The Novels of Alexander the Great by Mary Renault
On the rampart that faced the sea the air was cleaner, with a sharp scent of spring. The Olympian massif with its snowy crests called to her like the trees to a captive bird. Last autumn’s Dionysia was the first for forty years that she had not spent with her maenads in the mountains. Never again, said the caw from the kite-haunted bones. She refused it angrily. Soon, when it was sailing weather, Eumenes, whose loyalty had never failed, would cross with his troops from Asia.
There was a stirring along the ramparts. A little crowd was gathering and growing, coming towards her. She drew back from the brink and waited.
The band of emaciated men approached without sign of violence. Few looked to have strength for it. Their clothes hung on them like half-empty sacks; several leaned on a comrade’s shoulder to keep their feet. Men of thirty could have been sixty. Their skin was blotched with scurvy and many had toothless gums. Their hair was falling. One, to whom still clung vestiges of command, came forward and spoke, lisping a little because his front teeth had gone.
“Madam. We request permission to leave.”
She looked at them, speechless. Anger surfaced in her eyes and fell away into their depths. The old, thin voice seemed not a man’s but a Fate’s.
Answering her silence, he said, “If the enemy attacked he could lay us out barehanded. All we can do here now is share the last of the stores, and then go there.” He made a tired, economical gesture towards the ditch. “Without us, what’s left will last a little longer. Permission, madam?”
“But,” she said at last, “Kassandros’ men will butcher you.”
“As God wills, lady. Today or tomorrow, what’s the odds?”
“You may go,” she said. He stood a few moments looking at her mutely as the rest began shambling away. She added, “Thank you for your good service.”
She went in then, because of the cold; but a little later she went up again to watch them depart.
They had broken off branches from some scrawny pines that grew in the cracks of the stone, and as the gates creaked open they waved them in sign of peace. Slowly they eased themselves down the scarp, and plodded across no-man’s-land towards the siege-works. The rough timber gate in the stockade was lifted open; they trickled through and stood in a clump inside. A single, helmeted figure came out to them, seemed to address them, and went away. Presently soldiers came among them with baskets and tall jars. She watched the bread and wine distributed, the stick-like arms reached out in eager gratitude.
She returned to her room in the gate-tower, to crouch over her little fire. A ribbon of ants was streaming along the hearth to a basket that stood beside it. She lifted the lid; inside, they were swarming over a dead snake. It was the last one left from the Thracian sanctuary of Dionysos, her oracle. What had killed it? The rats and mice had been trapped and eaten, but it could have lived on the creeping things. It was only a few years old. She gazed at the moving mass and shivered, then put the basket with its seething heap onto the fire.
The air grew mild, the breezes gentle. It was sailing weather; but the only sails were those of Kassandros’ warships. The ration was down to a handful of meal a day, when Olympias sent envoys to ask for terms.
From the ramparts she saw them go into his tent. Beside her stood her stepdaughter Thessalonike, a legacy from one of Philip’s campaign weddings. Her mother had died when she was born, and Olympias had tolerated her in the palace because she gave herself no airs, and was quiet and civil. She was thirty-five, tall and plain, but carried herself well. She had not dared confess that in Pella she had had an offer from Kassandros; she had come to Pydna letting it be thought it was her life she had feared for. Now, pale and lank-haired, she waited for the envoys, keeping her thoughts to herself.
The envoys came back, their lassitude a little lifted by the hospitality in the tent. Kassandros’ envoy was with them.
He was a man called Deinias, who had done many secret errands for Olympias in the past and been well rewarded. How much had he told Kassandros? He behaved as if those days had never been, insolently bland. Florid, well-fleshed, his very body was an arrogance in that company. He refused a private parley, demanding to speak before the garrison. Having no choice, she met him in the central court where, while they were able, the soldiers used to exercise.
“Kassandros son of Antipatros sends you greetings. If your people give themselves up to him, they will be spared like those who have now surrendered. As for yourself, his terms are that you put yourself in his hands, without any conditions.”
She pulled herself upright, though a twinge reminded her that her back was stiffening. “Tell Kassandros to come with better terms.” A whispering sigh ran through the ranks behind her. “When Eumenes comes, your master will run like a hunted wolf. We will hold out till then.”
He raised his brows in overplayed surprise. “Madam, forgive me. I had forgotten news does not reach you here. Do not set your hopes on a dead man.”
Her vitality seemed to drain, like wine from a cracked jar. She kept her feet but did not answer.
“Eumenes was given up lately to Antigonos. He was sold by the Silver Shields whom he commanded. By the chance of battle, Antigonos seized their baggage train. Their loot of three reigns was in it; also their women and children—one cannot tell how much that weighed with such men. At all events, Antigonos offered it back in exchange for their commander, and they struck the bargain.”
A rustling shudder passed through the brittle ranks. Horror perhaps, the knowledge that nothing was now unthinkable; or, perhaps, temptation.
Her face was parchment-colored. She would have been glad of the stick she used sometimes to get about the rough places of the fort. “You may tell Kassandros we will open the gates without condition, in return for our lives alone.”
Though her head felt icy cold, and a dazzle of darkness was spinning in her eyes, she got to her room and shut the door before she fainted. “Excellent,” said Kassandros when Deinias returned to him. “When the men come out, feed them and recruit any who are worth it. Get a trench dug for the carrion. The old bitch and her household will stay here for the time.”
“And after?” said Deinias with feigned carelessness.
“Then … well. She is still the mother of Alexander, which awes the ignorant. The Macedonians won’t bear her rule again; but, even now … I shall frighten her, and then offer her a ship to escape to Athens. Ships are wrecked every year.”
The dead were shoveled into their trench; the thin, pasty-faced women moved from the fortress into the town house reserved for royal visits. It was roomy and clean; they got out their mirrors, and put them quickly away; girdled their loose clothes round them, and ate cravingly of fruit and curds. The boy picked up quickly. He knew he had survived a memorable siege, and that the Thracian archers, in the secrecy of their guardroom, had made stew from the flesh of corpses. The inner defenses of childhood were making it like a tale to him. Kebes, whose fine physique had lasted him well, did not check this talk; the haunted ones were those who kept silent. All kings of Macedon were heirs to the sword; it was well to know that war was not all flags and trumpets. As man and boy gained strength, they began to exercise again.
It was Roxane who had changed most to the outward eye. She was twenty-six; but in her homeland this was matronhood. Her glass had showed it her, and she had accepted it. Her consequence was now a dowager’s; she saw herself not as the last King’s widow, but as the mother of the next.
Pella had surrendered, on Olympias’ orders, dictated by Kassandros. This done, she sent to ask him if she might now return to her palace rooms. He replied that at present it was not convenient. At Pella he had things to do.
She would sit in a window that looked on the eastward sea, considering the future. She was exiled now from Epiros; but there was still the boy. She was sixty; she might have ten years or more to rear him and see him on his father’s throne.
Kassandros held audience at Pella. The Epirotes made alliance with him; he sent an adviser to di
There were many graves around Pella after Olympias’ purge. The withered wreaths still hung upon the stones, tasseled with the mourners’ hair. The kindred still came with tears and offering-baskets. Kassandros made it his business to go among them, commiserating their losses, and asking if time was not ripe for justice on the guilty.
Soon it was announced that the bereaved wished an Assembly called, to accuse Olympias of shedding without trial the blood of Macedonians.
She was sitting with the other women at the evening meal when a messenger was announced. She finished, drank a cup of wine, and then went down to him.
He was a well-spoken man with the accent of the north; a stranger, but there were many after her long absence in the west. He warned her that her trial was to be demanded; then he said, “I am here, you understand, at the instance of Kassandros. He pledged your safety when the siege was raised. Tomorrow at dawn, there will be a ship for you in the harbor.”
“A ship?” It was dusk, the lamps in the hall had not been lit yet. Her cheeks were hollowed with shadow, her eyes dark wells with a faint gleam in the depths. “A ship? What do you mean?”
“Madam, you have good guest-friends in Athens. You have supported their democrats.” (It had been part of her feud with Antipatros.) “You will be well received. Let Assembly try you in absence. No one yet died of that.”
Till now she had spoken quietly; she had not yet lost the lassitude of the siege. But her raised voice was full and rounded. “Does Kassandros think I shall run away from the Macedonians? Would my son have done so?”
“No, madam. But Alexander had no cause.”
“Let them see me!” she cried. “Let them try me if they wish. Say to Kassandros only to tell me the day, and I shall be there.”
Disconcerted, he said, “Is that well advised? I was to warn you that some of the people wish you harm.”
“When they have heard me, we will see what their wish is then.”
“Tell her the day?” said Kassandros when this news was brought him. “She is asking too much. I know the fitful hearts of the Macedonians. Call Assembly for tomorrow, and give out that she refused to come.”
The bereaved appeared before Assembly in torn mourning clothes, their hair newly shorn and strewn with ashes. Widows led orphaned children, old men bewailed the sons who had propped their age. When it was made known that Olympias would not appear, no one stood up to speak for her. By acclamation, Assembly voted for death.
“So far so good,” said Kassandros afterwards. “We have authority. But for a woman of her rank, a public execution is unseemly. She would be able to address the people, a chance that she would not waste. I think we will make a different plan.”
The household at Pydna was busy with small mid-morning tasks. Roxane was embroidering a girdle; Thessalonike was washing her hair. (She had been told, on Kassandros’ authority, that she was free to return to the palace; a distinction received with dread, and not responded to.) Olympias, sitting in her window, was reading Kallisthenes’ account of the deeds of Alexander. He had had it copied for her by a Greek scribe somewhere in Bactria, and sent it her by the Royal Road. She had read it often; but today it had come into her mind that she would like to read it again.
There was an urgent tap on her door. Kebes came in. “Madam. There are soldiers asking for you outside. They’re here for no good; I have barred the doors.”
As he spoke, battering and clanging began, with shouted oaths. Roxane ran in with her sewing still in her hand. Thessalonike, a towel wound round her hair, said only, “Is he with them?” The boy came in, saying sharply, “What do they want?”
She had been putting her book aside; now she picked it up again. She gave it to him, saying, “Alexander, keep this for me.” He took it with grave quiet eyes. The battering on the door grew louder. She turned to the women. “Go in. Go to your rooms. And you too, Kebes. It is for me they are here. Leave them to me.”
The women withdrew. Kebes paused; but the boy had taken his hand. If he had to die, it would be for the King, He bowed and led him away.
The door was splintering, Olympias went to her clothes-chest, dropped to her feet the house-gown she was wearing, and put on the crimson robe in which she had given audiences. Its girdle was Indian cloth of gold, embroidered with bullion and rubies. She took from her casket a necklace of great pearls which Alexander had sent her from Taxila, clasped it on, and walking without haste to the stairhead, stood there waiting.
The doors gave way. A press of men stumbled in and stood staring about them. They began pulling out their swords, ready to ransack the house and seek such hiding-places as the sacking of towns had made them cunning in. Then, as they moved towards the stairs, they saw the silent figure looking down on them like an image on a plinth.
The leaders stopped. Those behind them, even those still at the gaping doors, saw what they saw. The clamor died into an eerie silence.
“You wished to see me,” said Olympias. “I am here.”
“Did you run mad?” said Kassandros when the leader reported back to him. “Do you tell me she was standing there before you, and you did nothing? Slunk off like dogs chased out of a kitchen? The old hag must have put a spell on you. What did she say?”
He had struck the wrong note. The man felt resentful. “She said nothing, Kassandros. What the men said was, she looked like Alexander’s mother. And nobody would strike first.”
“You were paid to do that,” said Kassandros tartly.
“Not yet, sir. So I’ve saved you money. Permission to withdraw.”
Kassandros let him go. Affairs were at a crux, commotion must be avoided. He would see the man got some dangerous mission later. At present, he must think of another plan. When it came to him, it was so simple that he wondered he could have been so slow to see it.
It was drawing towards evening. At Pydna they were looking forward to supper, not so much from hunger—their stomachs were still somewhat shrunken—as because it broke the tedium of the day. Alexander was being read to by his tutor from the Odyssey, the book where Circe changes the hero’s men to swine. The women were making small changes in their toilet, to keep good manners alive. The sun hung over the high peaks of Olympos, ready to sink behind them and plunge the coast in dusk.
The little crowd came quietly along the road, not with the tramp of army boots, but with the soft shuffling tread that becomes a mourner. Their hair was cropped, disheveled and dusted with wood-ash, their clothing ritually torn.
In the last sunlight they came to the broken door, shored up by a local carpenter. It was ramshackle work. While passers-by stared, wondering what burial these people came from at such an hour, they ran up to the door and tore the planks apart.
Olympias heard. When the frightened servants ran up to her, she had already understood, as though she had known already. She did not change the homely gown she had on. She looked in the box where she kept the Deeds of Alexander. Good, the boy had it still. Walking to the stairs she saw the ash-streaked faces below, like masks of tragedy. She did not go through the farce of standing there, appealing to those unrelenting eyes. She went down to them.
They did not seize her at once. Each wanted his say. “You killed my son, who never injured anyone.” “Your people cut my brother’s throat, a good man who had fought for your son in Asia.” “You hung my husband on a cross and his children saw it.” “Your men killed my father, and rape
The voices rose, lost words, became a gabble of rage. It seemed they might tear her to pieces where she stood. She turned to the older men, steadier in their sternness. “Will you not see that this is decently done?”
Though they felt no pity, she had touched their pride. One of them lifted his staff for quiet, and cleared a place around her.
Above in the house the womenservants were keening, Thessalonike moaning softly, Roxane wildly sobbing. She heard it like the noises of some foreign town which did not concern her. She cared only that the boy should not see.
The old man pointed his staff. They led her to a piece of waste-land near the sea, too poor for farming, where glaucous shore-plants grew in the stony ground, and a mat of flotsam edged the water. The stones that strewed it were smoothed by the sea’s grinding, cast up in the winter storms. The people drew away from her, and stood round her in a ring, as children do in games. They looked at the old man who had appointed himself to speak.
“Olympias, daughter of Neoptolemos. For killing Macedonians without trial, contrary to justice and the law, we pronounce you worthy of death.”
Alone in the circle, she stood with her head up while the first stones struck her. Their force made her stagger, and she sank to her knees to prevent an unseemly fall. This offered her head, and soon a big stone struck it. She found herself lying, gazing upwards at the sky. A cloud of great beauty had caught the light from the sinking sun, itself hidden behind the mountain. Her eyes began to swim, their images doubled; she felt her body breaking under the stones, but it was more shock than pain; she would be gone before the real pain had time to start. She looked up at the whirling effulgent cloud, and thought, I brought down the fire from heaven; I have lived with glory. A thunderbolt struck from the sky and all was gone.