Alexander at the World's End Read online

  The remarkable thing about my father — that stolid, misguided man — was that from time to time he was entirely right.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Curiously enough, the first day I spent as an apprentice human being under the tuition of the celebrated Diogenes was also the day on which a minor tribal chieftain in the far north of Greece was killed in a battle with some neighbouring bunch of savages. The man’s name was Perdiccas, and he had been the ruler of a district called Macedonia .

  Perdiccas was the second of the three sons of King Amyntas. He’d achieved the throne by murdering his elder brother Alexander in the normal course of business, and would undoubtedly have been a highly satisfactory ruler by Macedonian standards if only he’d had the chance. He was survived by a son and a younger brother, who was appointed regent until Perdiccas’ son came of age.

  Predictably enough, the boy died not long after, and Amyntas’ youngest son, Philip, became king. He was twenty-three years old.

  Eight years earlier, the brilliant and successful Theban general Pelopidas, finding himself at something of a loose end between massacres, amused himself for a while by persecuting the northern primitives. Anxious to get rid of him without parting with anything of value, King Perdiccas offered him his younger brother as a hostage, and so off young Philip went to Thebes for three years as a guest of Pelopidas and his even more brilliant and successful colleague, the Theban commander-in-chief Epaminondas, a man regarded by his contemporaries as the most innovative and clear-sighted military thinker of his day. It was Epaminondas who virtually reinvented the art of war by changing the criteria of victory. Previously, you won a battle by taking possession of the battlefield, piling up a great heap of the enemy’s discarded arms and armour, and dedicating the spoils to your regional patron god; it was Epaminondas who demonstrated to the world that the best way to win a battle is to kill as many of the enemy as you can, and the hell with piles of shiny helmets and breastplates. The novelty of this approach wasn’t lost on impressionable young Philip, and since he wasn’t a proper Greek anyway and accordingly lacked the true Hellenic feel for a truly beautiful and satisfying heap of verdigrised armour, he set himself to contemplating the new Theban approach to war with a view to mastering it and if possible improving it further.

  Well, Philip served his apprenticeship, I served mine. That first morning, I showed up for work bright and early, with my wax tablets for making notes and my lunch in a goatskin bag on my shoulder, to find that Diogenes wasn’t there. For some reason, this didn’t come as a total surprise to me. As I think I mentioned earlier, I’d observed at our first encounter that although Diogenes was beyond doubt very dirty and scruffy, it was a comfortable, really rather cosy sort of dirtiness and scruffiness that looked as if it was designed to give a firm feel of authenticity without causing distress or inconvenience to the man who had to live in it. It certainly wasn’t the sort of miserable, demoralising squalor you’d expect from, say, sleeping rough in a broken old storage jar.

  (Very perceptive of me. Diogenes’ appearance was quite the work of art, and when I got to know him better I found that he took longer over his face, clothes and hair every morning than the most fastidious society hostess.)

  I sat down in the shade and waited, and in due course Diogenes showed up, rolling his damned jar like Sisyphus in the stories. You could hear him coming from quite a distance, because the jar made a sort of grumbling, grinding noise like the distant sound of an olive-press. It was a hot day, and when he finally came into view Diogenes was sweating freely.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ he panted, catching sight of me, ‘come and help me with this bloody thing.’

  I carefully put down my satchel and ran over. He’d managed to get the thing stuck in a rut in the road, and it took both of us a fair deal of cursing and shoving to work it loose. When at last we’d managed to stow it where he wanted it to go, he flopped down on the ground and told me to go and fetch some water, which I did.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, wiping his beard and handing me the cup.

  ‘All right then, let’s get a few things straight before we start on this apprenticeship thing.’ He looked at me for a moment, and shook his head. ‘You’re a smart kid, I can tell you that by looking at you, so I won’t waste my time or energy trying to impress you. Actually, I’ve been giving this business a bit of thought and I do believe there are a few things I can teach you, beyond all the meaningless bullshit I do for money. That’s assuming you want to learn,’ he added. ‘Because if you don’t, you can bugger off and amuse yourself all day, I’ll keep your father’s money and we’ll both be happy.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘I don’t mind learning,’ I replied, ‘so long as it’s interesting and useful. My father thinks I should be a philosopher.’

  Diogenes nodded. ‘Very worthy aspiration. Haven’t a clue what it means. Have you?’

  ‘A lover of wisdom,’ I replied. ‘At least, that’s what the word means literally.’

  Diogenes rested the back of his head against the wall of the jar, which was comfortably warm, and closed his eyes. ‘A lover of wisdom,’ he repeated. ‘Which begs a nice pair of questions: what’s wisdom, and is it something you can love?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Diogenes replied. ‘Fairly basic stuff, this. All right, let’s take the second bit first; only because the first one’s too hard for me, mind.

  Lover of wisdom; well, I assume you know what love is.

  ‘More or less,’ I said.

  ‘All right. So, there are things you can love — beautiful people, the city you live in, your parents and children — and there’s other things you can’t, like a mattock-handle or cutting your toenails or cleaning caked mud off a ploughshare.

  You can appreciate a well-made mattock-handle, if it’s a nice straight-grained piece of ash that’s been properly shaped and smoothed so it won’t blister your hands, but I defy anybody who isn’t crazy or very, very sad to be in love with a mattock-handle. Now then, can you spot the difference?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘A mattock-handle is meant to be useful, in a practical sort of way. The other things you said are more — well, inspirational.’

  Diogenes nodded. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said. ‘And the same goes for my other two examples, I guess. Gutting your toenails makes walking more comfortable, and cleaning mud off a ploughshare makes ploughing easier. Beautiful men and women, the city and your friends and relations, on the other hand, can be useless or even downright aggravating and you’ll still love them. All right so far?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Mphm.’ His voice was getting lower and slower, and I thought he was about to fall asleep. ‘So if philosophy’s the love of wisdom, wisdom’s something that’s capable of being loved, we appreciate and value useful things but we love things that inspire us without necessarily being useful and quite often aren’t; in fact, bearing in mind the vast amount of unhappiness and pain caused by love in this life, it’s a reasonable observation that anything capable of being loved is also capable of making your life thoroughly miserable, whereas if your mattock-handle rubs your hands and you’ve got any sense, you mend it or sling it and get a new one. Conclusion, therefore: wisdom is more likely to be a pain in the bum than anything useful. Is that a sensible thing for a young man to spend his time learning?’

  I shook my head. ‘I suppose not,’ I said.

  Diogenes opened his eyes and sat up. ‘You suppose damn right,’ he said, with an unexpected degree of animation. ‘Oh, I know a bit about wisdom, you see, and I could teach you some if you really wanted me to. I could teach you to understand a little of human nature by studying history, and then you’d begin to see what a mess we humans make of things whenever we try living in cities and organising each other’s lives. Now that’s inspirational stuff; you get this sort of heady, dizzy feeling that comes with moments of great insight. But all it’ll do is depress you and make you want to pac
k in trying to be a good citizen and go live in a jar. Instead, I suggest you take my word for it when I tell you that wisdom — which is just another way of saying “the truth” — isn’t something you want any truck with. Keep well clear of it; sell it to other people if it’ll make you a drachma, by all means, but don’t think of trying it yourself. No, what I imagine you want to learn is something useful and helpful, the sort of thing that’ll earn you a living and keep you safe and warm in later life. What do you think?’

  ‘That sounds eminently reasonable,’ I said.

  ‘Good, because it so happens that that’s what I’m eminently qualified to teach you. I can teach you the opposite of wisdom, which is folly, and the opposite of truth, which is lying. Deal?’

  I looked at him gravely. ‘Deal,’ I said.

  ‘Good lad.’ He looked round to see who was passing by, then looked back at me.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I replied, puzzled.

  ‘You heard me,’ Diogenes repeated. ‘What do you want to do for the rest of your life? Farmer? Speechmaker? Mercenary soldier? Do you want to be the man who goes round with a mop and a bit of rag cleaning out the baths when everyone’s gone home? Or would you rather be the King of Persia, say, or the Dictator of Syracuse ?’

  I smiled. ‘It isn’t as easy as that,’ I said. ‘There’s some things I can’t be, however much I’d like to.’

  Diogenes frowned. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You’re not thinking clearly. All right, let’s be scientific about this.What do you, me, the blind man who sells sausages outside the Theatre of Dionysus and the Persian governor of Ionia all have in common?’

  I scratched my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.

  ‘For a start,’ Diogenes replied, ‘they’re all featherless bipeds.’

  I assumed that was a joke, but he was serious. ‘Well, of course they are,’ I replied. ‘They’re all people. Human beings. But then, so’s everybody.’

  ‘True,’ said Diogenes. ‘So’s everybody.’ He stood up, not bothering to crouch.

  I hadn’t realised how tall he was. ‘And if they gave out prizes for meaningless generalisations like they do for plays, they’d be draping both of us in garlands right now. The hell with this, let’s go and earn some money. It’s not as worthy or admirable as sitting in the shade all day talking drivel, but—’ He suddenly crouched down beside me and lowered his voice. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s more fun.’

  I looked at him. ‘I’m not sure I agree,’ I replied.

  He sighed, crossed his legs and sat down in the dust. ‘That’s the trouble with you people, no sense of wonder, no appreciation of magic and the supernatural.

  That’s why your vision’s so limited.’

  I frowned. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m confused. I thought you were talking about money, not magic.’

  ‘I was.’ He lowered his voice again; later I came to recognise that stage whisper of his as a sign that I was about to be made a fool of. ‘All right, how about this? Suppose I was to tell you that there’s a special magical talisman, an artefact with the power to make people give you anything you want, do whatever you tell them to. Interested?’

  ‘I would be,’ I replied. ‘If I thought such a thing existed.’

  ‘Oh, it does,’ Diogenes said. ‘And what’s more, I’ve got one.’

  ‘Really?’ I was young, remember. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘All right, I’ll prove it to you.’ He jumped up and started to walk away. I had to run to keep up with him.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  As we walked, he kept on about the extraordinary powers of this talisman of his.

  Not only could it make people obey you, so that they could refuse you nothing;

  it could even make them like you. Love you, even. In spite of myself, I was getting interested; but Diogenes was walking so quickly that I didn’t have enough breath to ask questions with. With his special magical artefact, he continued, he could move mountains — literally, he could cause a mountain to be taken from one place and put down in another. He could create cities, destroy them; he could feed and clothe all the starving poor, or he could enslave a whole nation; the virtue of its magic was such that it could carry him across the sea, take him to the most remote corners of the world, from the Isles of Tin in the far west to the furthest reaches of Sogdiana...

  We’d stopped in front of a baker’s shop.

  ‘But to start with,’ he said, ‘let’s do something easy. Watch carefully. I’m going to make the baker give me a loaf of bread.’

  ‘All right,’ I replied.

  He nodded resolutely, walked over to the baker’s window and tapped on the sill.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, ‘I’d like a quarter-measure loaf. Wheat, not barley.’

  ‘There you go,’ the baker replied. ‘One obol.’

  Diogenes opened his mouth, fished out a coin (we used to carry our small change in our mouths back then) and put it down on the sill. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and walked back to where I was standing.

  ‘Satisfied?’ he said.

  ‘But you didn’t do any magic,’ I protested. ‘You bought the loaf.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Diogenes replied. ‘With my magic talisman.’

  I didn’t say anything; didn’t seem to be much point. After all, that was just silly.

  ‘You’d be amazed,’ he went on, talking with his mouth full as we walked back to where he’d left the jar, ‘at how much magic we’re all capable of.’

  ‘Really,’ I said, sulking.

  ‘Oh, yes. For instance, I can make water go uphill.’

  I frowned. ‘Really? No fooling?’

  ‘No fooling. Of course, I need my magic talisman.’

  I could feel a headache coming on. ‘Oh, no,’ I replied. ‘You can’t pay water to flow uphill.’

  ‘No, but you can buy a jar to carry it in.’

  That was so silly that I was about to say something rude. But I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Magic,’ Diogenes went on, ‘is easy. Just like most things in life. The trick lies in persuading people that they’re difficult.’

  I stopped where I was. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I think I can see what you’re getting at. You’re saying that...’ I paused, trying to find the right words.

  ‘What a thing is depends first of all on how we define it. You defined magic as being able to make people do things, but you didn’t exclude paying them money from the definition. That’s how you were able to trick me.’

  He shook his head. ‘No trick,’ he said. ‘You made it difficult for yourself, that’s all.’

  ‘But,’ I insisted, ‘some things really are difficult, because — well, they just are.’

  He smiled. ‘Really? Name one.’

  ‘All right.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Flying through the air.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I can do that.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Honestly. I give you my word. Put me on a mountain or on the top of the old tower in the Potters’ Quarter, and I promise you I can fly through the air.’

  He said it so convincingly that for a moment I believed him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He grinned. ‘Just not for very long, that’s all.’

  My brother Eudaemon loved playing soldiers. I can picture him now, with his wooden sword and the shield my father made for him out of a torn cloak stretched over a vine-sapling frame, charging up and down the rows in the small vineyard on the slopes of Parnes, chasing invisible Spartans. Well, I say they were invisible, and for sure I can’t see them any more, but in those days they were as plain as day (I was five at the time, and Eudaemon was seven). The difference between us was that while Eudaemon sallied forth to meet them, one small boy against a thousand fire-breathing hoplites, I tended to hide
behind the old fig-tree until they’d gone.

  My father’s attitude towards my brother’s martial aspirations tended to vary from day to day, depending on circumstances. For instance, when Eudaemon soundly defeated a phalanx of newly planted olive saplings (they outnumbered him thirty-five to one but eventually he overcame and beheaded them all), Father chased him three times round the terrace and broke his stick over Eudaemon’s shoulders when he finally caught up with him. On the other hand, when one of our neighbours asked Eudaemon what he wanted to be when he grew up and Eudaemon immediately answered ‘a soldier’, Father nodded sagely and said there were far worse careers for an ambitious young man of good family. Later, I found out the reason for that reaction, and it’s a salutory lesson for anybody who tends to read books.

  It was many years later, after Father’s death, and we were going through the box he kept his books in (he had well over twenty of the wretched things) with a view to sharing them out between us and maybe selling any that were worth money.

  While the rest of us browsed happily, snatching the rolls out of each other’s hands and reading bits aloud in silly voices, Eudaemon grimly worked his way through all of them till he found the one he was looking for, then stuffed it inside his tunic and hurried away. Well, naturally we couldn’t let that pass without finding out what it was that meant so much to our dear brother (we assumed it must be something with naughty bits in) and we left off fighting over the other books and persecuted Eudaemon until we’d managed to get the book from him. But it wasn’t dirty poetry or anything like that; it was a scruffy and well-used copy of Xenophon’s Persian Campaign, a most dangerous and pernicious thing as I’ll explain in a moment. Anyway, we tried teasing Eudaemon about this, but he got so angry and so violent that we had to give it back to him before he hurt somebody.

  You, my ignorant young friend, don’t know the celebrated Xenophon from a stick of rhubarb, so I’d better tell you a little bit about him; because if anybody was to blame for all the things that eventually happened, it may well have been him. Xenophon was a mercenary soldier, one of those sad, nasty people who were unaccountably still alive at the end of the War — sorry; the Great Peloponnesian War — and lacked the patience to wait around at home till the next war began.