Volume 10 177
midst of the wreckage of war. Yet he too seems un-
affected. In fact, he is so nonchalant the speaker
wonders if the soldier is drunk. Despite these cir-
cumstances, the soldier offers a cogent reply:
“Friends,” he said, “the great
Battle of Granicus
Has just been won
By all of the Greeks except
The Lacedaemonians and
Myself: this is a joke
Between me and a man
Named Alexander, whom
All of you ba-bas
Will hear of as a god.”
This section of the poem firmly plants it within
a specific historical period. The reference to
Alexander is of Alexander the Great (356–323
B.C.), son of Philip, King of Macedon and con-
queror of the civilized world. After his father’s as-
sassination in 336 B.C., Alexander ascended the
throne while suppressing his rivals in Greece and
razing the city of Thebes. Then, setting out from
Ilium (formerly Troy)—a choice deliberately made
as a romantic nod to the Homeric epic—Alexander
began a campaign to conquer the Mediterranean
front of the Persian Empire. By his death in 323
B.C., Alexander had succeeded in conquering land
as far east as India. He also founded several towns,
most notably the city of Alexandria. Alexander is
credited with extending Greek civilization to the
East, and his reign is considered to have ushered
in the Hellenistic Age of territorial kingdoms.
The soldier’s reference to the Battle of Grani-
cus identifies the first battle (334 B.C.) in Alexan-
der’s Persian campaign. At the time he crossed the
Dardanelles, Alexander commanded about 30,000
foot soldiers and over 5,000 cavalry, of whom
nearly 14,000 were Macedonians and about 7,000
Greek allies. At the Granicus (modern Kocabas)
River Alexander encountered Persian troops, and
after nearly falling prey to the Persian attempt to
lure him across the river and kill him, Alexander
was victorious. However, the battle resulted in a
slaughter of Greek mercenaries and an incarcera-
tion of 2,000 other soldiers who were then returned
to Macedonia.
It is likely that, making reference to the battle
being a victory for “all of the Greeks except the
Lacedaemonians and myself,” the soldier is refer-
ring to this massacre of Greeks. The soldier does
not elaborate on the circumstances; however, he
presents himself as being in a private joke with
Alexander and that the fate of others hung in the
balance. Consequently the reader is led wonder if
the soldier is Darius, leader of the mercenaries.
This interpretation would explain the soldier’s
wry attitude regarding Alexander, especially as
Alexander would continue to pursue his Persian
campaign. After prevailing at Granicus Alexander
was greeted with open arms by many cities, and
tyrants were thrown out and replaced by democra-
cies. As a result Alexander’s fame and legend con-
tinued to grow.
Further illustrating his wry attitude, the soldier
calls the speaker and his companions “ba-bas”, im-
plying that they are somehow naive (even the sound
“ba-bas” echoes the sound made by a sheep, and
by extension suggests the “sheep mentality“of con-
formity). It is already expected that Alexander’s
fame will spread, that he will be described as god-
like, and will be revered by the masses: but the sol-
dier knows the more complicated realities of war.
In the context of the speaker, the assumptions
of the soldier cannot go unchallenged. The soldier’s
view of the speaker may be that of a naive man in
the countryside. Yet the speaker has already proven
himself to be skeptical. He is decidedly unim-
pressed by the “official acts” of those in power. The
speaker is more likely to share the soldier’s sar-
donic view of Alexander’s victories, and probably
would not revere Alexander as others would. Even
the title of the poem, “How We Heard the Name”
has a detached quality to it, for Alexander is not
even cited directly; his is just a name like any other.
However, the mention of “the name” also has a
larger-than-life, even foreboding, quality to it.
The reader is left to wonder how the speaker
did, in fact, come to know “the name” and what it
meant to him. More likely than not, the speaker’s
life was altered irrevocably by being absorbed in-
to Alexander’s growing empire. Therefore, the
speaker would have been directly affected by theHow We Heard the NameA river, like time, is
always moving. A river has
literally washed away the
remnants of a battle, and
over time the emotional
impact of the battle will
diminish.”