Books: The Untidy Legacy of Alexander

FUNERAL GAMES by Mary Renault; Pantheon; 335 pages; $14.50

Mary Renault, born Mary Challans 76 years ago in London, is regarded as one of the world’s leading historical novelists. From Cape Town, South Africa, where she has lived since 1948, Renault looks back to antiquity where history, legend and myth rocked in the same cradle. The King Must Die, her most widely known book, is also her best, because it leaves the reader with the illusion of having attended the birth of Western consciousness. Theseus was the narrator, and civilization was only a gleam on his sword.

A writer of Renault’s re-creative powers had little difficulty moving from Theseus, mythical founder of a unified Attica, to Alexander the Great, who spread the seed of Hellenism across Asia Minor, North Africa and the brow of India. In Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy, Renault took the most romantic of all military heroes from his beginnings as son of Philip of Macedon through his glories as youthful conqueror.

Funeral Games ends the trilogy. The novel opens in 323 B.C. with Alexander, 33, dying of swamp fever in a Babylonian palace. Renault guides us through the property, noting its special features and listing the previous owners. Her description could be a model for Beverly Hills realtors: “Nebuchadrezzar’s bedroom, once ponderously Assyrian, had been Pesianized by successive kings from Kyros on. Kambyses had hung its walls with the trophies of conquered Egypt; Darius the Great had sheathed its columns with gold and malachite: Xerxes had pegged across one side the embroidered robe of Athene, looted from the Parthenon.”

Such loaded passages are frequently necessary to keep the reader oriented in ancient history. Characters, many related by polygamy, swarm out of the giltwork and malachite. All have their ambitions, dreams and passions. One of the refreshments of Renault’s ancient world is the absence of modern psychology. All that is needed to define the cast are the seven deadly sins, mainly wrath, avarice, envy and, above all, pride.

In death Alexander is still an untamed force of nature. During his own time, many believed that he was more divine than human, and he may have believed that too. For all his military genius and energy, this bold, danger-loving man does not appear to have given serious thought to the consequences of an early death. He ruled a sprawling network of satrapies largely through the power of his personality. There were no heirs to the empire, though two of his wives were pregnant when he died.

Even the unborn are participants in the “funeral games,” the author’s euphemism for the power struggles that began with Alexander’s first death rattles. The events of the book cover four decades and include 45 “Principal Persons” whom the author lists and identifies in a handy program preceding the action. The first strong move is made by Perdikkas, who becomes No. 2 man in the empire after the death of Hephaistion. He was figuratively and literally Alexander’s comrade-in-arms. Not of the blood, Perdikkas seeks to rule as regent until Alexander’s as yet unborn offspring come of age.

But not so fast. Back in Macedon, where men are men and some women are too, an athletic teen-ager named Eurydike is practicing her javelin toss and dreaming of asserting a claim to the throne. Eurydike is the granddaughter of Philip II; her grandmother was an Illyrian warrior whom Philip wed to seal a peace treaty. Renault handles the matter discreetly: “The lady would not have been his choice for her own sake; she was comely, but he had trouble remembering which sex he was in bed with.”

Of course, the great symbolic marriage during the Age of Alexander was between the rough-riding culture of Macedonia and Thrace and the silkier Persians and other Orientals. Alexander subdued them all, but he also succumbed to their styles.

In a general way, Eurydike represents the dashing and wild West and Perdikkas the exotic and clever East. She marries but does not couple with Alexander’s retarded brother, a large sweet creature who can be made to look and sound kingly for brief ceremonial occasions. Perdikkas attempts to juggle alliances from his headquarters in the East. They and other contenders meet bad ends. There are decades of wars, treacheries and murders. One of the great villains turns out to be Alexander’s mother Olympias, a virago famous for her grudges and knowledge of toxicology.

Throughout this turmoil one hardly notices the single truly successful player in Funeral Games. Ptolemy, staff officer and reputed half-brother of Alexander, shuns the immediate scramble for a fumbled empire. He assumes, instead, a dignified role as royal undertaker, removing himself and Alexander’s body to safe and cultivated Egypt. There, the hero’s spirit lives on in the city of Alexandria, Ptolemy writes a history of his times and founds a dynasty that lasts until the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C.

The principal problem that Renault faces in concluding her trilogy is that she must do so without her hero. In Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy, Alexander the Not Yet Great and Alexander the Great held the spotlight and spurred the action. In Funeral Games it is his absence that motivates events. Yet the novelist-historian has done a fine job in focusing nearly half a century of chaos. Her prose, as usual, has an Attic clarity; her research is sound and her imagined scenes cenotaphs. Lacking the actual remains, they convey the unparalleled aura of Alexander and his time.

—By R.Z. Sheppard

EXERPT

“His spirit sank like the altar fire when the fuel was low.’Shall we see it? Will a new Xerxes come?’The Chaldean shook his head.’A dying, not a killing. Another citywill rise and ours will wane. It is under the sign of the King.”Will he live, then, after all?”He is dying, as I told you. But hissign is walking along the constellations, further than we can reckon in years. You will not see it settingin your day.'”