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Philip very soon called his son back to the army, allowing him to serve this time with Hephaestion in the elite cavalry.

During that year, the year 438 from the first Olympiad [or 338 B.C.] the conflict between the Macedonian army and the Greek city-states came to a head. It was really the conflict between Philip’s ambition and Demosthenes’s determination—the issue being the rule of the Greek cities.

Because Greece as a whole did not exist. The Hellenes, separated among their dozen cities, had been united only by the shock of the world war, when the armies of the Asiatics invaded the waters and homeland (from the first meeting at Marathon to the sea and land victories of Salamis and Plataea). When the threat of conquest ended, the Hellenic cities fell apart like the spokes of a broken wheel and involved themselves in the long civil war which became a merciless struggle for mastery between, in one aspect, the land and sea powers, the north against the south, and in its final phase the test of mastery between Athenians and Spartans. Strangely, throughout the raids and sieges, the plague and the final mobilization of manpower at the height of this conflict, Athens had been touched by the splendor of the age of Pericles.

Then had followed the political prostration of the postwar generation, with its weight of taxation, its expanding trade, and its weak efforts to form peace leagues. After a century and a half of wars the famous city-states, dependent now on slave labor, had tried to protect themselves by professional soldiery, which could be maintained by money. Leadership had descended to individual tyrants or dictators, or to a religious council. Toward the end of this decline Philip of Macedon displayed his astute leadership—lacking since the death of Pericles—while the Athenian orator Demosthenes used his great persuasive power in an effort to rouse the city-states to their danger.

The conflict for control now centered in these two individuals—Philip, opportunist and realist, seizing every hold upon the disorganized cities of Hellas, posing as protector of the religious council, champion of the Delphic shrine, and benefactor of demos, the common man; and Demosthenes, lashing at the inertia of now wealthy Athenians, whipping up the ghosts of Marathon, calling upon a true citizen army to defend the last of the democracies. In this death duel between two personalities the actual antagonists seemed to be two irreconcilable ideas—the fading concept of the free city-state and the nascent concept of monarchy. For Demosthenes in his Philippics argued not so much against the human Philip as against the incarnation of power in Philip: If Philip were to vanish tomorrow, you would find yourselves another Philip. I want an army of the Republic.

Did the Athenians fear Philip? Demosthenes lashed their fear with scorn. Was Philip a strategist? So was a wolf, slinking out of sight, feeding on dead bodies. Was he handsome and hard-drinking? So was a woman, and a sponge. Would the immortal gods, watching from the skies, bestow favor upon such a lecher, a schemer, a bloodsucker?

Already, Demosthenes explained, the gods had vouchsafed an omen to the Greek patriots. The seeress of the Pythian shrine had given them a verse:

The eagles shall see, watching from the skies,

The conquered weep, while a conqueror dies.

Unmistakably this prophecy meant that the Macedonian invaders would mourn Philip, who would be killed in the coming war.

By the driving force of his emotion Demosthenes got his army of patriots. He got it into the field by persuading the Athenians that their advantage lay in making war as far as possible from their city, and by shaming the Thebans into becoming allies of the Athenians. (And in these Thebans lay the strength of the allies. The Theban phalanx, formed sixteen ranks deep under guidance of Epaminondas, had overthrown even the celebrated Spartans—the Theban Sacred Band of hoplites, devoted to a life of war, was believed to be supreme on the battlefield.)

So, reassuring, promising, inspiriting, the great orator marched toward Macedon that year with his citizen soldiers, who seemed to him to be the resurrection of democratic power. He marched with the hoplites, his bronze shield on his arm, his only insignia of rank the gold letters on his shield, spelling: “With Fortune.”

And from that moment Demosthenes ceased to exert any more influence upon the event than the hoplites trudging beside him. Philip, the trickster, the play actor and consummate commander of men, made his presence felt. The Macedonian army disappeared. At least it could not be found by the Greeks, who advanced in high spirits when they intercepted a message that Philip had departed for the Balkans. The Greek citizen soldiers were bewildered when they discovered that Philip was actually behind them with his Macedonians. The message had been a simple trick.

Anxious and tired, the Greeks hurried down out of the mountains into the long valley near Chaeronea and found the Macedonians there. Even then these Macedonians did not seem like an army ranged for battle. They moved at ease along the valley, not crowded together, and they seemed to have no servants or baggage. They stopped and sat down as if waiting for the foot-weary Greeks to hurry into formation against them.

Far out on the Macedonian flank files of horses moved through a grove, led by men sheathed in bronze down to the hips.

They did not look at all dangerous.

The Greeks hurried on. The Sacred Band of Thebes went into its phalanx. Past a small temple dedicated to Heracles, past the village of Chaeronea they went, toward the winding stream that divided them from the horsemen waiting at this rendezvous.

By midafternoon the sun was in the eyes of the horsemen. They had mounted, but they still waited on the rise among the scattered oaks.

These Companions, all Macedonians and noble-born, had been put—all three regiments of them—under the command of Parmenio, chief of staff. From past experience they knew that Parmenio would wait for Philip’s order to advance. But no such order had come from the lame leader, who was off somewhere in the battle opposite the Theban phalanx. From the sounds on their left the Companions judged that the Macedonians there had given way and were moving back up the slope. That meant the Thebans had not been checked.

The strain of waiting told on the armored horsemen, even though they were accustomed to it. Through the trees and the drifting dust they could see only that the small regiment of Hypaspists, or Aids, was engaged on their left. At times clouds of kilted Cretan bowmen moved across the slope in front of them, screening them. The level sun, striking into the dust, made it difficult to see more than that.

Restlessly the riders adjusted the shield straps on their cramped arms, shifting their weight, not speaking because they were listening intently. Nonetheless they would have waited in ranks until a command reached them, if one rider had not broken ranks. And if this rider had not been Alexander, the son of Philip.

Alexander had waited on the black horse until his nerves jumped and tore at him. He had been assigned to the Companions with Hephaestion, with the rank of regimental commander, although Philotas, the experienced son of Parmenio, actually commanded the regiment. Beside Alexander a big warrior sat his horse patiently—one Cleitus, called the Black because most of his body was burned to the hue of charred wood by the sun. Cleitus had been told off to guard Alexander’s body, so he stationed himself knee to knee with him, pushing Bucephalus over when the black horse moved restlessly. Cleitus the Black had no more nerves than an oak tree.

But Alexander strained to keep his bare knees from quivering; he wiped the drip of sweat from his right hand, tortured by anticipation of plunging into the maelstrom beyond the drifting dust, where sounds rose and fell like the pounding of surf. He breathed quickly, his throat dry. This grip of fear upon him was like a chain tightening with each moment, and with the glare of the sunlight against his eyes. Behind him he felt the other riders were watching him, noticing how he was being overmastered by fear.

Cold gripped his stomach, nauseating him until he had to swallow and cough to keep from retching. Lazily Black Cleitus picked at a scab covering a scar on one brown arm, and the noise beyond the trees changed to the screaming of gulls. But there could be no sea gulls screaming here....

Alexander had to move, to hold down the rising sickness. Jerking at the rein of the black horse, he tightened his knees, and Bucephalus plunged ahead. Cleitus called out something, and a tree branch whipped across his face. He flung up his shield, bending down, as he passed a group of archers who looked over their shoulders, startled.

Other horses followed after him, but he could not see them. Metal grated against his shield, and Bucephalus swerved, so he had to grip hard with his knees. Suddenly he felt the horse rise in a jump. A knot of men rolled and crouched against the ground beneath him. He realized how fast he was going and tried to steady the frantic horse.

Through the dust a group of men took shape, standing as if pressed together, turning a line of spear points toward him. Crouching behind his shield, he felt the black horse stumble and lurch and then race on, fighting for his head. Two wounded men, sitting back to back, held out open hands to him, making a sign....

When at last Alexander was able to rein in the black horse he found himself deep in brush at the edge of a stream. Listening, he heard no voices over the humming in his ears. But he felt desperately thirsty and dismounted to limp to the water, wrapping the rein around his wrist. Lying down, he drank, and then shoved his head into the water. When he wiped his eyes clear he saw Bucephalus drinking beside him. So he waited for the horse to finish. He was breathing easily now, and the sickness had left him. But he did not want to move. Somewhere beyond the encircling brush voices echoed and carts creaked.

Then he noticed that the sky had changed. The glare had gone, and the clouds over the hill were darkening. He stretched his arms and got on the horse, turning back through the break in the brush. When he reached a path he followed it, through an orchard, past a white stone temple where men lay as if flung into piles, motionless.

Alexander could make out only objects moving against the afterglow of the sunset. He tried to account for the missing hours but could not.

Over this cluttered land, he realized, the battle must have passed. It had disappeared now, except for the watch fires that winked into light ahead of him.

A man moved jerkily over the ground, bending down when he heard a voice from the wounded. Alexander noticed him because a squad of armored shield-bearers moved methodically behind the erratic searcher, and then he saw that it was Philip. His father peered at him and yelped, “Praise to the almighty gods!”

He gripped Alexander, felt him over for injuries, and hugged him. “Philotas swore you vanished into the village as if snatched up by a demon. They couldn’t find your body. Now I’ll give gold to thieving Delphi!” Philip was royally drunk. Suddenly he swore. “Boy, what made you start the Companion regiments off without an order? Parmenio had no order. It wasn’t time. They said they followed Philotas, and Philotas says he followed you. What devil possessed you, eh?”

“I don’t know. I was frightened.”

Philip turned his scarred head, to peer at his son, his breath reeking of wine. “Frightened? Don’t say that. It wasn’t easy, on Chaeronea ridge. Parmenio looked like a ghost—I was scared through my guts. You can’t escape that before an action. Only keep your head clear, until your work’s done....”

Relief flooded through Alexander, who had dreaded his father’s anger. It seemed that Philip felt what he had experienced in the oak grove. Suddenly Philip began to curse, peering into the darkness. Too many men had died in those hours. No such battle as this should have been fought. It was the fault of the charge of the Companions, before the turn in the battle.

Holding to Alexander, and stumbling across the bodies lying in the darkness, Philip went on cursing, tongue-lashing himself and the mistakes that had been made. He had planned to let the Theban phalanx come through—he had placed only a screen opposite that phalanx. When the Athenian hoplites followed, he had meant to wait until they lost formation, believing themselves victorious. Then he would have launched the Companions, with the Hypaspists and Thessalian cavalry supporting....

Alexander never forgot that moment when Philip, dead-drunk but clear in his head, led him over to the slope where men searched for weapons among the dead. “The Thebans stood here. At your age I used to watch them drill. They didn’t break, like the Athenians. We had to kill them—they had iron in them, the dumb bastards.”

Staggering through the darkness, Philip began to mutter. Then abruptly his words came clear, in Greek, repeating words of Demosthenes which he seemed to know by heart: “By the springs of our land, by the rivers that water it, by the hills that have made our home ...”

They found on the field the shield of the orator with its legend, “With Fortune.” Men related how Demosthenes, throwing away his weapons, ran with the others, helplessly, from the valley of Chaeronea.

Afterward, in Athens, when he was urged to speak to the people, he refused, saying, “It was Chaeronea that spoke, not I.”

Stunned by the disaster at Chaeronea, hearing with dread that the Macedonians had taken over and garrisoned Thebes, the citizens of Athens would have yielded up their orator and the other instigators of the war to pacify Philip. When Demosthenes appeared in the streets he was hissed and called the Snake. Political orators reminded assemblymen that his speeches “stank of the study lamp.” To one of these Demosthenes made answer, “My lamp does not give out the same smell as yours.”

But Philip, surprisingly, made no demands upon the great commonwealth. For this city of the Acropolis he felt unspoken admiration. His was the awe of the highlander for the metropolis.

Among the emissaries of this good will, Alexander and Hephaestion were sent to Athens, and the eager Macedonian feasted himself with sight-seeing—thrown as he was for the first time among masses of educated people, visiting the old Tower of the Winds, sitting in the cool of nights in the front row of the marble seats with armrests in the Dionysos theater, discussing politics in the lamplit gardens of the more exquisite prostitutes, who had at their tongue’s tip the gossip of the sea trade, the fashionable ideas of the Sophists, and tales of wonder from ancient Egypt where the Sphinx had been heard to utter prophecies.

The Macedonian youths walked with the pupils of Plato in the Lyceum—named after the hero Lykos, the Wolf. And Hephaestion as usual found amusement in this. “Behold,” said he, “here is your evolution of man, entire. From wolf to hero to philosopher. What next?”

Nor was Hephaestion impressed when they sat with the politicians in the city council on the hill under the Parthenon. “These citizens draw a dole to feed themselves, and they sit here all day to argue about what to do with themselves!”

And Alexander must have remembered the complaint of the dour Stagyrite, that these Athenians had become too abstract in their ideas and in their search for an ideal.

They met with gray-bearded men who had joked with ugly Sophocles, and had attended the first nights of Euripides’s plays which, like the Troiades, dramatized the story of females as well as the dominant males—an effort speedily lampooned by the uninhibited Aristophanes in Lysistrata. In fact the companion-ladies of the metropolis were more modern in their thought than the men, expressing themselves in deft quotations: “When I behold how filthy rich the gods have made me, why should I question them?”

These educated ladies made agreeable companions, superior companions, in fact. They concealed their amusement at the uncouth Macedonian mountaineers, because it was quite apparent to them that these same mountaineers were becoming the most influential men in Greece, if not yet the richest. The hetaerae had great interest in such a change in the political wind.

Alexander missed seeing children around their apartments. For this lack Hephaestion had a ready explanation. “They don’t want children running around and begging for bread, and calling all the visitors ‘Poppa.’ Anyway, they don’t have many because they practice that new thing called abortion. It may be good or it may be bad, but it certainly keeps the population down. It’s different with our women: they have litters. Did you see that girl called Thais? Imagine her having a child. She’s a child herself.”

Hephaestion saw no harm in the influence of these public women. “I’ve sold my body for what—only hard knocks given and taken; they sell their bodies and also provide an education.”

Athens differed from provincial Pella in other ways. Wealth flowing in from taxation, payments of tributary islands, and the growing overseas trade had ringed the city with new boulevards and vast public works.

The chink of silver coins was heard constantly along the shop fronts, where prices seemed fantastically high compared to Pella. Down at the harbor round merchant craft disgorged grain from the Euxine, lumber and metals, and groups of black and white slaves from the outlying islands. The sharp odor of wine hung over the hot waterfront. Alexander, taught by the insistent Aristotle to examine into causes, satisfied himself that this money prosperity came from the constantly rising prices. Goods increased in value, while labor remained cheap, owing to the great numbers of unemployed soldiers and the continued influx of slaves. More than that, Athens was drawing the materials for its new industries out of the east, from the islands and the coasts of Asia. This wealth had created a new aristocracy in Athens, three generations after the civil war.

From every crowded street he could see the gigantic statue of the goddess Pallas Athena, shining with gold and the pale splendor of ivory against the sheer blue of the sky. And he thought of the small altar of the God-Father under the window in Pella.

Many people spoke to him of the centenarian Isocrates, who had been buried that year. Isocrates, the philosopher, had devoted his life, like Demosthenes, to the ideal of democracy. But unlike Demosthenes, he had believed the Hellenic city-states to be in decline.

How could that be possible, the citizens argued, when statistics showed that the foreign trade of Athens had never been so great, nor the colonies—except for those ports taken over by the Macedonian—so flourishing? The figures for population, the silver reserve, the numbers of schools and civic works, all showed that Isocrates lied. Isocrates, they explained, merely remembered, owing to his great age, the earlier, primitive city-state, at a time when most men were farmers, before the advance of modern industry in the new commonwealth. Isocrates complained that in Hellas the city-states now could not maintain peace within themselves or between themselves. All of them—Sparta, Athens, Argos, Delphi, Corinth, and Thebes—had struggled first for supremacy and then for trade, and now were divided internally between the moneyed class and the laboring class. So said the doting Isocrates, and it was rumored that he had committed suicide by starving himself to death after Chaeronea.

Certainly this aged philosopher had accused the modern city-states of surrendering to Persian power, more than a century after Salamis. For Persian statesmanship and gold, he argued, had won the victory that the Asiatic fleets and armies could not obtain at Salamis and Plataea. The all-powerful Persians had induced the Spartans to sign a mutual assistance pact; the Hellenic colonies in Asia had yielded to this empire’s control, while imperial fleets dominated the seas and imperial gold decided the elections, even in the Athenian Assembly.

Under such conditions, Isocrates maintained, the Hellenic city-states could only survive if they united in an effort to free themselves from this golden yoke of the Asiatic empire. By making open war upon Persia and advancing their forces across the sea to liberate the colonies the Greeks could preserve their democracies and regain their ancient heritage.

To unite in this fashion for the Asiatic war, Isocrates admitted, it might even be necessary to accept the mastery of Philip of Macedon, who was very close to being a Greek and who alone could direct the course of such a war. This last advice the Athenians remembered, after the funeral of the aged Isocrates.

In their hysterical relief at being spared the fate of Thebes after Chaeronea, the Athenians voted Philip a citizen of their city. They managed to forget all of Isocrates’s warnings except his last counsel, to accept Philip. When Alexander and his companions appeared in the city, instead of the dreaded Macedonian army, the Athenians made much of Philip’s striking son. Only the friends of Demosthenes remarked that a wolf cub was not the less a wolf.

And Philip, using his son as emissary of good will, achieved a miracle of statesmanship in the year after Chaeronea. Informed by his spies, acting so swiftly that the rival cities had little time to weigh his actions, he called their representatives into a congress at Corinth.

Apparently Philip merely listened to the problems of the Greeks as they argued before him. For each problem he had a solution.

They were disunited: he formed a league of all the cities except Sparta, to be known as the Hellenic League, to have its own council, with which he would not interfere except in time of war. The constitutions, the private properties, the privileges of each city were guaranteed. Nor were the cities called upon to pay tribute. Any major dispute need not be referred to Philip; it would be decided by the supreme judgment of the religious council.

Moreover, Philip agreed to Isocrates’s plan. Having united all Greece, he would lead all Greece in a war against Persian dominion, to free the seas, liberate the colonies, and restore Hellas to its true grandeur. He would lead as captain-general of Hellas, not as king of the Macedonians. Upon each city he would call for a detachment of volunteer infantry. Sparta alone was excepted, as being the ally of the Asiatics. And the Spartans refused to join the new Hellenic League, assuring Philip, “we are accustomed to lead, not to be led.”

With nothing to pay to the conqueror, and nothing to lose, and with prestige and power to gain, the representatives of the Greek cities accepted Philip’s plan for a greater Hellas with enthusiasm.

Alexander, sitting through the sessions in the theater at Corinth, saw his father acclaimed a liberator and the statesman of the hour. Hearing the decision of the congress at Corinth, Demosthenes went into voluntary exile, declaring that he could not endure being a spectator of the end of Greek democracy.

Philip arranged for the levies from the Greek cities to join him the next year upon the King’s Way, en route to the Dardanelles. Meanwhile he sent Parmenio, his chief of staff, with task forces ahead, to secure a bridgehead across the strait, on the Asiatic side. Alexander he kept at his side, to observe these manipulations, while he arranged for his weak-minded son Arrhidaeus to be married to the daughter of a minor noble on the Asiatic shore.

Then at last Philip was satisfied that he had compensated by negotiation at Corinth for the wastage of lives at Chaeronea. This greater victory over the assembled Greeks had insured the kingdom for the Macedonians.

With so much accomplished by inspired forethought, Philip allowed himself to relax, and his Macedonians to feast when he came home to Pella.

Then, at the full tide of success, he was assassinated. And men recalled the prophecy of the Pythian seeress, that at Chaeronea the conquered should weep and the conqueror die.

After receiving notification that she was no longer the king’s wife, Olympias had retired with her personal servants to a separate house near the cemetery, to be out of the way of Philip and his girl bride. In this seclusion Olympias put on dark mantles, abandoning her bright silks. She took to spinning thread from wool, sitting at the wheel for hours in implacable silence. When she did go out she made use of a covered litter, so that no one in the streets of Pella saw her face—although her litter attracted attention enough in its passage. People began to say that the Princess of Epirus, who had never secluded herself as a wife, now screened herself properly as a rejected wife. Others observed how she walked abroad only at night, like a second Medea in the graveyard during the hours when the power of Hecate waxed great.

From her window Olympias watched the new influx of people thronging into Pella—merchants from Tyre or Carthage with war gear to sell, ambassadors from the barbarian tribes, Greek prostitutes and agents. Within a year Philip’s court had become the axis of Hellas. Often had Olympias imagined for herself such a triumph as this.

To Alexander, when he at last arrived home, she made no complaint of her misfortune, saying quietly that fate struck down those who had been raised too high by success. Her hope now lay in Alexander, and she only feared that she could not shield him from Philip’s drunken violence.

“Long since,” she murmured over the threaded wool, “when I carried you under my heart, I vowed to the Father-God that never would I cease to protect you in life.”

Especially she warned him against the overbearing manner of Cleopatra’s Kinsmen. Now that the girl was with child they acted as if their family had become the arbiter of Pella. To Alexander this mildness in his passionate mother seemed strange.

“I fear for your life,” she admitted, her fingers tearing at the ball of loose wool.

Alexander noticed that Philip, who had a habit of sitting alone on the lion-crested bench at the feasts, now kept Attalus, uncle of Cleopatra, beside him, even though Attalus grew foul in talk when he drank. As for Philip, no one could be certain when he was actually drunk. When Attalus goaded Alexander with a barbed word Philip fell silent, as if observing the two of them. Cleopatra did not pour the wine now, when they sat together, being far along in pregnancy.

Attalus disliked Alexander’s way of leaving his wine goblet untouched.

“You pour out enough on the sly, in sacrifice to your Father-Zeus,” Cleopatra’s uncle remarked repeatedly. And one night he stood up, lifting his wine bowl and shouting out, “May Cleopatra give Philip a son who’ll be a legitimate heir!”

Suddenly Alexander’s temper flared, and he saw only the bearded mocking face of Attalus, challenging him. At that head he flung his own wine-filled goblet, and reached back of him for a weapon, shouting, “Do you say I am a bastard——”

Empty-handed, he stepped on the table, to leap at Attalus. Instantly Philip jerked his sword from the bearer behind him and threw himself at his son. Muddle-headed with drink, he slipped, sprawling on the stones.

Shaking with anger, Alexander stared down at his father, then leaped across him, to the door. He shouted, “That’s the man who’d take you across into Asia—he can’t move himself from one bench to the other.”

Looking down at the staring, gaping faces, at his father getting up from the stones, Alexander turned and raced out of the hall. He ran through the guards, beyond the torchlight, into the street of Olympias’s house.

He found her awake, at her wheel, and without explanation he hurried her with one maid out to the stables. Within an hour he was out on the black horse beside her chariot on the dark path to the forests of Epirus.

But he left her at her old family home and rode on alone into the northern mountains. Freed from Olympias’s importuning, he could more easily forget that night at Pella. While he pictured Attalus ridiculing his flight, he pressed on deeper into the forests, afraid to face Macedonians. Until messengers from Pella tracked him down, giving him a letter from his father. Philip wrote that the Greek counselors were asking him how he expected to keep order in the new Hellenic League when he could not hold his own house together—and he wanted his son Alexander back to resume duty with the army.

Somewhat to Alexander’s surprise, his mother made no objection. Although she distrusted Philip’s letter, saying that the man who was called Fox by his own soldiers was never so dangerous as when he appeared most friendly. But her son should face his enemies, knowing that he was under protection of the Powers that had shielded the hero Achilles through all dangers. Alexander should trust in these Powers, which were not perceptible to other men.

At Pella, Philip greeted the exile as if nothing had happened at the wine cups that night. Immediately he began discussing a new kind of wheeled transport for the demountable catapults that Deiades had designed for the Asiatic expedition. Olympias distrusted this warlike activity. Usually, she pointed out, Philip did the opposite of what he discussed openly. Why should he depart just now, leaving Greece half pacified? More likely he intended to remove Alexander, with this transport, sending him across the sea to join Parmenio—at least until it was known whether Cleopatra’s child would be a boy or a girl.

Ptolemy also felt worried, hinting to Alexander that his idiot half brother was being married into the family of an eastern governor—while another bastard, a half sister, was betrothed to a prince, yet Philip had mentioned no forthcoming marriage for Alexander. He was being kept in the public eye, Ptolemy thought, because the rank and file of the army fancied, after Chaeronea, that he brought them good luck.

Worried by this advice on a matter he little understood and fearful of some outbreak from his mother, Alexander tried to intrigue for himself, sending a companion—an actor of the new theater—to offer to marry the eastern girl himself, in place of Arrhidaeus. Yet he felt instinctively that Philip would neither send him away nor forgive him this attempt at amateur statesmanship. It gave relief to his jaded nerves to yield to his advisers.

It seemed as if Philip discovered his secret before his actor-envoy could return. Limping into Alexander’s room with Philotas behind him, he sat down moodily, rubbing his untidy head. Philotas, the leader of a Companion regiment, stood at the door as if on duty, although by then he was intimate with Alexander.

Philip, perfectly sober, looked tired as he surveyed the books, the night lamps, and the half-finished drawings that littered the study. “When will you cease to be a moon calf,” he muttered, “filling your mind with other men’s writings, and gossip? You neigh like a filly when a man stamps his foot or takes a sip of wine.” His good eye blinked and his voice gentled. “By all the dog-headed tykes of hell, I wish you’d never had tutors. Can’t be helped now. Listen. Arrhidaeus was a problem. I wanted to marry him off somewhere. You’ll command the army, someday, with Parmenio. I wanted you to be able to grasp problems and master men. You can’t do that by making sweet music like Orpheus or reasoning about mathematics. Or by waiting for a god to come out of the stage machine to help you, like in a tragedy. I wish——”

Under Alexander’s silence he seemed to feel that he was lecturing a stubborn schoolboy. He seemed to try to reach across to the boy. He only said awkwardly, “No use worrying—I’m cracked here and there in the body. Have to get used to it.”

Alexander remembered how he limped out after their talk, pushing his head clumsily clear of the door curtain. In that moment he believed Philip had no thought of putting him aside.

But a few hours later Philip issued an order for Ptolemy, Harpalus, and Nearchus to leave Pella and stay in exile, depriving Alexander of his close friends.

And then, on the day of his half sister’s marriage, Alexander never forgot how the Kinsmen, and the silent Antipater, and the great families of Macedon had gathered in the half-ruined hall of the elder kings at Aegae, with their retinues waiting outside and the flutes playing. He had waited alone with some officers near the hall, until the trumpets sounded. They had not seen Philip limping out of the gate of rough stones, the trumpets calling, and people pressing back to make room for the king.

And Philip had fallen to his knees, with a bareheaded, screaming man stabbing a knife into his back, killing him.