In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great
Page 59
Each production has at least one enigmatic individual attached to its story. Thanks to a reference in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae relating to the Journal extract (T3, T4), we have Diodotus of Erythrae who was cited as one of the compilers of the official court diaries, the Ephemerides, working we assume under Alexander’s archigrammateus (chief clerk), Eumenes of Cardia, who was also cited as its compiler.7 Diodotus was never mentioned again; he is a human hapax legomenon, a single textual occurrence (as was Evagoras who was named as secretary of the huge Indus-Hydaspes fleet) – it seems the histories bypassed intelligence, surveying and clerical staff unless they appeared in a military capacity.8 But if Athenaeus’ text came down to us from the single corrupted manuscript that was transferred from Constantinople to Vienna in 1423 by the Italian historian, Giovanni Aurispa, then rather than ‘Diodotus’, a ‘Diognetus’ of Ethyrae, one of the known bematistes (map makers) on campaign, may well be our man.9
In support of the existence of the Pamphlet and its circulation in the Successor Wars – a scholar-backed theory born of its clear political designs and dissimilarity to the rest of the Romance – Plutarch gave us Hagnothemis who apparently first heard of its detail and Aristotle’s alleged involvement in the conspiracy to poison Alexander (T9, T10).10 Additionally, we have Holcias who allegedly read the Will aloud to the gathered megistoi, the most powerful generals at Alexander’s bedside at the morning of his death. Never previously mentioned in the campaign histories, Holcias was sufficiently important to the Pamphlet author to be cited as inheriting the governorship of Illyria (T1, T2).11
The obscurity of these individuals has cast doubts over the authenticity of both productions, for surely these notable men, here briefly illuminated like motes caught in a sunbeam, ought to have appeared more frequently in the campaign accounts. But we have noted the pernicious power of the pen: able to ink in an ally to the pantheon of history or whiteout an opponent to the exile of anonymity.
THE BOOK OF DEATH: PAMPHLET PARTISAN PINPOINTING
The content of the enigmatic Will-citing Pamphlet is believed to be best preserved (in the final chapter of the third book) in Recension A (the oldest) of the Greek Alexander Romance (T2) as well as its later redactions, but it is also fulsomely detailed at the conclusion to the Metz Epitome to which it did not originally belong (T1).12 A later corrupted and even briefer reference to the Will (likely sourced from the Romance) remains in the Excerpta Latina Barbari, an 8th century poor Latin translation of the earlier anonymous 5th century Greek Kronika Alexandrina; it stated: ‘When he was close to death, Alexander left a testament, that each of his officers should rule in their individual provinces, as Alexander had instructed, as follows…’13
We do not know when the first edition of what is otherwise known as a Pseudo-Callisthenes production entered circulation; the more historical and less fabulous parent of Romance archetype ‘α’ was possibly written some fifty years to one hundred years after Alexander’s death when all the necessary ingredients had been established.14 Neither do we know exactly when the detail from the Pamphlet first entered the Romance – whether soon after its genesis, as the so-called Liber de Urbibus Alexandri appears to have done with its pro-Ptolemaic list of cities – or if it was swept up much later, as it was into the 3rd century Metz Epitome.15 A possible clue is a papyrus dating to the Ptolemaic period (ca. 100 BCE) and it houses a further fragment of the Will without any Romance attachments.16 But once the Romance did absorb the earlier political document, much didactic filler was inevitably built around its original content. But the key elements comprising the archetypal Pamphlet are not difficult to pinpoint, for any obvious thaumata, marvels, would have hamstrung its focused political and military aims in the Successor Wars.
One ‘marvel’ attached to the description of Alexander’s death we see in the Romance may have existed in the original political Pamphlet. Taking the form of a gruesome prodigy – which may have served to represent the imminent treachery of Alexander’s men – a half-child, half-beast, was brought to the king. Its description recalls the monstrous sea-goddess Scylla from Greek mythology, a composite animal resonant of the cheetah-serpent-eagle-like sirrush symbolising Babylonian Marduk. Here the top human part of the body was dead but the limbs of the animals were still alive, thus it was potentially meant to imply that Alexander’s men had killed their host.17 And though this detail looks more convincingly like a later intruder, we will soon discover (below) that superstition and the portentous played a significant role in the psyche of the time, concerning soldiers in particular.
Whether original or not, what comes next is the clear central intent of the Pamphlet author, or authors: a description of the plot to poison Alexander in Babylon, with an outline of the political background as well as the means and the motive. It was Alexander’s chief cupbearer (archioinochooi) Iolaos, the son of the presiding Macedonian regent, Antipater, who handed him the poisoned wine at the impromptu party (or banquet) hosted by Medius of Larissa. The Pamphlet named those complicit in the regicide: alongside some fourteen attendees who were ‘in the know’ at Medius’ banquet, though the central architects of the crime were clearly named as the Macedonian regent and his sons (so Aristotle’s part appears to be a later claim).
This was a heavyweight line-up that was afforded a modicum of credibility by Antipater’s alleged summons to Babylon by Alexander before his death; he was, it is said, fearful that Alexander was planning to execute him, and so he took the initiative.18 As significant as the guilty were the few guests named as ignorant of the plot: Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Eumenes, Asander and Holcias (T1, T2).
Following a description of the king’s sudden pain after drinking from the cup and his worsening condition, as well as Roxane’s tender intervention when Alexander attempted to throw himself into the Euphrates, the surviving texts detailed a private reading of the testament by Holcias to a small select group of the king’s most trusted men. Besides Holcias himself, three more of the ‘innocent’ group were listed as present when Alexander drafted his Will, and we are no doubt expected to imagine that Eumenes, royal secretary and keeper of the Ephemerides, would have overseen the scribes who recorded Alexander’s final wishes in the form of a testament.
Strikingly prominent in the Pamphlet is the favourable treatment of Rhodes, both within the main Will narrative and in Alexander’s so-called ‘Letter to the Rhodians’ which preceded its bequests. The florid letter, in ‘clotted officialese’ and supposedly written to the island’s boule and demos (broadly the council and people), is widely considered a later interpolation, though contiguous references in the earliest surviving version of the Romance suggest that embellishment, not complete invention, gives us its now extended form.19
The Metz Epitome preserved additional detail of Alexander’s final utterances in which he pledged his friends to recognise the Will and urged the new acting chiliarch, Perdiccas, along with his absent regent (the king being unaware of Antipater’s part in the plot), to see that its terms were carried out.20 Finally, as Alexander’s energy was spent, he beseeched the gods to accept him and passed his ring to Perdiccas to whom he had pledged his wife in marriage, and placed his and Roxane’s hands together in public affirmation. As in the Vulgate accounts of Curtius, Diodorus and Justin (T6, T7, T8), the king remained vocal to the end, but here giving instruction to his men about his estate and burial wishes.
Also uniting the claims of the Pamphlet and the Vulgate genre is the common agreement that Alexander was finally proclaimed dead perhaps five days after the first dose of poison, after which Perdiccas had the body laid in a coffin and dressed in his regal robes, whereupon he announced the king’s passing and then read his Will to the larger gathering of men.21 This lucid and coherent reporting does contrast in every way to the general tone of the rest of the ‘fabulous’ Romance; even Roxane is, for example, correctly referred to as Alexander’s Bactrian wife whereas she is referred to as the daughter of Darius III in the preceding Romance text.22
> The whole construction – the prodigy, the background to the conspiracy, the writing and then reading of the Will with Alexander’s final instructions – was dubbed the Liber de Morte Testamentumque Alexandri Magni – The Book of the Death and Testament of Alexander the Great – by Reinhold Merkelbach in 1954, following the title of a manuscript from the Escorial Monastery in Spain (Codex Scorialensis b III 14 E), though the simplicity of the title ‘Pamphlet’ seems to better suit the political origins that Adolf Ausfeld pointed to some sixty years before.23 The Pamphlet has been termed ‘neither romance, nor history, but rather a political propaganda’, a conclusion not too distant from the verdict on the Journal (below).24 Whilst the identity of its authorship divides the community of scholars, the Pamphlet, which (prodigy aside) provided a more rational conclusion to Alexander’s final days than any ‘serious’ account, still sits in a rejected corner, where the Journal still enjoys more legitimate attachments in the final pages of the biographies of Arrian and Plutarch (T3, T4).
Many commentators are united in the belief that the Pamphlet was circulated for political effect in the first decade (or so) of the Successor Wars following Alexander’s death. Their studies have focused on the identification of its publisher, with the divining rod being the political slant of the Will along with the guilt, or exoneration, attached to those at Medius’ banquet. With some justification, then, we could say that a genuine Will has never been the subject of an investigation, only an assumed fabrication has come under scrutiny. Bosworth came as close as anyone to the genuine article when stating that ‘the production of Wills, post mortem, was a feature of Attic Inheritance cases…’, and therefore, ‘… it would not have seemed beyond belief that the Will of Alexander had been suppressed.’25
Perplexing then is the unchanging conclusion that the Pamphlet Will is pure propaganda. Neither have historians satisfactorily questioned why Alexander ‘decided’ to die intestate, for the nature of his death was far from sudden; his decline incontrovertibly took place over a number of days in all extant accounts, providing him an opportunity to designate heirs and successors, and to disseminate the power in a manner that would have truly prolonged his legacy.
So what of the Pamphlet’s authorship? Since Ausfeld’s 1894 critique separated it from the clearly unhistoric elements of the Romance, so providing the credibility for its political birth in the Diadokhoi years, a number of studies have summarised the conflicting datum lines.26 What is unanimously agreed upon is that the Pamphlet was partisan in its construction: ‘It is replete with details, tendentious and misleading, anchored to historical personages.’27 In which case we may conclude that its construction and design coincided with the political agenda of at least one of those cited as ‘innocent’: ‘No one was unaware of what was afoot, with the exception of Eumenes, Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Asander and Holcias.’28
The conspicuous salvation of Ptolemy and Perdiccas led to deductions that one or the other was the author – wholly logical proposals at first glance. Perdiccas died three years after Alexander, and yet hostility between him and Ptolemy was evident from the settlement at Babylon onwards, and perhaps even at Babylon, eventually culminating in war.29 This is troubling, for it would have been ‘remarkably counter-productive’ for Perdiccas to extricate Ptolemy from guilt if the chiliarch was the author.30 This alone ought to rule out Perdiccas who was killed in the summer of 320 BCE (according to the ‘low’ chronology, which we follow); even Tarn’s 1921 case for its termini ante and post quem, and which did hinge on Perdiccan origins, conceded that it may have been a somewhat later publication (specifically, from the years that saw the new regent, Polyperchon, in opposition to Cassander commencing late 319 BCE).31 We suggest the latter dating is broadly correct but the identification of the author (or co-authors) still needs to be resolved.
Bosworth (and others) argue for a Ptolemaic Pamphlet and for a publication period following the so-called Peace of the Dynasts of 311 BCE; military successes in Asia Minor and Greece saw the Egyptian satrap facing his rivals with a new confidence that led him to intrigue for the hand of Cleopatra, Alexander’s sister. Bosworth argues that in this context, and courting Rhodian naval power, the Pamphlet was issued at the expense of Ptolemy’s rivals. The Will does indeed pair Ptolemy with Cleopatra. But the same reasoning that discounts Perdiccan authorship can be applied here: there was no logic in Ptolemy absolving his arch rival Perdiccas, or his chief supporter, Eumenes, from conspiratorial guilt. Both had been dead some years by 311 BCE and Ptolemy could have easily slandered them, despite their former affiliations to Cleopatra.32 But, above all other arguments, we know from Arrian’s statement that the conclusion to Ptolemy’s book either corroborated, or itself invented, the Journal entry, with its speechless and intestate conspiracy-free death, and this was the antithesis of the claims made by the author of the Pamphlet.33
An alternative publication date has been proposed in a more recent study of Alexander’s mother, Olympias, in which the Pamphlet is indeed referred to as a ‘scrap of partisan literature’. Its origins are pinned on the decade after her death in 315 BCE, when Olympias’ ‘airbrushed’ image fitted the sentiment of that time as nostalgia for the murdered queen mother newly surfaced.34 Yet the term ‘scrap’ may understate its virulence; its survival through the wars of the Diadokhoi, and in one form or another through the 2,300 years since, speaks for its historical stamina. Nevertheless, Olympias may well have been involved in the Pamphlet’s provenance, as we shall discover in later chapters.35
Heckel built on earlier theories that also positioned the Pamphlet as a product of Polyperchon and his regency ca. 317 BCE (Polyperchon held the regency until ca. late 316 or early 315 BCE when Cassander attained power).36 The seeming flaw is that Polyperchon was never himself mentioned in the document when he had every chance to grant himself Will-sanctioned authority, hardly an effective strategy if he sought approbation from its circulation. When developing his case, which proposed Holcias was working in league with Polyperchon, Heckel saw this as ‘subtle and ingenious’. But that subtlety verges on self-incrimination; as Bosworth points out, Polyperchon owed his own regency to the dying wish of Antipater, and to damn the former regent with regicide was to call into question his association and the resulting appointment.37
Polyperchon finally came to terms with Cassander in 309 BCE and received grants and troops in return for the murder of Heracles, Alexander’s eldest son.38 Bearing in mind the vitriol with which the Pamphlet treated Cassander and his family, it seems implausible that he would have entertained any strategic alliance (which lasted almost a decade) with the by-then vulnerable Polyperchon if he was known to be, or suspected as, the author. Moreover, it is unlikely that Polyperchon would have promoted a son he had written out of the Pamphlet, for Heracles was never recognised in the reissued Will.
Hammond suggested that Antigonus, not present at Babylon and so not on Medius’ guest list, may have been behind the design of the conspiracy theory, and yet Heckel summarised why the influential veteran has never been proposed as its author: of all the major coalition players, he alone has no significant role.39 Additionally, he fought against those named innocent in the Successor Wars. We propose, nevertheless, that Antigonus did indeed have an influence on the birth of the Pamphlet, though its delivery and the midwife were not what he had in mind.40
The shifting sands of proposed authorship clearly illustrate that none of the aforementioned proposed authors is a comfortable match to its content, and for each candidate there remains an indigestible logic and a very ‘nasty conundrum’.41
Having ruled out the more prominent candidates, the innocent list is whittled down to the king’s Bodyguard Lysimachus, the Carian satrap Asander, the king’s secretary Eumenes and the elusive Holcias. Lysimachus’ initial participation in the Successor Wars fell in line with Antigonus, as did the early actions of Ptolemy, each related by marriage through daughters of Antipater, and both were to demand their just rewards for their part in Antigonus�
�� eventual victory over Eumenes. So Lysimachus had no reason to salvage the former royal secretary from guilt either.42 Asander was most likely a relative of Antigonus Monophthalmos; he appears to have defected from Perdiccas in 321/320 BCE and we believe he supported Antigonus until 315 BCE, after which he switched allegiance to Ptolemy.43 Asander would have harboured no desire to put the former chiliarch he betrayed on the innocent list, and neither his supporter Eumenes, nor the opposition rebel Holcias who was eventually captured by Antigonus. So they too can be discounted as credible Pamphlet authors.44
Putting Holcias aside for the time being, this leaves us with Eumenes of Cardia, who did enjoy the support and trust of Olympias, and reportedly, Polyperchon too, from late 319-316 BCE. Following Perdiccas’ defeat in Egypt, and again at a strategic reconvening of generals at Triparadeisus later in 320 BCE (some argue that was 321 BCE, following the ‘high chronology’), Eumenes was proscribed with the surviving Perdiccan remnants.45 History has never handed Eumenes the pen because Lysimachus, Ptolemy and Asander, named innocent of guilt, appear to have opposed him through the First and Second Diadokhoi Wars. However, as we will show, there were two, or possibly three, periods between his release from a siege at Nora in 319 BCE, and his execution at the end of 316 BCE (or early 315 BCE), when the line-up in the Pamphlet would have suited his, and significantly Olympias’, desperate position – and by association, Polyperchon’s too. For Eumenes needed Ptolemy and Lysimachus in a coalition against the by then powerful Antigonus Monophthalmos, although as events were to show, they believed they did not need him; and in that they were quite mistaken, as the next fifteen years would prove.46
THE WILL: ORIGINATION AND CONTAMINATION