Alexander the Great has appealed to my imagination ever since about sixth grade, when we first read about him in our history books. So I was interested in this month's cover article in the Smithsonian magazine, describing archeological digs at Aigai in Greek Macedonia.
Aigai was the ceremonial capital of ancient Macedonia, as distinct from the better known -- to me at least -- administrative capital at Pella, about thirty miles to the north. Much of the ruins are only now being excavated, and the ancient palace reconstructed. The Smithsonian writer interviews the director of operations at Aigai (Angeliki Kottaridi), and describes the historical importance of the site.
It was in 336 B.C. that Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon, was assassinated at the theater in Aigai, when Alexander was twenty years old. Philip was entering the theater, on the occasion of his daughter Cleopatra's wedding, when Pausanias, the leader of his bodyguards, suddenly stabbed him in the chest with a dagger. Pausanias made a run for it, but was caught and killed on the spot.
Besides Philip's several wives (Alexander was born of his fourth, Olympias), Philip had gone through one "romantic" conquest after another, both male and female. Pausanias had been one of them until Philip grew tired of him. One of the great debates of history has been whether Pausanias acted alone, as the classical jilted lover; or whether he was acting on behalf of Alexander (whose relationship with his father was often stormy); or on behalf of Alexander's mother (who hated Philip); or at the behest of agents of the Persian Empire or of the Greek city-states, all of whom were fearful of future Macedonian aggression.
Pausanias was sort of the Lee Harvey Oswald of his time.
Ms. Kottaridi offers no opinion on that question, but -- as an admirer of Alexander -- considers any accusations against Alexander to be a "foolish slander."
Most of what we know about the first twenty years of Alexander's life comes from the writings, over a century later, by the Greek historian Plutarch. Most of what I myself know about Alexander's life comes from the trilogy of historical fiction written by Mary Renault -- a writer whose excellent reconstructions of the Theseus legends -- The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea -- I discussed in two essays in 2016. The first book of the Alexander trilogy, Fire from Heaven (1969), which I read avidly when first published, is based on Plutarch's account of Alexander's life from the boy's earliest years up until his father's assassination. The book expands on the sketchy details provided by Plutarch, making use of everything Ms. Renault knows about the milieu of fourth century Greece and Macedonia and the ways people from all walks of life thought and acted in those days, derived from her own extensive research into Greek history.
If you like historical fiction, Fire from Heaven is a must; if you're not sure, it's a good place to start. My own edition includes a very good introduction by Daniel Mendelsohn, whose analysis of Homer's Odyssey, his discussion of how he taught the Odyssey to a small seminar of college freshmen, and the story of his problematic relationship with his own father, were all combined seamlessly in a book entitled The Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, which I discussed in 2017.
Every piece of historical fiction -- perhaps even every "objective" writing of history -- reconstructs the known facts from the perspective of the writer. Mendelsohn points out the psychological factors in Renault's life that led her to have perhaps idealized Alexander. Alexander is not just a military conqueror, Renault implies; he is an intellectual, a typical ancient Greek, one who sought to learn about and to understand the worlds he conquers.
That Renault saw Alexander as someone motivated by this quasi-philosophical yearning is made clear in The Persian Boy [the second book of the trilogy], where he says that he didn't "only travel the earth to possess it. I seek to know what it is, and what men are, also."
It's this yearning that we sense in his life that, no doubt, has made Alexander an attractive historical figure for centuries of readers. And for me, as well.
And besides, who can resist Plutarch's story of how the boy Alexander won his beloved horse, Bucephalus?
In Mary Renault's telling of the assassination plot, Alexander had, in fact, been tempted to assassinate his father. The two strong, but very different, men -- father and son -- had struggled against each other for years, and by the time of the assassination, Philip was about to go off and conquer the East, leaving Alexander home in Pella. Alexander had always been dissuaded from doing so, because of the strong taboo against killing one's father, a taboo enforced by the frightening Eumenides ("the Furies.") But his mother has now advised him -- remember that she hated Philip, and would loved to have seen him dead -- that Philip was not actually his father.
Once he believes himself not his father's son, however, he finds his hatred fading away. He considers the issue rationally.
If I meant to do it, no time could be worse than now, at this ebb-tide of my fortune, with the tide ready to turn. He won't leave me Regent here, when he goes to Asia; I'm in disgrace, and besides I doubt he'd dare. He's bound to take me to the war. Once I'm in the field, I hope I can show him something, and the Macedonians too. ... If he lives, he'll change to me when I've won some battles for him. And if he falls, I'm the man who will be there, with the army around me.
This monologue, directed at his intimate friend Hephaistion, is of course Ms. Renault's invention. But it illustrates her view of Alexander, and it's a view that her writing has forced me to accept: that Alexander was a young man of deep passions and great ambition, willing even to kill when he found it necessary, but a man whose passions were almost always under the control of his reason -- part of the Greek ideal of character. In Ms. Renault's reconstruction of the assassination, Alexander was not the assassin.
So why was Philip of Macedon assassinated at his daughter's wedding in 336 B.C.? It's been debated for over two millennia, and we'll never really know, of course. To me, it doesn't sound like something Alexander would have done. But I'm irretrievably prejudiced by Mary Renault's starry-eyed view of Alexander's character.
Ms. Kottaridi tells the Smithsonian writer that she fell in love with Alexander when she was young,
... not the mythical figure, but the man. He was so much more than a military genius. He opened up the Silk Road. He built these amazing Hellenistic cities in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, with freedom of religion, tolerance for different cultures, equal opportunity. And it all began right here in Aigai.
I think Ms. Kottaridi and Ms. Renault would have enjoyed knowing each other. And I know I would have enjoyed talking to both.
No comments:
Post a Comment