From 330 b.c. Alexander transformed his court by adopting a number of court personnel and practices from the Achaemenids. This included the adoption by the king of a mixed Persian and Macedonian royal costume, proskynēsis, Persian spear-bearers and certain Persian officers, such as the chiliarch and the chief usher (εἰσαγγελεύς).Footnote 1 But Alexander also used an imposing tent and an audience style modelled on that of the Great King. It is my intention here to investigate the Persian-style tent of Alexander and the two court offices called the chiliarch and chief usher, associated with the king's new audience-style.
A glimpse of the ceremonial splendour of the transformation of Alexander's court occurs in Athenaeus' description of the audience style of Alexander in his Persian tent. The account is most probably derived from the lost history of Chares through Phylarchus, and deserves to be quoted in full (Ath. 12.539e = Phylarchus, FGrHist 81 F 41.20):
ἦν γὰρ αὐτοῦ ἡ σκηνὴ κλινῶν ρʹ, χρυσοῖ δὲ κίονες νʹ κατεῖχον αὐτήν. οἱ δὲ ὑπερτείνοντες οὐρανίσκοι διάχρυσοι ποικίλμασιν ἐκπεπονημένοι πολυτελέσιν ἐσκέπαζον τὸν ἄνω τόπον. καὶ πρῶτοι μὲν Πέρσαι φ´ μηλοφόροι περὶ αὐτὴν ἐντὸς εἱστήκεσαν πορφυραῖς καὶ μηλίναις ἐσθῆσιν ἐξησκημένοι· μετὰ δὲ τούτους τοξόται τὸν ἀριθμὸν χίλιοι, οἱ μὲν φλόγινα ἐνδεδυκότες, οἱ δὲ ὑσγινοβαφῆ, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ κυάνεα εἶχον περιβόλαια. προειστήκεσαν δὲ τούτων ἀργυράσπιδες Μακεδόνες πεντακόσιοι. κατὰ δὲ μέσην τὴν σκηνὴν χρυσοῦς ἐτίθετο δίφρος, ἐφ᾿ οὗ καθήμενος ἐχρημάτιζεν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος τῶν σωματοφυλάκων πανταχόθεν ἐφεστηκότων.
The tent of Alexander had one hundred couches and was supported by fifty golden pillars; gilded canopies, stretched out and wrought with very costly embroidery, covered the upper area of the tent. Inside, around it, stood, first of all, the five hundred Persians called the ‘apple-bearers’, adorned with purple and quince-yellow costumes. After them, there were archers to the number of a thousand: some wore flame-coloured garments, others ones of scarlet, and many also had dark-blue mantles. At the head of these were five hundred Macedonians, the Silvershields. A golden throne was placed in the middle of the tent, upon which Alexander used to seat himself and hold court, with his bodyguards standing close on all sides.
The historian Chares of Mytilene, a contemporary of Alexander, had given his extended account of this same structure at the point in his narrative where he described the banquet after the mass marriages at Susa (324).Footnote 2 Chares is likely to be the ultimate source of Phylarchus.Footnote 3 We encounter descriptions of the same royal tent of Alexander in Polyaenus and Aelian. Polyaenus adds a crucial detail: in this manner and in this tent Alexander conducted his court of justice when he was in the lands of the Bactrians, the Hyrcanians and the Indians.Footnote 4 That is clearly in the period after 330 b.c., and gives an important date from which the tent was used. But Alexander had already captured Darius' tent in 333 b.c. in the aftermath of the battle at Issus, and we might speculate that he had been using it earlier than 330 b.c., though the direct evidence is lacking.Footnote 5 The Great King had traditionally employed an awe-inspiring tent while on the road, which included private and public areas.Footnote 6 The tent used by Xerxes in Greece, for instance, was eventually captured by the Spartans.Footnote 7 H. von Gall has shown that the Persian royal tent was explicitly designed to recreate the audience style of the apadana in the Persepolis palace. The one hundred columns in that hall corresponded to the fifty golden pillars of Alexander's tent, which was of a smaller size than the tent used by Xerxes.Footnote 8
Whether Alexander routinely began to use the great tent captured from Darius—or, at the very least, a type of tent clearly modelled on itFootnote 9 —from Issus or not, he certainly did so from some point after the Great King's death, according to Polyaenus (Strat. 4.3.24). In Bactria, for instance, an officer called Proxenus was in charge of pitching the king's tent, possibly the Persian-style tent known from Chares.Footnote 10 While in India, Alexander attempted to impress Porus by erecting his tent on the riverbank in view of the enemy, with ‘all the magnificent royal apparatus’ displayed—a statement that strongly suggests a reformed Persian-style tent.Footnote 11 A similar but far less impressive tent was erected on the decks of two ships after Alexander was injured at the Malli town (Curt. 9.6.1). According to Herodotus (1.99), the Persian royal tradition, as taken from the Medes, was to isolate the king from ordinary people: business was generally conducted through messengers, so that the king would not be visible to his subjects. This increasing isolation of the king from his subjects was also a characteristic of Alexander's evolving royal protocol, and no doubt explains why he now required an army of staff-bearers, chamberlains and ushers, whose presence was soon to become a cause of bitter resentment by the Macedonians (Plut. Alex. 51.1–2).
It is notable that in the various descriptions of the bodyguards Alexander employed when in the Persian royal tent we find five hundred Persians called the μηλοφόροι (‘apple-bearers’). The Achaemenid kings normally had a bodyguard of one thousand spear-bearers called the ‘apple-bearers’, who were chosen from the ten thousand Immortals (Ath. 12.514b–c), so it is obvious that these are derived from the Persian court.Footnote 12 Diodorus (17.77.4) states that Alexander had a guard of ‘spear-bearers’ who were distinguished Persian nobles, including Oxyathres, Darius’ brother,Footnote 13 and it may have been these Persians who were members of the μηλοφόροι. But Athenaeus' account, as cited above, makes it perfectly clear that the Iranian μηλοφόροι were reduced to five hundred in number when in Alexander's tent, and were subordinate to the Macedonian bodyguards. The inference that they were essentially a ceremonial corps seems convincing, as Alexander continued to rely on his Macedonians as his closest and most important σωματοφύλακες.
Another important issue related to Alexander's court ceremonial and the royal tent is proskynēsis. The act of proskynēsis most probably did not need to be imposed on his Eastern subjects by force, but was accepted by Alexander as a reflexive action by former subjects of the Great King accustomed to such etiquette, even if the Macedonians and the Greeks were excused from its performance after 327 b.c. owing to their bitter hostility.Footnote 14 Under the Achaemenids, a court official called the chiliarch (or in Old Persian the hazarapatiš) had supervised proskynēsis, controlled access to the king and had actually commanded the court guard of μηλοφόροι, who, as we have seen, were present in Alexander's audiences in his Persian-style tent. We are explicitly told by Diodorus Siculus that ‘the post and rank of chiliarch had been brought to fame and glory under the Persian kings. Afterwards, under Alexander it again gained great power and honour when he became an admirer of all other Persian customs' (Diod. Sic. 18.48.4–5). Alexander had either (1) adopted this office and merged it with the command of the companion cavalry held by Hephaestion or (2) introduced it as a separate court office. In either case it was held by Hephaestion.Footnote 15 The latter's presence by the king's side at the regular receptions held in the royal tent, during the pomp and ceremony of the king's audiences, was very probably as Alexander's Persian-style chiliarch to supervise Eastern visitors and their performance of proskynēsis.Footnote 16 It is quite likely that Hephaestion can already be seen performing this role during Alexander's famous private proskynēsis symposium (Plut. Alex. 54.5–6).Footnote 17 Alexander's desire for obeisance was no doubt behind the introduction of an Achaemenid-style chiliarch, and a hint of this can be found in Arrian's explicit linkage of the court reforms from 330 b.c. with proskynēsis (Anab. 4.9.9). At this point, Alexander came to promote a group of close supporters and companions, whom Heckel usefully labels the ‘new men’.Footnote 18 Hephaestion was a prominent member of this circle, and, although the group had differing opinions of Alexander's ‘orientalism’, Hephaestion was the strongest supporter of these policies: Plutarch states explicitly that Hephaestion approved of and followed Alexander's adoption of Persian practices, and Alexander employed him in his business with barbarians.Footnote 19 This latter role is most probably one of the functions of Hephaestion's court chiliarchy, along with the command of the ceremonial Persian μηλοφόροι, his supervising of proskynēsis and the control of oriental subjects during audiences.
A second Persian court-official appears to be associated with the new ceremonial style at Alexander's court: the εἰσαγγελεύς. Chares of Mytilene, the author of a lost history of Alexander, is referred to by Plutarch as the king's εἰσαγγελεύς (Plut. Alex. 46.2).Footnote 20 This latter term referred to the functionary who introduced visitors to the Great King. The office's Old Persian name was plausibly reconstructed by W. Hinz as the *viθapatiš.Footnote 21 The functions of the post are elucidated by Herodotus' account of Darius' accession, where we learn that one of the rights that the Persian noblemen who had plotted with Darius had received was to obtain an audience with the king without an εἰσαγγελεύς in attendance (Hdt. 3.84). The office continued to be attested in later Achaemenid history: the εἰσαγγελεύς of Cyrus the Younger appears to have been one Gadatas,Footnote 22 and Diodorus' account of Artaxerxes' attack on Egypt (in 351 b.c.) mentions a general by the name of Aristazanes who was the royal εἰσαγγελεύς (Diod. Sic. 16.47.3).Footnote 23 Both Jacoby and Berve dated Chares' appointment as εἰσαγγελεύς to the time at which the general Persian court-reforms of Alexander were introduced (c.330/329 b.c.), and there seems no good reason to reject this conjecture.Footnote 24
Before the introduction of the εἰσαγγελεύς, it appears that Alexander's seven σωματοφύλακες performed the function of introducing visitors.Footnote 25 Since the bodyguards still fulfilled this role in late 330 b.c. during the conspiracy of Philotas,Footnote 26 it is not implausible to think that Chares' services—just like those of Hephaestion as chiliarch—were mainly used during Alexander's formal audiences with foreigners to impress them with his new court ceremonial, rather than during the ordinary contact he had with Macedonians and Greeks while on campaign. On the basis of the Persepolis reliefs, P.J. Junge argued that the εἰσαγγελεύς was the official who supervised the staff-bearing attendants (σκηπτοῦχοι) who served the Great King by following him when he left the palace, and passing messages to petitioners (Xen. Cyr. 8.3.19).Footnote 27 The σκηπτοῦχοι may be identical with the ῥαβδοῦχοι,Footnote 28 and, according to Diodorus, Alexander had, around 330 b.c., employed these very officials (ῥαβδούχους Ἀσιαγενεῖς).Footnote 29 Our evidence, then, suggests that Chares was a ‘chief usher’, who directed the Asian staff-bearers in Alexander's court, perhaps in the official receptions, and in particular during the audiences held in the Persian-style tent.
To conclude, Alexander developed a grandiose audience-style after 330 b.c. and his magnificent Persian-style tent was a central element of that court ceremonial. Along with this came the ‘apple-bearers’ (μηλοφόροι) and new court-personnel appropriate to the splendour of Alexander's receptions. The chiliarch Hephaestion and the chief usher Chares held Persian offices that were related to the audiences of Alexander and his demand for proskynēsis, practices which tended to increase his isolation from his subjects and which were befitting to his new status as king of Asia.
