Bullheaded Black Remembers Alexander: The Story of Alexander the Great's Invasion of the Middle East

Copyright 2004 J.L. Taylor. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Note for Librarians: a cataloguing record for this book that includes Dewey Decimal Classification and US Library of Congress numbers is available from the Library and Archives of Canada. The complete cataloguing record can be obtained from their online database at: www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html ISBN 1-4120-3286-5

Offices in Canada, USA, Ireland, UK and Spain This book was published on-demand in cooperation with Trafford Publishing. On-demand publishing is a unique process and service of making a book available for retail sale to the public taking advantage of on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing. On-demand publishing includes promotions, retail sales, manufacturing, order fulfilment, accounting and collecting royalties on behalf of the author. Book sales for North America and international: Trafford Publishing, 6E-2333 Government St.,

Victoria, BC V8T 4P4 CANADA phone 250 383 6864 (toll-free 1 888 232 4444) fax 250 383 6804; email to orders@trafford.com Book sales in Europe: Trafford Publishing (UK) Ltd., Enterprise House, Wistaston Road Business Centre, Wistaston Road, Crewe, Cheshire CW2 7RP UNITED KINGDOM phone 01270 251 396 (local rate 0845 230 9601) facsimile 01270 254 983; orders.uk@trafford.com Order online at: www.trafford.com/robots/04-1113.html

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Contents

PREFACE

CHAPTER ONE    PEGASUS ENTERTAINS A STRANGER

CHAPTER TWO    WHAT’S IN A NAME?

CHAPTER THREE    LOWER AND LOWER

CHAPTER FOUR     HIGHER AND HIGHER

CHAPTER FIVE    HEPH, ALEX AND ARI

Chapter Six    Aristotle

Chapter Seven    The Last Day Of School

Chapter Eight    Monarch In Spite Of Himself

Chapter Nine    The Gordian Knot

Chapter Ten    Battle Of The Titans

Chapter Eleven    Magic Egypt

Chapter Twelve    Babylon

Chapter Thirteen    Hunting Down Darius

Chapter Fourteen    Bullheaded Black Looks For Hades

Tying It All Together

About the Author

For De

and

For Joseph and Josephine Taylor

The Greek Colonies in the Mediterranean Sea

Greece in relation to Europe & N. Africa

PREFACE

If you pick up this book you may already be wondering why a stallion is retelling the story of Alexander the Great. ‘Alex, as the famous military genius is referred to in the text, would have enjoyed the idea. He loved Bucephalus, or Bullheaded Black" as I call him, and eventually built a splendid tomb for the horse when it perished during the final battle of a campaign in India. After all, the two of them had been together from the time Alexander was a teenager.

Permitting Bullheaded Black to recall famous events allows some freedom on my part to cut history to its bare bones—to touch upon the highlights of the story, but also to leave a little room for common sense, horse sense if you will, about the man and his times, his faults, his passions, his dreams, and his spectacular achievements.

In other words, a good story is a good story. But shouldn’t people who read about Alexander be somewhat curious about the major influences on Alexander’s mind? As narrator, Bullheaded Black points out, for example, what should be rather obvious to everyone but what plain history invariably neglects: the importance of the conflicting viewpoints of Olympias, Alexander’s mother,and of Aristotle, his personal tutor.

The main outline of the book is based upon principal events common to any biography of Alexander the Great. Since he invaded the entire Middle East, and since that part of the world is so important in current events, it is enlightening to follow the progress of the conquest with a modern map of the region in hand. Most of the names have changed, but in some ways this makes the story more interesting. It is also important to realize that Alexander lived at a center point in Western Civilization; and to clearly illustrate this I have placed a brief chronology of major events at the end of the book.

Despite the horrors of war that he was responsible for, Alexander championed some unusual ideas for his time: the union of civilized nations, international trade, peace, even some experiments with democracy when he freed the Greek colonies in Asia Minor [Turkey] from Persia [Iran]. He also had the courage, against the will of his army, to advance religious tolerance and racial equality in the various regions he conquered. These dreams perished with him in Babylon, when in 323BC he died unexpectedly at the age of 33, some say from a combination of malaria and overindulgence in wine after a prolonged celebration.

Before there was Christianity, there was Alexander! Before there was Islam, there was Alexander!

Unfortunately for the world, however, dreams like his did not flower profusely again until 1776 in the New World. Surely he would have been astonished to learn that today religious freedom and individual liberty only exist as green tendrils in much of the Middle East, sprouting here and there precariously following the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

CHAPTER ONE

PEGASUS ENTERTAINS A STRANGER

What am I doing up here sitting on this cloud? a black stallion wondered out loud. ‘And why do I have wings? Horses don’t fly!" He was facing a white stallion who unfolded his own set of wings as if to say what makes you think that you know everything?

Who are you? the black horse asked, his eyes wide with curiosity.

The name is Pegasus, and horses do have wings when they live in the sky. How else could we get around?

I don’t know. But this high up in the air, I am not going to argue with you. Wings make one feel safer. That’s for sure. But who would think that a horse could grow feathers?

You haven’t noticed the view yet, Pegasus chided the stranger, ignoring this last comment, largely because he had no logical explanation for horse feathers either. Isn’t everything from up here clearer and more beautiful?

Clearer than what? More beautiful than what?

Than down there where you came from. I’ve never seen you up here before. Were you some human’s horse?

A few tears stained each side of the black animal’s handsome face. He sniffled and snorted a little. I don’t like it up here. Earth is the right place for living. It could never be the same any place else.

Humph, Pegasus snorted. You sound like some earthbound poet, probably some negative person named after the snow or the frost or some other trivial thing. I can’t believe what limited viewpoints horses and people have in your mortal world. Don’t you know that Heaven is more important than Earth? Everyone should believe that or should be forced to believe it.

I don’t believe it. I would rather have my feet on the ground anytime.

Well, just where down there is it, that you think was such a perfect place to live? Was it the sea? Were you a sea horse?

Don’t be foolish. Sea horses don’t belong to humans, and they aren’t as big as I am. You don’t know very much about actual facts, do you now?

I don’t care about facts. What good are they to anyone? What is real is often nothing. What you believe is often everything. But go ahead if you want to. I don’tmind if you give me a few facts about yourself, although there is no way you could be important in the greater scheme of things. Tell me who you are and where you came from. But please be brief about it.

The black stallion eagerly, almost desperately, took advantage of the invitation to talk about himself. See those islands directly below us that look like stepping stones in the wine-dark sea? I’ve been on those. Seen them up close. I’ve seen red flowers and silver grass and blue dragonflies. I’ve seen moths with white and black markings on their wings that look like eyes. I’ve seen yellow, spotted frogs, even the pink insides of frogs, for that matter—a lot of details and things that you can’t see up here. And not to brag about it, but I’ve seen the most important cities in the civilized world. The Greek mainland and the islands below this cloud, as much as I respect them, don’t happen to be everything in the world.

To me they are, Pegasus replied. I happen to know that the Greeks are the only humans favored by Heaven, except maybe for a few neighboring people who share their religious beliefs. No one else is worth caring about, not to anyone I know who is of any importance up here.

The black horse snorted with surprise and rolled his eyes a little. He knew from personal experience that

Pegasus was wrong about people who were not Greeks, about people of other races from different countries, about some people being more important than others in the eyes of Heaven, whatever that was supposed to mean. A stubborn streak that was basic to his nature rose quickly to the surface, despite his fear of his new surroundings. He decided to tease Pegasus, this great, white-winged stallion who seemed to speak with such authority about things in the sky.

I’ve been everywhere, horse. I’ve been everywhere, the black horse began to sing, much to the annoyance of Pegasus, who was halfheartedly trying to remember some of the places in the world he himself had personally seen, places he had been sent to on special assignments. Except for regions in or near the Aegean Sea, he had to admit to himself that he had never traveled very far—oh, except of course to a Greek colony here or there in the Mediterranean. And once he had been to Byzantium, one of the colonies on the doorway to the Black Sea. But that was about it, and he didn’t mind acknowledging to the stranger that whenever he had flown down to the earth he had never cared very much for the place. He had out of curiosity sipped a little water from some of the sacred Greek streams, but he had never taken the time to smell a flower or even to taste a convenient grass, as some earthly poet might some day put it. Green wasn’t his favorite color, and he was certain without tasting it thateven the youngest blades in