son.”
According to Plutarch’s sources, however, the priest made a mistake in his greeting. Though he
wanted to be polite and address Alexander with the salutation “O paidion,” or “O son,” because of
his poor command of Greek the priest instead greeted Alexander with the words “O pai Dios,” which
meant “O son of Zeus.”
Whether it was a mistake or not, Alexander immediately accepted the prophet’s greeting with
delight, and the legend began that the priest, the human mouthpiece of the god himself, had greeted
Alexander as the son of Zeus. Alexander’s intimations of his own divine lineage had been stunningly
(if mistakenly) reinforced.
Next, we are told, Alexander asked the prophet whether the god had given him the rule of the whole
world (or mankind), and whether Alexander had punished all of those responsible for his father’s
murder. The priest then presumably went into the inner sanctum of the shrine and put the questions to
the god himself.
The infallible god had the form of an omphalos, or a large, egg-shaped stone studded with
emeralds. This stone god was carried about by eighty priests on a litter in the form of a boat. These
priests, bearing the stone god in his boat on their shoulders, walked (or staggered) about, without
volition, wherever the god directed them. The prophet then interpreted the movements of the litter as
responses to the questions asked of the god. To Greeks accustomed to anthropomorphic
representations of gods, Zeus Ammon probably seemed quite exotic and even odd-looking; that was
undoubtedly part of his appeal.
In answer to Alexander’s first question, the priest cried that the god had granted Alexander his
request. To the second question, about the punishment of Philip’s murderers, Plutarch tells us that the
priest cautioned Alexander to speak more guardedly, since his father (Alexander’s) was not mortal.
But in answer to the question of whether Philip’s murderers had all been punished, the priest told
Alexander that Philip had been avenged. Thus (according to this tradition) the god had pointedly
implied that Olympias had told the truth after all: it was not Philip II of Macedon who had slithered
into her bedroom on the night Alexander was conceived.
The questions Alexander asked Zeus Ammon and the answers he received have always been a
source of fascination. Unfortunately, however, there is no contemporary evidence that the two
questions (about world rule and Philip’s assassins) were asked by Alexander or heard by anyone who
was there at the time.
Rather, the questions may have been invented by later writers, such as Cleitarchus, who wanted to
explain subsequent developments, such as Alexander’s seemingly endless victories; or by
Callisthenes, Alexander’s official historian, who wanted to make sure that everyone knew that all of
Philip’s assassins had been punished, thereby exculpating Olympias and Alexander by infallible,
divine pronouncement. Indeed, if we assume that Callisthenes only wrote things pleasing to
Alexander, it is interesting that he, and implicitly Alexander, should have felt the need to have the
king’s innocence proclaimed by none other than Zeus Ammon. Whether the story therefore reveals
filial devotion—or a guilty conscience—is an open question.
That the asking of the question about Philip’s murderers could be interpreted in such a way may
also explain why Arrian (whose account of the journey to the oracle drew upon Ptolemy and
Aristobulus, both of whom went with Alexander to Siwah) simply reports that Alexander put his
question to the oracle and received the answer that his heart desired. According to Arrian, no one
actually heard (or at least later reported) what Alexander asked the god. And if no one heard the
questions, there could be no gossip about the god granting Alexander rule of the whole world or
exculpating Olympias and Alexander. If Arrian is correct, this may be all we can know about
Alexander’s famous consultation of Zeus Ammon.
But there also may be some later evidence that casts light on Alexander’s consultation with the god.
Years later, when Alexander reached what he believed were the ends of the earth, at the mouth of the
Indus River, we are told that he made sacrifice to other gods and with a different ritual, in accordance
with the oracle of Ammon. Thus the sacrifice to the other gods at that point must be related to what
Considering the context, we might deduce that the question Alexander asked the oracle was not
whether he would rule over all mankind, but whether he would reach the ends of the earth itself,
possibly undefeated when he got there. Unfortunately, Arrian leaves us frustratingly ignorant of what
precisely the oracular utterance was that Alexander thought had been fulfilled when he reached the
Outer Ocean.
Whatever Alexander thought about himself either before or after he consulted the oracle at Siwah,
however, he could not have been displeased by his experience there, for he honored the god with rich
gifts before setting back off for Egypt.
THE FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDRIA
After his visit to the oracle, Alexander returned to Egypt by the same route. Along the way, he
founded Alexandria, the first and greatest of his cities. The foundation date suggested by later Roman
tradition is April 7, 331 B.C.E.
All the sources agree that it was Alexander who personally decided to found a great city in Egypt.
Indeed, he designed its general layout, inspired by a dream in which a gray-haired old man of
venerable appearance stood by his side, and recited these lines from the Odyssey:
Out of the tossing sea where it breaks
on the beaches of Egypt
Rises an isle from the waters:
the name that men give it is Pharos.
Alexander got up the next morning and visited Pharos, then still an island near the Canopic mouth
of the Nile, but later joined to the mainland by a causeway. Since there was no chalk, Alexander
marked out the plan of his new city with barley meal in the shape of the Macedonian military cloak,
the chlamys.
Huge flocks of birds, however, descended upon the site and devoured the barley. Alexander took
this as a distressing omen. But this seemingly ominous event was interpreted by the seers as a sign
that the city would not only have rich resources of its own, but would be the nurse of men of every
nation.
This “prophecy” has been seen by some scholars as an anachronistic retrojection from
Alexandria’s subsequent history as a polyglot city of Macedonians, Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and
others, to the time of its foundation as a specifically Greek city. But the historian Curtius Rufus
mentions that Alexander ordered people to migrate from neighboring cities to Alexandria to provide
the new city with a large population. It is certain that the peoples of these neighboring cities cannot
have been solely Greeks or Macedonians, since there were very few Greeks living in the neighboring
areas of the Nile Delta at the time. A new city with a large population cannot have been made up of
ethnic Greeks. The first Alexandria undoubtedly was a multi-ethnic city from its foundation, as
Alexander intended.
At the same time, Alexandria in Egypt was physically organized as a fundamentally Greek city:
; Alexander indicated the location of the marketplace ( agora), the temples to be built, what gods they
should serve, including the gods of Greece and the Egyptian Isis, and its circuit wall. Alexandria
therefore had the essential topographical layout and the physical structures characteristic of the Greek
polis, as the spectacular underwater archaeological excavations increasingly have disclosed. That
Alexander included a temple consecrated to the Egyptian Isis in his plan is, however, another
indication of his respect for the religious traditions of a foreign people.
Although the new foundation had a city wall (as virtually all Greek cities did), Alexandria’s
fundamental function was not military. Nor was the city established primarily for commercial
reasons, despite its later history. Rather, the choice of its name literally speaks for itself: with
characteristic immodesty, the first Alexandria was founded to project the name of Alexander
spatially, into Egypt, the fabled land of one of history’s oldest civilizations, and temporally, into
posterity. Indeed, Alexander never named a city after himself that he did not intend to be a permanent
establishment. According to one Byzantine-era grammarian, there were finally no fewer than eighteen
such Alexandrias dotting the landscape of the Middle and Near East.
THE FATHER OF ALL MANKIND
From the site of his first eponymous city, the king returned to Memphis, where he was visited by
deputations from Greece and was joined by a new force of 400 Greek mercenaries and 500 Thracian
cavalry. He once again offered sacrifice to Zeus the king and held a ceremonial parade of his troops
under arms, followed by games with athletic and musical contests. As so often, a major sacrifice
followed recent successes.
It was perhaps at this time that Alexander listened to the lectures of a philosopher named Psammon,
who apparently argued that all men were ruled by Zeus, since in each case that which acquires
mastery and rules is divine. Plutarch tells us that although Alexander approved of this argument, his
own pronouncement on the subject was more philosophical: namely, that while Zeus was indeed the
father of all mankind, he nevertheless made the best especially his own. Whether Alexander uttered
these words in Egypt at this time or not, no better summation of Alexander’s understanding of Zeus’
relationship to mankind has ever been made.
Both clauses of Alexander’s “more philosophical” pronouncement on the subject can be traced
back to Alexander’s favorite work of art, the Iliad, where Zeus is repeatedly referred to as the father
of both men and gods. Moreover, in the epic world the best, the aristoi (e.g., Achilles, Hektor, and
the other heroes), are especially dear to the gods. Achilles’ quest to prove himself the best of the
Achaeans is a central, perhaps the central, theme of the Iliad. The ideas Alexander perhaps
enunciated in Egypt about Zeus’ relationship to mankind and the best were thoroughly grounded in the
theological world of the Iliad.
Alexander obviously believed that he belonged to those “best” whom Zeus made particularly his
own. From his earliest days, Olympias had encouraged him to believe that he was a descendant of
heroes and gods. Nothing he had accomplished would have discouraged this belief. Against all the
odds, a king who was not yet thirty had met and defeated in battle the Great King of Persia and taken
half his empire away from him. No Greek mortal of any age had accomplished such feats of arms;
Achilles, Alexander’s model and ancestor, had not even taken Troy. Alexander and his Macedonians
had reversed the tides of history itself. By his deeds, Alexander had elevated himself not just to the
ranks of the best: he was the best of the best. After what had happened at the Granicus and Issos, who
could doubt that Alexander was beloved of the gods, especially of Zeus, who held sway over the
entire world? According to the Colophonian natural philosopher Xenophanes, the Thracians, who had
blue eyes and red hair, claimed that their gods had blue eyes and red hair. Of course Alexander’s
Zeus made the best especially his own. He was the father of the best: Alexander!
But Alexander’s pronouncement also implied that among the rest of mankind were other aristoi,
who were also dear to Zeus. Zeus made the best (plural) his very own. Alexander did not say that all
the best were Greeks or Macedonians; indeed, the logical implication of his reply to Psammon was
that the best could come from among all mankind.
If Plutarch has quoted Alexander accurately, what Alexander seems to have been claiming then was
that there were men whom Zeus made his very own because they were the best, regardless of their
ethnic background or nationality. This is important because it possibly gives us some idea of the
theological underpinnings of Alexander’s later willingness to incorporate the best of the Persians and
some other conquered peoples into his army and the administration of his empire. As we have seen,
Aristotle had advised his pupil to treat the conquered peoples of his empire like plants or animals; it
is not easy to reconcile such advice with the belief that Zeus is the father of all mankind. Alexander’s
subsequent treatment of the “best” among the conquered peoples, on the other hand, is completely
consistent with the beliefs he apparently expressed in Egypt.
LEAVING THE “TWO LANDS”
In addition to giving local philosophers lessons about Zeus’ preferences, Alexander also reorganized
Egypt politically, leaving two Egyptians as provincial governors ( nomarchs), and installing garrisons
at Memphis and Pelusium. Lycidas, a Greek from Aetolia, was left in charge of the mercenaries. A
Companion was left as the secretary of foreign troops and two men of Chalcis were left to
superintend the work of Lycidas and the Companion.
Governors of Libya and of Arabia by Heröopolis also were appointed. Peucestas, son of
Macartatus, and Balacrus, son of Amyntas, were put in charge of the troops in Egypt. Command of the
fleet was given to Polemon, son of Theramenes. Various other promotions in the army also were
made.
Alexander was deeply impressed by Egypt and the potential strength of the country: that is why he
divided its control among several officers. He did not believe it was safe to entrust the governance of
such a rich and important country to one man. The Roman emperors later took a leaf from Alexander’s
book: they never sent a senator there as proconsul, but always governors and administrators drawn
from the class of equites, or knights. The Roman emperors feared what a Roman senator might do
with the resources of Egypt at his disposal.
As for Alexander, with a renewed sense of confidence in his divinely sanctioned destiny, he and
the Macedonians marched out of Egypt in the spring of 331 beneath the shadows of the pyramids,
determined to find Darius and his great army wherever they were and to settle the contest for Asia,
once and for all.
CHAPTER 10
The Battle of Gaugamela
FROM MEMPHIS TO TYRE
The first order of business after Alexander left Memphis on his way to Phoenicia was a brief punitive
campaign in Samaria, the region lying between Judaea and the Galilee. While Alexander was in
Egypt, the Samaritans had burned alive Andromachus, whom he had put in charge of Syria. After
p
unishing those held responsible, by summer the army reached Tyre, where the fleet was waiting.
In Tyre, Alexander once again honored Herakles with religious celebrations and games, perhaps a
sign that he anticipated great labors. The kings of Cyprus sponsored dithyrambic choruses and
tragedies featuring some of the most prominent actors of the day. During the performance of one
comedy, Lycon of Scarpheia introduced a line into his character’s speech asking Alexander for a
present of ten talents. Alexander laughed and gave the enterprising thespian the money.
The matter of Alexander’s Athenian prisoners then arose again. The Athenian state galley, the
Paralus, crewed by free citizens and bearing envoys named Diophantus and Achilles, arrived. The
purpose of the embassy was to ask for the return of the Athenians taken prisoner at the battle of the
Granicus. Alexander had already denied a similar request two years before, but the strategic situation
now was quite different.
Since 332 a war between Macedonian troops and the mercenary army of the Spartan king Agis had
been raging on the island of Crete. To deal with this dangerous situation, Alexander dispatched his
admiral Amphoterus with the fleet to assist the Macedonians and to help support his allies in the
Peloponnese. To keep Athens neutral in the conflict, Alexander now promised to return the Athenian
prisoners of war.
Amphoterus was sent with orders to support all the Greek cities that were “sound” on the Persian
War and did not listen to the Spartans. Phoenicia and Cyprus supplied a hundred additional ships for
the war in the Peloponnese. By the spring of 330, these forces and Antipater would combine to defeat
the Spartan king.
DARIUS’ SECOND OVERTURE
The summer of 331 brought another overture from Darius as well. After praising Alexander for his
generous treatment of his mother and the other royal captives, Darius offered him all the land west of
the Euphrates, 30,000 talents of silver, and the hand of one of his daughters in return for a cessation of
hostilities. If he accepted, Alexander would become Darius’ son-in-law and would share the rule of
the whole empire. To judge by the terms of the offer, Darius made his offer to Alexander for both
strategic and personal reasons.