Conquest of Persia Read online

  The soldiers, who were a superstitious lot, listened respectfully.

  “I have no idea what this dream means,” Alexandros continued, “which is why I’ve asked our ablest diviner to come this morning and interpret the dream for us.”

  Aristandros was in his element. The interpretation of the dream was rather obvious (and its authenticity perhaps somewhat suspect) but what mattered was the performance. A bleating goat was brought forward. Aristandros placed a garland around its horns and communed with the animal for a minute before slamming its forehead with his mallet. When the goat sank to its knees, Aristandros slashed its throat with a theatrical flourish, then lifted its still-attached head and watched all the blood spurt out onto the dirt, doing his best to avoid getting splattered in the process. When the bleeding slowed and the goat collapsed to the ground, he moved on to an emaciated-looking ass and repeated the operation. The final victim was a hinny, looking almost like a small horse. It seemed more intelligent than the other two and shied away when Aristandros approached. But in the end, the charlatan worked his magic and the hinny met its end.

  Once all the animals were down, three assistants proceeded to butcher them, reserving the entrails for Aristandros, setting aside generous slices of tenderloin for the gods, and preparing the rest of the carcasses for the roasting spit. Aristandros knelt for a long time, surrounded by bloody offal, alternatively staring at the sky above and the gore below, his lips constantly moving in silent prayer or perhaps malediction. Finally, he rose to his feet, a beatific smile illuminating his face, and bellowed to the assembled ranks. “Rejoice, men! The gods will assist us in taking Tyros.” There was restrained cheering. “But it will require some Herculean work,” the seer added sagaciously. The cheering subsided. “Now, let us join our leader and, incidentally, Herakles’s descendant, in offering our thanks for the assistance we’re about to receive.”

  Alexandros took over. “Alright, men. We start by paying obeisance to the gods, then we feast, then we do some work, then we loot Tyros of all its possessions, and then we march on to even greater treasures.” The soldiers had seen and heard all this before but somehow they found Alexandros’s appeal irresistible. The prayers, paeans, and other rituals proceeded in the usual fashion and by the end of the day, the soldiers were ready to build a causeway across the River Styx, if that’s what Alexandros asked for.

  When the first galleys sallied out of Old Tyros and we started pounding cedar trunks into the sandy seafloor and dropping large rocks into the resulting wooden framework, the men standing atop the fortifications of New Tyros laughed and jeered. Their amusement waned, after a week or two, as forty thousand soldiers and another sixty thousand local laborers swarmed over Old Tyros, dismantled it, brick by brick and block by block, and a discernible causeway started to emerge from the turbulent waters of the Tyrian strait.[12]

  *******

  I got caught, as I knew I would be. I had managed to arrange for Barsine’s children and the serving girls who acted as their putative mothers to be housed near Alexandros’s quarters. Eventually, I even succeeded in locating Artakama (who, at fourteen years of age, gave every promise of surpassing her sister’s allure) and moving her in with her nieces and nephew. While visiting our commander-in-chief, I found myself holding a message from Barsine to her children. Eventually, I conveyed their reply to her. Somebody must have seen me sneaking into Barsine’s quarters and promptly informed our leader.

  “I had another dream last night,” Alexandros told me when I responded to his urgent summons. “I was hoping to have you interpret it for me, rather than troubling Aristandros with it.”

  “I don’t do dream interpretations, sire,” I objected. “You know that.”

  “Well, maybe you can help me with this one. See what you think. I dreamt I was visiting Barsine. She was in her bed, her body enticingly silhouetted through the thin fabric of her coverlet. I stripped and rose to the occasion, as I usually do, and slipped under the coverlet with her. But when I reached for her body, my hand landed on a hairy bastard instead. I threw the coverlet off in alarm and what did I see, lying there next to Barsine?”

  He paused and looked at me. I played along. “I have no idea, sire.”

  “It was you! Naked as a jaybird. Trust me, not a pretty sight.” He cackled. “Needless to say, I was taken aback, in this dream of mine, to find you in bed with my mistress. I awoke immediately and found myself reaching for my sword. It was all I could do to stop myself from tracking you down and running you through, right there in the middle of the night. That’s how vivid the dream was.” He looked at me again, no longer laughing. “So, what do you make of this dream?”

  I hesitated. The alleged dream seemed to be an even more transparent fabrication than the Herakles dream had been a few days earlier. And its intent no less obvious. However, what my response should be was not as apparent.

  “Or should I call in Aristandros to help interpret the dream?” Alexandros seemed to be enjoying my discomfiture.

  I raised my hands and waved them back and forth, as if to ward off the evil specter. “No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I think we can manage to figure it out without him.”

  Alexandros nodded. “Yeah, I think so too.” Any trace of humor had vanished from his face. “This is how I see it. That dream is trying to tell me that, if I ever hear you’ve been sniffing around Barsine again, you’re a dead man. What do you think of that interpretation?”

  “Sounds about right to me, sire.”

  On the one hand, I knew I’d been saved from committing another grave transgression. I’d been dancing on the edge of the Prime Directive precipice way too often lately. On the other hand, one can get used to anything, including dancing on the edge. And, even though we had conversed only briefly, I genuinely admired this woman. She struck me as quite possibly the most impressive person I’d met during my involuntary sojourn through this vibrant era and it had nothing to do with her beauty. Or so I told myself.

  I resolved to refrain from direct contact with Barsine but that didn’t mean I couldn’t continue to help her children and sister. One consoling thought cruised through my mind. He didn’t say anything about not seeing the children or Artakama again.

  *******

  Our work was proceeding nicely. Everybody concluded that the faster we could finish the causeway, the sooner we could move on to more profitable and enjoyable pursuits. We settled down to a regular routine, with fresh supplies of timber arriving daily from the forested hills of Phoenicia and ample building materials piling up on the quay as Old Tyros was systematically reduced to rubble. It also helped that the channel was relatively shallow near the coast. In a matter of a few weeks, the causeway extended a third of the way across the strait. Then the water got deeper and the Tyrians got more worried.

  On the off chance that our causeway might reach the base of their battlements, the Tyrians started an energetic artillery building program. Almost every morning, when we arrived for work, we could see the skeleton of another catapult or stone-throwing machine rising on the parapet. We were still too far away but I was not looking forward to the day when our causeway came within range of their weapons. The other thing the Tyrians did was to send ships, with lots of archers aboard, to take potshots at my workers. With thousands of men working in close quarters, they could hardly miss, whether they bothered to aim their arrows or not.

  Rather than keep losing dozens of men a day, I had no choice but to divert a portion of my workforce toward building screens to protect the workers. Some of the timber that would have gone into the construction of the causeway ended up supporting stretched canvas and animal hides, behind which the construction could proceed in relative safety. In short, we were building not only a sixty-foot-wide artificial isthmus from Old Tyros to New but creating the only isthmus in the world lined by a continuous, twenty-foot-high curtain wall on either side. And the water kept getting deeper and our progress correspondingly slower.

  The walls that we we
re building were far from impenetrable. The Tyrian ships kept coming and the archers and slingers aboard kept shooting. Although they couldn’t see my men behind the screen walls, they could make a shrewd guess concerning their whereabouts, so their arrows and bolts continued to exact a heavy toll. In response, I ordered two towers to be built, one near the current end of the causeway and one about half way to the shore. Once these towers were up, I stationed archers and slingers on top of each, whose job it was to pour missiles down on the heads of the rowers, archers, and slingers aboard the Tyrian ships. Pretty soon, it seemed as though half my manpower was devoted to fighting a running battle to protect the other half.

  We were just beginning to reach deep water when disaster struck. I was walking on the causeway, supervising the work as usual, when a shout rang out from one of the men atop the farther tower. “Burning ship bearing down on us! Burning ship! Starboard side! Burning ship!”

  I ran to the starboard-side screen and pulled the canvas sheets apart. It took a moment for the significance of the sinister sight to register. There were actually three boats: A plain merchant galley, flanked by two triremes. The galley was in flames. There were no oarsmen on the galley. In fact, I couldn’t see anyone aboard. They must’ve dived off when their ship caught fire. On the other hand, every oar on the two triremes was manned and the rowers were pulling for all their worth. The triremes were flying. But so was the galley between them. The three vessels acted almost as three hulls of a trimaran. I realized the galley was tethered to the two triremes. There was something strange about that galley, I thought, besides the fact that it was aflame. Its cargo must’ve shifted aft, causing the prow to ride way up, well above the water. I noticed two poles extending beyond the bow of the galley, with some kind of kettle attached to each. Unbelievably, the trimaran was picking up speed, streaking faster than the speed of flight, aiming straight for the end of our unfinished causeway. And suddenly I understood.

  I started hollering. “Everybody off the towers!” I yelled. “Evacuate the causeway! Run!”

  The men around me put down their tools, wheelbarrows, or rocks in their hands, straightened up, and looked at me as if I were a madman.

  “Run!” I yelled in desperation. “Get going! Move! Get to the shore! Run!” I was windmilling my arms, trying to get my message across. Some of the men started to move. I ran to the nearer of the two towers and shook it. “Get down! Get down! Get off the causeway!” I ran back to the gap in the screen to look at the ships again. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I continued to scream as the inexorable disaster unfolded, almost in slow motion, in front of my eyes. Except it turned out to be much worse than I had imagined.

  Just before the trimaran collided with our causeway, a man in each trireme started chopping desperately at the ropes tying the triremes to the galley. As soon as the ropes were severed, the triremes sheered off to either side and started rowing back to New Tyros, while the galley, maintaining it momentum, continued to streak toward the causeway. The cargo hadn’t shifted, I realized. They placed it toward the stern precisely to get the prow out of the water. The conflagration was spreading and growing higher, engulfing almost the entire ship. Even the two poles holding the kettles on either side of the bow were now aflame. And the boat was still flying. And then the prow reached the causeway. It was sufficiently high above water level to easily ride up onto the causeway, tearing through the screen of timber, canvas, and animal pelts as if it were made of dried grass. Almost the entire flaming galley ended up skidding onto the causeway.

  I continued screaming the entire time as I watched the galley come aboard the causeway, although I can’t remember exactly what I was yelling. By that point, everybody on the causeway was screaming and running. Everybody, that is, except the men on the far tower and the men working at the far end of the causeway, whose escape route was cut off by the burning ship. All they could do was stand and watch as the causeway under their feet ignited. And then the poles holding the kettles burnt through and the contents came crashing down. There must have been gallons and gallons of highly flammable oil in those kettles. When they hit the burning causeway, there was a tremendous explosion and a wall of fire whooshed out in a 360-degree circle, moving much faster than the fastest workers could run.

  I was in mid-scream when I was engulfed by the zooming wall of fire. Suddenly, I had no air in my lungs, only a searing vacuum. My clothes were aflame and all the hair on my body singed off. I dove through the gap in the canvas screen and kept swimming until I hit the seafloor. Fortunately, I’d managed to avoid hitting the rocks that formed the base of our causeway. When I looked up, the heavens above me had an eerie orange glow, unlike any sunset I had ever seen. Except it was not the sky I was seeing but the surface of the water, some twenty feet up.

  Should I swim back up or should I stay down here? But then involuntary reflex took over and I found myself bursting through the surface, gulping for air. Fortunately, the water itself was not on fire but the entire causeway, including the towers, the screens, the wooden support structures, even some of the filler materials were all ablaze.

  I started swimming toward the shore, not even noticing the chill of the waves smashing into my face or the sting of the brine seeping into my burns. I swam parallel to what used to be our causeway, unable to take my eyes off the carnage. The causeway was still glowing, except for those black smudges that used to be people. Charred bodies dotted the entire length of the causeway, hundreds of bodies, jumbled one over the other, some of them still moving, some of them still moaning. Somehow, I kept swimming.

  *******

  After the causeway conflagration, Alexandros didn’t exactly remove me from command of the construction project. Instead, he placed Perdikkas and Krateros in charge of the entire Tyrian theater of operations, including the construction of the causeway, and told me I’d be reporting to them when I recovered from my injuries. “The causeway will be built,” he told me grimly, “bigger, better, and stronger than it was before the accident. And I want you to get back to work as soon as you can. In the meantime, I have to return to Sidon; some things I need to look after.”

  The urgent business that recalled Alexandros to Sidon was a meeting he had scheduled with the rulers of the Phoenician cities that had previously submitted to us. Each of these cities had at least a few warships, all of which had been pressed into service with the Persian navy under Pharnabazos. However, after the Persian defeat at Issos, and after receiving word from home that their cities were now under Macedonian control, all of these rulers suddenly discovered that their warships were urgently needed at home. By coincidence, Alexandros realized at the same time that it was simply impossible to take a strongly-defended island fortress without a navy. He went to Sidon to persuade all these rulers that they should contribute their warships, along with crews, to the newly-reconstituted pan-Hellenic navy.

  It turned out that Alexandros was entirely successful in his entreaties. He was a persuasive young man and the rising power in the region. It also helped that the audience hall in the Sidon royal palace, where the meeting took place, was surrounded by Macedonian troops in order to assure the safety of the participants, all of whom were required to leave their own soldiers outside the city walls and to enter the royal palace unaccompanied and unarmed. Perhaps the presence of their host, the newly-crowned erstwhile gardener Abdalonymos, conveyed a subliminal message as well.

  Interestingly, when word spread of the formation of the new pan-Hellenic navy, other squadrons of warships began to arrive at Sidon. Ten ships sailed in from Rhodos, ten from Lykia, three from Soloi in Kilikia. In a matter of days, the pan-Hellenic navy numbered more than a hundred warships. Then, a few days later, while Alexandros was still in Sidon, more than 120 triremes showed up from Kypros. The new pan-Hellenic navy, although it had almost no Greeks in it, was far more formidable than the old navy, which Alexandros had disbanded at Miletos, had ever been. For one thing, it could now deploy a great many more ships than the Tyrian n
avy.

  Soon after the arrival of the Kypriot contingent, Alexandros decided to return to Tyros with his newly found navy and resume siege operations. Rumors circulated of further defections from Pharnabazos’s Persian fleet but Alexandros was too impatient to wait any longer. He simply sent word to all the Macedonian-controlled ports that any defecting ships wishing to join the pan-Hellenic navy should report for duty at Tyros.

  Like a child enjoying a new toy, Alexandros couldn’t get enough of his navy. He appointed himself commander of the fleet and decided to sail to Tyros aboard one of his ships, rather than making his way back on shore. He also embarked most of the foot soldiers who had accompanied him to Sidon, turning them overnight into marines, without the benefit of any training in the specialized tactics required for boarding enemy ships at sea. “Fighting is fighting,” was his response to anyone who implied that different skills might be involved.

  When the approach of Alexandros’s ships was reported to the Tyrian navarch, he sailed out with his navy to intercept them and presumably destroy them before they could join the siege. There was no doubt in the navarch’s mind that any fleet manned by Greeks was no match for the Tyrian sailors and marines. Then the pan-Hellenic armada appeared on the horizon. As the two fleets closed on each other, it became clear to the Tyrian navarch that he was not facing Greek sailors and, more importantly, that the enemy had many more ships than he had at his command.

  The Tyrian navarch made the sensible choice and ordered his fleet to turn around and head back home. Alexandros, as soon as he realized there would be no naval engagement that day, saw an opportunity and didn’t hesitate to seize it. “They’re running away,” he yelled. “Let’s beat them back to the Northern Harbor!”[13]

  Another epic regatta ensued, the fifty Tyrian triremes racing desperately not only to save their own lives but also the lives of their compatriots because, if the pan-Hellenic ships reached the harbor first, there would be very little to stop the marines on board from storming the city itself. It was a close race but the Tyrians reached the Northern Harbor barely ahead of Alexandros’s lead ships. Upon reaching the mouth of the harbor, the last three Tyrian triremes turned around and engaged the pursuing ships. It was a hopeless stand. All three triremes were sunk and their crews killed in short order. However, their sacrifice bought enough time for the rest of the Tyrian fleet to reorganize just inside the harbor.