Free God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great by Christian Cameron

of Aphrodite. Zeus, god of kings, what a horror that woman could be, and how much of Alexander can be laid at her door. Sober, she was brilliant and scary, and drunk, she was a lascivious predator with no scruples and a poisonous memory. And her power to manipulate – she was quite brilliant . . .
    She was very beautiful, with sparkling eyes and curly brown hair, tall, elegantly limbed – please don’t imagine her as somebody’s mother. She bore Alexander at the age of fourteen, and when I first met her – not first saw her at court at a distance, but actually stood in her presence – she was twenty-five years old, in the prime of her beauty. Her skin glowed, and she herself had a sort of radiant vitality that she passed unmarred to her son. I’ve known men who hated her, and I’ve heard magnificent tales of her debauchery, and I know some of them to be true, but let it be said – Macedonian men disliked powerful women, and she was a powerful woman who added to beauty and charm an indomitable will and an almost unbreakable bond with the king that allowed her to call the tune at court. She had many enemies.
    She was fiercely protective of Alexander and her protection extended to his friends and companions, and despite having several skirmishes with her myself, as you will hear, I have to admit that she was often our ally against Philip and his companions – the older men who saw us first as children and later as dangerous rivals.
    But I digress. That winter, she had got it into her head that Alexander needed a woman, and she decided that the woman of his dreams would also be a useful tool to manipulate him – this is a fine example of how her mind worked.
    Anyway, she and Aristotle were adversaries. These days, it has become popular to suggest that Olympias and Philip were the enemies, but I never saw that. It seemed to me that Olympias and Philip were united in wanting their boy to grow up to be a good, solid, dependable Macedonian nobleman – something, I’d like to note, that Philip never was – and Aristotle wanted something more – a great king, an Athenian-style philosopher who had the mettle of Achilles and the mind of Socrates.
    Calixeinna became their battleground. She could flirt, a talent wasted on young men, and she could play the lyre and the flute and recite poetry. She could also do geometry, and this fascinated Alexander and even Aristotle. She was not without weapons. Nor was Alexander indifferent to her. He loved beauty, and she was beautiful.
    One day, Alexander was paired with me in a war game. We were to live without supplies for three days, stealing food from the kitchens or outlying farms. This was in emulation of the Spartan training, and deeply unfair – if we were caught, I would be beaten. Alexander was never beaten.
    We were taken some miles from the Gardens of Midas, and our horses were taken by slaves. We were to live three days off the country, never being caught or even seen, and then we were to steal food from the manor itself, and finally, we were to surrender ourselves to Aristotle at a set time.
    Alexander wanted to be paired with Hephaestion, but for whatever reason, he was paired with me. We were taken into the chora, the farmland west of the manor, and left at the edge of the forest without food, water or weapons of any kind.
    Perhaps this sort of thing challenges Spartan boys. Alexander and I had a very pleasant three days. We lay up until dark, stole into the first farm and took the dog leashes off the wall of an outbuilding we’d observed at last light. We slept together for warmth and in the morning we unwove the hemp leashes and made slings. Instead of going into the chora, we went up into the hills and killed every rabbit we wanted. There were ripe berries on the bushes, and Alexander got us not one but two magnificent trout out of a stream by standing stock still in the freezing water until the trout trusted him – and then he abused that trust. He was very proud