Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great by Nicholas Nicastro

helmet!”
    The order was passed from couch to couch and out the door, and drew back a peaked Phrygian helmet from the armory, which was likewise handed toward me from man to man.
    “My lord Alexander, while I appreciate that you want my services, I have seen too much fighting in the ranks to be made a retainer.”
    “Our Shield-bearers are not retainers,” Hephaestion said with some impatience. “In our army, they are the light infantry that keeps the cavalry in touch with the phalanx. You are being honored.”
    Alexander dumped the helmet in my lap and clapped me on the back.
    “Welcome to the king’s Hypaspists, Machon son of Agathon!”
    I sat through the rest of the party with only the helmet for company. It was old, with enough chips and dents to tell the story of Philip’s seventeen years of unrelenting raids, battles, and sieges. And now it seemed the pattern would be repeated with the son. As to many of you, it came as a relief to me that the Macedonian juggernaut would at last be directed east, against the barbarians. Meanwhile, while the post of expedition historian was not the role I came to play, it would give me ample opportunity to observe and report to the Assembly.
    My decision to accept this offer was vindicated when all the Athenians but me were sent home. While he had the greatest esteem for the artists and philosophers of Athens, he held the soldiers of our city to be in a kind of bad odor. Aeschines suggests that he feared betrayal, but I don’t agree: there were contingents from plenty of Greek allies, such as the Thessalians, whom he kept at his back without any such concern. Instead, I think he and his comrades dreaded the air of defeat they perceived around Athenian arms. The Macedonians had known nothing but victory for a good many years, and standing at the opening of a difficult campaign, and of provincial and superstitious minds, they simply wanted nothing but winners around them.
    The chronicler’s post turned out to have enormous advantages. Alexander, desperate as he was for acclaim, put few limits on where I could go, or to whom I might talk. By this he did not intend that I would write embarrassing things about him. There would be an official version of every major event on the march. However, the enforcement of his legend was accomplished most through immersing the writer so completely in the affairs of the King, his trials and his joys, the day-to-day substance of his great endeavor, that the historian could not help but sympathize with his subject. There was power in being allowed within the charmed circle of Companions—a power that Alexander used well. As evidence, I point to the manuscripts of Callisthenes that had already appeared at the bookstalls. Yes, even Callisthenes, who was eventually murdered by Alexander, casts his subject as history’s finest hero.
    My first sampling of this privilege came just before the army left for Asia, as I became aware of troubling reports from the inner court. Alexander had only recently finished erecting a splendid tomb for his father, which he accomplished at the cost of much time and money. Though father and son had been estranged in recent years, the young King discharged his duty with great devotion, showing the reverence for custom that marked his conduct in the years to come. I was at the royal cemetery in Aigai before the tomb’s fine painted façade was closed forever and buried under the hill. Having retrieved Philip’s bones from the pyre and bathed them in wine, Alexander installed them in their gold box and sealed the inner chamber. With his own hands, Alexander placed a pair of Philip’s greaves at the door to his resting place, leaning them there as if his father had just stepped inside for a nap.
    Cynics may do their best to impugn his motives. They may say that he made such a lavish dedication to his father’s memory not out of genuine feeling, but to prove to the Macedonian nobles that the estates and privileges they