We can very easily imagine

how utterly indifferent they were in Sparta

to this inscription, 'except the Lacedaemonians.'*

But it was natural. The Spartans were not

of those who would let themselves be led and ordered about

like highly paid servants. Besides,

a panhellenic campaign without

a Spartan king as commander in chief

would not have appeared very important.

O' most assuredly, 'except the Lacedaemonians.'

That too is a stand. It is understood.

So, except the Lacedaemonians, at Granicus;

and then at Issus; and in the decisive battle

where the formidable army that the Persians

had amassed at Arbela was swept away,

that had set out from Arbela for victory and was swept away.

And out of the remarkable panhellenic campaign,

victorious, brilliant in every way,

celebrated far and wide, glorious

as no other had ever been glorified,

the incomparable: we were born;

a vast new Greek world, a great new Greek world.

We, the Alexandrians, the Antiocheans,

the Seleucians, the innumerable

rest of the Greeks of Egypt and of Syria,

and of Media, and Persia, and the many others.

With our extensive empire,

with the varied action of our thoughtful adaptations, and our common Greek, our Spoken Language, we carried it into the heart of Bactria, to the Indians.

Are we going to talk of Lacedaemonians now**

* Lacedaemonians is the usual Greek word for Spartans,

**C. P. Cavafy, 'In the year 200 B.C .'

CHAPTER NINE

'My sharpness in the face of dangers', in the weeks which followed his victory at the Granicus, Alexander deserved the motto which historians later put into his mouth. Tactically, his problem was plain. He had to follow up his advantage before the Persians could regain their balance and defy him at any of the strong strategic centres down the coast. Distance never inhibited him, and the western coast of Asia had never been heavily occupied by the king's garrisons and feudal colonists, but he was moving into a world of complicated interests, each of which would have to be consulted in order to hasten his progress.

In the administrative jargon of the Persian empire, the coast of Asia Minor was divided into the country and the cities; the agreed owner of the country was the king, who received its fixed taxes and distributed farms as he pleased to colonists, administrators or Persian and Greek nobles with a claim to royal favour. The interposing buttresses of hills and the more remote parts of the interior were left to wild native tribes who were as independent as they could make themselves; the coastline, however, was thickly settled with Greek cities, and their status had long been argued between mainland Greek powers, who wanted to dominate them, and the Persian king, who wanted to tax them. For the past fifty years, these cities had been agreed by a treaty of peace to belong to the king; by his father's slogan, Alexander was now committed to the familiar ideal of freeing them.

In finance and religion, the Persians had been neither meddlesome nor extortionate masters; their scale of tribute was fixed, most cities were rich from their land, especially those with an active temple bank, and just as some of the numerous magi in Asia Minor had found a home in Ephesus, so the Persian king respected the rights of the nearby precincts of the Greek gods Apollo and Artemis, whom he identified with gods of his own. But politically, like the Romans or the British, the Persians had found it most convenient to strike a bargain with the cliques of the rich and powerful. Local tyrannies flourished in the smaller and less accessible Greek cities, knowing that their narrow power had the support of the Persian administration. In the larger cities, Persian hyparchs, generals, judges and garrison commanders lived on contented terms with the local grandees, establishing friendships which in several cases bridged the differences of east and west with commendable warmth. As the cities were surrounded by the country, richer citizens were men with a double allegiance, for as country landowners they owed taxes to the Persian king but as citizens, they retained their eligibility for office within the city walls. Inevitably, the two allegiances tended to merge into one and usually it was the freedom of fellow-citizens which suffered, for the rich and powerful would follow their Persian sympathies and set up a political tyranny. Where rule by the rich was in the nature of Persian control and was often promoted by Persian intervention, city feelings clashed bitterly, and men lived in one of the most revolutionary situations in the ancient world. Rich were divided against poor, class, therefore, against class, and democrat loathed oligarch with an intensity which even the odious divisions of Greece could not equal, free from the provocation of a foreign empire. 'The cities', wrote Lucian, an Asian Greek sophist, when the Romans were playing the part of the Persians, 'are like beehives: each man has his sting and uses k to sting his neighbour.' His metaphor fitted Alexander's age even more aptly for then, stings were as virulent and cities, like true hives, were actively divided on class lines.

Into this tangle of civic strife and class hatred, Alexander was heading with need for a quick solution. His father's campaign was committed only to punishing the Persians on behalf of the Greeks; there had also been talk of freeing the Asian Greek cities, but punishment and freedom might mean little more than the riddance of Persian masters. The allied Greek leader was also a Macedonian conqueror: it would not be hard to stop his two positions from conflicting.

Immediately after the Granicus, he made three revealing moves. He issued orders that Ins army should not plunder the native land; he meant to own it, therefore, like a Persian king, and so he appointed the Macedonian leader of his advance invasion as satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, a continuation of an enemy title which complimented Persian government, though it may have surprised his Macedonians. As for the natives who came down from the hills to surrender, he sent them back as disinterestedly as any of his Persian predecessors. Throughout the province tribute was to be paid at the same rate as to Darius. Troy was declared free and granted a democracy, a hint of where Alexander's liberation might lead him, though as yet, no general provision was made for the Greek cities; the men of Zeleia, the Persians' headquarters, were 'excused from blame as they had been forced to take the Persian side'. Their tyrant, presumably, was to be deposed, if he had not already fled.

Parmenion was despatched from the battlefield to take the satrapal castle of Dascylium; as its guards had deserted, that presented no problem.

Meanwhile Alexander took the ancient route south-west across the plain to Sardis, seat of the satrap of the Lydians, whose empire had been seized by the Persians more than two hundred years ago after a defeat of their renowned king, Croesus. Quick to strike, Alexander was not the only man in a hurry. Some seven miles outside the city walls, he was met by Mithrines, commander of the Persian fortress, and the most powerful men of Sardis, who offered him their city, their fortress and its moneys. Alexander took Mithrines on to his staff as an honoured friend and allowed Sardis and the rest of Lydia 'to use the ancient laws of the Lydians and to be free'. As nothing is known of Persian government inside Sardis, except that the Lydians had been garrisoned and disarmed, it is impossible to decide what privileges this grant was meant to restore, but the Persians were famous for their provincial judges, and documents from Babylon and Egypt show how widely the 'king's law' was invoked against their subjects. In spirit, Alexander made a gesture to the Lydians' sensitivities, though his Greek crusade owed them nothing as they were not Greeks. Climbing the heights of the acropolis which still towers split in half above the tombs of the old Lydian kings in the plain below, Alexander marvelled at the strength of the Persian fortress and admired its triple wall and marble portico. Momentarily, he considered building a temple to Olympian Zeus on its summit, but thunderclaps broke from the summer sky and rain streamed down over the former palace of the Lydian kings: 'Alexander considered that this was a sign from god as to where his temple to Zeus should be built and he issued orders accordingly.' At this omen from Zeus the Thunderer, thoughts of a temple on the site of former domination gave way to a generous recognition of the Lydian kings, suppressed by the Persians for the past two hundred years, and diplomatically Alexander bad more reason to choose the latter than obedience to a shower of rain.