May the gods grant you health and strength, dearest Philotas.

There is much more than good wishes, news from home or reports from our anabasis that I would like to share with you, my son. Treat it with the utmost discretion!

Someday, the historians will argue about many of the events of Alexander’s life, and their arguments will go on forever without decision. The reason is that the different accounts are developing now, in my time. I cannot do anything with my version because no matter how much pride I have in my achievements, I must defer to Alexander’s need for ever-increasing renown and grandeur. Far be it for me to diminish his glory. Indeed, it would be dangerous to do so, as glory fills his head.

I recently heard that he became angry when he saw an account of the day he was born. The historian wrote that on that propitious day, Philip captured Potidaea, learned that I had defeated the Illyrians, heard that his racehorse was victorious in the Olympic Games, and was told that Alexander had been born. Alexander demanded that his birth be reported before my victory, no matter the order Philip received the different dispatches. I am a little surprised that he does not claim to have ridden the victorious racehorse that very day.

For certain men, no glory can ever be enough. It is like a rich man who has so much money and property that he will never be able to use it all, but he still wants more.

I once had a conversation with Alexander when we were both quite drunk, and we started talking about Ares. I said that Ares gets very little attention in our worship and stories, and I wondered why, considering how war is the way of the world. Alexander, as drunk as he was, talked about Ares in Homer. He said there is only one reference to Ares in the Odyssey, but there are some in the Iliad, where he fights fiercely but is clearly not as powerful as Zeus or Athena.

I asked again: “Why isn’t Ares a greater god when humans are consumed with fighting?”

He stopped drinking and became almost sober for a moment. He stared at me and said, “I know the answer. Humans do not want to ascribe our victories to Ares, for we want the glory for ourselves.”

And I said, “Your majesty, perhaps you are Ares.”

He smiled in a way I had never seen him smile before.

As for me, I am the greatest general of first Philip and now Alexander. I think a great deal about Philip these days. There would be no great Alexander without the great Philip, without the father’s victories in Greece and his plans for Asia. And Alexander, someplace inside him, knows it, and I think this is the inner force that drives him, to actually be greater than his father.

At any rate, here I am, and should I not be satisfied with my role in life? If in these accounts, I become a kind of old foil for the young hero, then this is another of my roles. For I will only be remembered because of him. And I will be remembered forever.

And yet I must admit to some frustration when I hear my deeds obscured, so I will use these letters, though I am unsure if they will ever be seen or become part of the discussion.

You asked me about the destruction of Persepolis and whether it is true that I asked Alexander not to do it. Yes, I told him that now that he had conquered it, it was his property. He rejected my advice and told me it was revenge on Persia for things they had done in past history. (cf. Arrian Anab. 3.19.11)

But is that what all of this was about? What about what Isocrates had said, that was echoed more recently by Callisthenes, that Alexander should remember Greece. It was for Greece that this whole expedition of conquest set out, to add Asia to Greece (cf. Arrian Anab. 4.11.7).

As I saw the flames of Persepolis, I saw a kind of vision in the flames. I know now that Alexander will conquer as far as he wants, to the ends of the world, that he will burn and destroy everything in his path, that no one else will ever stop him. No, no one else. He will destroy himself. He will squander everything. This is what happens when we forget what I call our Purpose.

I heard a story once about a general who was captured with many of his men. His captors saw that he and his men were skilled, and so they ordered them to build a bridge. The bridge would help the enemy conquer the general’s land. Though his soldiers complained, he set them to work, and they built a fine bridge. It was as if the general was in a trance, so committed to the task at hand that he forgot who he was. He took pride in the solid work his men were doing. Only when the bridge was finished and he saw the enemy crossing the bridge in big numbers, on their way to conquering his homeland, he awakened from his trance. But it was too late.

Alexander is in his own self-induced trance, but I fear that he will not wake up until he has destroyed himself and all of us with him.

Farewell, my son.

May this letter find you well, my dearest son.

Do not let yourself be disquieted about rumours of the role I played in the Battle at at the Granicus River. Delineating the true line of events will be the role of diligent historians in the far future, whereas the presentation or questioning of battle accounts in our days is a matter of high politics, in fact it is a thorny ground on which I advise you to tread most carefully, giving no room to pride or even to love of which you have given me, your father, constant signs. The explanation I am about to give you are for you alone, at least as long as the world around us is not ready for factual truth.

You have heard talk that I dissuaded Alexander from rushing to battle late in the day, encouraging him to wait for dawn, but that Alexander insisted on charging ahead. Does it matter that he indeed did take my advice, even without giving me due credit for it? Sufficient for me was and is that the operation ended in success and not in failure, which would have been the undoing of us all. There are accounts of the river’s height and fast current. Does it matter that the river was not so high and not so fast and that the battle could be engaged in the water?

I have many skills that serve a king well. Make all decisions carefully. What could be better than to be prudent and then to say that you were not? Be cautious; afterwards you can pretend that you were not cautious at all. Wait till the right moment to cross the Granicus and you can always say you crossed it at a dangerous time. Be real on the ground; then you can say you flew. Despite his vanity, Alexander is clever enough to devise his military and his political tactics as it serves him best.

I was cautious but partly because I saw Memnon, a worthy opponent if ever there was one who had defeated me before, though I only understood later that he was being used in a cynical way.

Memnon knew what I know; war is not just about battles. He understands supply lines, something I am vitally concerned with. Even though they had 20,000 cavalry from Asia Minor and 20,000 Greek mercenaries, they were outnumbered, so he advised the Persians to avoid engagement and instead burn all the crops in the fields in the area, trample down and destroy all grass and fodder for horses and destroy the towns. Alexander would not be able to sustain his army. I am not sure if he knew how right he was; Alexander had only thirty days’ worth of money and supplies.

The Persians did not listen to Memnon. They would not destroy their towns and insisted in engaging Alexander. And we won.

I am a soldier. I follow orders. If I give advice, it is to help accomplish my king’s goals. I never disagree out loud with his objective of conquest. When I express an opinion, as I did at the Granicus, it is to disagree on tactics.

But there are times that in the privacy of my own thoughts, I do think about the objectives as well. I believe in the defeat of Persia so that Persia can never attack Greece again. I believe in defeating the barbarians in a conquest of Asia. I believe in bringing Greek culture to a new part of the world.

I should be used to all this. This is our world. Our world is war. If we do not kill, we will be killed. I am not a philosopher. I am just a man who is getting older by the day. Yet I wonder sometimes if Alexander cares about anything than his dreams of conquest, conquest for the sake of conquest.

So, there are times when I have doubts. And the symbol of my doubts is Memnon. When I was at Magnesia, most of my army was made up of Greek mercenaries. We faced an army filled with Greek mercenaries. But were it not for the places of our births, I could be Memnon and he could be me. It is not easy when your enemies look like your friends, when they are “Us” and not “Them.”

My dear son

You say that there are stories that when Darius offered his daughter and a great part of Asia, and Alexander refused, that this was a deal that his father Philip would have taken. Moreover, the story is that I advised him to take the deal. All that is true: Philip would have accepted it, and it was a deal I did counsel him to take.

All these things are connected.

Why does he refuse to take this bride, or any other? Let us say he would die. Kings are known to die. Especially kings who fight bravely in the battlefield. He would be blamed for not having taken a bride. Where would the kingdom be?

So why has he not hastened to sire a son?

Because his father wanted him to?

Because his passions flare in a different direction?

Because he did not want an heir sitting in Macedonia who would make him expendable?

All of these, but more than any of them, he simply does not expect to die.

I am not even sure it has to do with his musing about his Divine immortality.

What makes him a great soldier, a fearless commander who leads his troops, is his sense of invincibility. Soldiers face death all the time. If a soldier fears mortality, he cannot fight. He must fight as if he is invincible.

But Alexander’s lack of fear of mortality may be the undoing of us all.

For if the gods should decree that he dies without an heir, I can only imagine what will happen. After all these conquests, Philip’s dream, and his even greater dream, of a great Macedonian empire, I expect, will die with him.

I suppose what we need is some kind of golden mean when we think about mortality, balancing courage as if we are immortal with a healthy realism that we are not.

We cannot balance them in the moment, but we can think ourselves immortal when we need to summon the courage to accomplish the immediate task, and very mortal when we make the decisions that will affect the future of our families and our states.

May Alexander live. May he sire sons so that his line can continue.

I hope it is not too late.

My dearest son

I want you to live. Nicanor is gone, Hector is gone; I need you to live. And if you keep saying the things you are saying, you will be gone, too.

You do not have the same relationship with Alexander that his boyhood friends have. He may have disliked you since that business with the Carian dynasts in which Philip involved you.

You cannot denigrate his achievements on the battlefield. You cannot claim that it was not so much him but me that won certain victories. Thank you for celebrating my prowess, but I do not thank you for putting yourself in danger. It does not matter what the truth is. You can tell the truth all the way to your execution.

Do not even talk to possible conspirators. Do not be seen with them. Even if you are completely innocent of being involved, you must stay away from these people as if they have a plague.

The latest thing I heard was that you mocked Alexander for claiming divinity in Egypt.  I know what you’re thinking: This is an insult to the gods. But you don’t really care about the honor of the gods, do you? The gods have many human characteristics. They are a jumble of the good and bad, of divinity and bestiality.

Think about it this way: When a person controls life and death, does he not have the power of a god? So know in your mind that he is not a god, but act with deference.

What you can’t stand is that Alexander thinks that he is better than anyone else, far above you.

And this makes you jealous. Jealousy is at the heart of your anger at Alexander, but it is also what is at the heart of the danger that threatens me. You must understand your jealousy, and the jealousy of others, with more insight.

You knew Philip. He, like the gods, and like his son, was also a mixture of good and bad. I think of him as a man of tin and copper who produced bronze. He was a visionary and a savage. But look how he transformed Macedonia and Greece and laid the plans for the conquest of Asia. Since you know how much of all this is Philip, it diminishes Alexander in your mind.

Do not think this way. And if you do think this way, do not talk this way.

Keep your eyes open and try to keep your mouth shut.

What good will the truth do you or me when you lie in your grave?

Again and again: You can be right all the way to your destruction.

I am sitting here in Ectabana, looking at the royal treasure. It is an amazing sight.

Jealousy continues to be a major theme in our lives. Just as I hear stories that are told against you, I know that you hear stories that are told against me. When you are the most trusted general of a king, there are many who want to take your place, and in a situation like this, they will probably take my place over my dead body. I imagine that men like Callisthenes are writing their histories to defame me and always to glorify Alexander at the expense of my achievements.

If they succeed in turning Alexander against me, or if he turns against me on his own, just think how they will smear my character and cynically manipulate the historical record.

If anyone could be objective, they would think that after my so-called tensions with the king, his continued reliance on me for so many things, shows his enduring trust in me. Think about how first Philip and then Alexander have trusted me with so many of the most important missions.

Philip sent me to secure a bridgehead in Asia. I liberated a number of Ionian cities, as far down the coast as Ephesus, before a Persian counterattack drove us back to the Hellespont. It was there that I heard of Philip’s death, of which I will not write or speak, and neither should you. Hecataeus came with Alexander’s orders to execute Attalus for treason. I acceded to the order, despite the fact that Attalus was your sister’s husband.

You were given command of the Companions and Nicanor command of the hypaspists. Was this to ease his conscience over Attalus? Perhaps, and certainly to ensure my support for Alexander. By the way, my new son-in-law Coenus must be careful about what he says and does, too.

I am here at Ectabana with a large military force, and I control his logistical lines and supply trains, protecting the lines of communication.

Every time I accomplished one of these tasks, it made others jealous.

I sit here with the royal treasure taken from Susa and Persepolis.   All the gold and jewels that flood my eyes belong to him, as do all of us, because he is the treasure. The truth is, my dear son, that men like you and me would not be in our positions without him. Do not be jealous of him, because a man like him is rare. Yes, it is very hard to live by his mercy or cruelty, his justice or injustice. But never forget that for all his failings, we are living in Alexander’s world.

I want to speak about Olympias, but before I do, I want to explain, my dear Philotas, what I am trying to do in all these letters. As a parent to his child, I want, first, to protect you, and second, to promote you and to further your success and ambitions. I think that every good parent wants to do these things, and in that order, to protect and then promote.

I know that Olympias has a terrible reputation with many. Some suspect her of being part of the assassination of Philip. Some do not understand the role of Philip’s wives, that she was not really ‘the Queen’ before Philip’s marriage to Cleopatra. That marriage did not really affect anything. I know that there had been tensions between father and son. There was a complicated rivalry; Philip was not getting any younger and I think, despite his power and success, he was jealous of his son’s youth. Philip’s heavy drinking often clouded his reason. So the fact that he allowed the public questioning of Alexander’s ability to inherit, his siding with the person, Attalus, who questioned it, was very painful to Alexander and his mother.

But the focus should be on Attalus, not Olympias. Philip supported Attalus against Pausanias, and it was Pausanias who killed Philip. The fact that Philip could make me share command with Attalus for the preliminary expeditionary force to Asia is something that I highly resented. It was an example of how Attalus had gained power over Philip. So even given her drive and manipulations, Olympias was not part of the plot to kill Philip.

But if it would have served her ambitions for Alexander, she would have been capable of anything and everything, including assassinating Philip.  

For a brilliant woman like Olympias, ambition is best served through a son. I have my own career, and I am very proud of all I have done. I am a man and I have had power and success, but still, I yearn for you to do well in the world. Olympias was and is nothing without Alexander. Olympias has always been consumed with Alexander, and one could look at this in a negative way.

As a parent, I see this differently, and I know that Alexander would not be Alexander without Olympias. His drive and ambition are equal to that of anyone in the history of the world, even, as we have written about, aspiring to divinity. I see that most if not all this ambition comes from Olympias.  I have not heard much about what is going on back home and how Olympias is using her power now, but that is not my real interest. All of our lives, especially yours and mine, my son, depend on Alexander, and we cannot understand Alexander without understanding Olympias.

Alexander is such an astonishing personality that his actions are mythic before they can be understood. It is as if he does something and there are three different accounts of the action before the sun sets.

It was wonderful to see you at Gordium. I was very proud that the armies came together; this showed great planning and coordination after many successes by both armies including Alexander’s liberation of the Greek towns in central Anatolia and after I captured the city and destroyed the Persian garrison at the capital of Phrygia.

Do you know that the incident there has already been rendered legendary? I received a message today complimenting me on the capture of Tarsus in Cilicia. The herald told me, with breathless wonder, as if I had not been in Phrygia myself together with Alexander, that he cut the Gordian knot with his sword. He was wide-eyed with Alexander’s brilliance and announced that this meant that Alexander would conquer Asia.

Curious, and enjoying myself, I asked him to tell me more. He said that instead of untangling the knot laboriously as expected, he dramatically cut through it with his sword, demonstrating a divine genius. He said: Alexander can solve any problem; all he needs is confidence and brute force. The cutting of the knots means that the kings of Phrygia are no more; their dynasty is extinguished. Now, there is only Alexander. No ancient legends can stand in his way.

I did not tell the herald that I had seen the whole thing. The knot was not just one knot but several knots all so tightly entangled that it was impossible to see how they were fastened. Alexander pulled the linchpin from the pole to which the yoke was fastened, exposing the two ends of the cord, allowing him to untie the knot without having to cut through it.

Or at least, this is what I saw.

I am sure that Alexander will conquer Asia and fulfill the prophecy. But I do think about the symbolism. I think about several entangled knots as opposed to one knot.

Nothing is as simple as the herald would proclaim it. I hope Alexander himself will not think of the story in the version I just heard it. He did not just show brute force; he was thoughtful and clever. 

We like our stories simple, and so we make complicated things, like destiny and war, into one-sentence legends about good and evil and heroes and villains.

But nothing real is so simple. Life is entangled knots.

My dear son,

You know that I am not the most educated man. I did not have Aristotle as my teacher. I do not know that much history, but I know enough to know that there are few figures who dominate their times as much as Philip or Alexander.

Think of each of them as the sun. The sun shines and gives light and warmth. But it can also burn. Maybe those of us who fly too close to the sun will, at one point or another, die in the flames. It is our ambition that has drawn us, and we cannot resist.

Those of us, and I really mean you and me, who the Fates have brought close to the sun, try our best to receive the light and warmth without getting burned. It is all we think about: ‘Did I say the wrong thing? Have I shown my loyalty? Have I been consistent in my advice, but still given good counsel?

I have been thinking about an incident that happened early on. Remember the Pixodarus incident? I’m sure you do, but let me go over it with the benefit of time.   Alexander had misread a situation. The Carian prince Pixodarus was an interesting fellow. He had usurped the throne by banishing his sister Ada. He had an uneasy relationship with Persia. He wanted a military alliance with Macedon. And so he wanted to arrange a marriage between his daughter and Philip Arrhidaeus. While Philip might have looked down his nose at him, he might have liked getting something useful from a marriage with a son who was not going to become his heir. And Pixodarus did have a lineage; he was descended from the great Mausolus. So it really wasn’t a bad deal for Philip who was about to move against Persia; Caria was strategic.

But Alexander, who was beyond insecure because of the way his father had always treated him, thought this was a threat to him. It wasn’t, but Alexander might also have been upset that Pixodarus did not want him as his son-in-law. At this point, Alexander acted on his impulses and tried to make his own deal. He sent a friend, the actor Thessalus, to Pixodarus and offered himself. 

This is when we got involved. You came and told me, and I went to Philip. Philip brought you with him and confronted Alexander. Philip felt a conspiracy, and banished Thessalus and several of Alexander’s friends.   

I have been thinking about this incident because I am afraid that Alexander holds a grudge against you and me for our part. But I have also been thinking: What else could we have done? We were preventing Alexander from making a mistake. What if we had not brought it to Philip’s attention?

We should never try to put ourselves into the middle, too close to the sun. But what happens when the middle comes to you? What happens when you are flying as low as you can, but the sun reaches down and burns you alive?

My dear Philotas

Alexander has usually held the intense love of his men, since his great day as a youthful commander in the victory at Chaeronea. I know it really was Philip’s victory, but the picture of the young Alexander leading his men against the Sacred Band of the Thebans is an image that has continued to inspire. I think it has even inspired Alexander to this day. But can that image disappear?

By the way, the more I think about that battle, it might have been the most important of all. I know that many more were killed at other battles. But without that victory, there would have been no invasion of Asia because there would have been no hegemony over Greece. It led to the League of Corinth. Philip became the strategos for a pan-Hellenic war. It established Philip’s greatness. But in many ways, Philip’s magnificent and epoch-making victory is now just the background for the picture of the young Alexander leading the charge.

I may seem to be rambling, but I mean that images are fickle things, and so is support for a leader. Even loyal soldiers can reach a point where they want to stop and turn to a different life. Even the most loyal soldiers cannot help but see that Alexander is a complex person who, for all his vision and military brilliance, can be unnecessarily violent and vengeful. Is he right to be so fearful of assassination? Is he right to see enemies in the shadows? I think that his fear and vengeance give shape to those shadows, turn them into real human beings. I wish I could explain that last sentence better. But I feel like his fears become realities, that he is his worst enemy. I feel that his needs of every kind are so insatiable that they pull him like Sirens into destruction.

And the shame of it all is that he has far exceeded anything, even Philip’s dreams. But nothing is ever enough.

The fire of that magnificent image of the young commander leading the charge is turning into smoke, replaced by an angry drunk railing at his friends. I fear the worst for all of us.

I have always pictured a glorious, heroic death on the battlefield. Certainly, this was my probable fate, after all the battles I have fought for more than fifty years. And perhaps I will die in the proposed invasion of the land of the Cadusians and Hyrcania. But I have a different feeling, that I will die here at Ecbatana.

I am not sure if you received my last letter. I wrote it while sitting here near the treasure. I said that all the wealth that floods my eyes, all the gold and jewels, represent all the power and all the honor of our lives, and everything belongs to Alexander.

I have the physical strength of a younger man. Perhaps this is because I have been so active all my life. And yet my mind muses with the thoughts and feelings of a man my age. A man my age should be sitting on his farm, watching the sunset with his gray-haired wife. But I have been so fortunate to have this life for so long.

I have been the cause of so many deaths. How many thousands of women became widows because of me, how many children grew up without a father?

Whatever happens to me at the end of my life … I fully accept it. How can I ask for justice or mercy, at the hands of enemies or friends, when I have never been just or merciful? I cannot remember if I ever believed in anything except for might and power. The philosophers have never fought on a battlefield, where there are no morals or ethics, and very little honor, for that matter. In this way, life is a battlefield.

So while I fear for you, my son, do not fear for me. I have had a life filled with wonder. I have seen the world and led armies of conquest.

Instead of sitting watching the sunset on a farm in Macedonia, I am staring at the riches of Persia. After all my years of war, I am at peace.