to bear the pain was a form of vanity. Others marveled at his bravery and contempt for death.
Calanus’ end made a deep impression upon all who witnessed it, and his name became proverbial for
calm courage in the face of death.
THE CROWN OF PROMACHUS
There followed a less dignified event. After leaving the funeral pyre, Alexander invited a number of
his friends and officers to dine with him and proposed a contest in drinking neat wine—no doubt to
help everyone forget what they had just witnessed. The prize was a crown worth a crown. The
winner, Promachus, drank four pitchers (about twelve quarts) of fortified wine. Promachus
unfortunately survived just three days to enjoy his victory. According to Chares, who, as chamberlain,
was in a position to know, forty-one other competitors from the contest also died from the effects of
the wine, having been seized with a violent chill after the debauchery ended. The episode should have
been a warning sign to Alexander. But the road of excess usually does not lead to the palace of
wisdom; more often, it has brought its travelers directly to the Elysian fields.
HONORS FOR BRAVERY
Alexander now took the army along the royal road to Susa, which he reached by March 324. Just
before he entered the city, Nearchus appeared once more, having safely brought the fleet from
Harmozeia.
Alexander now offered sacrifices for the safety of his ships and men, and contests were celebrated.
Awards of golden crowns for conspicuous bravery during the campaign in India also were made: to
Peucestas for saving the king’s life; to Leonnatus for saving Alexander, service in India, his victory in
Oria, his defeat of the Oreitae and their neighbors, and settling affairs in Oria; to Nearchus for his
voyage from India; to Onesicritus, master of the royal galley; and to Alexander’s friend Hephaestion
and the other members of the bodyguard.
THE MASS MARRIAGE AT SUSA
A larger and more significant ceremony followed. After the battle of Issos Alexander had pledged to
Darius’ mother, Sisygambis, that he would provide for the marriage of her captive daughters even
more generously than her son had promised to do. How Alexander now fulfilled that promise was not
perhaps quite what the queen mother, the royal daughters, or especially the Macedonians themselves
would have envisioned.
For at Susa the royal daughters of the Persian king and many other royal ladies were wedded to
Alexander and ninety-one of his Companions and friends. Alexander himself married Barsine
(Stateira), Darius’ eldest daughter, and also, according to Aristobulus, Parysatis, the youngest
daughter of Artaxerxes III Ochus.
Thus Alexander was linked through matrimony to both branches of the Persian royal family. To
Hephaestion, Alexander gave Drypetis, another of Darius’ daughters and the sister of his own wife
Barsine, so that Hephaestion’s children should be Alexander’s nephews and nieces. Amastrine,
daughter of Darius’ brother Oxyartes, was wedded to Craterus. To Perdiccas was given the daughter
of Atropates, governor of Media. Ptolemy married Artacama, the daughter of Artabazus, and Eumenes
was joined to her sister Artonis. Nearchus married the daughter of Barsine and Mentor, and Seleucus
wed Apame, the daughter of the Bactrian Spitamenes. And so it went, with Alexander’s officers being
given young Persian and Median noblewomen as brides.
More significantly, however, the weddings were conducted in Persian style. Chairs were set for the
bridegrooms in order. After toasts to health had been drunk, the brides came in and sat down next to
their bridegrooms, who took them by the hand and kissed them. Alexander performed the ceremony
first.
If the Persian ritual was notable for its simplicity and dignity, Alexander’s arrangements for the
wedding party were not. Bridal chambers for all the newlyweds were set within a specially
constructed pavilion, and in it were one hundred couches, each adorned with nuptial coverings made
of silver. Alexander’s couch had supports of gold. The pavilion was decorated sumptuously with
expensive draperies and fine linens. Underfoot there were purple and crimson rugs interwoven with
gold.
The nuptials lasted for five days, with entertainment provided by Indian jugglers, rhapsodes, harp
virtuosi, singers, flautists, dancers, and the most famous actors of the day. Ambassadors and guests
gave wedding presents worth 15,000 talents. Alexander himself provided a dowry for each couple.
Ten thousand other Macedonians had married Asian women, and now every one of those men
received a wedding gift from Alexander.
The mass marriage ceremony at Susa has elicited strikingly contradictory interpretations. Arguing
against the idea that Alexander wanted to fuse the Macedonian and Persian aristocracies into one, the
Australian scholar Bosworth has hypothesized that, in the wake of the execution of Orxines and the
other Iranian pretenders, Alexander may have been leery of giving Persian nobles the prestige of a
royal marriage. Alexander did not want Persian noblemen marrying Sisygambis’ daughters or other
Persian noblewomen because of his fears of insurrection. In support of this hypothesis, it has been
observed that, with two exceptions, all of the grooms were Macedonian or Greek, and all the brides
were Persian or Median. As far as we know, no Persian noblemen married Macedonian or Greek
women as part of the ceremony. Thus, the mass marriage ceremony was not an equal fusion of the two
aristocracies, but rather the absorption of the Persian aristocracy into the Macedonian ruling class.
On the other hand, the ceremony needs to be seen in its ancient context. We are hard-pressed to find
another example of a mass marriage of Greek or Macedonian officers or royalty to women of any
other ethnic group. In fact, previously Alexander had set the precedent of marrying outside his ethnic
or national group with his first marriage, to Roxane, a Bactrian woman. Yet Alexander’s wedding to
Roxane had been celebrated according to the Macedonian or Greek form. The marriage ceremony at
Susa was that of a conquered people. Such an accommodation to the customs of the Persians would
have been unthinkable only a few years before. No one would have missed the significance of the
choice of ceremony. The weddings at Susa were not a fusion of cultures on an equal basis, but did
represent an accommodation that displayed the present and future political order. Although virtually
all the grooms at the wedding were Macedonian or Greek and all the women were Persian or Median,
the future ruling class of Alexander’s empire—the issue of the marriages at Susa—would be one of
mixed Macedonian and Persian blood. Shortly, Alexander would make it crystal clear that a joint
Macedonian-Persian ruling class was exactly what he had in mind for the administration of his world
empire. The majority of the Macedonian soldiers understood this very well, and they were far from
pleased about it.
THE PAYING OFF OF THE DEBTS
The Macedonian soldiers’ dissatisfaction with the weddings in Susa helps us to understand their
suspicious reaction to an extraordinary gesture of generosity. Seeing that many of the soldiers
somehow had fallen into debt during the campaigns, Alexander decided to pay off all those debts. At
first the troops were reluctant even to register
to have what they owed paid off, thinking that
Alexander was trying to identify the spendthrifts among them.
Learning of these apprehensions, Alexander had banking tables set up in the camp. The king told his
accountants at the tables to cancel the debts of all who produced any bond, without so much as
registering their names. The lowest figure given by the sources for the total debt Alexander paid off
was 9,870 talents, the highest 20,000. Much of the money apparently was owed by the soldiers to
Asian traders. By paying off the vast debt, Alexander was doing a good deed on behalf both of the
debtors and their creditors.
The incident is significant both for the amount of debt it reveals the soldiers to have accumulated
during the campaigns, despite the gratuities paid to them, and also for the suspicion of Alexander
among the rank and file that the episode clearly betrays. As so often, generosity did not breed
gratitude, but resentment.
THE RETURN OF THE SUCCESSORS
The growing displeasure of the Macedonian soldiers was further inflamed by the sudden arrival of the
governors of the new cities that Alexander had founded and of the provinces he had captured. These
governors brought with them the 30,000 “Successors,” young Persian men from the eastern satrapies,
selected for their grace and strength before the Hyphasis mutiny. Since their selection they had been
taught Greek, trained along Macedonian military lines, and given Macedonian battle dress. Upon their
arrival in Susa they gave a splendid display of their skill and discipline in the use of their weapons;
Alexander warmly praised their performance. The reaction of the battle-scarred, graying Macedonian
veterans does not need to be imagined: later, the Macedonians jeered at Alexander’s “ballet-
soldiers.”
But the real object of the Macedonians’ simmering anger was not the Successors. Rather, it was the
king himself.
From the Macedonians’ point of view, the appearance of the Successors was only another example
of Alexander’s many efforts to lessen his future dependence upon his own countrymen. Alexander’s
Median clothes also had caused pain, and the weddings in the Persian style had not been to the
Macedonians’ taste. The Macedonians also were not happy about Peucestas, the satrap of Persia,
imitating the Persians in dress and speech, and the inclusion of foreign mounted troops, including
Bactrians, Sogdians, Arachotians, Zarangians, Areians, Parthyaeans, and Persians, in the units of the
Companion cavalry. Moreover, a fifth cavalry regiment now was being added, not “wholly
barbarian” but with some of the “barbarians” picked to serve in it. Some foreign officers also had
been posted to the Royal Squadron ( agema); their commander, Hystaspes, a Bactrian, and the foreign
troops were all equipped with Macedonian lances in place of their native javelins. All this caused
deep indignation among the Macedonians, who felt that Alexander’s whole outlook had become
“barbarized” and that he no longer esteemed Macedonian customs or the Macedonians themselves.
Soon the resentment boiled over into a second mutiny. This time, however, the king had prepared
the ground and would emerge victorious. What had happened at the Hyphasis may have been forgiven
after what the king and his men endured together in Gedrosia, but it was not forgotten. Like his
Homeric role model, Alexander did not strive to finish second, even to his own soldiers.
CHAPTER 27
The Mutiny at Opis
A NEW ALEXANDRIA
The Macedonians departed from Susa in the spring of 324. Hephaestion, leading the majority of the
infantry brigades, traveled directly down to the Persian Sea (Gulf) by land. Alexander sailed down
the Eulaeus (modern Karun) to the sea with the hypaspists, the Royal Squadron, and a few of the
Companion cavalry, and then took the fastest ships along the coast to the mouth of the Tigris. The
other ships made their way up the Eulaeus to the canal that joined the Eulaeus with the Tigris and
passed through it (into the Tigris).
Alexander then navigated up the Tigris to the rendezvous point where Hephaestion was waiting
with the army. At the confluence of the Eulaeus and the Tigris Alexander paused to found another
Alexandria, possibly the later Spasinou Charax. Although part of the population of the settlement was
drawn from a native town (Durine), an elite of Macedonian veterans also was settled there in a
special quarter known as Pellaeum, an obvious reference to the Macedonian capital of Pella.
From the newly founded city Alexander then went up the Tigris River with the whole army to Opis.
On the way he destroyed the artificial cataracts the Persians had constructed along the river to make it
impassable to invading fleets. Such preparations indicate that Alexander was not exhausted. Nor had
he lost his desire for future conquests. On the contrary, just as he had done before his expedition to the
Outer Ocean from Pattala, Alexander was carefully preparing the logistical groundwork for the next
phase of his plan to conquer the world.
THE MUTINY AT OPIS
By midsummer of 324 Alexander and the army had reached the city of Opis. Opis had important links
to both Babylonian and Persian history; there, in September 539, Alexander’s imperial predecessor
Cyrus the Great had conquered the Babylonian king Nabonidus and become the ruler of Nabonidus’
immense empire.
In Opis Alexander summoned the Macedonians and announced that all men unfit for duty by reason
them when they left enough to make them the envy of those in their homes and also to encourage others
to come out and take part in similar dangers and toils.
Undoubtedly contrary to Alexander’s expectations, his announcement pleased neither the veterans
who were being discharged nor those soldiers who were staying on. The Macedonians vehemently
protested. He had used them up in every kind of service and now he was turning them away in
disgrace and throwing them upon their cities and parents, no longer the same men he took with him.
Why not send them all away and write them off as useless, since he had these young ballet-soldiers
with whom he could go on to conquer the world?
The troops who were to remain picked up on the call for general demobilization. They demanded
release for themselves too. Further, they loudly insisted that their years of service should be counted,
rather than their ages; it was only fair, they argued, that those recruited together should be released at
the same time. The mutineers then mockingly told Alexander to go to war by himself, along with his
father Ammon, since he did not respect his soldiers.
Alexander’s response was ferocious. For the first time, the Macedonians now faced an enraged
Alexander, the same Alexander whom Asians had come to know and fear from the Hellespont to the
Indus. The king leaped down from the platform on which he had been standing. Pointing out the
ringleaders of the mutiny, he ordered his guards to arrest them on the spot. By some accounts,
Alexander seized the instigators with his own hands. Thirteen soldiers were arrested immediately and
executed without delay.
To the rest of the Macedonians Alexander then made an impassioned speech, telling them to go
wherever they
wanted. At the Hyphasis he had endured Coenus’ long speech; now the Macedonians
would have to listen to his side of the story. He reminded them that his father had found them a tribe
of impoverished vagabonds, most dressed in skins, pasturing a few sheep and fighting (without much
success) to keep them from their neighbors, the Illyrians, the Triballians, and the Thracians. Philip
had made the Macedonians dwellers of cities, annexed Thrace, subjected Thessaly to Macedonian
rule, and humbled the Phocians.
The men of Thebes and Athens, who once had exacted money or obedience from the Macedonians,
now looked to them for their salvation. Philip had put everything in the Peloponnese into order, and
when he was made supreme leader of all Greece for the war against Persia, he had won this glory not
for himself alone, but for the Macedonian people.
Yet the services of his father were small compared with his own: he had inherited a handful of gold
and silver cups, and less than sixty talents in the treasury; there was eight times that amount in debts.
He had had to borrow a further 800 talents. Nevertheless, his cavalry had crushed the satraps of
Darius at the Granicus and made the Macedonians the masters of the gold of Lydia, the treasures of
Persia, and the wealth of India. From all this, what was left to Alexander was only the purple—and
the diadem.
Alexander then asked if any man believed that he had suffered more for Alexander than Alexander
had for him. He challenged them to strip and show their wounds; he would show his. No part of his
body save his back was without scar. He bore the mark of every weapon a man could grasp or fling.
Through every land and sea, across rivers, mountains, and plains, he had led them, a victorious
army.
He had married as they had married.
He had paid their debts.
The dead had been given illustrious burials. Their parents were held in high honor, and had been
freed of all taxes and services. Now he had it in mind to dismiss men no longer fit for service.
They wished to desert him? Let them go. But when they returned home, they should tell all that they
had deserted their king, who had crushed everyone, and left him at the mercy of the barbarians they
themselves had conquered. When these things were announced, they would win praise among men and