The Nature of Alexander Read Online Free PDF Page A

solid centre was the infantry phalanx, a deep column (phalanx means finger) armed with the giant spear of his devising, the famous sarissa. Of graded length, those of the fourth-rank line being at least 15 feet long, these pikes enabled four ranks at once to take the enemy at spear-point, making them virtually immune from all but missile weapons. This was the holding force. The striking hammers were the flanking cavalry wings. Alexander was to be the virtuoso of this instrument; but Philip was its creator.
    He had light-armed skirmishers, archers and slingers; Dionysius of Syracuse had made innovations in siegecraft which were not lost on him. His generalship was equalledby his political acumen, which enabled him to intervene in neighbouring wars at the request of one or other party (the ancient tragedy of divided Greece) to his own profit. His influence in Thessaly, his steady extension across Thrace towards the vital corn route of the Hellespont, were already alarming Athens.
    One can only speculate what would have been the effect on Alexander if Olympias had died in childbirth; if he had kept her genes but escaped her influence. Such a father and son might have added affection to mutual pride. As it was, this towering figure was the enemy and oppressor; the gross lecher from whose loins some god—pray heaven—had saved him from being begotten; above all the rival, at all costs to be surpassed. All Alexander’s story testifies to the effect on natural genius of the deep insecurity felt in these tormenting early years. Compensation for it inspired his greatest achievements; when it took him unawares, it betrayed him into his greatest sins.
    That he kept his sanity he must have owed to his capacity for friendship, a solace he turned to while very young. Psychologically his face must have been his fortune; to this attractive boy people were drawn without the pretences of flattery, and his true child’s instincts felt it. He grew up with a religious faith in friendship, making it a cult, publicly staking his life on it. The real loves of his life were friendships, including his sexual loves. Though he had the classic family pattern for homosexuality, it was probably the mere availability of men rather than women for friendship which directed his emotional life. To be loved for himself, as he certainly often was, ministered to his constant need for reassurance, and he returned affection so warmly that it seldom let him down. When it did, it shook him to his roots. He had committed too much, and could not forgive.
    When he was seven, the recognized end of childhood, his father found him a tutor. He was a certain Leonidas, Olympias’ uncle; Philip the diplomat thus avoiding palace brawls. Both parents, it seems, agreed on the way in which the boy should be fitted for his destiny. As a man, he gave his own account of it.
Ada, whom he honoured with the title of Mother and made Queen of Caria … in the kindness of her heart used to send him daily many dishes and sweets, and finally offered him pastrycooks and chefs of noted skill. He said he did not need them; better cooks had been given him by Leonidas his tutor—a night march to make him want his breakfast, and a small breakfast to make him want his supper. “And,” he said, “the man himself used to come and look through my bedding-boxes and clothes-chests, to see my mother did not hide any luxuries or extras there.”
    Spare diet, thin clothing, and the hard exercise his age and nature (as well as the need to keep warm) dictated may have been the chief causes of Alexander’s failure to reach the average height of the Macedonians, whatever that was; the great sarissa being a regular weapon suggests that it was impressive. Had he been a really little man, we should read of his being identified by it at a distance instead of by the other means always mentioned, his armour, actions and so on; and the Athenian propagandists could never have let it alone; but that his height