Between the Mountain of Mercy and the river Araxes, on an artificial terrace sixty feet high, stood the palace buildings of Persepolis, ceremonial centre of the Persian empire. They were built to be impressive, a vast statement of royal power at the foot of the mountains where Persian rule could never extend: there were two audience halls and a treasury, king’s apartments and gates plated with bronze; there were staircases, rooms for the guards and a royal harem. The mudbrick walls stood 65 feet high and were adorned with gold and glazing; tall columns of wood or marble, fluted and set on bell-shaped bases, supported the roofs of cedar timber. The pillar drums were uneven, their capitals grotesquely shaped as pairs of bulls or monsters kneeling back to back; the doors were cumbrous, the paving crazy and the style of the place too jumbled to be pleasing. Once a year Persepolis was the scene of a grand occasion, when envoys from all the peoples of the empire would come with their presents for the Festival of the Tribute. Up the stone staircases and along the front of the terrace walls, the carved reliefs described the ceremony: rows of Immortal Guards stood to attention, their rounded spear-butts resting on their toes; noble Medes and Persians climbed the stairs, some talking, others holding lotus-flowers or lilies, accompaniments of a royal banquet, and while the envoys from the empire waited in their national dress, soon to be ushered in by courtiers, in his hundred-columned Hall sat the King of Kings, carved on a golden throne, holding his staff and attended by the Royal Fly-swatter. For nearly two hundred years, the power of Persia had met in Persepolis for its annual festival.
Now, in January 330, Alexander approached with his army of some 60,000 men, united after their passage through the mountains; he mounted the long low tread of the north-west staircase towards the Gate of Xerxes and its two monumentally sculpted bulls. It was a steep climb into a world of vast pomposity, hitherto unknown to the Greeks, but the Persian governor was waiting to welcome him. He was shown into the pillared hall of Darius I, 150 feet square and linked to the royal living-quarters by a narrow passage; he walked through the small central chamber into the Hundred-columned Hall of Xerxes, at whose entrance the Persian king was shown stabbing the beasts of evil, the winged lion-griffin and the lion-headed demon, those fateful ancestors of the Devil of the western world. Behind this hall stood the treasury, a building of mudbrick whose red-washed floor and brightly plastered pillars were lit through two small skylights, and here Alexander found his reward, 120,000 talents of uncoined bullion, the largest single fortune in the world.
Already he had encouraged his troops with talk of Persepolis as the most hateful city in Asia and for the past four years they had risked their lives in the hope of plunder; they could not, therefore, be left milling round the terrace, and when their king reappeared he gave them the word for which they had long soldiered. Up the staircases they streamed in an orgy of looting which archaeology has since confirmed. Among the ruins of Persepolis pots and glasses were found shattered, the heads of the carvings had been mutilated and there was evidence of vandalism which cannot be excused as the passage of time. The palace treasure was exempted as Alexander’s property; elsewhere, marble statues were dragged away from their bases and their limbs smashed and strewn on the ground; guards and inhabitants were killed indiscriminately and women were stripped of their clothes and jewellery until Alexander, it is said, demanded they should be spared. Mad for a share in their limited spoils, the troops then took to fighting among themselves.
Revenge on Persia had been a theme in Greek politics for more than a hundred years, and in this plundering of Persepolis it had at last reached its climax; from an army of Macedonian hill tribes and growing numbers of Thracians, the crusade could have taken no other form. But the climax did nothing for the problems of Alexander’s own position, and as often, the peak of enthusiasm already contained the first traces of doubt: one chance story brings this new state of mind to life:
On seeing a huge statue of Xerxes, overturned by the hordes which had forced their way into the palace, he stopped beside it and addressed it as if it were alive. ‘Are we to pass you by,’ he said, ‘and leave you lying on the ground because you campaigned against the Greeks, or are we to set you up again, because of your otherwise high-minded nature?’ For a long while, he stood by himself and thought the matter out in silence but finally, he passed on by.
The Greeks’ avenger was beginning to have doubts: whether to be scourge or heir of Xerxes, how, if at all, to rule, as king of Asia, these were his besetting problems, and for the moment, he left them, like the statue, lying where they were. Darius was still in retreat near Hamadan, and another pitched battle seemed very likely; he could not have guessed that within six months Darius would be dead and the problem would return, too acute to be turned down.
Though looting Persepolis, he had tempered the sack with his usual concern for security and the proper accumulation of treasure. Troops had been sent east to the nearby Mountain of Mercy and so to Pasargadae, where Cyrus the Great had built a small palace some twenty years earlier than Persepolis; its Persian governor surrendered, and a treasure of 6,000 talents was reported to Alexander who was already considering its centralization. Ten thousand baggage animals and 5,000 camels had been ordered from Susa to help remove all treasure from Persia’s home land, for Persepolis was not to continue as a storehouse for the empire. While this baggage-train was awaited the main army could relax. Not so Alexander, who set out into the hills round Persepolis with a picked force of infantry and a thousand horsemen.
His intention was to subdue the rest of the province of Persia, rough, populous and seldom visited by its king. The early spring snow was not congenial to such a mountainous campaign, but wherever the ice seemed too thick for the army Alexander dismounted and began to break it with a mattock, an example which his men felt bound to follow. Again his determination was decisive, for the Persian hill-shepherds had never expected a winter attack and they came to terms as soon as they heard they would be fairly treated; neighbouring nomads, who had been left independent by the Persian kings, were surprised in their caves and received in a surrender which meant little to their way of life. After thirty days of hard exertion, enough had been seen of the tribesmen, and Alexander returned to Persepolis, where he continued to distribute most generous presents ‘to his friends and other helpers according to their deserts’. There were banquets, games and sacrifices to the gods, and yet it was all a lull before a second storm.
While the treasure was moved from the palace, arrangements were made as if Persepolis were still a place of importance. Its Persian governor was restored to his rank and one of Alexander’s men was appointed to a garrison of 3,000 Macedonians. The province of Persia was more of an embarrassment, as it had naturally never been taxed or subjected while it ruled the empire. Alexander’s tact was once more applied to a troublesome victim: as satrap, he named a Persian aristocrat, son of one of the Seven Families, whose father had been killed at the Granicus battle; it was a judicious choice in an area where feeling was bitter. Then, one late spring evening, something happened which seemed to make a mockery of the appointments which had gone before: the palaces of Persepolis went up in flames, and the fire was agreed to have begun with Alexander’s approval.
No event in his expedition has caused more dispute and speculation, and only when Persepolis came to be excavated, was the scale of the blaze at last appreciated. In the Hundred-columned Hall of Xerxes, wood ash covered the floor to a depth of as much as three feet, and on analysis it was found to be cedar, the material of the beams in the building’s roof. Rafters, then, had come crashing down from a height of sixty feet into a blaze which mudbrick walls and timber pillars could only help to feed; the result was uncontrollable and the Treasury and much of the Audience Room was burnt at the same time. As an act of destruction it ranked with any Thebes or Gaza of Alexander’s career. So much for the facts; their explanation is another matter.
According to Alexander’s officers, the palace fire was a calculated act of vengeance, and it is to Ptolemy’s history that the fullest motive should probably be traced:
Alexander set fire to the Persian palaces, though Parmenion advised him to save them, especially because it was not proper for him to destroy what were now his own possessions: the peoples of Asia would not come over to him if he behaved like that, as if he had decided not to hold sway over Asia, but to pass through it merely as a victor. But Alexander replied that he wished to take revenge on the Persians for invading Greece, for razing Athens and burning her temples.
The burning, therefore, was the culmination of the Greeks’ revenge.
After the heavy plundering and the removal of the bullion, it might indeed seem logical to have fired a palace which served no useful purpose. Alexander would have delayed until the precious metals had been hauled on to his pack-animals, and then paid a final gesture to the Greek allies whom he was to dismiss within a month. But Parmenion the unfortunate adviser is a figure in the histories whom repetition has worn thin, especially as the true Alexander would soon behave as the permanent king of Asia, whereas Parmenion would be put to death, partly perhaps because he mistrusted the very conduct which at Persepolis he was alleged to have advised. Moreover, if the burning had been so carefully planned, the prior garrisoning of Persepolis seems an inconsistent order. ‘It was agreed’, wrote Plutarch, wrongly, ‘that Alexander quickly repented and ordered the fire to be put out.’ There was, therefore, a rival version in which the burning had been a mistake; it too deserves to be considered.
Unlike Ptolemy its author was not a personal friend of Alexander, but within twenty years of the event, he had published a book which often exaggerated, sometimes erred, and was built partly from stories told him by men from Alexander’s army, partly from others’ writings and partly, perhaps, from the evidence of his own eyes. On the night of the burning, he wrote, the King and his Companions had held a banquet; women were present, the wine flowed freely and musicians added to the revelry.
Soothed with the sound, the King grew vain;
Fought all his battles o’er again
And thrice he routed all his foes and thrice he slew the slain.
The Master saw the madness rise…
Among the women sat the lovely Thais, a courtesan from Athens who had followed the army across Asia; when the banquet was far gone, she made a speech, praising Alexander and teasing him, daring him to join her in a revel. It was for the women, she argued, to punish Persia for the sake of Greece, punish her harder than the soldiery, and thus set fire to the hall of Xerxes, sacker of her native Athens. Shouts of applause greeted her words, as the Companions bayed for vengeance on the ruin of Greek temples; Alexander leapt to his feet, a garland on his head, a torch in his hand, and called for a rout to be formed in honour of the god Dionysus.
The jolly god in triumph comes:
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums…
Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure,
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
As lady pipers and flautists encouraged the singing, the guests seized torches and the giddy procession followed Thais up the terrace. At the head of the staircase, first Alexander, then’ Thais flung torches on to the floor of the Hundred-columned Hall; those behind them followed suit, and as the flames rose, pillars caught fire and began to smoulder. Sparks flew across the platform; the common troopers came running from camp, fearing an accident; they arrived to see the beams draw flame and the palace roofs come crashing on to the ground. Persepolis had its own water-supply and a system of drains, but there was no hope of bringing such a blaze under control; Alexander had done more damage than he intended, and sobriety was followed by repentance.
Such was the story, adapted from the original by three authors more than three hundred years later, each in their different ways. A Roman stressed the wine and minimized the woman; two Greeks stressed the woman and the frenzy, staying closer to their common source; centuries later, they gave the cue to Dryden, who stressed the power of music and wrote Alexander’s Feast, one of the finest odes in the English language. The story they shared set the motive of Greek revenge in the background, but it owed nothing to talks with Parmenion or a planned destruction for political ends. What Ptolemy ascribed to resolution others had ascribed to a woman, wine and song. It is from this deep difference that the search for the truth must begin.
Where stories conflict it is tempting to believe the most dramatic, but the tale of Thais, omitted by Alexander’s officers, has often been tried and found wanting: ‘of course’, it has been said, ‘there is no need to believe a word of it’, and ‘naturally, the tale was eagerly repeated by later writers and even finds credence today’. But there is more to Thais than a pretty legend, for history is always human, and behind the burning of Persepolis there lies a very human complication.
Thais, the Athenian, had not joined the Macedonian army for a passing whim; first, she had made sure of her client, and for once, such a private matter happens to be known. In a book on banqueters’ conversation, he is named as none other than Ptolemy, friend of Alexander, historian and future Pharaoh of Egypt; this is a chance reference, but it is confirmed by an inscription which honours a son of Ptolemy and Thais as the winner of a two-horse chariot race in Greece. At once, the mystery takes on a very different aspect, all were agreed that revenge inspired the ruin of Persepolis, but it was Ptolemy who omitted all mention of Thais and explained the affair by a debate between Alexander and Parmenion. Ptolemy, it is known, would alter or suppress history to discredit his personal rivals; what he could do for an enemy, he could surely do so much more for a lady he had loved. After Alexander’s death, he married for political reasons, but Thais had already borne him three children and she was not a mistress to be forgotten. She may even, perhaps, have been watching while her lover wrote up the past. ‘None but the brave, none but the brave deserve the fair…’, how could he ever involve the mother of three of his children in an act of vandalism which even Alexander regretted? Better by far to drop her from the story and replace a moment of intoxication with a sober rebuttal of the dead and discredited Parmenion. By his confident answer. Alexander would seem so sure of his actions, and nobody would guess that the historian’s mistress had been behind the gesture of revenge.
And yet the gesture’s own irrelevance, the prior appointments, the tales of regret and of second thoughts survived to impugn the honesty of his story. Alexander, however tentatively, had begun to doubt his role as Persia’s punisher and it is only too plausible that wine and a woman’s encouragement were needed for an action which he had all but outgrown:
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair
Who caused his care
And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked and sighed again:
At length with love and wine at once opprest
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.
At a time of indecision, the palace burnt down because a future Pharaoh kept a mistress, wine flowed, the woman teased, and another king showed off before her; the burning could be explained in the light of past policy, but three months later, when Alexander was the heir, not the punisher, of Xerxes, it was rightly regretted as an ill-considered error.
Only the lady, it might seem, had escaped from blame for the ruin she had brought about. So, perhaps, it seemed, but slowly and deviously justice came to be done to her name. Ptolemy’s history was too reticent to be widely read, but the author who told her true story was vivid and more to the taste of a Roman public; through Rome, his story passed to medieval Italy, when Ptolemy’s writing had long been ignored. Another Thais, meanwhile, had featured in Roman comedy, as a slave-girl who proved unfaithful to her master; the poet Dante combined the two, and the result deserved a place in Hell. In the Eighth Circle, where the flatterers were scourged by demons, Thais as last found retribution: ‘before we leave this place,’ said Dante’s guide Virgil.
Lean out a little further, that with full
And perfect clearness thou mayest see the face
Of that uncleanly and dishevelled trull
Scratching with filthy nails, alternately standing
upright and crouching in the pool.
That is the harlot Thais. ‘To what degree,’
Her lover asked, ‘have I earned thanks, my love?’
‘O, to a very miracle,’ said she.
And having seen this we have seen enough.
Behind that question and answer lay a finer irony than Dante appreciated: Ptolemy had indeed earned Thais’s thanks, through a delicate silence which had seemed convincing for two thousand years. The Pharaoh repaid his mistress, the firing of Persepolis was removed to the plane of reasoned policy and only through a poet’s confusion was justice done to her name; Thais, at last, was condemned, but poetic justice has never been part of the prose of politics and kings.