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The Blood of Heroes

Predictive Precocity

When Ludwig van Beethoven was eleven years old, he composed somepiano pieces too difficult to play with his small hands. His music teacherwas said to have remarked, “Why, you can’t play that, Ludwig.” Towhich the boy replied, “I will when I am bigger.”

History is full of the notable quotes and feats of precocious geniuses.The common thread of such stories is that they foreshadow the greatdeeds to come. Of course young Beethoven knew that someday hewould be able to play the most difficult works for piano; after all, he wasBeethoven!

Many such stories were told about Alexander the Great. Most can befound in the first ten chapters of Plutarch’s biography. Plutarch relaysthem to suggest Alexander’s future invincibility; his vehement nature(barely controlled by his self-discipline); his self-possession; his confi-dence; and his wit. The adult Alexander was famous for all of these. Itwould be a mistake, however, to forget some salient facts about his back-ground and upbringing as we read through Plutarch’s delightful litany ofyouthful triumphs.

Alexander was a prince, with the blood of some of Greece’s greatestheroes (real and mythical) flowing through his veins from both sides of

his family tree. Moreover, this young prince did not grow up among“barbarians,” as some ancient writers have intimated, but at a wealthy,sophisticated royal court filled with great painters, writers, diplomats,and soldiers. He also received the finest education possible. Unless wekeep these facts in mind we can never understand how Alexander, theMacedonian prince, eventually became the king of Asia and a god.

The Blood of Heroes

Alexander’s mother, Olympias, was a princess of the royal house ofMolossia in Epirus (northwestern Greece). Molossos, after whom theroyal house was named, was supposedly the son of Andromache andNeoptolemus. It was Neoptolemus who had slain King Priam at thealtar of Zeus Herkeios (“of the Household”) during the sack of Troy. Healso happened to be the son of Achilles. On his mother’s side, Alexanderwas thus a blood descendant of the flawed hero of the Iliad and his sav-age son. To Alexander, the significance of his descent from the heroes ofGreece’s epic past was not a matter of passive identification with ancienthistory; the past was alive, and Alexander was part of a living epic cycle.

Alexander’s father, Philip II of Macedon, had fallen in love withOlympias when both were initiated into the mysteries of the Kabeiri(earth gods) on the island of Samothrace. Later on, Olympias was knownto be devoted to ectastic Dionysian cults. During their ceremonies sheentered into states of possession, and to the festival processions in honorof the god she introduced large, hand-tamed snakes that terrified themale spectators.

Strong-willed, intelligent, and ruthlessly committed to Alexander’sinterests as she saw them, Olympias apparently never read the chapter inthe textbook of Greek culture that forbade women to meddle in politics.She also passed along to Alexander her unshakable belief in his specialconnection to the gods and his unique destiny. Alexander may have beenthe only man in Macedon who was not afraid of his formidable, somehave said terrible, mother.

Olympias probably married Philip in 357. We are told that beforeAlexander’s birth she dreamed that she had heard a crash of thunder andthat her womb had been struck by a thunderbolt. There followed a

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blinding flash of light. A great sheet of flame blazed up from it, spread-ing far and wide before it disappeared.

Philip, too, had a prophetic dream. He saw himself sealing up hiswife’s womb; on the seal was engraved the figure of a lion. Interpretingthis dream, Aristander of Telmessus, who later served as Alexander’s seerduring his campaigns, declared that Olympias must be pregnant, sincemen did not seal up what was empty, and that she would bear a sonwhose nature would be bold and lion-like.

That bold and lion-like son probably was born on July 20, 356, thevery day when the great Temple of Artemis at Ephesos, one of the sevenwonders of the ancient world, burned to the ground. Hegesias of Mag-nesia claimed that the conflagration was no wonder: Artemis was awayfrom her shrine attending the birth of Alexander.

Philip received the news of his son’s birth just after he had capturedthe important city of Potidaea. In fact, three happy messages werebrought to Philip that day: that his one and only general, Parmenio, haddefeated the Illyrians in a great battle; that his racehorse had been victo-rious at the Olympic games; and that Alexander had been born. Philip’ssoothsayers predicted that a son whose birth coincided with three victo-ries would be invincible.

The soothsayers were right; but of course, they also knew that theblood of some nearly invincible heroes flowed through the infant’s veins.Olympias did nothing to discourage Alexander’s belief in his descentfrom heroes and divinities. When she sent Alexander off to lead hisgreat expedition, we are told that she disclosed to him the secret of hisconception and exhorted him to show himself worthy of his parent-age. (Unfortunately, Alexander never revealed what his mother hadtold him.)

Even as a young boy, according to Plutarch, Alexander revealed hisambitious nature. He was a fine runner, and when friends asked himwhether he would be willing to compete at Olympia, he replied that hewould—“if I have kings to run against me.” He also astonished some vis-iting Persian ambassadors by questioning them about the distances theyhad traveled, the nature of the journey into the interior of Persia, theking’s character and experience in war, and the nation’s military strength.His close interrogation of these ambassadors was later seen as particu-larly significant.

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Indeed, even before he reached puberty, Alexander had alreadyplanned his career. Whenever he heard that his father had capturedsome famous city or won an overwhelming victory, he was annoyed andcomplained to his friends, “Boys, my father will forestall me in every-thing. There will be nothing great or spectacular for you and me to showthe world.”

The Taming of Bucephalas

Alexander’s precocity and ambition are perhaps best illustrated by thedelightful story of the horse named Bucephalas—“Oxhead,” for theshape of the mark on his forehead. The big black horse had beenbrought to Philip by Philoneicus the Thessalian, who had offered to sellhim for the huge sum of thirteen talents. When Philip and his friendswent down to watch Bucephalas being put through his paces, however,they found him quite wild and unmanageable. He allowed no one tomount him; nor would the horse endure the shouts of Philip’s grooms.He reared up against anyone who approached him. Angry at havingbeen offered a vicious, unbroken animal, Philip ordered Bucephalas tobe led away.

Alexander intervened with a wager: if he could not mount and rideBucephalas, he would pay his purchase price. Philip’s friends laughed atthe bet. But Alexander had noticed what no one else had seen: that Bu-cephalas was spooked by his own shadow. Alexander therefore turnedBucephalas toward the sun, so that his shadow would fall behind him;then, running alongside and stroking him gently, Alexander spranglightly onto his back. When he saw that Bucephalas had been freed of hisfears and wanted to show his speed, Alexander gave him his head andurged him forward at a gallop. As Philip and his friends held their col-lective breath, Alexander reached the end of his gallop, turned under fullcontrol, and rode back in triumph. Philip’s friends broke into applause.Philip himself, we are told, wept for joy, and said, “My boy, you mustfind a kingdom big enough for your ambitions. Macedonia is too smallfor you.”

Philip was right, of course. But the real significance of this event wasnot what it revealed of Alexander’s ambition; what really set the young

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prince apart were his keen powers of observation and his ability to drawthe correct inferences from what he saw. As a young man, Alexander ap-plied those powers to combat; he was able to observe and then act upondata—features of topography, for instance—whose implications no oneelse could understand as clearly or as quickly.

An Education F it for a Pr ince

In charge of the nurses, pedagogues, and teachers expected to educatethe tamer of Bucephalas was a certain Leonidas, a relative of Olympias,known as a strict disciplinarian. Alexander’s pedagogue (or minder, usu-ally a slave) was an Acarnanian named Lysimachus, who pleased hischarge by calling Philip “Peleus,” nicknaming Alexander “Achilles,” andstyling himself “Phoenix,” the name of Achilles’ old tutor.

Once when Alexander was making sacrifice to the gods and was pre-paring to throw incense on the altar fire with both hands, Leonidasstopped him: only when Alexander had conquered the spice-bearing re-gions could he be so lavish with his incense. Later, after he had conquered

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The grove of Mieza, in Macedon, where Aristotle taught Alexander the Great whenhe was about fourteen years old. Author’s collection

those regions, Alexander sent Leonidas 500 talents’ worth of frankin-cense and 100 talents’ worth of myrrh, explaining that he had sent thisabundance so that Leonidas might stop dealing parsimoniously with thegods.

This ending has always appealed to those who have endured a strictteacher. We should attend, however, to the anecdote’s opening scene,which provides the real insight into the character of Alexander. Even be-fore he needed their favor to conquer the world, Alexander was extraor-dinarily pious and generous to the gods.

When Alexander was fourteen years old, Philip brought the greatphilosopher Aristotle to Pella as Alexander’s tutor. In what was probablya consecrated precinct of the Nymphs near the beautiful grove of Mieza,Aristotle tutored the young prince in ethics, politics, and eristics (formaldisputation).

Aristotle also annotated a copy of Homer’s Iliad for Alexander. Hetook it with him on his campaigns to the East; it was one of the very fewmaterial possessions he ever seems to have cherished. During his cam-paigns he slept with it under his pillow, along with a dagger.

The influence of the Iliad upon Alexander cannot be overestimated.To begin with, it supplied a model of a war of revenge against Asia. AndAlexander seems to have been deeply moved by the heroic example ofhis kinsman Achilles: when he visited the site of Troy in the spring of334, he honored Achilles and the other Greek heroes buried there withsacrifices, and proclaimed Achilles happy in life, since he had, while hewas alive, a faithful friend, and after death, a great herald of his fame.

It was Achilles’ acceptance of the inevitability of his own death, how-ever, that most inspired Alexander. According to Homer, both Thetis(Achilles’ mother) and Achilles knew that once he had avenged Patro-klos by killing Hektor, his own death would be near. But in avenging hisfriend he would win the only kind of immortality available to mortals:excellent glory.

Alexander too seems to have been willing to accept death, at a time ofthe gods’ choosing, in exchange for the everlasting glory that came fromachieving great deeds of arms. That acceptance explains best the patternof Alexander’s actions throughout his life. Like Achilles, to gain all,Alexander was willing to risk all. In combat, that was his great advantage

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over those who wanted to live longer—and therefore were destined tolive shorter and less glorious lives.

Homer may have given Alexander some ideas about how to fight aswell; Alexander reportedly regarded the Iliad as “a handbook of war-fare.” Since there are no completely convincing examples in the epics ofthe massed hoplite warfare typical of Greek practice during the fourthcentury, we can only assume that what Alexander meant by his remarkwas that, like Achilles, he should fight glorious duels with his enemiesout in front of his supporters. This is exactly what he did. And we knowthat Alexander justified some of his more controversial actions, such asmarrying “barbarian” women, with references to the Iliad.

As for Aristotle himself, what influence he had on Alexander’s think-ing otherwise is debatable. According to some sources, he advisedAlexander to treat the conquered peoples of his empire like plants or an-imals. There is really no good reason to doubt this story; the generalsense of the advice is completely consistent with known Aristotelian the-ories about the natural and desirable submission of slaves to masters, andof the conquered to their conquerors. Fortunately for the conqueredpeoples of Asia, Alexander ignored his teacher’s counsel, preferring totreat at least some of them as human beings.

From between the lines of Plutarch’s predictive account of Alexan-der’s early years, then, a picture of the young prince comes into focus: acompetitive and ambitious young man, pushed and pulled betweenequally strong-minded parents, blessed with keen intelligence, pious ina traditional fashion, sensitive and well educated, but with an independ-ent streak, and, most important, fired by a passionate engagement withGreece’s heroic past. Much of that past had been defined by violent en-counters with Greece’s powerful neighbor to the east, Persia.

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