A Young Macedonian in the Army of Alexander the Great

by Alfred John Church

Thoroughly mystified by this answer, the Uxians returned to their native hills, and having collected a force which was held sufficient to garrison the pass against any assailant, they awaited the arrival of their new tributary. But to their astonishment he approached them from behind. His eagle eye had discovered a track, known, of course, to the mountaineers, but certainly unknown to his guide. A few wreaths of smoke rising into the clear air, far up the heights of the hills, caught his eye as early one morning he surveyed the mountain range over which he had to make his way. At the same time he traced the line of a slight depression in the hills. “Where there is a dwelling there is probably a path,” said the king to Parmenio, who accompanied him in his reconnoitring expedition, “and we shall doubtless find it near a watercourse.”

The watercourse was discovered, and with it the path. Greedy as ever of personal adventure, Alexander himself led the light troops whom he selected as the most suitable force for this service. Starting at midnight he came just before dawn on one of the Uxian villages. The surprise was complete. Not a man escaped. By the time the next village was reached some of the inhabitants had gone about their work in the fields and contrived to get away. But they only spread the alarm among their tribesmen. As there was not a fortress in the whole country, there was nothing left for the humbled mountaineers but absolute submission. Even this would not have saved the tribe from extermination, the penalty which the enraged Alexander had decreed against them, but for the intercession of the mother of Darius.

“My son,” she said, “be merciful. My own race came two generations back from these same mountaineers. I ask their lives as a favour to myself. If they are haughty, it is the Persian kings in the past who by their weakness have taught them to be so. Now that they have learnt your strength, you will find them subjects worth ruling.”

“Mother,” said Alexander, “whatever you are pleased to ask, I am more than pleased to give.”

And the shepherds were saved.

Another pass yet remained to be won, the famous Susian gates, and then Persepolis was his. But it was not won without an effort. One of the sturdiest of the Persian nobles held it with a body of picked troops, and the first assault, delivered the very morning after his arrival, was repulsed with loss. The next, directed both against the front and against the flank, always a weak point with Asiatic troops, was successful, and the way to Persepolis was open.

The king had invited Charidemus to ride with him as the army made its last day’s march to Persepolis, and the young Macedonian had related to him the adventure which he and his friend had encountered on their way from the fords of Euphrates to join the army, and had dwelt with some emotion on the story of the unhappy man who had been the means of their escape. A turn of the road brought them face to face with a pitiable spectacle for which his tale had been an appropriate preparation. This was a company of unhappy creatures—it was afterwards ascertained that there were as many as eight hundred of them—who had suffered mutilation at the hands of their brutal Persian masters. Some had lost hands, some feet; several of the poor creatures had been deprived of both, and were wheeled along in little cars by some comrades who had been less cruelly treated. On the faces of many of them had been branded insulting words, sometimes in Persian and sometimes—a yet more intolerable grievance—in Greek characters. “Not men but strange spectres of men”;[71] they greeted the king with a Greek cry of welcome. Their voices seemed the only human thing about them.

When the king saw this deplorable array, and understood who and what they were, he leapt from his horse, and went among the ranks of the sufferers. So manifest was his sympathy that they could not but welcome him, and yet they could not help shrinking with a keen sense of humiliation from the gaze of a countryman. Bodily deformity was such a calamity to the Greek with his keen love for physical beauty, that such an affliction as that from which they were suffering seemed the very heaviest burden that could be laid upon humanity. Yet there were none who were not touched by the king’s gracious kindness. He went from one to another with words of sympathy and consolation, inquired into their stories, and promised them such help as they might require. A strange collection of stories they were that the king heard. Some doubtless were exaggerated; in others there was some suppression of truth; but the whole formed a record of pitiless and often unprovoked cruelty. Many of the unhappy men were persons of education: tutors who had been induced to take charge of young Persian nobles and had chanced to offend either employer or pupil; unlucky or unskilful physicians, such as he whom Charidemus had encountered; architects where buildings had proved unsightly or unstable. Mercenary soldiers who had been convicted or suspected of unfaithfulness were a numerous class. A few, it could hardly be doubted, had been really guilty of criminal acts.

So moved was Alexander by the horror of what he saw and heard that he burst into tears. “And after all,” Charidemus heard him murmur to himself, “I cannot heal the sorrows of one of these poor creatures. O gods, how helpless have ye made the race of mortal men!”

Still, if he could not heal their sorrows, he could alleviate them. The sufferers were given to understand that they should have their choice of returning to their homes in Greece, or of remaining where they were. In either case, their means of livelihood in the future would be assured. They were to deliberate among themselves, and let him know their decision in the morning.