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The next task was to secure the lower slopes of the mountain from the few remaining guards. A troop of Companions galloped up to dismount and do battle, but the guards fled again at their onset and the hill passed to Alexander and his skirmishing force of Agrianians, archers and Shield Bearers. While they held the slopes against the enemy higher up the mountain, the rest of the army forded the river on one side of the narrows, continuing the war-cry and forming swiftly up on the far bank to deter attackers; Alexander held their rear with his trusted skirmishers and only joined them when it seemed safe. More shouting and firm drill from, the infantry scared off the worst of the danger, and when Alexander was finally forced to ford the river himself, he arranged for arrow-shooting catapults on the far bank to give him cover across the water. Holding off with his skirmishers, covering with his artillery, and menacing with his heavier troops, he escaped disaster by an intelligently balanced withdrawal. Three days later he slipped back by night across the river and launched two brigades of Foot Companions and his invaluable archers and Agrianians into an enemy who were casually encamped and not expecting to see him again. Many were slaughtered, more captured and the Illyrian kings fled northwards, discredited.
But unwelcome news prevented any further pursuit. It was already mid-September and by circling round his northern frontiers, Alexander had presumed on the obedience of the Greeks and the continuing safety of Philip's advance force in Asia. On both points he was mistaken. In Asia, Attalus had been murdered, and it was perhaps on news of this that Olympias had taken vengeance into her own hands in Macedonia and murdered Eurydice, niece of Attalus and the girl who had supplanted her in Philip's affections; for completeness, she had murdered her baby daughter Europe too. But in Asia, perhaps because of Attalus's removal, the advance force had faltered and been driven back by the vigour of the Persian king's generals; as part of a coherent strategy, 300 talents were said to have been sent to Demosthenes, most hostile of Athenian politicians, and there were hopes that the Greeks would rebel against their leaders. Rebellion had indeed come, but it owed nothing to Persia or to Athenian politicians.
Three years before Philip had punished the city of Thebes in central Greece harshly for her opposition on the battlefield; she had been his ally, then changed sides as her hopes were disappointed; after the Greeks' defeat, she had seen her prisoners sold as slaves and her dead buried only after she had paid for the privilege. In the city prominent Thebans were killed or exiled and their property was confiscated; a Macedonian garrison invested Thebes's fortress and a council of three hundred Thebans, many of whom had already been exiled by their fellow citizens, were set in authority over men who loathed them for their debt to Macedonia. Worst of all, in the name of independence Philip had promised to restore the smaller cities in surrounding Boeotia; these cities Thebes had persistently tried to tyra
It was not, then, Alexander who was to blame for Thebes's latest upheaval. Philip's severity was working itself out in Alexander's name, and the cause was the secret return of Thebans whom Philip had banished three years before. They talked of freedom and they alleged that Alexander had been killed in battle near the Danube. This sounded too convincing to resist, and when they described the misbehaviour of the Macedonian garrison, whom the Thebans had been too slow to eject the previous autumn, two of its leaders were seized and assassinated. It was open rebellion, now, but their talk of freedom was hardly disinterested: among the returned exiles, there were former officials of the league through which Thebes had dominated her neighbours, and if they were protesting against Macedonia's tyra
Alexander treated the news with the speed and gravity which it deserved. He did not waste time in returning to Macedonia, but in a tremendous forced march he stormed down Macedonia's western border, across the brown plains near Trikkala, and was over all hills and mountain passes and up before Thebes within fourteen days. Thebes had been hoping for Athenian troops and for citizen armies from southern Greek cities, but only the Arcadians were stirring to join her, and other states seemed dangerously likely to stay neutral or even to help the Macedonian leader to whom they were sworn allies. When a Macedonian army, more than 30,000 strong, was reported from the city walls, the Thebans could not bring themselves to believe it: 'Alexander', they assumed, must be Antipater, or perhaps Alexander of Lyncestis who had been set in command of Thrace. But to their cost, Alexander it was, and within a week he had begun the 'swiftest and greatest disaster', it could be said, which had ever befallen a Greek city.
Alexander's movements were decisive and much deplored, and the dispute, as often, left its mark in the delicacies of his various histories. Ptolemy, his friend and officer, stressed his reluctance to attack the city, his repeated delay in the hope that Thebes would send ambassadors, the division, no doubt true, between Thebans who wished to talk and between instigators who would have none of it; others agreed on the fact of Alexander's delay, but when Alexander asked for the surrender of the rebel leaders, the Thebans, they said, answered him by shouting from a high tower for help in freeing the Greeks from their tyrant, and Alexander thereupon launched irrevocably into plans for attack. Three days later he opened battle with the Theban army outside the walls and was very hard pressed indeed, for the Thebans had been training in their city gymnasium; not until Antipater led his reserve line into action did his Macedonians begin to recover ground. As they rallied Alexander noticed a postern-gate in the city wall which the Thebans had left unguarded, and this turned the battle. He hurried Perdiccas and his regiment to take it, and once the city had been entered behind the Thebans' backs, their defence was vain; the looting was helped by the Macedonian garrison who had hitherto been blockaded inside their fortress, and it knew no bounds.
Ptolemy put it more cu
And yet one fact was agreed, and of great significance. In the brutal sack of the city, Alexander's Greek allies from Thebes's neighbouring cities distinguished themselves by looting worthy of any Thracian, and given their past history, their enthusiasm was wholly forgivable. In Greece Philip had repeatedly supported the smaller cities against their bigger neighbours; now, when Alexander dismantled the power of Thebes, it was these small cities who joined him wholeheartedly as allies. The sack of Thebes ca