The World

Alexander barely knew his father but was close to his mother Olympias, one of the few not afraid to confront Philip – and protect her son. In 342, Philip hired the thirty-seven-year-old Athenian philosopher Aristotle to tutor Alexander. When Philip faced war with Athens, he appointed Alexander as regent. Alexander always kept under his pillow Aristotle’s copy of The Iliad and a dagger, two objects that symbolized his two contradictory facets: the cultured Greek and the ferocious Macedonian.

In his father’s absence, Alexander showed his mettle by defeating rebel tribes. As Athens gathered a coalition of Greek states to stop Philip, they sent envoys to Artaxerxes III of Persia.

ROULETTE: DARIUS III AND ALEXANDER III

It was the perfect moment to approach the Great King. The impressive Artaxerxes III was keen to intervene in Greece. He had crushed Sidon, Egypt and Ionia, aided by two exceptional henchmen, a Greek freebooter Mentor and a Persian eunuch Bogoas, in whom the absence of testicles was no bar to military brutality. When Artaxerxes returned to his capital after fifteen years of war, he promoted Bogoas to Commander of the Thousand, chief minister. But, alarmed by the rise of Philip, he funded Athens and sent a unit to harass the Macedonians in Thrace, a decision that would have world-changing consequences.

Philip summoned his son Alexander, by now aged eighteen, for the battle of Greece. In the summer of 338 BC on the field of Chaeronea. Philip fielded 30,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, giving Alexander command of the Companion cavalry on the left flank, against the coalition led by Athens that fielded double the number of cavalry. But nothing could equal Philip’s generalship nor his army’s experience: on his own right flank, he deliberately fell back while on the left Alexander led a charge that annihilated the Sacred Band of Thebes to the last man. When Philip saw the dead Sacred Band, remembering his youth in Thebes he wept and erected the Lion of the Chaeronea, a statue under which were later found the bones of 254 men (the Macedonians cremated their dead; Greeks were buried). Now the ruler of Greece – entitled hegemon of the Council of the Greeks – received important news from Persia: a wave of mutual poisonings had decimated the royal family.

Artaxerxes, aged sixty, had planned to dismiss the eunuch Bogoas, who instead poisoned the king and then one by one eliminated his sons, finally summoning a heroic general and royal relative, Artashaiyata, who had made his name by winning a series of single combats. Bogoas crowned him Darius III. Inevitably the new king longed to rid himself of the eunuch.

A deadly game of poison roulette ensued as each of them tried to kill the other. Bogoas poured the king a glass of poisoned wine and the king, for once better informed, insisted the eunuch drink his own cup. The poisoner died by poison. Regardless of the habitual spasms of murderous intrigue at the top, the empire, restored by Artaxerxes III and now led by a confident, capable soldier-king Darius III, was the unchallenged superpower – and likely to remain so for centuries to come.

At the age of forty-eight, the grizzled one-eyed Philip, hegemon of Greece, fell in love with a teenage girl, never a good look. In 337 BC, Philip announced a Hellenic expedition against Persia, officially to avenge Xerxes’ burning of Athens but really to replenish his coffers with Ionian treasure and chasten Persia for backing Macedonian enemies in Thrace – ‘You,’ Alexander later wrote to the Great King, ‘sent troops into Thrace which we control.’ As he mustered his vanguard, Philip announced that he was marrying again. After six diplomatic marriages to foreigners, including Olympias of Epiros, who had brought him possession of Molassia, he announced he was marrying the teenaged Macedonian, Cleopatra, niece of a nobleman, Attalos. His infatuation destabilized his crowded polygamous household: Olympias was infuriated. Already surrounded by a coterie of young supporters led by a kinsman Ptolemy, who may have been an illegitimate son of the king, Alexander was alarmed.

At the marriage feast, the Macedonians drank hard and fought fast. The king’s new uncle-in-law Attalos mocked Alexander, who was only half-Macedonian: ‘Now surely there’ll be born for us true-bred kings – not bastards!’ Alexander threw his goblet at Attalos, who threw his back. Philip ordered Alexander to apologize. His son refused and the soused father drew a sword and lurched towards him, but tripped, fell over, then passed out.

‘The man ready to cross from Europe to Asia,’ sneered Alexander, ‘can’t make it from one table to another.’ After dinner, Olympias and Alexander escaped into the night. Philip summoned Alexander back, but when a Persian satrap offered his daughter to the prince, the king refused and exiled Alexander’s henchman Ptolemy. Soon afterwards the Macedonian vanguard left for Asia.