Read Ebook: Battles of Destiny by Shepperson Isabel

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HUMAN, TOO HUMAN.

All that the literatures of the world hold treasured in amber; all that life, the primal fount of literature, holds as its human heritage--find fitting application to Alexander the Great. The color scale--from white thro' tints to standard, and from standard thro' shades to black--of every emotion and passion of the heart of man is fixed fadelessly upon the name and fame of Alexander.

Yet how human and dearly human it all is! We understand it today even as Callisthenes understood it, and as the age B. C. and the early age and the middle age understood it. We haven't advanced even yet very far from the primitive. The heart that in drunken rage slew Clitus his friend, and then mourned his deed inconsolable in his tent for three days--is easily cognizable today.

That quarrel between Alexander and his tried and true Macedonians, with its subsequent reconciliation, has in it a ring of the old young-world. For when Alexander returned to Susa with his worn out troops, he at once sought out the thirty thousand boys whom he had left there in training. Great was his delight at the progress they had made in his absence; at their military bearing, their ability to ride and hurl the javelin, and to perform other adroit manoeuvres. Alexander then thought to reorganize his army and send home all the Macedonians who were in any way disabled, or who, when urged to cross over the Ganges, had begged to be taken back to their wives and children. But the sturdy veterans were sorely offended at this proposal, and breaking out into a rage, declared that they had been most unjustly dealt with, and that every Macedonian would at once abandon the army, and that, perhaps, with his pretty boys he might be able to keep the world which their good swords had won for him. To this Alexander responded in deep wrath that it should be as they said. He at once dismissed from his service all the Macedonians and filled their places with Persians.

Now when the Macedonians saw that it was done even as they had said, the scales of jealous anger dropped from their eyes and they were deeply repentant. So laying aside their arms, and dressed only in short undergarments they sought suppliantly the tent of Alexander. But it opened not to their importunities. For three days they stayed there neither eating nor drinking, but sorely longing for the light of the countenance of Alexander, for every man loved him. And at last the tent door opened and Alexander came forth, and going affectionately among them he sat down and wept; and they wept.

Then Alexander, thinking it wiser that the maimed should embark in the waiting vessels, spoke to them most kindly, praising their valor and declaring that their deeds should be known throughout the world: saying also that he would write concerning them to his mother Olympias and to the Governor of Macedonia, giving orders that the first seats in the theatres should be reserved for them and that they should therein be crowned with chaplets of flowers. Moreover every soldier's pay should continue to him, and the pay due to the fallen should be regularly sent to their wives and children. And thus was reconciliation between Alexander and his Macedonians happily effected.

How childish it all is--that jealous hate and the hasty reaction; the humiliating importunities of barbaric love; the Conqueror conquered and--in tears; the generous re-fusion of the old warm feelings; the magnanimity of the Great; the joyous departure of the honored veterans, their sitting in the seats of honor crowned with a chaplet of flowers: childish? well, yes, but we older children can understand and even dimly--remember.

A DEITY.

Did Alexander believe himself descended from Jupiter Ammon? No. On one occasion being wounded he said "This, my friends, is real blood flowing not Ichor,"

"Such as immortal gods are wont to shed."

"Man, vain man dressed in a little brief authority does cut such capers before high heaven as make the angels mourn." The awful punishments inflicted upon Thebes, Tyre, Gaza; the maniacal madness that satiated itself in the life-blood of Clitus--a warrior, comrade, and friend, a soldier who at Granicus had thrust his own body between Alexander and the down-plunging slaughtering sword and so receiving in his own flesh the blow, had saved the life of the man who should later slay him; the deadly ingratitude which could forget the lifelong services of Parmenio, his father's ablest general, his own boyhood's adviser, admirer, and friend, and, in a fit of jealous rage, condemn to death Philotas, son of Parmenio, and Parmenio; the hate-exultation which, triumphant at last, had the feet of Batis, late satrap of Gaza and a bravely fallen foe, bored thro' and thereby tied to his chariot; then Alexander, descendant of Achilles, drove three times thro' the streets of Gaza, dragging his living victim--naked, torn, bleeding, broken, dying--thro' the town in which so late he has reigned as Persian satrap: surely at capers such as these well might the angels mourn.

Yet these atrocities are well nigh balanced by acts of heroism, repentant generosity, benignity, magnanimity: and it is an open question whether any other of the race of mortals, having the world of his time absolutely in his own hands, would have acted as wisely as Alexander.

The eunuch escaping from the Macedonian camp and bearing to Darius the news of his wife Statira's death, extolled the forbearance and chivalrous courtesy of Alexander toward the Persian captives and admiringly cried out "Alexander is as gentle after victory as he is terrible on the field." And Darius, so late King of Persia, tallest and handsomest man of his time, husband of Statira, most bewitchingly beautiful woman of Asia; but now alas! an uncrowned king, loser of Arbela, a fugitive, bereft of sons, daughters, wife--nevertheless on hearing of Alexander's generous conduct towards the royal captives exclaimed in tears, "Ye gods of my family, and of my kingdom, if it be possible, I beseech you to restore the declining affairs of Persia, that I may leave them in as flourishing a condition as I found them, and have it in my power to make a grateful return to Alexander for the kindness which in my adversity he had shown to those who are dearest to me. But if, indeed, the fatal time be come, which is to give a period to the Persian monarchy, if our ruin be a debt which must be paid to the divine jealousy, and the vicissitude of things, then, I beseech you, grant that no man but Alexander may sit upon the throne of Cyrus." And when slowly bleeding to death from wounds inflicted by his base betrayer, Bessus, satrap of a province into which Darius had fled for safety--the dying monarch begged of Polystratus, a chance attendant, for a little water: and on receiving it he said that it had become the last extremity of his ill fortune to receive benefits and not be able to return them. "But Alexander," said he, "whose kindness to my mother, my wife and my children I hope the gods will recompense, will doubtless thank you for your humanity to me. Tell him, therefore, in token of my acknowledgment, I give him this right hand," with these words he took hold of Polystratus' hand and died.

The man who could inspire such sentiments of grateful admiration into the heart of his dying enemy was more than mortal.

Plutarch tells us that Alexander, coming up at that moment, gazed with painful emotion upon the dead form of Darius. And taking the cloak from off his own shoulders he covered with it the prostrate form of his late foe, and gazing down upon the fierce dead comely face--he wept.

PHILOSOPHIES.

All the philosophies of the sleepy East and their antitheses of the aggressive West seem to have receptively influenced the myriad-minded Alexander.

Pride, not vanity, but pride essentially one with the chords of being, expressed itself in the words "And were I not Alexander I would be Diogenes." Either highest or lowest, all or nothing. Earth as kingdom or--a tub; no compromise, no half way, absolutely and unconditionally either one extreme or the other: this seeming perversity in the makeup of many men of genius has not been sufficiently considered; it is not psychologically understood; there is something humanly attractive about it; something young-world young and something old, old as the heart of man. And this perverse pride was the common link between Alexander and Diogenes, and by it each understood the other: to the former, indeed, fate awarded the earth-kingdom and to the latter--the tub; but these extremes were, by the common link, essentially one.

The Gymnosophists, or wise men of India, whom Alexander consulted, could not have deeply impressed the mind of the pupil of Aristotle, for, as Plutarch tells us, he laughed at them and sent them away with many presents.

Yet the sacrificial death of Calanus, one of these seers, could not fail to affect forcibly the susceptible mind of Alexander. Jests, dreams, auspices, oracles, theories, sophisms, philosophies, metaphysical speculations in general--well, these are agreeably adjustable; maybe so maybe not so; and when looked at too logically they can all scamper away and hide themselves elusively in Symbolism: but death, death in flames, self-sought, self-devised, self-suffered--that is real, that is awful.

On the day of his death and whilst erecting his funeral pile Calanus talked cheerfully with the Macedonians and urged them to drink deep and enjoy the passing hours. He commended himself to Alexander, whom, he said, he doubted not but that he should soon see again at Babylon. Then when the pyre was finished, he set it on fire, sprinkled himself, and cutting off some of his hair, threw it into the flame as a first-offering of the sacrifice: he then mounted the pyre, lay down calmly and covered his head in his robe. He moved not as the crackling flames drew near, nor might any one note the least tremor of fear in his limbs as the fire fed on them, nor did any sigh or moan escape from his lips: tho' what contortions of agony may have twisted themselves on his face could not be known for his head and shoulders were hid in his robe.

There is undoubtedly a strong tendency in human nature to rush from one extreme to the other. The best by corruption become the worst; no one can fall so low as he who has been highest. But from the lowest which has known the highest there rush at times instantaneous recoil, re-ascent, re-attainment--momentary tho' it be--to the highest. Then when genius gilds that lowest, that recoil, re-ascent, re-attainment--the thoughtless world is thrilled, it listens anew, it understands.

Some of the chastest lyrics of the language have been written in recoil from, in liberation and glad bird freedom from the slough of sensuality.

ALEXANDER'S FEAST.

Perhaps the taking of Persepolis and the mad orgy of triumph there indulged in, mark the flood-tide of Alexander's good fortune and likewise the fateful turning and re-flow of the tide. But what a tide!

Given the effects of generous wine; and the warrior, the military genius, the poet-philosopher, the dreamer of dreams, the world conqueror, the fair-haired favorite of Zeus, is, indeed, in that wondrous triumph-hour--a deity. That sycophant court-adulation, that lulling love, that music, that wine might well "raise a mortal to the skies or draw an angel down." O music, elf of a lost paradise, we remember with you, we lament, we love, we pity, we deplore, we--weep. With young-world Alexander touched to tears by old Timotheus' lyre, we too lament a bravely fallen foe:

We too deplore human ingratitude:

We too muse mournfully perplexed o'er all this sorry scheme of things and mingle our tears with those which thus perplexedly flowed so long ago:

"With downcast looks the joyless victor sate, Revolving in his altered soul The various turns of chance below; And, now and then, a sigh he stole And tears began to flow."

But reaction follows depression, and violent activity succeeds to passivity. And this the old musician knew who played so well upon the all too humanly receptive heart of Alexander. The wail of the Grecian ghosts "that in battle were slain and unburied remain inglorious on the plain" call for vengeance and point out the abodes of the Persian gods.

Thais leads the way, and Alexander, drunk with wine and with the madness of music, follows whither she leads him; and soon the temples of the gods, the palaces of the Persian kings, the city Persepolis--are in crackling flame.

Suddenly Alexander is again Alexander. With shame of soul he sees the ruin he has wrought and frantically strives to undo what he has done. But too late; countermands clash with commands, confusion feeds the flame, Persepolis falls.

HELLENISM.

Alexander died in a comparatively short time after the battle of Arbela and his world empire fell to pieces. What, then, was the permanent good or decisive effect of his conquests? To this question historians reply that the Hellenization of the Orient with subsequent spread of Greek culture among the Arabian Saracens, thence as vital principle re-animating the Renaissance--was the result of Alexander's conquest of Asia.

More than seventy Greek colonies were established along the route of the Conqueror. These continued to flourish long after the far seeing mind that planned them had ceased to foresee and plan. Vigorous Hellenism was easily dominant over sleepy Orientalism. And thus was bloodlessly won thro' the slow centuries, the great victory of freedom, civilization, culture, art, science, philosophy--Hellenism. From Arbela to the sixteenth century Renaissance is a conquering span that might well delight the gaze of the young warrior who once wept because there were no more worlds for him to conquer. As Napoleon's crucial defeat was not at Waterloo but in Moscow; as the British Revolutionary forces lost the colonies not at Yorktown but at Saratoga; as Carthage of old went down under world-conquering Rome not at Zama, but at the Metaurus; so the incipient death blow to Alexander was inflicted not in Babylon but at the banks of the Ganges. When his army refused to follow him any farther; when his brave Macedonians wept for their far away homes and begged to be taken back to their wives and children; when his best friends and admirers saw in the wide rolling Ganges and the enemy bristling the opposite bank, obstacles insuperable even to Alexander; when at last the Conqueror turned away unconquering, turned back, yielded--then came the fierce chagrin-humiliation, the mad beginning of the end. The world marks only the collapse-crash, but deeper insight sees sympathetically the fatal bend or twist or crack or break having in it inevitably the tragic collapse-crash.

The death of Alexander has been variously described. Some say he died of poison; others, of the exceeding coldness of the waters of the river in which he bathed; others, that his death is directly attributable to the excesses, the mad orgies of sensual indulgence into which he plunged himself as result of his chagrin at turning back from the Ganges, and of his wild grief at the untimely death of Hephaeston his favorite and friend. Doubtless the subjectivities of the various biographers have obtruded themselves over the objective reality and the simple truth will never be known. Alexander died at Babylon, 323 B. C., aged thirty-two.

ZAMA

Had the battle of Zama been won by the Carthaginians and lost by the Romans, then Semitic influence rather than Aryan, would have moulded the civilization of Europe. These two mutually antagonistic races have grappled together in mortal combat at Zama, Tours, Jerusalem and, influentially, at Belgrade, Lepanto, Constantinople, Adrianople--and the end is not yet. Will there ever be full amity between these races?

But Rome won at Zama. And as Roman historians gravely assure us that it was better for all subsequent civilization that Rome should win, why we gratefully acquiesce; feeling, indeed, dully content that fate should, at all past times and crises, have shown herself as wisely beneficent to the winning cause as she is today. But however superior Rome may have been to Carthage, and however Roman valor, Roman dogged endurance, Roman integrity, may have surpassed Carthaginian--yet Hannibal, favorite of Baal, towered mountain-high over all Romans of his day, and for a time, even over all Rome.

Hannibal's personality thrills thro' the centuries. The school-boy with the good wonder-flush of admiration at the revealing vistas of the past, understands Hannibal. That eternal enmity to Rome in the son of Hamilcar; that youthful vow at the altar of Baal and its life and death fulfilment; that Herculean crossing of the Alps; Ticino, Trebia, Thrasymenus, Cannae--Capua; Metaurus, Zama: exile, suicide--why the school-boy understands it all: and Hannibal, hunted victim of the past, is victor of the passing hour. Glamour of the historic page, generous youth, poets in prose, dreamers of dreams--and the Smoky City classroom is all aglow with white-light from the Alps as Hannibal crosses; with red light from the bloody waters of Lake Thrasymenus; with gold-glow from the rings severed from the cold dead hands of Roman knights at dread Cannae; with mocking death-light as Hannibal defiantly dies!

CAPUA.

And after the great victory at Cannae Hannibal led his troops into winter quarters at Capua. Here his soldiers, relaxed from the severe discipline of war and wildly delighting in the genial climate of southern Italy, gave themselves up unrestrainedly to luxuries and pleasures. And just here at Capua, in the midst of those luxuries and pleasures, lay potentially the defeat at Zama.

DEFEAT.

The Roman senate determined to carry the war into the enemy's country hoping that thereby Carthage would be constrained to summon Hannibal and his army from Rome in order to defend the Carthaginian capital. Nor was this hope vain. Hannibal's eight years' success in Italy was negatived by this call from Carthage and his reluctant compliance.

Rome's ablest general, Scipio, with a well equipped army awaited Hannibal on his disheartened return into Africa. They met at Zama.

History or story relates that a personal interview between Scipio and Hannibal took place before the battle. Each stood in awe and admiration of the other: each felt mutually the charm of bravery, integrity, excellence; as men they were friends, as leaders of hostile armies, they were enemies. The interview proved futile. After a proudly lingering farewell they parted with dignity; and riding back to their respective armies prepared for immediate battle.

When the fight was fiercest and success seemed to favor the Carthaginians, suddenly the sun ceased to shine and darkness enveloped the contending hosts. It was an eclipse of the sun for which the Romans were, in great measure, prepared; the Carthaginians, wholly unprepared. Panic fear and superstitious terror seized upon Hannibal's veterans; they who had crossed the Alps, and stood knee deep in blood at Lake Trasymene and at Cannae, yet quailed in this midday darkness.

With the slow and ghastly return of the light of the sun, Rome's bull-dogs were again ferociously at slaughter; but the Semitic heart had been smitten with awe of the unknown God; he would pray, not fight; he would fall prone in adoration of the awful Deity of darkness and of light. In vain did Hannibal strive to rouse his terror-stricken legions, in vain did he himself perform prodigies of valor: the hour of conquering Rome had come and on her way to world-conquest lay Zama. The Juggernaut of destiny rolled on, and Zama-Carthage fell to rise no more.

AND AFTER.

Hannibal was only forty-five when he lost Zama. That flame of hatred toward Rome, kindled at the altar of Baal when he was a boy of only nine years, still raged within him inextinguishably. He had lost his right eye in the Roman campaign. His brave brothers, Mago, hero of Trebia, and Hasdrubal, hero of Metaurus, had fallen in battle. The second Punic War, the war of Rome against Hannibal, or rather of Hannibal against Rome, had after phenomenal successes, ended in the disastrous defeat at Zama and in the most humiliating conditions of peace imposed upon Carthage by world-conquering Rome. All, indeed, seemed lost except a little life; yet in this dull defeat-peace, this wearily sullen after-storm, the old hate fires insatiably raged.

Hannibal, unsupported and unappreciated by his own country, passed over into Asia. He wandered from Asiatic court to court ever striving to arouse enmity towards Rome or to incite the nations to battle against her. Rome steadily pursued her inveterate foe. From court to court he passed, and from country to country passed too, the paid assassins whose sole object in life was to bring Hannibal dead or alive to Rome.

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