208 The marble 'Lion of Chaeronea', set on a plinth to commemorate, and guard, the common tomb in which members of the Theban Sacred Band were buried after Philip's victory (338 BC). Excavation of the tomb brought to light 254 skeletons, laid out in seven rows. news caused real panic at Athens and Thebes, so much so that, despite their long-standing hostility, they hastily patched up an antiMacedonian alliance. On 2 August 338 Philip came through the Boeotian passes, and two days later brought the Greeks to battle at Chaeronea. His victory was total and momentous: all organized resistance to Macedonia now ceased. Chaeronea spelt the end of citystate freedom as any polis-based democrat understood it. The 'strong man' solution had been applied at last. Aristotle, who had ties with both Macedonia and Athens (as tutor to the young Alexander, and first head of that remarkable college cum-research centre, the Lyceum) must have greeted the news with mixed feelings. Yet in the last resort the entire intellectual climate which he and Plato had helped to evolve was - disclaimers notwithstanding well in key with this new authoritarianism. Aristotle's engrained class prejudices and contempt for 'lesser breeds' (not to mention all manual labour: could gentlemen, he asked, properly play musical instruments?), his intellectual elitism and meritocratic pretensions, his fascination with monarchy and absolute power – such phenomena leave one (as no doubt they left many Greeks) nursing a sense of profound depression. It is as though the previous two centuries, from Solon to Pericles and the great Attic dramatists, had been lived in vain. Intellect, now, had entered the service of absolutism, with which it had always had a social, class-based sympathy. Aristotle may refer only in passing to Philip or Alexander in the Politics, but their great shadows lie across every page: the kings of surpassing areté before whom all must bow down and worship, the strong men whose sharply dictatorial swords slashed through the more-than-Gordian knot of fourth-century Greek politics, the shattered coda of what, for all its faults, had been the most exciting and progressive political movement yet known to mankind. Alexander the Great: a myth and an enigma - After his victory at Chaeronea, Philip of Macedon sent ambassadors to Athens with generous terms for a peace settlement: more generous by far than those he offered Thebes. As one of his representatives (and escorts for the ashes of the Athenian dead, now returned home with honour), he chose his own son, Alexander, now eighteen (b. 356). This remarkable young man blond, stocky, quick-witted, a fast runner and born horseman - had been carefully trained as Philip's successor since childhood. His tutors and educational programme were carefully chosen with this end in view. His terrible mother, Olympias, taught him to think of himself as a king, and perhaps something more than a king: it may well have been she who infected him, at an impressionable age, with notions of his own divinity. Ambition is a virus easily caught, and Alexander was no more immune to it than the next man. He embraced the Homeric code of the Argeads with enthusiasm, grafting on to it a personal sense of identification with Achilles. That hero's touchy pride and thirst for military glory, his determination 'ever to be best and above all others', are traits which at once strike us in Philip's son. From the tutelage of Aristotle he acquired, not only a lifelong interest in medicine and botany, but also a sense of his own kingly areté, and a traditional contempt (which expediency and experience soon made him modify) for all non-Hellenes. There is a famous fragment of Aristotle's in which he advises Alexander to be 'a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants'. In this attitude he had the backing of almost all Greek intellectuals, Euripides and Plato included. Though Alexander seems to have discarded such a notion later (even this has been disputed) he surely embraced it with some enthusiasm as a young man. To invade the Persian Empire offered an unparalleled opportunity for the achievement of military areté; besides, he had been brought up to regard this crusade as his natural heritage. His future, in that autumn of 338, looked bright with promise. Yet there were already tensions below the surface. How long would Alexander remain content with the status of Crown Prince now plans for the great invasion were actually under way? Kingship was Alexander's destiny, the legitimate conquest of Persia his birthright. Yet between him and this glittering prospect there stood one formidable obstacle: his father. Philip was now in his mid-forties, battle-scarred and battered by hard living, yet still as full of energy and ambition as ever. Unless some chance arrow struck him down - and he seemed to bear a charmed life - it was Philip, not his son, who would earn immortality as the conqueror of the Persian Empire. As time went on, this realization clearly caused acute friction between father and son. It may have had more serious consequences still. Rightly or wrongly, Philip came to suspect Alexander and Olympias of plotting a coup against him. This is the only possible explanation of his behaviour between 338 and 336. He first (in striking contrast to his earlier policy) eased Alexander out of all public functions. He then pro ceeded to divorce Olympias on the ground of adultery (at the same time casting doubts on Alexander's parentage), and, finally, married as his fifth wife a blue-blooded Macedonian aristocrat, whose uncle prayed at the wedding-feast that from this union might spring a legitimate heir to the Argead throne. If Philip, that canny diplomat, was prepared to ditch his well-trained Crown Prince in so public and humiliating a fashion, it could only be because he feared him as a potential rival and usurper. Philip's first child by his new wife was a girl, which may explain why he now, surprisingly, patched up a reconciliation with his angry son. With the Persian venture imminent, even a suspect Crown Prince was better than none. An advance force had already set out, to establish a bridgehead at the Hellespont crossing, and, as Philip put it, to 'liberate the Greek cities'. The Delphic Oracle, on being asked whether Philip would conquer the Great King, replied, ambiguously: "The bull is garlanded. All is done. The sacrifice is ready.' To secure his western frontier, finally, Philip arranged a marriage between Olympias' brother, Alexander of Epirus, and her daughter Cleopatra, Alexander's sister. Incest, clearly, was no impediment to a good alliance. The wedding took place at the old Macedonian capital of Aegae - shortly after Philip's wife gave birth to a son- and ambas sadors and notables from every Greek city were invited to attend it. On the second day of the festivities, in circumstances which have never been fully cleared up, Philip was assassinated by a member of his own bodyguard. The garlanded bull had indeed been sacrificed - but at whose instigation? Circumstantial evidence, then as now, pointed ineluctably to Alexander and Olympias. Proof positive is out of the question; it can only be said that Philip's death was little short of providential for his son. With swift assurance Alexander won the army's endorsement as King, secured recognition from those foreign envoys so conveniently assembled in Aegae, and almost at once set out on that career of conquest which has earned him an immortal if ambivalent niche in history. After one swift campaign (335) to subdue recalcitrant frontier tribesmen and cow potentially rebellious Greek states including the utter destruction of Thebes, a piece of calculated terrorism which misfired rather badly - Alexander crossed into Asia Minor (spring 334), leaving Antipater behind as Regent, with a strong home army to keep the Balkans in order. He was never to set foot on Macedonian soil again. |