Besieger of Cities

Alfred L. Duggan

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787208469
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

Demetrius, named "Besieger of Cities, " was the first man to be worshipped as a god during his lifetime by the people of Athens. He passed his life in fighting strenuously to restore the great empire of Alexander which his father had helped to found.In this brilliant panorama of political maneuverings and exciting warfare, Alfred Duggan reveals all sides of a fascinating man whose career was at the center of a turbulent period of world history."Alfred Duggan's great gift was his Dickensian ability to create characters who are both believable and likeable. Demetrius has the good humor of Mr. Pickwick and the unfounded hopefulness of Mr. Micawber; it seems only proper that the Besieger's adventures end in comfortable house arrest rather than a violent death. Nice guys may finish last, but at least they don't always end up as mincemeat."—David Maclaine, Historical Fiction"It shines…A first-rate recreation."—Kirkus Review

1—BRINGING FREEDOM TO HELLAS

Even in high summer a fresh breeze swept the open sea. On the flagship they had spread an awning over the poop, to keep off the sun and let in the cool air. Under it the admiral sat on a folding stool. He could see the horizon all round him, and the orderly lines of the fleet which followed, 250 warships and transports. The sun was high, so that to starboard the mountains of Attica were half-hidden by mist; but the waves danced in the dazzling light. The fleet was moving at less than half speed. On the fivers, the ships of the tine, two rowers pulled at each oar while the other three rested; on the flagship, a tall sevener, three rowers to each oar gave a reserve of mobility, while their four comrades crowded the central gangway to stare at the land.

The admiral, Demetrius son of Antigonus, was the best-looking man in the whole armament. He was tall, though not so tall as his mighty father; he had the muscles of a warrior, the brow of a thinker, and the expressive thin mouth of a wit. He was still in his twenties, as he reminded himself whenever he thought of the future; he did not remind himself nearly so often that his next birthday would be his thirtieth.

He glanced astern, admiring the good order of his ships. They kept station very well. So they should. This was undoubtedly the second-best fleet in the civilised world. Experts said that Ptolemy’s was the best—perhaps they were right, but the question would soon be decided.

Then he recalled that this was his first sight of Attica, the mother of beauty and knowledge; and instead of drinking it in he was thinking of future war. He very seldom thought seriously of anything but war, or heard any other topic discussed at his father’s table.

That was natural enough. For thirty years, all his life, war had been the main interest, the main occupation, of civilised men all over the world. Demetrius had been born a subject of old King Philip, but he was still in his cradle when Alexander ascended the throne of Macedonia and set the armies marching. His home was in conquered Asia by the time he was learning to walk. The earliest words he could understand had been tales of conquest, tales more wonderful than even a quick-witted child could invent for his own enjoyment.

In the great household of the new Macedonian satrap of Phrygia soldiers were always calling on their way home. Mostly they were elderly veterans, tired of long marches and hard knocks and hunger and cold, glad to be going back wealthy to the ancestral farm. But some were warriors in the prime of life, lamed or lacking an eye or a hand. These unlucky young heroes were still on fire with the wonder and glory of conquest. They were not burdened with the leather bags which weighed down the prudent veterans; their plunder had been squandered on wine or gambled away. They envied their comrades, still trailing long pikes over the empty plains of Scythia or beside the close-set muddy rivers of India. They felt like men turned out of the theatre while the play was at its height. Over there in the east, farther away than it was possible for the small mind of a child to conceive, history was being made; Alexander continued on his conquering way, and these wrecks of battle still longed to be marching with him.

They had seen such wonders that they could not cease recounting them: the huge ramparts of Babylon, so wide that chariots might pass on the battlements: the myriads of little houses packed within the walls: towering temples where strange gods were worshipped. Here was the biggest and most populous city in the world—and all built of mud, without marble or stone.

Persepolis on the other hand was all precious marble, or limestone for the meanest buildings; and the treasure taken in it was past counting—earthenware jars as tall as a man, each filled with a solid mass of once-molten gold, so that you had to break the jar to get at the wealth within. In Persepolis there was more bullion, lumps of gold and silver too heavy for a mule to bear away, than any Hellene or Macedonian had imagined to exist in the whole world.

Other soldiers, on the whole more interesting to a small boy whose mind was just awakening, told of strange lands which were more than half magical. They had skirted the borders of the Amazons, and seen women among the warriors though they had never encountered a wholly female army; rumour ran that Alexander himself had parleyed with, and indeed seduced, the Amazon queen. In pursuit of the fleeing Darius, the Great King whose ancestors had so nearly conquered Hellas, they had hastened over the endless plains of Scythia, plains bounded only by the horizon so that men called them the Sea of Grass, plains so level and empty that nowhere did they pass a hill or a tree taller than the pikes of their invincible phalanx.

Then they had reached the mountains; peaks higher than Olympus, passes narrower than the cleft of Delphi. But the mountaineers valued their freedom so highly that they would not survive it. In hundreds they leapt over great precipices as Alexander’s invincible light infantry stormed their defences high above the clouds.

Beyond the mountains the army had come down into the well-watered plains of India; thick forests of unknown trees, broad rivers flowing south beyond the rim of the known world. There they had encountered armies of elephants, beasts so strange and huge that you could not describe or even imagine them. But the pikemen of Macedonia, these men boasting to the staring boy, had broken the line of huge trumpeting beasts. Alexander spared the conquered King of India, though he took tribute from his myriads of savage subjects.

But the world went on and on, even beyond India. At last veterans and invalids brought news that the invincible army had turned for home. Surely the phalanx would return to Pella so that the soldiers might enjoy their wealth? If young Demetrius stayed here in outlandish Phrygia he would see the mighty Alexander ride by on his way to Hellas and Macedonia and the true centre of civilisation.

It was very hard for a boy to practise steadily with his javelins, to drill earnestly at the command of the flute, to wheel and run in line as a preparation for the battles of his manhood, when his elders had already conquered more than the known world.

Father had been entrusted by the mighty Alexander with the government of several Persian provinces. Of course Father was very famous, a faithful and skilled commander; but he looked as though the great wars had been rather too much for him. Not only had he lost an eye, but at the age of sixty all his hair was white, even to the bush on his broad chest. He was stiff in the legs too, and needed help to mount his horse. But when he was bathed and anointed, wearing his magnificent bronze cuirass, he still looked the famous Antigonus, the tallest and strongest warrior in the best army the world had ever seen. Also he happened to get on well with his ten-year-old son; the fifty years of difference in their ages made him seem more like a grandfather than a father, and no boy quarrels with his grandfather.

Young Demetrius never saw the conqueror of the world ride by in all his glory. When he was just thirteen news came that the great Alexander had died in the prime of his youth, of a fever caught among the stinks of mud-built Babylon. At once Father put on his armour and rode off with all the troops he could muster, to discuss with the other commanders the government of the Empire.

It was the end of an epoch. Henceforth men were divided into two classes (that is, the only kind of men who interested young Demetrius—soldiers); either they had served under Alexander, in which case they all said they had seen India even if they had been posted in garrison on the Hellespont; or they had joined the army after the death of the great king, and must keep silent while their betters boasted. Inevitably, the young recruits felt that all their lives they would have to take second place.

In theory the great Empire which stretched from the Adriatic to the Indian Ocean was ruled by the two joint-kings whom the Macedonian army in Babylon had nominated to succeed Alexander. These were the late king’s bastard half-brother Philip III, a lunatic who must always be controlled by a keeper; and Alexander’s posthumous son by the Persian princess Roxana, Alexander IV, who would have to reign for at least sixteen years before he could govern by his own authority. Meanwhile the commanders of the great army fought among themselves for the Regency.

Antigonus, Satrap of Lycia and Pamphylia, was important but not quite in the front rank, not quite great enough to strike out for himself. Obediently he followed his military superior, Perdiccas who had been second-in-command under Alexander.

In duty bound, Perdiccas made war on Ptolemy the separatist, who was trying to dismember the Empire he had helped to conquer by detaching Egypt to be his independent realm. The war dragged on, with two skilful and well-led armies fencing at the crossings of the Nile; it seemed that Perdiccas could neither win nor lose. So the Macedonian soldiers, who wanted peace just as much as they wanted an undivided Empire, ended the fighting by killing the less successful of the two commanders. At the moment this was Perdiccas, who was duly murdered in his tent by his own men.

Antipater was chosen by what was left of the army to succeed Perdiccas as regent of the undivided Empire. As other commanders dropped out the importance of Antigonus increased. Antipater gave him the chief command in the war against Eumenes, the only senior officer who was not of Macedonian descent. In the course of the struggle Antigonus acquired much of Asia Minor as his private demesne. He was careful to describe himself as a faithful follower of Antipater the Regent; but within his wide satrapy no one dared to give him orders.

In his sixteenth year young Demetrius was suddenly ordered to grow up. His father sent for him in the privy chamber, and commanded him to marry.

“It’s early for you to settle down, I know,” said Antigonus with a twinkle in his eye, “but when you hear who the lady is I’m sure you will jump at the chance. She brings a good dowry, of course: 8,000 genuine Macedonians to strengthen my army, and seventy Indian war-elephants. I’m not so sure about those elephants. Each one costs as much to feed as a troop of horse, and the official account of the Indian campaign says that the phalanx walked through them without trouble. On the other hand, everyone buys them, so perhaps the official account is more official than accurate....”

“Father, please,” said Demetrius, “elephants matter, I know, and I like to hear your opinion of them. But now that I am listening will you tell me the name of my future wife?”

“Sorry. I thought I had told you. Set your mind at rest, she’s not an elephant. Though if by marrying an elephant you would increase my power I would expect you to go through with it, mind. No, Antipater has offered you his daughter Phila. Just think of that. We are a noble family, and important as things stand. But I hadn’t aimed as high as that for you. It’s very lucky that he has an unmarried daughter to spare. She has been married already, naturally. Her husband was the great Craterus, who fell in battle against the rebel Eumenes. So there you are, son-in-law to the Regent, brother-in-law to Ptolemy satrap of Egypt and to Lysimachus satrap of Thrace; and Cassander, Antipater’s son, is married to Thessalonice, a daughter of old King Philip. So if Alexander were alive you would be brother-in-law to his brother-in-law. Isn’t it a splendid match?”

“Indeed it is, Father. Now will you tell me the drawback? I can see from the look in your eye that there is one.”

“Well, my boy, she’s older than you are. About twice your age, to be accurate. She’s a widow, as I told you. But the lady Phila is said to be beautiful and good and a very great lady. If you are sensible about it you will get on well together.”

“I see. I am to marry an old lady for her dowry. Well, if you command it of course I obey.”

“Nonsense. Twice your age doesn’t make her an old lady. Thirty is the prime of life. What does Euripides say? To gain a fortune bondage must be dared.’ You aren’t risking bondage, only marriage. To the wife that may be bondage, but never to the husband.”

“So long as she understands that from the outset...When do I meet her? I hope she likes me. It’s too much to hope that I shall like her.”

But when he met the lady Phila he did like her. She was tall and stately and handsome, with the simple exquisite manners of the rural Macedonian aristocracy. Above all, she was completely straightforward; honour emanated from her like a perfume. Within a year of their marriage their son Antigonus was born, and later there was a daughter, Stratonice. As he grew older Demetrius was frequently unfaithful; but Phila was his wife, the abiding symbol of home.

Best of all, his brother Philip was still unmarried. This political alliance published to the world that the satrap Antigonus had chosen Demetrius to be his heir.

By the time he was twenty Demetrius was the colleague of his seventy-year-old father everywhere except on the battlefield. Antipater had died, oddly enough in his bed, and the war then being fought was still against Eumenes, the rootless Hellene who was the best tactician and most popular leader of the day, but who had never succeeded in carving out a private fief from the dissolving Macedonian Empire. He ruled only the land on which his camp was pitched, though he plundered at large throughout Asia.

Everyone admired Eumenes, but he was an outsider, a Hellene competing with Macedonians. Antigonus put him to death. There was no other way to deal with the dangerous old man, though some blamed Antigonus for unnecessary cruelty.

Now that Antigonus seemed to have reached the top other Macedonian generals naturally combined to pull him down. Cassander in Hellas, Lysimachus astride the Propontis, Seleucus lord of the eastern deserts, Ptolemy of Egypt, all marched against him. Antigonus was compelled to divide his forces; while he himself defended the north-west he sent Demetrius to face Ptolemy on the borders of Syria and Egypt.

At the opening of his first campaign Demetrius was twenty-four. He had entered his father’s army at the top, and would command in his first engagement. That was enough to frighten any sensible young man; but it was made worse by the nagging of his counsellors. The responsibility was his; orders went out in his name; his reputation, not theirs, was at stake. But these elderly veterans had been sent by his father to advise him, and they did not believe that a young man who had never served Alexander could control an army.

The most prominent adviser was old Nearchus, a veteran of veterans; he had commanded the fleet on the Indian expedition. Before that he had served old King Philip, and he had campaigned without respite since the first crossing into Asia. He feared Ptolemy’s skill as a commander, and took a very gloomy view of the future.

He turned out to be right, though when Demetrius marched south from Gaza he felt confident enough. Both armies were made up of mercenaries, Hellenes and Macedonians fighting only for pay; both had enlisted local auxiliaries, desert horsemen who thought only of plunder. Such troops would not fight to the death. Demetrius hoped that during some pause for reconnaissance the war-chest of Antigonus, most prudent and richest of all the commanders, might buy Ptolemy’s army from under him.

Unfortunately Ptolemy was a very good general. As soon as he found the enemy he attacked. Demetrius saw for the first time how fast a battle can move.

He was still comp...