In combat these Greek troops had played only a minor role. The Macedonians, with their longer pikes and lighter, more mobile divisions, regarded them as second-raters, throwbacks to an outmoded style of warfare. All the same they were valuable to the army as cultural capital. Steeped in literature and learning that Macedonians lacked, revered for progressive political traditions, these Greeks offered Alexander a potent propaganda weapon. His rule over Asia would be not another Persian-style despotism but a Hellenic regime, with a king who exercised wise and just (though absolute) power. The presence of Greek contingents in his army, and a few Greek officers among his Companions, helped Alexander maintain his enlightened image.

In the upper satrapies Alexander’s Greek troops were especially important as cultural signposts. This was Asia’s wild frontier, a rugged, mountainous realm where tough nomads lived by the arrow and the sword. Raiding and counter-raiding had been rife for centuries, and boys learned to ride and shoot almost before they could speak. Attacks by Scythian warlords to the north kept the region unsettled and violent. If Hellenism could plant its flag even here, if the Greek polis could be imported from the Aegean to the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers, then Alexander’s campaign of conquest could be seen as a civilizational crusade.

Thus Greek squadrons were culled out of Alexander’s army and scattered through the Bactrian wilderness, like seeds from which city-states could grow. That at least is the metaphor invoked by Alexander’s admirers through the ages, from Plutarch in Roman times—who in a rapturous pair of speeches imagined plays of Sophocles being staged on the banks of the Oxus—to Sir William Tarn, the great British champion of Alexander in the mid-twentieth century. Alexander’s critics, whose views have become predominant in recent decades, have of course taken a different view. To them the new settlements were not beacons of enlightenment but mere bunkers, ensuring control by predators of their prey. The truth of the matter surely lies between these poles. Cultural and economic nurture goes hand in hand with hegemonic exploitation even today, when Western powers once again struggle to tame the wild energies of Bactria.

In any case, the “Athens on the Oxus” glorified by Plutarch was a far cry from the lot of Alexander’s garrison troops. Many had spent six years in parched mud-brick towns like Zariaspa and had seen very little else of Asia. At first their duties had been not only toilsome but dangerous. Through the surrounding desert rode fast-moving bands of guerrillas, and these tribesmen drew the garrison troops into several deadly ambushes. Alexander had finally pacified the region, in part by marrying Rhoxane, the daughter of its most powerful warlord, but its climate and landscape remained as forbidding as ever. From the walls of Zariaspa the Greeks saw only treeless wastes and arid mountains shimmering in the heat. There was no glimpse of their surest ally and quickest route back home, the sea.

In southern Afghanistan, the kind of landscape that drove many Greeks to flee the East (Illustration credit 4.1)

It was the sea the mutineers now sought to reach. Twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry set out westward in the months after Alexander’s death, choosing as their captain a certain Philo, otherwise unknown. Probably they were aiming for the ports of Phoenicia or Asia Minor, where ships could be commandeered for the voyage to Greece. They counted on their numbers and weapons for security, and on Alexander’s absence. Perhaps they judged that none of the ruling generals, men who had once suffered the rigors of Bactria as they were now suffering, would care enough about that blasted, barren province to stop them from leaving it. If so, they judged wrong.

3. CRATERUS (

CILICIA, SUMMER–WINTER 323 B.C.)

Meanwhile, in Cilicia (today southeast Turkey), Craterus, Alexander’s most revered general, was contemplating the paths that lay before him. The news from Babylon reached him en route to Europe as he marched at the head of the ten thousand veterans sent home from the army the previous year. Now that his king was dead, Craterus could foresee a change of masters and a change of political destiny, but first, the change from which all the others would flow, a change of wives.

Craterus, almost fifty and the oldest of Alexander’s top staff, was married to a highborn Persian named Amastris. Cousin and best friend of Alexander’s own bride Stateira, Amastris was one of the most distinguished women Alexander had bestowed in the mass wedding at Susa, a mark of what he owed to the loyal, dutiful Craterus. But the apparent honor also carried a sting. Craterus, as everyone knew, disliked Alexander’s embrace of Persian ways. He loved his king—indeed, no one had done more to protect and strengthen Alexander—but he hated the king’s policy of fusion, by which the ruling elites of Europe and Asia were being grafted together like shoots from two trees, and several times told him so to his face. Marriage to Amastris meant participating in this fusion plan.

Shortly after the mass wedding Alexander sent Craterus home to Macedonia, perhaps out of dislike of the old soldier’s traditionalism. Craterus’ assignment was a formidable one. He had to oust Antipater, staunch public servant for nearly half a century, from his position as guardian of the homeland, and install himself instead. The task would be even harder if Craterus brought along his barbarian wife. Alexander himself had recognized that difficulty, for he had forbidden the ten thousand veterans to bring their own Asian wives or mixed-race children home with them. Among the army at Babylon, such hybrid families were common enough, but back in Europe they would cause shock and dismay. Small wonder that Craterus had not hurried to complete his assignment. He had been ill when he departed Babylon, and that slowed his progress, but more recently he had come to a dead stop. Almost a year after leaving, he was still in Cilicia, only about halfway to the Macedonian capital, Pella.

In Cilicia, in the summer and fall of 323, messengers from both east and west kept Craterus informed of the changing world picture. From Babylon came news that Alexander was dead; that the king’s last orders had been voided; that Perdiccas was in command of the joint kings; that Craterus had been made sovereign over Europe, along with Antipater, the man he had been formerly told to replace. Then, from Europe, came reports that Athens had revolted; that the Greeks were on the march; that Antipater was besieged in Lamia and desperately needed relief. Finally a letter arrived from Antipater himself. It was a plea for Craterus to cross the Hellespont and prevent the collapse of the homeland. Antipater offered Craterus one of his daughters—his oldest and most prized, the renowned Phila—as a bond of alliance.

Few women rivaled Phila for sagacity, nobility, and warmth. Even in her childhood Antipater reportedly conferred with her about matters of state. Later in life she had the self-possession to manage disputes in camps of armed soldiers, dealing out justice so as to win the trust of all. But Phila was no Athena, devoted only to warfare and statecraft. She had a keen interest as well in matters of the heart. She used her own wealth to subsidize marriages of poor women who lacked dowries, a private endowment in the service of love.

Phila was in Cilicia at the time of Alexander’s death, not far from Craterus’ camp, and was recently widowed. Her marriage to a Macedonian officer named Balacrus had brought her to Tarsus, capital of Cilicia, but Balacrus had been killed by the Pisidians, a stubbornly autonomous tribe, in a battle the previous year. Accidents of time and place seemed to be bringing Craterus and Phila together, the army’s most revered officer and one of Europe’s most admired women. The union suited Craterus far better than his arranged marriage with Amastris and also offered him a surer place in the imperial hierarchy. With Phila at his side, he would have a glorious homecoming; if he then rescued Antipater from Lamia, he would become not only the old man’s son-in-law but, soon enough, his heir.