Alexander the Great

Private funerals at huge public expense were nothing new to the Persian empire, but at court Hephaistion's last rites had also opened up enticing possibilities. Hephaistion had died a Chiliarch, or Grand Vizier, with control over the Companion Cavalry and access to Alexander's private favour; in the event of campaigns in Arabia or the West, Alexander might well follow Persian precedent and designate a Royal Deputy to share an empire which, as his Successors soon found, was too burdensome for any one man. The office of Chiliarch was worth having, but it ca

Perdiccas's cavalry command was given to Eumenes the secretary, a more controversial appointment. There were Macedonians who hated such an educated Greek outsider; they could, moreover, point to Eumenes's hatred of Hephaistion, which had caused them to quarrel constantly, even over such trifles as the housing of their slaves and the honours of a young Greek flute-player. But Eumenes had adapted himself to his king's oriental plans: he was a valuable man and a wily one. He therefore cleared his name by dedicating himself and his weapons to the dead Hephaistion, presumably acknowledging that he was now a divine hero. Other Companions felt obliged to follow suit: the secretary could not be allowed to steal a march.

Apart from the loss of Hephaistion, the courtiers looked out on very different surroundings. In the army, Macedonians were now outnumbered more than ten to one by orientals, and with this fundamental shift of power the new style of kingship which had developed since Darius's death was thrown into greater prominence. Alexander now did business from a golden throne and though dressed, as before, in the Persian diadem, girdle and striped tunic, he wielded a golden sceptre: his official tent was supported by golden pillars and roofed with a richly spangled baldachin, while inside, the five hundred remaining Shield Bearers kept guard over the silver-legged sofas, aided by a thousand oriental bowmen dressed in flame-scarlet, vermilion and royal blue. Five hundred Persian Immortals stood behind them, flaunting their glorious embroidery and their spear-butts, carved like a pomegranate; outside the tent, the Royal Squadron of elephants barred the path of unauthorized visitors, attended by 1,000 Macedonians, 10,000 lesser Persian Immortals and 500 privileged Wearers of the Purple. Magi, concubines, staff-bearers and bilingual ushers continued to play the prominent part they had earned in Persia for the past 200 years.

By this splendour, Alexander and his courtiers were involved in the old externals of a Persian monarchy. When they held audience in their park, reclining on ornate sofas, they were following a long-lived Persian precedent; the king's throne and audience tent had deep roots in the Persian past, as did the incense-burners which smoked by his side. Visitors would pay him their Persian proskynesis : he would ride in the privileged chariot, symbol of king and conqueror, and be drawn by the white team of heavy Median horses which had such sacred overtones for his followers. Like a Persian King, he celebrated two birthdays and was honoured by a personal Royal Fire; sacrifices were offered by oriental courtiers to his august spirit, while even his robust drinking habits had links with the necessary virtues of Persian kingship. To an unaccustomed Greek visitor these

Oriental privileges had nuances which are difficult to appreciate. If he had ever seen such pomp before, it would only have been on the stage, where Greek dramatists had presented it as Asiatic excess and conceit. There was a decided touch of the theatre in Alexander's new magnificence, but the conceit was politically excusable: he was wisely playing the Persian monarch to his fast-increasing ranks of orientals. They expected it: he, no doubt, enjoyed it, though the deeper religious overtones were sadly lost on him: Alexander never gave proof of understanding the god Ahura-Mazda, protector of the Persian kings. This ignorance had not cost him a superhuman aura. What he missed in his Persian background, were a king's majesty derived from the fact of his royalty, he received instead from Greeks; in grateful Greek cities of his empire, he was being freely acclaimed for his achievements as if he were a god.

Like the dead Pythionice, mistress of Harpalus, Alexander had already been receiving divine worship from Asian Greeks before he ever reached Hamadan. It was not a new solace, only demanded when Makran or Hephaistion's death had begun to make him feel inadequate. It was a free expression of tactful admiration: cities offered sacrifice in his name, especially on his birthday, or celebrated games called Alexandreia, or set aside a sacred precinct and an altar for his honour or carried his image in a procession of the other twelve gods of Greek Olympus. The city, not the private worshippers, set up this cult in return, or in hope, for Alexander's benefaction; to the plain man, it meant the pouring of libations at the altar outside his door on the days of the great processions when the king or his image was escorted through the streets. He would pour to the king from a flat bowl of cheap glazed pottery, stamped with the royal portrait; one such bowl to Alexander has come from Egypt's Alexandria, implying worship of the founder in his lifetime. Divine honours, as in primitive Rome, had long been paid to dead notables, where they merged with the similar cult of heroes, but Alexander was being worshipped in his lifetime, an honour whose origins and impact have been vigorously discussed, denounced or even explained away.

'It would be eccentric,' Aristotle had recently written, 'if a man were to say that he loved Zeus.' The love of god was not such an alien idea to the ordinary man, but the gods of fourth-century Greece ca