Free The Nature of Alexander by Mary Renault Page A

break rather than bend. This pattern appears in his story more than once.
    The eagerness with which the satrap jumped at his offer must have opened his eyes; Pixodarus had clearly been promised no heir-apparent. But enlightenment came too late. Philip found out. And here the Plutarch manuscript has a tantalizing short gap. After the break, it says Philip went to Alexander’s room, taking with him Philotas son of Parmenion, one of Alexander’s close friends, and gave him a furious dressing down. He was probably confined to his room under house arrest. The presence of Philotas is unexplained, unless as a neutral witness, his father being Philip’s oldest friend; but the young man’s later record makes it not impossible that, unknown to Alexander, he had betrayed the plot.
    Philip upbraided his son for being so unworthy of his rank as to seek an alliance with a mere Carian, the servitor of a barbarian king. In other words, he had been assured of his rank, and his doubts were as insulting as his action had been disastrous. For him the match was out of the question; and after Thettalus’ revelations, Arridaeus was of course turned down. The diplomatic coup was ruined. For a man with Alexander’s grasp of affairs it must have been a bitter moment. But worse was to come. The King, determined to show who was master and break up a subversive clique, banished from Macedon all Alexander’s intimates. The one interesting exception was Hephaestion. There are several feasible reasons, the most obvious being that Philip, like Aristotle, thought him a good influence on Alexander; for whose conduct, too, he might be a useful hostage, especially if Philip knew them to be lovers. He was a shrewd judge of men. As it was, he gave a last crack of the trainer’s whip; he had Thettalus, then in Corinth, arrested and brought to Pella in chains.
    His professional status was that of an Irving or a Garrick. Even though only reprimanded—we hear nothing of any punishment beyond the gross humiliation of his fetters—it was an extreme step for Philip with his cultural aspirations. But he could have found no better way of flicking Alexander on the raw. His insistence on sharing every danger to which he exposed his men was almost an obsession. This time it had been impossible. The shame must have bitten deep; the resentment also. It is to his credit that he never pushed it out of his mind together with the friend concerned in it; Thettalus remained throughout his reign a welcome guest and favourite artist.
    Meantime, the first phase of the Persian War had started. Parmenion and Attalus had taken an advance force across the Hellespont and secured a bridgehead. King Ochus had been poisoned the year before by his eunuch Grand Vizier, the king-maker Bagoas, whose power he had tried to curb; Arses his son was young and occupied with these internal dangers. The coastal satraps’ resistance seems to have been disorganized and weak. Had Alexander’s friendship with his father lasted, he himself would probably have held a command in the expedition. In his place went the hated Attalus.
    Philip had one matter of home defence to see to before setting out himself: the conciliation of Epirus. Perhaps through Eurydice’s persuasions, perhaps because Olympias had made herself intolerable, or because he blamed her for what her son had done, Philip had decided upon divorce. This would naturally affront his brother-in-law, King Alexandros. Evidently, however, the family honour was of more concern to Alexandros than his sister’s feelings; for he readily accepted Philip’s offered amends, the hand of her daughter Cleopatra. That he was her uncle was in those days no impediment.
    It would be of great interest to know what plans Philip had made for Alexander in the coming war. He would not now be trusted as Regent. If left behind, he would have had to be imprisoned, and there is no sign at all of any such intention. The alternative would have been taking him along