With old man Antipater bottled up in Lamia and Leosthenes proving his brilliance, the Athenians sent out new diplomatic missions in the autumn of 323. Sieges, if pursued to conclusion, were lengthy affairs and required huge commitments of money and manpower. Hyperides was dispatched to the Peloponnese to lobby for greater support. Thousands of troops would need to be paid for many more months of service, and the coffers of Athens, even after Harpalus’ stolen money had topped them off, were not adequate for the job.

On his way south, Hyperides was reunited with someone he never expected to see again, in life at any rate.

Demosthenes, the fallen Athenian statesman, had followed the war through letters that reached him on Calauria. He knew from informants that envoys of Athens would soon make their way to the Peloponnese. He may even have known that his ally-turned-persecutor, Hyperides, was among those envoys. If so, he chose to forget his wounds and reach out to his old friend. Calauria was separated from the Peloponnese by a narrow channel, only a few hundred feet wide; perhaps, he must have reckoned, the gulf between himself and Hyperides could be crossed as easily.

Demosthenes left Calauria and intercepted Hyperides en route, offering to lend his rhetorical talents to the Athenian diplomatic mission. Officially, Hyperides should never have considered such an offer. The Athenians had stripped Demosthenes of citizen rights such that he wasn’t allowed to vote, never mind serve in government. But Athenian rules, always pliable, were even more easily bent in wartime, and breaches were also more easily healed. Hyperides embraced as a partner the man whose conviction he had secured only months before.

Demosthenes had found his route back home. When the Athenians learned of his efforts on their behalf, they happily recalled him from exile and sent a state warship to pick him up. The entire city turned out for his landing in the harbor of Piraeus. Demosthenes used the occasion to publicly thank the gods and invoked the memory of Alcibiades, the great Athenian military leader of the previous century. Recalled from banishment after winning great victories as a privateer, Alcibiades had sailed into Piraeus leading two hundred captured galleys, yet not even he, Demosthenes claimed, had been so wholeheartedly welcomed back into the body politic.

It was a total restoration, beyond what the great orator had pleaded for from exile, beyond what he could have expected or hoped. In his letters from Calauria, he had sought a mere extension of the due date for his fifty-talent fine; he said he would try to collect fees owed to him and make a partial, initial payment. The Athenians had refused even that modest request. Now they eagerly took care of the entire sum on his behalf. By decree of the Assembly, Demosthenes was appointed to a minor religious office and awarded a salary of exactly fifty talents.

With victory over Macedon seemingly imminent, money, and forgiveness, could be freely extended. Athens was ready to reclaim its ancient glory, with its most illustrious leader back at the helm.

^*“Foe-see-on” is the best of several possible pronunciations.

4

Resistance, Rebellion, Reconquest

Asia and North Africa

SUMMER 323–SUMMER 322 B.C.

News of Alexander’s death traveled outward from Babylon like shock waves from an earthquake. In all likelihood, it was the fastest- and farthest-moving piece of news the world had yet received. Millions heard it within a week’s time. Recent discoveries of dated records near Idumaea, beside the Dead Sea, show that Alexander’s death was reported there only six days after it occurred.

The news went out along communications lines set up by the Persians and still functioning under Macedonian rule. Criers stationed on hilltops, spaced at the limits of earshot, called it to each other, sending it in one day’s time the distance of a month’s travel. Mounted couriers, called astandaiin Persian, carried it at a gallop from one way station to the next, relaying it at each one to a fresh rider atop a fresh horse.

Swiftest of all were the fire beacons that raced along spoke-like lines to the main Persian capitals, Susa and Persepolis. By manipulating poles on which the fires were displayed, the relay crews could transmit coded messages. Almost certainly this system brought word of Alexander’s death to Susa during the night of June 11, for Alexander died not long before nightfall on that day, and Babylon was only a few hundred miles from Susa.

At Susa (as far as we know) dwelled much of what remained of the Persian royal family, including two princesses who were now Alexander’s widows, Parysatis and Stateira. Also there was Stateira’s grandmother, Sisygambis. All three had been captured by Alexander ten years earlier, after the defeat of Sisygambis’ son, Darius, at the battle of Issus. Following royal tradition, Darius had brought his family with him and parked them close to the battlefield but took no measures to secure their safety; the Persians had no experience of losing battles on their own territory. After Darius and his officers fled from Issus, Alexander coolly rounded up his royal prisoners, treating the women with a deference that became legendary and sending them to Susa to live as royalty once again. He was particularly kind to Sisygambis, addressing her as “Mother” and refusing to sit in her presence until asked, the same mark of respect a highborn Persian would pay to the woman who bore him.

When in his last year of life Alexander wed Stateira and Parysatis, the granddaughter and grandniece of Sisygambis, the old woman saw her family’s fortunes miraculously restored. Though once a prisoner who could expect enslavement or worse, she was again the matriarch of a ruling family. She had every hope of seeing a great-grandson inherit her son’s throne and rule Asia as Darius had done, along with much of Europe and North Africa—an empire that had been expanded, not diminished, by defeat.

That hope was dashed, however, by news of Alexander’s death. Now Sisygambis’ star was sinking again. She knew enough about dynastic politics to foresee what lay in store. Her widowed granddaughter would be easy prey for enemies and rivals (indeed, in Babylon, Perdiccas and Rhoxane would shortly murder Stateira, as we have seen). Without male relatives to look to for protection—purges within her own family had wiped these out—she would be little more than a household slave to the Macedonians. The prospect of facing old age in dishonor was more than Sisygambis could bear. On the night of Alexander’s death she stopped taking food and drink, a resolute, slow-motion suicide. In five days she was dead.

Elsewhere in Susa and other great cities of the Iranian plateau, the Persians began the solemn rituals of state mourning. Though Alexander had come as an invader, he was by this time the only king they had, and they marked his passing reverently. Men shaved their heads and donned funereal clothing. At altars across the land, the sacred fire of the Zoroastrian faith, fueled night and day by attendant priests, was extinguished, a sign that the energies that gave life to the cosmos had come to a halt.

The final rite in the Persian cycle of mourning was the slow passage of the king’s body through the kingdom, with stops along the way to allow subjects to lament. Alexander’s body too would be carried in such a procession, the generals in Babylon ultimately decided. Its destination, though, became a matter of dispute. Alexander had expressed a wish to be buried near the oracular shrine of the god Ammon, west of Egypt, but at some point his request was overridden by the governing regime in Babylon. In life, Alexander had exerted astounding control over his empire and those who ran it; in death, his corpse could again be an instrument of control to those who gave it burial. Such a precious resource could not be wasted in a remote North African desert.