On the high note of these successes, the struggle for outer Iran was ended, and after two years of bloodshed and arbitrary depopulation on a grand scale, it was time to return to Balkh and consider the future of provinces which the Persian kings, far distant in Susa, had tended to entrust to a member of their own family. Iranians were to retain the local aorts as Sogdian governors and the old Persian citadel beside the Oxus and the river Kokcha was to be rebuilt as a huge Alexandria with a palace and a formal street plan; Alexander had no responsible relations left alive, so he linked the Sogdian nobility to his own person in the time-honoured way. Among the captives from the first rock were the daughters of the Sogdian baron Oxyartes; one of them, Roxane, was said by those who saw her to be the most beautiful lady in all Asia, deserving her Iranian name of 'little star'. All were agreed that Alexander was entranced by her, some saying that he first met her eyes at a banquet and at once fell passionately in love. Nowadays, it is fashionable to explain away the passion and emphasize its politics, but that was not how contemporaries saw it. Marriage certainly made political sense but there were other Iranian ladies who would have served the purpose as well. Alexander may have followed his head but, aged twenty-nine, he was agreed to have chosen the only girl who fired his heart.

Rich in supplies, Alexander arranged a lavish wedding banquet on the summit of Sisimithres's sky-high fortress. His sense of style had not deserted him and the occasion had a decided touch of chivalry, for Alexander and Roxane symbolized their match before their guests by cutting a loaf of bread with a sword and each eating half as bride and groom. The sharing of the loaf was the Iranian custom which is still practised in Turkestan, though the sword was a military detail which could be Alexander's own. But the mood of the moment was best caught by the experienced and contemporary Greek painter Aetion: in his painting of Alexander's wedding, sadly lost, he depicted a very beautiful bedroom, with a wedding bed on which Roxane was sitting; she was an extraordinarily lovely girl but, modestly, she looked down at the ground, feeling shy before Alexander who stood beside her. Smiling cupids were in attendance: one stood behind and pulled back the veil from her face; another removed her shoe, while a third was tugging Alexander towards her by the cloak. Alexander, meanwhile, was offering her a garland, while Hephaistion assisted as best man, holding a blazing torch and leaning against a young boy, probably Hymenaios, the god of weddings. On the other side more Cupids were playing, this time among Alexander's armour; two heaved his spear, two dragged his shield by the hand-grips, on which sat a third, presumably their king; another had hidden under the breastplate, as if to ambush them.

So, through the baroque imagination of a Greek master, 'Alexander's Wedding to Roxane' won a prize at the festival games of Greek Olympia and survived through a Roman visitor's description to influence Sodoma and Botticelli.

Like Achilles, men said, Alexander had married a captive lady. But in politics, if not in personality, the new Achilles had conic far since his pilgrimage to Troy. Nobody could have guessed that a pupil of Aristotle, who had once refused to take a wife, would fall passionately in love with a lady from outer Iran, marry her and use her as proof of goodwill to the conquered Iranian barony; his father-in-law, moreover, had been Bessus's close associate in a rebellion which had detained him for two awkward years. There was only one embarrassment. As father of Barsine, Alexander's

first Persian mistress, Artabazus may have been disappointed by the decision to marry Roxane, especially as Barsine was known to be bearing her first child. However, he had already resigned his command in Bactria, pleading old age before the marriage was in view; the satrapy which had first been offered to Cleitus now went to another Macedonian with a suitably large force of hired Greeks. Artabazus would never be grandfather of Alexander's recognized heir, but he is not known to have borne any lasting resentment and his sons continued to be honoured. He was retired to the governorship of the first Sogdian rock in place of the baron Ariamazes who had been crucified. Ironically it was the rock on which Roxane had been captured.

Alexander's plans were already extending beyond marriage. At Balkh, he ordered 30,000 native boys to be chosen for military training; their weapons were to be Macedonian and their language Greek. It was the most determined attempt at a wide Hellenization of Iran to be made by any western king: like Philip's royal pages, not only would the boys be hostages against their fathers' misbehaviour, they would also become the dependent soldier class of the future, when the Macedonian veterans retired and the army could be filled with westernized Orientals. From a year of frustration, even of murder, a creative plan had at last taken shape; the Iranians, so far from being treated 'as plants and animals', would be called to share in the empire, obliged to Alexander alone and educated away from their tribal background. Whether the boys and their parents were grateful is another matter. At the same time, Alexander's courtiers too were to feel the change: while the cavalry officers were rearranged, Hephaistion had needed promotion in order to preserve his special dignity, and it was perhaps now that he became Alexander's official second-in-command. His title was Chiliarch, his job had military responsibilities. But both job and title had been created by the Persian kings.

To any such change, there were bound to be complications.

In my case, the efforts for these years to live in the dress of Arabs and to imitate their mental foundation quitted me of my English self.. .; at the same time, I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only.... Sometimes these selves would converse in the void, and then madness was very near, as I believe it would be near the man who could see things through the veils at once of two customs, two educations, two environments.

Though Lawrence of Arabia comes nearer to one side of Alexander than any man since, he theorized where Alexander only acted for the moment.

But with Alexander too there were now two veils to life, and the two selves did converse, if not in the void of madness, at least on an everyday level where tensions are no less real for being public. At Balkh in spring 327, with Roxane as bride and Hephaistion perhaps as Vizier, tension was to break into conflict and its victim would be a man whom the fighting of the past two years had so far left alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

In Persian legend, Alexander was said to have soon sent Roxane away to Seistan, where he gave her its citadel as a wedding present to keep her safe when the men withdrew to the Punjab; this, however, is dubious, as Roxane did come to India and the walls of Seistan's capital probably belong to a later date. Presumably, she stayed in camp, where she would have assisted at one of the most misrepresented episodes in her husband's life. This cannot be understood without its Persian background, proof of the change in Alexander's plans. Once understood, it is a small but revealing glimpse of his mood: it turns on the matter of a courtly kiss.

Unlike the Chinese, who had no word for kissing, the kingdoms of the ancient east had long included a term for kissing gesture in their court vocabularies. This gesture was practised in Assyrian royal society, whence it was adopted first by the Medes, then by the Persians; its equivalent was known in Greece, probably as a borrowing from the East, and the Greeks described both their own and the Orientals' practice by one and the same word, proskynesis . The only descriptions of it were written under the Roman empire, but they fit well enough with early Greek and Persian sculpture: the payer of proskynesis would bring a hand, usually his right one, to his lips and kiss the tips of his fingers, perhaps blowing the kiss towards his king or god, though the blowing of kisses is only known for certain in Roman society. In the carvings at Persepolis, the nobles mounting the palace staircase or the attendants on King Artaxerxes's tomb can be seen in the middle of the gesture, while the Steward of the Royal household kisses his hand before the Great King, bending slightly forwards as he does so. These Persian pictures and the Greeks' own choice of words show that in Alexander's day, proskynesis could be conducted with the body upright, bowed or prostrate. The Romans believed that when Alexander asked for proskynesis from his closest friends, he expected them to grovel before him. But in Persia, as in Greece, it was only the suppliant or abject inferior who would go down on his hands and knees. Only if courtiers and aristocrats fell into disgrace or begged a favour would they prostrate themselves before the king. Proskynesis itself did not require it.