Darius in the Shadow of Alexander by Pierre Briant

Author:Pierre Briant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

The King Is Thirsty, the King Drinks!

Nonetheless, several vignettes also depict Great Kings in a situation of distress, if only for the needs of the authors of collections of exempla. And here again, more direct comparisons can be made to the story about Alexander. The question is always the same, but it is raised in terms specific to the Great Kings: How will a king accustomed to such plenty and luxury, reserved exclusively for him, react if for some reason he cannot have access to them? Seneca condemned Cambyses, who, under the worst conditions of hunger and thirst imposed on his soldiers, continued calmly to enjoy delicacies and the splendor of his precious serving dishes.76 Another monarchical fable concerns Artaxerxes II:

Against the Cadusians … he made an expedition in person, with three hundred thousand footmen and ten thousand horses. But the country which he penetrated was rough and hard to traverse, abounded in mists, and produced no grains, although its pears and apples and other such tree-fruits supported warlike and courageous populations. Unawares, therefore, he became involved in great distress and peril. For no food was to be got in the country or imported from outside, and they could only butcher their beasts of burden, so that an ass’s head was scarcely to be bought for sixty drachmas. Moreover, the king’s dinner was not served; and of their horses only a few were left, the rest having been consumed for food. (Plutarch, Artaxerxes, 24.2–3)

The phrase Plutarch uses—“the king’s dinner was not served”—implies that royal meals had to be prepared by the rules, wherever the king happened to be. But unlike Cambyses, Artaxerxes does not persist in his luxury next to soldiers in abject poverty. On the contrary, he is praised for his qualities as a leader of men, which he demonstrates on the return marches:

And the king now made it plain that cowardice and effeminacy are not always due to luxury and extravagance, as most people suppose, but to a base and ignoble nature under the sway of evil doctrines. For neither gold nor robe of state nor the twelve thousand talents’ worth of adornment which always enveloped the person of the king prevented him from undergoing toils and hardships like an ordinary soldier; no, with his quiver girt upon him and his shield on his arm he marched in person at the head of his troops, over precipitous mountain roads, abandoning his horse, so that the rest of the army had wings given them and felt their burdens lightened when they saw his ardour and vigour; for he made daily marches of two stadia and more. (24.5–6)

Here Artaxerxes could easily be mistaken for Alexander. The virtues of the leader are lauded in the same words that appear in many anecdotes praising the Macedonian. Like Alexander in Gedrosia, Artaxerxes abandoned his horse and marched in the lead with the common soldiers.77 The result is the same: the king communicates his exemplary energy and enthusiasm to the troops. In this case,

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