#2: Alexander Through Our Curious Lens: Alexander the Great, by Phillip Freeman, NY, 2011, XI-68 of 391 pages

The title above is from a recital given to Phillip, by a famous Athenian actor, the night he was slain. The Athenians, in the name of Demosthenes, did admit to scheming for Phillip’s death. Demosthenes would outlive the entire Macedonian royal family and their tutor, Aristotle, who died mysteriously the year of his young patron’s demise.

Freeman does a great service with standards maps and chronologies. By synchronizing the chronologies of the Macedonian and Persian Royal houses from his 2nd and 3rd chronology, one may get a sense for the gathering storm of death and ruin for the most powerful political/military rulers. The political rulers of the small states would mostly go unharmed, even in the wake of terrible miscalculations. The financial elite behind the scenes, who processed the slave sales, mining rights and pillage logistics of the Macedonian Kings, at the very same time that these same shadowy concerns, or networks, supplied bribes, opposition finances and assassins for the Persians, as well as spies and turncoats for both sides, remains completely undreamed of by Freeman, in line with his academic credentials. In the good man’s defense, of all the authors on Alexander I have read, he alone—especially compared to the ancient authors who mostly avoid the obvious, whether because it was so well known as to be explicit, or because the learned readers they wrote for were trusted to understand the implicit facts that lurk forever beyond the comprehension of modern scholars—regularly reminds the readers that the Persian system of rule extended far beyond Persia in the form of influence. The modern reader, who has been conditioned to credit newspaper accounts of remarkable occurrences threatening the “security” of USG, with no understanding that half of the ruling governments of the world’s nations have been put in place and maintained by USG money, power and agents, has no concept of imperial dynamics. Indeed, modern Americans do not believe that they live at the core of an empire, when, by any historic definition, they do. That an empire maintains itself within its boundaries [1] in large part by paying client states and agents to keep that portion of the world not shackled in visible chains and firmly beneath its boot-heel in chaos, is an understanding common to most of Civilization’s previous folk, yet lacking in the modern reader and writer, therefore blinding both. Freeman has not been so blinded.

Freeman does not focus on fanciful homosexuality, and simply notes that Alexander was unique among Macedonian ruling elites in not being obsessed with sex as a power ritual. The Macedonian men come off as debased semi-barbarians, sharing the heroics of the Germans with none of the high morals; committed robbers, rapists, traitors and murderers, with no sense of loyalty other than that regard held for the getter of things, the king that took all the risks, FIRST and FOREMOST and gave away most of the booty. Macedonian culture was purely piratical, with its only redemptive qualities being martial, the ability to suffer in expectation of victory that would bring gain and glory.

Macedonian were as pious as any ancient folk of rural type, believing whole-heartedly in heavenly and earthly powers beyond human ken. Despite Freeman, Everett and other modern historians sneering at the piety of Phillip and Alexander, they bring evidence of it to the table and then look away as trained, into cynicism. The metaphysical fact of ancient Macedonian life was this, a Hero King had a chance to live after death, as a hero shade, a demi-god, or even a god, being sustained with sacrifice and worship by mortals. On the other side, the normal man had only the joys of this life to enjoy. After death he would exist only as a shadow of a former self, not suffering, but neither living.

It would be the miraculous genius of Christianity to promise the life of a hero ascendant to the status of an angelic being to all who accepted the gift of Christ, with no need of suffering, sacrifice, heroics or the like. That disconnected eternity in shadow that was the plight of Enkidu in Gilgamesh, of the many lesser heroes slain by Hector and Achilles in the Iliad, or of the mother of Odysseus in the Odyssey, was the lack of motivation that prevented dying for loyalty by most men in Antiquity. The pagan king was a sacrificial beast, a bull if you will, that might live in comfort in his stall until butchered at the altar, or, might battle, suffer, toil and be slain in great gory glory, but then finally pass on to a bright afterlife. On the way the domestic king crushed the life out of all of his folk other than his cronies, who enjoyed their brief mortal springtime. The wild king however, like Phillip and Alexander before they were slain, not only provided a chance at an afterlife for themselves, and perhaps a select few heroes, but garnered great wealth for their loyalists. In modern terms, president and voter, general and soldier, admiral and sailor, all face the same eternal reward for personal sacrifice to a collective honor code. But, in Antiquity, king and soldier, hero and slave faced two decidedly varied prospects of an afterlife. Freeman does not seem to “get” this fact, but places the pieces all in order.

Freeman writes in a rousing style, evoking just enough of Plutarch, Diodorus and Arrian, to bring up the shades of Antiquity, using brilliant common prose to impart the feeling that Alexander was a maniac, a driven, pathos plagued personality, a torch that burned brightest. He is most clear about the sex and murder, that Macedonian and Persian elite were regularly slain by each other, far more often than by enemy action. The murder of Phillip, which Arrian avoids completely, meets the homosexual question neatly. While Alexander shared his bed with no one, and seems like a chaste genius afraid of dissipation, his father shared his bed with two men, in succession, and entered the bed at his will of seven wives. Two died in childbirth, and Alexander’s mother only spread her legs long enough to bear Alexander, her ticket to power. The brutal Macedonian nobles did not take it in the ass, but raped slave boys as a power rite and seem to have preferred lots of slave girls for pleasure. The page system, placed a youth in the bed of a mentor [Phillip] as a kind of transitional petting buddy. This seems borrowed from the Greek practice, which seems learned from the Punic nations who educated the Greeks in the 700s. Once the youth became a man, and beard on beard petting became too coarse, the bed buddy was exchanged for a new lover. Keep in mind that Abe Lincoln and Herman Melville, men who were not homosexual, shared beds with other men, even strange men, in hotel rooms. So “bedfellow” does not necessarily mean sex. It might have amounted to a kind of body guarding, doubling the chance of surviving the initial stage of a bed chamber attack.

Pausanius was a page who grew too manly, and was replaced by a younger Pausanius. The younger one spread rumors that the elder was a slut, a hermaphrodite, who took it in the ass. This caused the elder to commit suicide in battle to prove his worth. Attalus, the brutal uncle of the elder, invited the younger to a party, got him drunk, ass raped him, had his bullies ass rape him, and then gave him to the slave men to be gang raped again. Pausanius appealed to Phillip for revenge. But the King needed Attalus and his clansmen. So, Pausanius stabbed Phillip in public and was slain by Alexander’s friends. Moderns see that Alexander had a lot to gain here. Recently reinstated as the heir after a drunken argument separated father and son for a year, Alexander was going to be left behind as regent. Alexander was, unlike most Macedonians, loyal and honorable, with no desires above learning and conquest. The modern assumption is that he feared being left out of conquering Asia. But Phillip was only willing to conquer Near Asia and had chided Alexander for offering to marry a governor’s daughter, when he deserved better, meaning Alexander was being considered for a marriage alliance with THE KING of Asia. What Alexander’s action prove, before and after he became king, was that he would have conquered Europe while his father conquered Near Asia. Phillip was literally on his last leg in his forties. Freeman finds no evidence for Alexander’s involvement in the plot, though his mother is a high odds bet for someone to encourage the butt-sore page in his savage outburst.

Finally, Freeman does the standard botch job on the military combat. He is impressive on logistics and army maneuver, pointing out that the real enemy for armies was still the land. Despite all evidence from Xenophon, Thucydides, Arrian, Tacitus; ancient military men who were also writers, that heavy infantry were moving forts and that the actual killing was done by light infantry and barbarian horse and foot, he writes the Agrianes out of battles where they were key. [2] Still possessed of honor, while Macedonians and Greeks mutinied again and again and required constant pre-battle justification speeches for their pending actions, the allied Agrianes and mercenary Archers went into combat first and took the most risk with the least protection, and never mutinied. The myth of the hoplite still mesmerizes the non combat writer of today, who thinks in terms of safety in armor, behind a shield wall, rather then of hunting the enemy to the ends of the earth as Alexander with his Agrianes and archers in the lead did for 13 years.

Below is the Macedonian/Persian chronology:

Persian Rise: 559 to 486 B.C.

P = Persian… M= Macedonian

P… 559-30: Cyrus the Great [slain against Scythians]

P… 530-22: Cambyses II [crisis]

P… 522: Bardiya [plots]

P… 522-486: Darius [restoration], invades Scythia and repulsed, invades Athens and repulsed, establishes Macedon as client state

Macedonian Slavery to Persia: 498 to 399 B.C.

M… 498?: Amyntas I

M… 498-54: Alexander I, serves, than turns on Xerxes, interviewed by Herodotus

P… 486-65: Xerxes, drives vast slave army into Hellas, through Macedonia, repulsed

P… 465-24: Artaxerxes I, establishes diplomatic, financial proxy state tactics and seems to have successfully begun financing the disastrous Greek Civil war running until 404, documented by Thucydides and Xenophon.

M… 454-13: Perdiccas II, stability

P… 424 Xerxes II: plots

P… 424-04: Darius II: stability

M… 413-399: Archeleus, decline under decadent homosexual pervert

Woetide of Macedon: 404 to 359 B.C.

P… 404-359: Artaxerxes II, challenge of his brother Cyrus, civil war, march of Xenophon’s 10,000, proves Greek military superiority, begins aggressive client state policy in Hellas paying off Sparta, then Athens then Thebes in succession to keep Hellas in chaos. Regains proxy control of Thracian, Macedonian and Illyrian mining and slave trade. Achieves understanding with Scythians. Note that Artaxerxes II outlives six Macedonian kings!

M… 399-98: Orestes, plots

M… 398-95: Aeropus II, plots

M… 395-94: Amyntas II, plots continue, indicating international money interests active, ore and slaves being extracted through Macedonian ports

M… 393-70: Amyntas III, plots, Phillip held as prisoner by Thebes, Persian client state

M… 370-67: Alexander II, plots

M… 367-65: Ptolemy, plots

M… 365-59: Perdiccas III, plots, wars, Perdiccas is slain the year Artaxerxes II passes

Macedonian Rise/Persian Decline: 359 to 335 B.C.

M… 359-36: Phillip rises to defend Macedon

P… 359-38: Artaxerxes III, murdered by eunuch plot

P… 338-36: Eunuch Bagoas deposed

P… 336: Darius III rises from scheming palace intrigue

M… 336: Phillip is slain at state function heralding invasion of Persia at virtually the same time that the murdering eunuch Bagoas is gotten rid of by Darius. Alexander and Darius III assume power at the same time. Is it any accident that Alexander raced to rescue Darius from his “loyalists” who abducted and murdered him, after Alexander had placed Darius’ family under his protection? Look above and consider the coincidental events in 359 and 336.

M/P… 335 Persian money finances the rising of no less than six barbarian tribes and kingdoms to the north and west of Macedon, all of the four major Greek states and some of the lesser ones at the same time, despite the fact that all of these risings would have worked better for those peoples had they waited for Alexander to invade Asia, indicating an Asian financial source. Also, rebels mostly fought delaying actions, with known leaders seeking sanctuary in Persia. Yet most academics continue to paint Alexander as the likely benefactor of Phillip’s death, when it was Persia. There was no reason to suppose that a 20 year old prince would be more competent than the architect of the best army yet fielded by man. In retrospect, the Persians miscalculated unleashing a religious fanatic and military mastermind who used their empire as a funeral pyre to reach Heaven, as had Herakles a wooded mountainside.

…

Notes

-1. National boundaries are demarcations of interior force projection, the actual length of the invisible chains that shackle their subjects to the ruling center. To be bound is to be enslaved. We, due to our omitted and distorted planting history, have been reconditioned to consider “bound” not as bondage, or a condition reflected most accurately in the terms “bundled off,” “nabbed,” or “kidnapped,” but as outward and even upward mobility! Folks of Alexander’s day knew differently, that to be bound was to be taken captive by an enemy who held one in bad will, to either be killed, tormented or sold to a party who merely regarded the bound person as a disposable tool.

-2. See Soldiers and Ghosts, circa 1990s, in which the author critique’s Trajan’s column and the Flavian siege of Jerusalem to demonstrate the low combat agency of legionairy regulars compared to barbarian allies.