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, liis 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.

THREE

CLEITUS :

O let me rot in Macedonian rags

Rather than shine in fashions of the east.

Ay, for the adorations he requires,

Roast my old body in infernal flames

Or let him cage me, like Callisthenes.

Nathaniel Lee, Rival Queens(1677), Act 4.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Like many defiant gestures, the burning of Persepolis was soon to seem outdated. During the following summer, Alexander was to break with the past, a change so notable that it came to be explained by a corresponding change in his character; hence the history of the next three years was told both as Alexander's victory against the tribes of Iran and as his defeat by his own growing pride and indiscipline. Of the two battles, that against himself is more intriguing, for though new strains and conflicts grew with the expedition, history would cast Alexander in the role which suited its preconceptions. The probable truth ran deeper, at times no less dark, at others certainly more subtle.

By the middle of May Alexander had left Persepolis and taken the main road northwards for the 450 miles to Hamadan, expecting to fight a pitched battle before he caught Darius. He was met on the way by 6,000 reinforcements which he had summoned the previous November, and which increased his army to more than 50,000, apart from the treasure-train and ever-increasing baggage. This was a cumbrous force if matters came to a pursuit of Darius rather than an open fight. Darius, however, could not make up his mind. Since Gaugamela he had fled by mountain road to Hamadan with some 10,000 loyal supporters, including his hired Greek troopers, and at first he had stayed his ground in the hope of discord in Alexander's camp. But when his pursuers turned north to hunt him down he planned a flight towards Balkh in Afghanistan, distant home of many noble families of the empire; then, finding that Alexander was approaching too fast, he changed course again and decided to retreat from Hamadan and hold the nearby Caspian Gates with a draft of Scyths and Cadusians. A rumour of this reached Alexander, but neither the Scyths nor Cadusians would stir to the rescue; quarrels, therefore, broke out among Darius's followers. Those with homes near Balkh were determined to retreat there, and so they arrested their king in the fertile plain of modem Khavar, meaning to escape east as fast as they could. Darius's besetting fault had been his irresolution. This now was to cost him his life.