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him.
    My mates and I cross the field, now, at Chaeronea. The knights of the Sacred Band are out front of their position, oiled up and performing their gymnastics like the Spartans at Thermopylae. A better-looking bunch could not be imagined. Even their squires are handsome. Their camp is laid out square as a geometer’s rule. The stacked arms dazzle in the late light.
    We rein-in at half a stone’s toss. I introduce myself and declare for all that Thebes and Macedon should not be fighting each other, but campaigning conjointly against the throne of Persia.
    The Thebans laugh. “Then tell your father to go home!”
    I indicate their camp. “Is this where your post will be tomorrow?”
    â€œPerhaps. Where will yours be?”
    Black Cleitus, it turns out, knows two of the fellows—wrestlers, brothers, from the games at Nemea. They swap tales and catch up on the news. In the midst of this, a striking-looking officer of between forty and fifty years comes out on foot toward me. “Can this indeed be Philip’s son?” he inquires with a smile. He was a friend to my father, he says, introducing himself as Coroneus, son of the general and statesman Pammenes. It was in Pammenes’ house that Philip passed his term as hostage at Thebes. “Your father was fourteen and I was ten,” Coroneus relates. “He used to hold my head underwater and beat my buttocks.”
    I laugh. “He did the same to me!”
    Coroneus motions a handsome lad of twenty forward. “May I present my son?” It seems overformal to remain on horseback; my mates and I dismount. Can it be that we shall be fighting these splendid fellows with the morrow’s sunrise?
    Coroneus’s son is named Pammenes, after his grandfather; a handsome lad in impeccable armor, half a head taller than his father. Sire and heir take station beside each other, fellow knights of the Sacred Band. “This is how we stand in formation,” declares the youth.
    I discover myself fighting tears. The dagger at my waist is Toth steel encrusted with gems; its worth is a talent of silver. I address Coroneus. “My friend, will you accept this from me in gratitude for your care of my father?”
    â€œOnly,” he returns, “if you will take this.” And he gives me the lion’s crest of his breastplate—of cobalt and ivory, inlaid with gold.
    â€œWhat fine gentlemen,” says Hephaestion as we recross the field.
    Here, for your education, Itanes, I must address a question that causes all young officers consternation. I mean the experience of empathy for the foe. Never be ashamed to feel this. It is not unmanly. Indeed, I believe it the noblest demonstration of martial virtue. My father did not. One evening, succeeding the victory at Chaeronea, I chanced to speak with him of this moment with the Theban knight Coroneus. Philip attended closely. “And what, my son, did your heart say in that hour?” He meant to tease me, I could see, not from malice, but to correct my ways, which he believed overly chivalrous. “Did you feel pity for those whom it was your charge to slaughter? Or could you turn your heart to flint, as men say your father does so well?”
    We were home at Pella; the occasion was dinner with Philip’s officers. These now fell attentively silent, turning toward me.
    â€œI felt, Father, that since I was prepared to pay with my own life, so was I sanctioned to take the life of the foe—and that heaven took no exception to this bargain.”
    Murmurs of “Hear, hear!” approved this. “Indeed,” my father observed with a laugh, “Achilles himself could not have answered more in the ancient spirit. But tell me, my son, how will Achilles of old fare in our modern era’s corrupt and inglorious affrays?”
    â€œHe will elevate them, Father, by his virtue and by the purity of his purpose. And where he stands, even in this degraded latter day,