my teaching assistants that theoretical knowledge was to be further subdivided into theology, the natural world, and mathematics. I termed these areas theoretical because they did not lead directly to anything. They were to be studied and understood simply for their own sakes. I never doubted that the human mind needed this theoretical foundation so that it could think without self-delusion and confusion.

  I focused practical knowledge on politics, governments, and the use of ethics to guide the organization of laws, the style of monarchies and the establishment of unified nations. Clearly, there had to be some modification of this practical knowledge for Alexander, but I had ideas about how this could be done.

  Productive knowledge centered on drama, art, music, and poetry. I decided to teach the pages how to analyze tragedy using the works of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. Priceless life-lessons lay in these productive works and they allowed my students to be immersed in Greece’s rich dramatic heritage.

  ≈

  I can still remember seeing the royal pages approaching Mieza from afar with Prince Alexander at their head, riding Bucephalas, his magnificent horse. Near him was Hephaestion, followed closely by the other energetic pages. I waited in the courtyard until they charged into our quiet school at full gallop. Coming to a halt, Alexander leaped off Bucephalas and stood before me.

  “We have arrived, Aristotle,” he said. “What do you require of us?”

  I looked at the Prince o
f Macedon. I had not seen him since he was a much younger lad. For the first time, I examined his physical characteristics. The initial impression he gave was of being short, much shorter than his peers. Although he added some weight to his attenuated stature during the following years, he was as tall now as he would ever become.

  However, the arrogant young prince had a presence about him. I was surprised at how quickly I got over the disappointment of his height and was instead captured by his eyes. They projected a disarming gaze. I felt as if the deep brown eye examined the visible part of me while the blue one probed deeper for any sign of weakness. Alexander was beardless, in contrast to the other pages who had started to show the beginnings of the hairy facial growths of which Macedonian men prided themselves. His hair was long and wavy, almost blond. I noticed that he held his head elevated and to the left, probably the result of a neck injury experienced during demanding military training or the rough games that Macedonian boys played. Even at thirteen, he carried the body of an athlete—he was muscular and lean. Despite and not because of his titular status, he was clearly the leader of the other thirty-nine youths who arrived that day at Mieza.

  My first lecture concerned politics and government. I reviewed tyranny, oligarchy, and the need for a democratic middle class. Then, before going too far with the sons of Macedonian aristocracy, I tempered these views with a thesis that described a singular exception to these principles. There was only one justification for an absolute monarchy: outstanding personal achievement by a man who was widely recognized as a god among men. Every page and the prince understood that I was speaking of King Philip and, eventually, Alexander.

  Toward the end of the lecture, I defended slavery, teaching that enlightened rulers and leaders should treat slaves as beasts and plants. I stated my conviction that all barbarians, especially Persians, were slaves by their very nature and nothing could ever change that. Finally, I defended private property and great wealth, explaining that poverty was as permanent, and as pervasive as inclement weather.

  Every page, especially Alexander, understood that I was advocating the establishment of an enlightened monarchy—a monarchy tempered by democratic ideals and guided by philosophic principles. Abundantly clear was my contention that a just society could only be achieved when kings became philosophers and philosophers became kings.

  ≈

  During the months that followed, my assistants took the pages on field expeditions up the slopes of Mount Bermion, to the shores of Lake Ostrovo, and across the Gardens of Midas to collect plant specimens. The specimens were brought back to the Mieza School, where they were analyzed, categorized, and put in our botanical museum display racks. Within half a year, every page could scientifically describe over a hundred plants found in southwestern Macedonia.

  Callisthenes, my nephew, lectured the pages on the history of Greece, Persia, Macedon, and the far-reaching barbaric lands. He taught them a historical scientific method and had each student begin a historical diary, which he urged them to keep the rest of their lives.

  My greatest expertise was in biology, medicine, and the natural sciences. I obtained aborted fetuses from a nearby village and carefully examined their embryonic parts. I compared the human fetus with the undeveloped embryo of a chicken and taught the pages how it paralleled the development of a seed. I imparted to them medical knowledge, as taught me by my father. The students learned how to use herbs to treat illness, how to counteract snakebites, and how different foods alter human performance. They learned simple geometry by surveying land and plotting the direction of much-needed roads in the district. I showed them the habits of bees and for over a year studied the life cycle of the Aegean mosquito. Alexander was especially interested in the mosquito.

  Embankments in the countryside produced natural lodestones that were collected, taken back to Mieza, and used in simple physics experiments. Alexander was amazed when I explained the use of the lever and fulcrum and demonstrated how enormous weights could be moved using simple machinery.

  The most difficult subject to teach the pages was ethics and rhetoric. Macedonians and Greeks took it as axiomatic that rulers and leaders could do and say whatever they wanted to achieve their goals. Lying had been a celebrated Greek art since Homeric times. Every educated Greek knew that even the great Odysseus had prevailed through trickery and verbal misrepresentation. That model had been the norm for centuries. With difficulty, I taught countless lessons explaining the nature of truth. The pages (and Alexander in private, epoptic sessions) were taught how the rules of logic could aid humans as they sought social, political and personal truth. An area of study that Alexander came to excel at was eristics. It required a skilled thinker, speaker, or writer to argue a position with equal facility from both a pro and a con position. I taught them that truth could only be found by understanding the extreme opposites surrounding any difficult or controversial issue.

  To evaluate the success of these lessons, I modeled mental exercises, demonstrating how a speaker could hide his real feelings about an issue by showing that he understood its extremes. Only when I completed my presentation would I reveal what I really thought. If my students could not fathom my true feelings during these presentations, I had succeeded in teaching them the power of logic. Alexander mastered the technique early and enjoyed using it in the evening when the pages discussed the day’s instruction in their quarters.

  However, that was long ago. Alexander became king immediately after Philip’s death and set out to defend and establish his new kingdom. He was insistent that he would surpass Philip’s achievements. Macedonia and Greece would only see him for two more years. After that, he never returned to the land of his birth.

  I returned to Athens and established the Lyceum. It became famous as the “walking school,” because much of my instruction occurred as we strolled about the school’s grounds. King Alexander wrote me often—more in the beginnings of his campaigns than at the end, however.

  Alexander’s brilliant, meteoric time changed civilization—even when I lived. My reflections will continue as you read of his life.

  CHAPTER 1

  POTHOS

  Leonnatus brought Queen Cleopatra-Eurydice into the old Aegae palace throne room. The new King of Macedon, Alexander, awaited the quaking former Queen. She cradled her infant son, Caranus, in her slender arms. Her terrified little girl, Europa, was at her side. Leonnatus had followed his new king’s command and found the ex-queen on the road to Paiko, escorted by a small group of Olympias’ priests. They were only three stadia from Paiko, where they were to have been killed. Alexander’s mother had instructed the priests to burn the bodies, crush their bones into pieces no larger than a fist, and then cast the remains in the River Vardar. Only Alexander’s quick action the day of his father’s assassination had saved them.

  “Cleopatra-Eurydice,” Alexander said as he walked toward the young mother and her children. “Forgive my mother’s harsh treatment of you. She acted without my authority before I had recovered from my father’s cruel murder. Are your children well?”

  Cleopatra-Eurydice seethed with anger. Nonetheless, fear and concern for the safety of her children caused her to hold her tongue. She knew that the twenty-year-old upstart who stood before her had known everything about the plot that had just robbed her of a husband and father. Robbed also was Macedon. The greatest king her country ever had was dead, killed by his former wife and his only son. She knew that Alexander was lying as he spoke to her. Play along, she decided. Let him make his move. If she could survive the next months, there were forces in Macedonia that might rescue her. General Attalus was in the Troad as co-commander of a formidable army. He hated Alexander. She also hoped, more than believed, that there might be highland uprisings against Alexander. Usurpers had always nested in Lyncestis. Her options were few. She could only be compliant until events either saved or eliminated her.

  “My daughter and I were beaten by the priests during the trip, but we were not seriously injured. Pra
ise Zeus that they did not harm my son.”

  Alexander moved toward the former queen and reached out to touch her baby. The boy slept serenely in his mother’s arms, as Alexander caressed the infant’s smooth cheek. He turned from the mother and children and walked to the throne dais.

  “You think I was involved in Philip’s murder, don’t you. I assure you I was not. I’ve investigated the plot thoroughly. Pausanius acted alone, motivated by the cruel rape that Attalus caused. We’ve tortured the stable hands who ravished Pausanius. They confessed that Attalus commanded them to violate Philip’s former lover. Attalus will pay for his actions with his life. If you must blame someone for Philip’s murder, blame him. He set in motion the events that felled your husband and my father.”

  At that, Cleopatra-Eurydice burst into tears. Almost as quickly, she regained control, wiped her eyes with her sleeve cuff, and looked demurely at the king. “I mourn Philip with every breath and fear for my children’s safety, Alexander. But anger is not in me,” she lied. “I’m just numb.” She saw Alexander smirk at her self-serving remark. However, she hoped it would buy her time. It was all she could think of.

  “You will be taken to Pella today. For a time, you must remain under palace arrest. I’ve given orders that no harm is to come to you or your children. When I have time, I’ll send for you. We will discuss your exile.”

  “I’m grateful to you, Alexander. I never hated you. The fates put us in opposing roles.” She couldn’t bring herself to call him king, although he had held the title for two days now. “A lesser man would have had me killed, as your mother intends.”

  “Olympias won’t harm you,” Alexander shot back. “She understands her limitations and responsibilities. Go with Leonnatus to Pella. I’ll speak to you when I get there.”

  Cleopatra-Eurydice left the throne room, accompanied by her two children.