Band of Lovers (eBook)

PROLEPSIS

THE ONLY ONES HE EVER FEARED

A long, hot, dusty day of battle, and Philip, king of the Macedonians, casts his helmet aside and with the one eye remaining to him gazes across the charnel landscape stretching into the distance. Evening’s shadow creeps towards and gradually envelops the victorious king. Philip stands motionless, but not thoughtless, outside the town of Chaeronea in Boeotia, a region of central Greece which had been autonomous until the events of that fateful day in 338 BCE.

One would think that after success in campaigns against so many enemies, Philip would be accustomed to the pungent miasma of shit, blood, and despair that permeates a battlefield. But he has not yet grown used to the horror, and he never really will. And especially not after fighting this enemy. To Philip it had felt like killing a part of himself from long ago, when he was an untried youth not expected to ascend the throne in Pella.

Ancient Macedonia lies immediately north of the southeast-pointing peninsula that comprises mainland Greece. Traveling south from Macedonia, the major regions of Greece are encountered in the order Thessaly, Boeotia (slightly to the west), and Attica (with its capital, Athens). To the southwest of Attica across the narrow land bridge of the Isthmus of Corinth lies the Peloponnese, home of the Spartans and their enslaved workers, the Messenians, as well as the Argives, the Arcadians, and the Eleians, traditional guardians of Olympia, the location of the famous quadrennial Olympic Games.

The boy will, with a little guidance, make a great king, is Philip’s reaction to the approach of his son and heir, Alexander3. Surrounded as always by a corps of loyal, able friends, the prince hails his victorious father. In response, Philip beckons his son to follow as he tours the battlefield to congratulate the men and share in their celebrations.

To the young prince’s surprise, though, exposure to the men’s victory-elation does nothing to alleviate his father’s malaise. Alexander points out to the king that his army—the courageous, faithful men from the mountainous north and west of Macedonia and those hailing from its broad southern plains alike—have suffered rather few casualties. In fact, the army is largely intact and will in short order be ready for Philip’s next great enterprise: the invasion of the Persian Empire, that mighty realm to the east of the Greek world.

The official aim of the king’s ambitious eastern campaign, preparations for which were by then well underway, was to exact retribution for the destruction of Athens, including its temples, by the Persians under King Xerxes during the Greco–Persian War almost 150 years earlier. The irony was, of course, that Macedonia had fought on the side of the Persians in that war, as had Thebes and the majority of the other Greek city-states.

In reality, Philip was an ambitious, aggressive man in command of the most effective military machine the world had yet seen, a machine he rapidly created from next to nothing. Such a combination compels action. Now that he’d subjugated the fractious Greeks to the south and the fierce, warlike tribes on Macedonia’s northern and eastern borders, the Persian Empire was the only real target remaining worthy of a man of Philip’s ability and vision.

For almost his entire adult life Philip had dreamt of invading the powerful, fabulously rich empire to the east. Now that the threat posed by the Sacred Band and its legendary commanders had been removed, the time for the great eastern adventure was at hand.

But not even the prospect of fulfilling that cherished dream brings joy to the king of Macedonia. To his son and heir Philip appears distracted, even distant. Alexander, although accustomed to his father’s moods, is unsure what to make of this strange malaise.

Philip, despite several short detours to greet friends and favored senior officers, heads always in the same general direction, seemingly drawn towards a particular spot on the landscape.

Following his father’s gaze, Alexander beholds in the middle distance a mound of bodies. Piled high one atop another, they lie quite still, blood and dirt obscuring the sheen of their bronze armor and weapons despite the early evening sun. Having engaged them in combat that day, Alexander recognizes the bodies of the feared Hieros Lochos (Sacred Band) of Thebes, that great city’s elite infantry regiment. In life those men were regarded by all Greeks as invincible in battle. And for good reason, for had they not vanquished the vaunted Spartans at Leuctra thirty-three years earlier and at Mantinea a decade later? The cause of his father’s melancholy now dawns on the Macedonian prince—as a young man, Philip lived in Thebes for several years as a guest, or as a hostage, depending on one’s point of view.

While residing in Thebes from about 368 to 365 BCE, the teenage Philip, a prince of Macedon but not expected to ascend the throne, lived with the leading politician and general Pammenes, later to become commander of the Sacred Band. This privileged position afforded Philip many opportunities to learn from the leading citizens of democratic Thebes during its hegemony over much of Greece. And learn much of politics, diplomacy, and warfare the young man did.

Two figures were Philip’s most important teachers during his sojourn in Thebes. From the philosopher-general Epaminondas the young prince learned, among other things, the subtle arts of politics and the principles of diplomacy and of warfare. Epaminondas taught Philip that the judicious application of diplomacy could be as effective, and in some situations more effective, than war or the threat thereof. It was a lesson that Philip would put to good use when he set out to subjugate the Greek world after becoming king of Macedonia as a result of his brother’s untimely death in 356 BCE.

Epaminondas certainly also passed on to the eager Macedonian prince his extensive knowledge of military strategy. After all, it was Epaminondas who devised the novel sledgehammer-and-echelon tactic used by the Thebans at the battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE, when they crushed the feared military of Sparta. That great, and to the majority of Greeks unexpected, victory ended the decades-long Spartan hegemony, established in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE. The victory of Thebes at Leuctra led directly to establishment of the Theban hegemony.

The former Theban hegemony, that is. The era of Macedonian domination of all Greece dawned that day at Chaeronea, for it was then that the Greek city-states permanently lost their cherished liberty.

The thought of Pelopidas, his other Theban mentor, induces painful regret in Philip, as he passes a Macedonian busily looting a Theban body. Philip smiles and nods in approval, gestures that the man will recall in years to come when telling of his encounter with the Macedonian king. Pelopidas, Epaminondas’ friend and colleague, had been far more than a teacher to Philip, he had been a close friend—and a lover.

Pelopidas, during Philip’s sojourn in Thebes, was a boeotarch (general) of the Boeotian League, a loose confederation of cities headed by Thebes. He was also the second commander of the Sacred Band. In fact, after assuming that command upon the death of his predecessor, Pelopidas changed the way the Sacred Band was employed. Rather than dispersed among the front ranks of the phalanx, Pelopidas after the victory at Tegyra in 375 BCE used the Sacred Band as one unit, as an elite strike force.

On the battlefield, the Sacred Band was tasked with directly assailing the enemy commander and his bodyguard, with the aim of cutting the head off the snake. Both Epaminondas and Pelopidas were long dead by the time of the battle of Chaeronea—killed in combat against Thebes’ enemies—but in a very real sense they lived on in Philip, as do all mentors in their students.

With memories of his time with Pelopidas washing over him, Philip approaches the mangled pile of corpses, all that remains of the stalwart men of the Sacred Band. The king had exercised with, played jokes on, sparred with, and got drunk next to the predecessors of the men now lying dead at his feet. For Philip there is an unnerving element of unreality in the sight. Seven-gated Thebes4 and its renowned infantry, led by the Sacred Band, had long been the greatest threat to his ambition to subjugate Greece. And now they were gone. A feeling of relief that those who’d blocked his path were vanquished, mixed with guilt over the memory of his former comrades, teachers, friends, washes through the king.

After their defeat had become inevitable, the majority of the Theban troops abandoned the field, as was typical in the aftermath of ancient battles. After seeing that the battle was lost, most dispersed south towards home and safety. Most, that is, but not the men of the Sacred Band. Philip’s eyes fill with tears as he realizes that the Sacred Band had not fled but stood their ground, as ordered. They lie now where they met their deaths, having bought with their lives time for their compatriots to escape to safety. Courage writ large in corpses—and the Greeks value nothing so much as courage.

Muffled sniggering from behind startles Philip from his reverie. Turning, the king sees an advisor smirking, denigrating the men lying dead before them. Philip does not react. Instead, the king of Macedonia, soon-to-be acknowledged hegemon of the Greeks,...