Part 16

"High things were spoken there, unhanded down; Only they saw thee from the secret shrine Returning with hot cheek and kindled eyes."

One thing, however, was stressed in the official version of what happened: the desired greeting was given publicly to Alexander by the eldest of the priests. And its import was enhanced by the arrival of messengers to say that oracles to the same effect had been given simultaneously by the Sibyl of Erythræ and Apollo at Branchidæ, where a long silence of over one hundred and fifty years was interrupted thereby. As to the private interview Alexander wrote to his mother that "secret things were divulged to him which he could communicate only to her personally."

I shall revert to the significance of the visit to Siwah presently. Meanwhile, it will suffice to note that it was quite in character with the methods already adopted by Alexander that he should seek in this bizarre way to impress upon the imagination of men a new idea; to disclose by a sensational action of this kind an important change of policy. And it is paralleled by several incidents in his later career.

Twelve months after leaving Siwah, Alexander was master of Persepolis. This was the capital of Persis, a land of some half a million inhabitants whom Cyrus and Darius had made lords of a subject population not much below that of the Roman empire. For over two hundred years forty millions of people had looked to Persis and Persepolis as the seats of the mighty. The "city of the Persians" and the palace of their kings which it contained were the manifest symbols of empire: the one Alexander gave over to his soldiers to pillage, the other he fired with his own hand, thus proclaiming to the world that the end of a dynasty had come. His own part in this catastrophe--which affected the imaginations of men in some such way as did the capture of Rome by Alaric in 410 A.D.--was taken conspicuously. Starting up from a banquet, he and his companions, among whom was the beautiful Athenian courtesan Thais, went in Dionysiac revel to the sound of flutes through the streets to the palace, and threw the torches which they had taken with them from the feast upon the cedar beams of the roof. Once the flames had shot up and the desired effect had been produced, Alexander ordered the fire to be extinguished.

Early in the following year Alexander entered Ecbatana, the summer capital of the Persian empire, and Darius became a fugitive. Up to this point Alexander had been hegemon of the Hellenic league as well as king of Macedon, and, on liberating the Greek cities in Asia from Persian control, he had added them to the league. Now that the war against Persia, for which the league had been ostensibly formed, had ended, Alexander thought the time had come to relieve himself of the partnership into which, following the policy of Philip, he had entered at the opening of his reign. This he did in his usual dramatic way. He discharged all the Greek troops put under his command by the league, and made elaborate provision for their transport back to the coast and across the Mediterranean to Greece. To every Greek city which had sent him a contingent, its return was a message that Alexander was no longer bound by the treaties made when the league was formed. This did not mean, as he took pains to show, that it was freed thereby from all obligations toward him. Over the Macedonians he ceased at this point to be hegemon, but he still remained their king.

A little later he appeared before his astonished Macedonian officers clad in what pleased him of the costume of the Persians. The tiara and the sleeved jacket and the baggy trousers he did not adopt, but he took their soft undergarments, and, as the symbol of authority, the diadem. He also remodeled his court in the Oriental fashion, adding purple to the uniform of the guards, chamberlains, and, if a dubious report is to be trusted, a harem. Finally in 327 B.C., shortly after his romantic marriage with Roxane, a Persian princess of the Sogdian nobility, he added the requirement that all who were admitted to his presence should kneel at his feet and kiss the dust before him. "Chares of Mytilene," who was master of ceremonies when this custom was inaugurated, "says that Alexander, while drinking at a symposium, offered his goblet to one of his comrades, who, taking it, rose and went to the hearth, where, quaffing it off, he first knelt and kissed Alexander's feet, then kissed his cheek and returned to his couch. All present did the same except Callisthenes," who proffered the kiss on the cheek without first kneeling and thus earned the disfavor of the king. With this rather lame conclusion was enacted the prologue of what his old Macedonian nobles regarded as a great tragedy.

"It has been thought," says Eduard Meyer, "that proskynesis"--to use the technical term for this ceremony--"was only the natural expression of the fact that by the arbitrament of battle Alexander had become lord of the Persian empire and legitimate successor of Darius. And, indeed, there is truth in this idea. But the meaning of the requirement, and the historical significance of the occurrence and of the conflict which it occasioned, are by no means exhausted when proskynesis is regarded as a harmless concession to the views of his Oriental subjects. The essential point is that Alexander demanded it of the Macedonians and Greeks also. It is precisely in this matter, however, that the views of Orientals and Europeans collide most squarely and typically. Herein exists an antagonism which is independent altogether of race and nationality. We cannot say how it arose, but it dominates the whole course of the cultural and political development of the regions in question. The Oriental, be he a Semite, an Egyptian, an Indo-European, a Chinaman, or of any other stock, finds it natural that in intercourse with others he has to humble himself; that he call himself their servant, them his masters; that he kneel in the dust, not only before the king, but before all superiors, without lessening thereby the sense of personal pride with which he, too, may be animated.

"To the European, on the other hand, such demeanor involves the destruction of his own personality. Never will a free man call himself the slave of another. Rather, he will always speak of himself in confident tones, with a strong feeling of; his own worth.... Prostration and kissing the dust are due, in European thinking, only to a god who is thereby acknowledged to be the lord of the worshiper, in whose presence the worshiper can have no will of his own.

"It was among the Greeks, in their free republics, that this feeling developed to its full strength. It finds typical expression in the story of the Spartan heralds, Sperthies and Bulis, who, although they had surrendered themselves to the Persian king to be executed, refused to prostrate themselves before him; 'for in their country,' Herodotus makes them say, 'it was not customary to kiss the dust before a man, nor had they come for that purpose.' The stories of Themistocles who rendered the required homage, and of Conon who on its account avoided an audience with the King altogether, despite the high value it would have had for him, are similarly significant. In demanding proskynesis, accordingly, Alexander offended Greek sentiment violently. Rather, what he thereby demanded was the acknowledgment that officially, in his capacity of king,--his private position is a different matter altogether,--he was no longer a man, but a god."

In other words, when Alexander demanded that Greeks and Macedonians fall at his feet and kiss the dust before him, he demanded that they recognize him as a god, as in fact the son of Zeus. This ceremony had no such implications for the Persians; but, as we shall see in a moment, in Alexander's thinking, the Persians were to cease to exist; they were to be made Hellenes by education.

Alexander set out for Asia with a firm belief in the absolute superiority of Hellenic culture; and in this belief he remained fixed to the end. To establish Hellenic life throughout Asia, he regarded as the main object of his conquests. His Hellenic ideals he revealed to the astonished natives at almost every halting-place on his march; for on such occasions he again and again held gymnastic and musical contests after the Greek pattern. As we have seen, he had learned from Aristotle that city-life and Hellenic life were synonymous, and that without political activity city-life was animal rather than human in character. Accordingly, he displayed a feverish energy in founding Greek city-states everywhere in the conquered territory, but particularly in the regions of the Far East where urban life had been hitherto lacking. Like mushrooms overnight, towns by the scores sprang up behind him on his line of march; so vast was the immigration into Asia from Greece and Macedon even during the thirteen brief years of his reign.

The fact was that by founding cities Alexander lessened enormously his military and administrative difficulties. For every city took from his shoulders responsibility for maintaining order, collecting taxes, and dispensing justice in the territory assigned to it--necessary tasks, now that a European state was arising in Asia, which could be performed otherwise only by the creation of a bureaucratic system of officials. This, however, was a non-Hellenic institution for which Alexander had naturally no liking. In the future he saw the whole world--that of Asia which he had already conquered and that of the Far West which he meant to conquer--honeycombed, like Greece itself, with a multitude of city-states, each a separate cell with a town in its centre, each possessed of a general assembly and a council, magistrates of its own choosing and laws of its own making or adoption, each the home of free men speaking the Greek language, fostering Greek art and letters, and fighting with Greek arms and tactics. It was a grand vision, which failed of realization in Alexander's time and thereafter; but it set forth an ideal toward which future generations moved for over five centuries.

It is clear that Alexander never lost faith in the absolute supremacy of Hellenic culture. Certainly the place of unlimited authority which he reserved for himself above the world of city-states and their law-bound citizens, was the one prescribed for the ideal wise man, the man of supreme political ability, by Aristotle his tutor. That Aristotle thought of a different pambasileus for each city-state and Alexander of a single "absolute monarch" for all, is a non-essential difference, and it is simply in the institutions which Alexander found necessary to translate the idea of the philosopher into the world of reality that Hellenic practice and custom were violated.

These outlandish institutions, however, Alexander employed as means for the better dissemination of Greek life and thought, without being conscious, perhaps, that they were destructive of the spirit which they were intended to preserve.

On the other hand, it is indisputable that Alexander revised his tutor's, and his own youthful, opinion as to the worth of the Asiatics. What he came to think of Semites and Egyptians we do not know; and it may be that he continued to regard them as naturally servile and, hence, condemned them to remain forever hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Hellenic or Hellenized citizens in whose cities they were to live. But as to the Medes and Persians and the kindred Iranian stocks of the Far East, the views of their conqueror changed radically when he came really to know them, and to appreciate fully the magnitude of the task which he had undertaken.

He found that they had spirit and capacity comparable to those of the Greeks and Macedonians themselves. That they caused him no physical repulsion is shown by his falling in love with and marrying Roxane. Teach them the Greek language, draw them along with the immigrant Greeks into the body politic of the new cities, equip them with Macedonian weapons, drill them in the Macedonian fashion, and distribute them in the Macedonian regiments; above all, use the nobles in the high administrative posts, and it seemed to Alexander possible, within a short time, to fuse the new masters of Asia with the old into a new cosmopolitan race.

With iron resolution he carried this policy forward despite all opposition. Then, choosing the dramatic moment of his return to Susa after his Indian campaign, he arranged an extraordinary marriage as a symbol of the contemplated fusion of the dominant peoples of Europe and Asia. "He himself," says Arrian in his Anabasis, quoting Aristobulus, an eye-witness, "married Barsine (rather Stateira), the eldest of the daughters of Darius, and, in addition to her, another, the youngest of the daughters of Ochus (the able predecessor of Darius), Parysatis. Earlier, too, he had wedded Roxane, the daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria. To Hephæstion he gave Drypetis, who, too, was a daughter of Darius and sister of the wife he took himself; for he wished the children of Hephæstion to be cousins of his own children. To Craterus he gave Amastrine, the daughter of Oxyartes, Darius's brother; to Perdiccas, the daughter of Atropates, satrap of Media; to Ptolemy, his aide, and to Eumenes, his private secretary, children of Artabazus, to the one Artacama, to the other, Artonis. To Nearchus he gave the daughter of Barsine and Mentor, to Seleucus the daughter of Spitamenes of Bactria; and in like manner to his other companions he gave the most famous of the daughters of the Medes and Persians, to the number of eighty. The marriages were celebrated in the Persian manner. Seats were placed in order, and on them the bridegrooms reclined"; and at this point we may let Chares, master of ceremonies, interrupt Arrian and describe the setting which he had arranged for the service.

"It was," he says, "a hall of a hundred couches, each large enough for two to recline at table, and in it each couch, made of twenty minas' worth of silver, was decked as for a wedding. Alexander's had feet of gold. And to the feast were bidden all his Persian friends, and given places on the opposite side of the hall from himself and the other bridegrooms. And all the army and the sailors and the embassies and the visitors were assembled in the outer court. The hall was decorated in most sumptuous style, with expensive rugs, and hangings of fine linen, and tapestries of many colors wrought with threads of gold. And for the support of the vast tent which formed the hall there were pillars thirty feet high, plated with silver and gold, and set with precious stones. And around about the sides were costly portières, embroidered with figures and shot through with gold threads, hung on gilded and silvered rods.

"The circuit of the court was half a mile. Everything was started at the signal of a trumpet-blast, whether it was the beginning of the feast, the celebration of the marriages, or the pouring of one of the various libations, so that all the army might know." "After the banquet," resumes Arrian, "the brides entered and seated themselves each beside her fiancé, who thereupon took her by the hand and kissed her; and the first to do this was the king.... Then each man, taking his wife, led her away. Their dowries Alexander gave to every one of them. And he caused the names to be written down of all the other Macedonians who had married Asiatic women, and there were said to be over ten thousand of them. To these, too, gifts were given by Alexander at the marriage feast."

For five consecutive days artists from every land and people entertained the cosmopolitan assembly with displays of skill as various as were the ideas and interests to which they catered. But the discord was lessened and the dominant motiv repeated again and again by the appearance and reappearance of the greatest Greek masters of the dramatic and musical arts.

* * * * *

It being established by these many incidents that it was a salient trait of Alexander's character to disclose his fundamental policies by acts elaborately staged and performed before the largest possible audiences, we may return to his extraordinary visit to the temple of Ammon of Cyrene. He had first to proceed one hundred and seventy-five miles along the Libyan coast and then southwest for about seven days before reaching his goal. A month of the most difficult marching, at a time when every day was precious, was the high price which Alexander thought it economical to pay for the recognition which he there received as the son of Zeus. What was, then, the value of this well-advertised recognition?

That it had none for Egypt and the nations of Asia, to whom the god of Siwah, like the prophet in his own country, was without honor, implies that Alexander esteemed highly its value in the Greek world, where the voice heard at Siwah was in fact an admonition to the pious and might be an embarrassment to all in official positions. An oracle, however, was always addressed primarily to him who received it. Other persons could neglect it with impunity. Nevertheless, Alexander had made it improbable that anybody should be unaware that Zeus had acknowledged him as his son. Doubtless, much discussion was provoked; but there the matter seems to have ended so far as Hellas was concerned till seven years later, at the time of the feast at Susa, when Alexander issued a mandate to all the Greek city-states, new and old, that they should recognize him as a god.

Strange as it may seem to us, among whom church and state are separated sharply, and religion depends upon a revelation which can be interpreted but not supplemented, the question was one which came properly within the province of the general assembly of the citizens of each city. At this very time the Athenians, for example, had waiting within their gates many foreign deities whose claims to official recognition were being pressed upon the ecclesia by votaries among both the alien and the native population. Such were Isis the Egyptian, and the Cypriote Aphrodite. In comparatively recent times, moreover, the ecclesia had yielded to similar solicitations, and had enrolled among the deities of the Athenian people Asclepius and the Thracian Bendis.

In a polytheistic world there is no logical limit to the possible number of gods; so that the chance always existed that there were deities whom a given community had not yet discovered at any given moment. There is, in such a world, a logical necessity that anarchy should be absent from heaven. Hence each community had to rank its gods and goddesses according to their power and spheres of activity. The lowest god, demigod or hero was, accordingly, separated from mankind by no deep or broad chasm. With most of their deities, in fact, the Greeks were on terms of familiar intimacy, as were mediæval Christians with their saints. Various of the lesser gods, Theseus and Heracles among the ancestors of Alexander for example, had once been men who had been elevated to Olympus by the grace of Zeus because of the many services which they had rendered to men. It is true that they were the children of Zeus; but had not Zeus also claimed Alexander as his own son? Why, then, should not he too be deified?

The difficulty from the standpoint of religion--of the sentiment which had led in the past to the heroizing of men--was that he was still living. And this was an insurmountable difficulty. From the religious conceptions of the Greeks the worship of the living ruler could never be derived; and, in fact, it was by pious people and for theological reasons that the rendering of divine honors to Alexander was opposed in Athens and elsewhere. The most that could be expected from men of religious convictions was a sullen acquiescence in something which they could not prevent.

The apotheosis of Alexander was grounded in impiety, in disbelief in the supernatural altogether. For the age in which he lived was marked by this very thing. In that time of storm and stress the ancient Greek religion became bankrupt. For enlightened people--and their name was then legion--the gods had ceased to have objective reality. Like the spirits of the departed whom Ulysses had recalled to consciousness by giving them blood to drink, they were dependent for their existence upon the kindliness of men. Without the ministrations of the living they would not merely be forgotten; they would be annihilated. It was the gratitude of mankind which had kept the memory of benefactors green by rites deemed and called religious. Once, to be sure, the deities had been real beings, but that was before they had died, while they were living upon the earth as men. Then they had performed great services--had founded cities, conquered worlds, established laws, invented arts, developed grains and fruits, and trained animals. So at least many men of talent and learning already taught. But it remained for Euhemerus of Messene, about fifty years later (ca. 280 B.C.), to give the idea classic expression in an entertaining work of popularization. With all the circumstantiality of Defoe, he tells how, in the course of his voyaging, he was driven southward into the Indian Ocean from Araby the Blest, till he came to the island of Panchæa. There he found a model community whose social and political organization he described in the manner familiar to us from Plato's Republic. There, too, he made a remarkable discovery--an account written on golden tablets in "reformed Egyptian" by Hermes of the lives and achievements of Chronus, Zeus, and all the other gods and goddesses of the Greek hierarchy. They had been kings and notables of Panchæa, and some of them, like Zeus and Dionysus, had been world conquerors. Others, indeed, had earned the favorable verdict of posterity by very questionable acts. Aphrodite was the first prostitute, and Cadmus, the grandfather of Dionysus, was the cook of a king in Sidon and had run away with a flute girl named Harmonia.

This "sacred writ" was naturally the latest and most authoritative revelation. It was saved, moreover, from being a gospel of atheism because, as Cumont says, "It left to the eternal and incorruptible stars ... the dignity of original gods and exalted them in proportion as it lowered their rivals of bygone days." The signal merit of Chronus had been to introduce the worship of the heavenly bodies in Panchæa.