Cleitus the Black was one of
Alexander the Great’s generals and one of his closest friends. He had saved
Alexander’s life in battle by severing some warrior’s arm an instant before it was
about to sever Alexander’s head. The online sources tell us that, “In 328 BC
Artabazus resigned his satrapy of Bactria, and Alexander gave it to Cleitus.”
During a banquet to celebrate, Cleitus and Alexander got in an argument.
Everyone was raging drunk, and Alexander announced a sudden change in plans. He
would put Cleitus in command of a large contingent of Greek mercenaries to go
attack some nomads to the east. Cleitus
was outraged and they had an argument, in the course of which Alexander beaned
Cleitus with an apple, the image that starts the poem. For historical reasons
that remain unclear, this only escalated the argument. Cleitus was hustled out
of the banquet hall, came storming back in, and Alexander killed him with a
spear through his heart. Oops! Alexander was very sorry and was close to
suicide in his grief.
Ralph Waldo Emerson notes in one
of his essays that reading about the ancient Greeks you’re struck by how they
seem such a pack of unruly boys. (Except with real spears and shields instead
of sticks and garbage can lids.) When I was an unruly boy, all in Greek-like high-testosterone
good spirits, I beaned close friends and sometimes my brothers with dirt clods,
rocks, door knobs, odd pieces of wood, shingles, bricks, snowballs, horse
droppings, chunks of scrap metal, live fish, and apples of course, and I shot a
few with my BB gun. But I always came up short of killing any of them. There’s
one of the main differences between boys of my generation and Alexander the
Great. Alexander was on the front end of a rising Western civilization, and
perhaps we’re here past the peak as it accelerates into decline. You can discern
a symmetry of sorts: our weaponry is becoming more and more widespread and it
follows naturally that it’s being used more and more—not spears but guns, and
genuine bullets are replacing toys and apples to much more lethal effect.
Henry has little to say about
this incident in the great Historical Pageant. Society wide, our grief mirrors
Alexander’s.
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