Alexander: Child of a Dream by Valerio Massimo Manfredi Page A

royal cavalry and two steeds were waiting.
Philip was already on his mount. Alexander jumped onto his own horse and they all galloped out of the palace through the open gate.
They rode for several days towards the east, first along the coast, then through the interior, then again on the coast. They! passed Thermal, Apollonia and Amphipolis, stopping at night in small country inns and eating traditional Macedonian food -roast goat’s meat, game, mature sheep’s milk cheese and bread baked in the embers of the fire.
After leaving Amphipolis they started weaving their way up a steep path until, quite suddenly, they saw a desolate landscape there before them. The mountain had been stripped of its wooded cover, and everywhere there were mutilated trunks and carbonized tree stumps. The land, laid bare by the destruction of its greenery, was pitted with excavations in several places and at the entrance to each cave-like hole there stood enormous piles of rubble, like giant anthills.
A relentless drizzle began to fall and the cavalry escort pulled their hoods over their heads as they urged the horses forward. The main bridleway soon forked into a labyrinth of pathways on which a multitude of ragged and emaciated men were walking, their skin darkened and wrinkly, all carrying heavy baskets full of rocks.
A little way beyond, a column of dense black smoke rose into the sky in lazy coils, spreading a thick soot over the entire area which made breathing difficult.
‘Cover your mouth with your cloak,’ Philip abruptly ordered his son.
A strange silence lay everywhere and there was not even any sound from the movement of all those feet, muffled as they were by the thick mud the rain had made of the dust.
Alexander looked around in amazement: this was how he had imagined Hades, the kingdom of the dead, and the sight brought some lines from Homer to mind:
There lie the realm and region of the Men of Winter hidden in mist and cloud. Never the flaming eye of Helios lights on those men at morning, when he climbs the sky of stars, nor in descending earthward out of heaven, ruinous night being rove over those wretches.*
* The Odyssey, Book XI (translated by Robert Fitzgerald).
     
Then, suddenly, the silence was broken by a dark, rhythmic noise, almost like the fist of a giant Cyclops beating monstrously on the tormented slopes of the mountain. Alexander spurred his horse on by digging in his heels; he wanted to see what was making the tremendous noise which now seemed so strong as to make the ground shake.
They came over a rocky crest, and Alexander saw ahead of him the point where all the pathways came to an end. There was a gigantic machine, a sort of tower of large wooden beams and uprights, and it supported a pulley at its highest point. A hemp rope held a colossal drop hammer, made of iron, while at the other end the rope was wrapped around a winch operated by hundreds of poor souls. They pushed the winch to make the rope turn around the drum, thus raising the hammer inside the wooden tower.
When the hammer reached the top, one of the overseers unhooked the brake, freeing the drum of the winch which then spun in the opposite direction because of the weight of the hammer. The hammer fell freely to earth, smashing the rocks that were tipped inside continuously from the baskets carried bodily across the mountain.
The men gathered the smashed mineral material, filled other baskets with it and then took it away along other paths to an open area. Here it was crushed more finely in mortars and then washed in the waters of a torrent, channelled through a series of weirs and ramps, separating the gold granules and dust from the smashed rock.
‘These are the mines of Mount Pangaeos,’ Philip explained. ‘With this gold I have armed and equipped our army, I have built our palaces, I have developed Macedon’s strength.’
‘Why have you brought me here?’ asked Alexander, his profound distress apparent in his voice. While he was asking the