In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great
Page 74
Napoleon Bonaparte penned a fulsome Will on April 15th 1821 at Longwood on the island of St Helena. It dealt with his wife, his son, his veterans and his generals, those who were loyal and those who calumniated against him. The document contained directions for his burial and its religious observances, and it dealt with his fortune; annexed to the last page was an inventory of his chattels should any confusion arise. The greatest conqueror of his age may even have read Suetonius’ account of the Will of Augustus, for there appear to be many similarities.93 Some years earlier, in 1806, Napoleon had commissioned what is now known as the Table des Grands Capitaines in porcelain and gilded bronze. Inlaid around the table were cameos of twelve of antiquity’s greatest commanders, with the centre reserved for a likeness of Alexander III of Macedonia.94 Recalling Augustus’ dismay at Alexander’s maladministration, and to quote the utilitarian view of truth once espoused by Napoleon, we wonder if they too concluded that his intestate end was ‘nothing more than a fable agreed on’.95
NOTES
1.Cicero De Officiis 3.8.36.
2.Diogenes Laertius Aristotle and Theophrastus.
3.Chroust (1967) pp 90-114 and Chroust (1970) p 629.
4.Davis (1914) Part 2, Ch. XI, The Funerals, section 69.
5.Suetonius Nero 17 for an example of the use of ‘testator’.
6.Example provided by Hansen (1999) p 96.
7.Davis (1914) Part 2, Ch. XI, The Funerals, section 69. How Solonian law translated into Will structures is not fully clear as the speeches we draw inspiration from may be abiding by, challenging, reinterpreting, or suggesting new avenues of law.
8.See chapter titled Babylon: the Cipher and Rosetta Stone.
9.A discussion of the deviation from the original Will can be found in chapters titled The Silent Siegecraft of the Pamphleteers and Lifting the shroud of Parrhasius.
10.Keyser (2011) p 111 for the Mesopotamian and neo-Babylonian Wills.
11.Harris (1911) pp 12-13 and Kenyon (1899) p 58 for the mummy cases at Gurob.
12.Hesiod Theogonia 22-34.
13.Plutarch Agis 5.1-4 and for general attributions to the rhetra of Sparta see Plutarch Lycurgus. Detailed discussion of Spartan law and estate planning in Avramović (2006). Russell (1946) p 99 for Spartan land law and Aristotle Politics 1270a ff.
14.Plutarch Solon 2.1-3, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914.
15.In translation the ‘Rock of Ares’, also called Areopagus, situated northwest of the Acropolis, functioned as Court of Appeal for criminal and civil cases in ancient times. Discussed in Arnaoutoglou (1998) pp 1-5.
16.Callias was fined 50 talents upon his return, but seems to have brokered a peace known as the Peace of Callias, see Herodotus 7.151, Diodorus 12.4, Demosthenes De Falsa Legatione in Shilleto (1874) p 428. Neither Thucydides nor Herodotus mentioned the peace treaty.
17.Diogenes Laertius Solon 1.62.
18.Chroust (1970) p 635.
19.Plutarch Solon 20.1-4 for the laws relating to women. Sparta had a similar rule for its petrouchoi. If an epikleros was already married but childless, she might have been forced to divorce under this arrangement.
20.Chroust (1970) p 636.
21.Chroust (1970) p 629.
22.Diogenes Laertius Epicurus 10.
23.Quoting Cicero Academica 1.12. For a fuller discussion on the meaning of kataleptike phantasis see Striker (1996) pp 106-107.
24.Diogenes Laertius Arcesilaus 4.19.
25.See chapter titled The Damaging Didactic of the Classical Death for discussion on Chrysippus’ purported death.
26.Plutarch Romulus 5.3. Larentia may better be termed ‘mythical’ for her associations to Heracles but other traditions see her marriage to a wealthy citizen, Roman or Etruscan, as historic.
27.Gibbon (1776 to 1789) Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence, Part V.
28.Cicero Topica 4 for women’s right to Wills.
29.Cicero De Officiis 3.73. Suetonius Augustus 33.2 for the Cornelian Law; this applied to anyone who ‘testamentum malo scripserit, recitaverit, subjecerit, suppresserit, amoverit, resignaverit, deleverit…’, according to Julius Paulus Sententiarum receptarum ad filium libri quinque 5.25.
30.Tacitus 14.40.
31.Pliny Epistles, Letter To Cornelianus.
32.Suetonius Augustus 56.1.
33.Grafton (1990) p 28 for the Ravenna papyrus. Quoting Pearson (1960) p 262.
34.Suetonius Nero 17.
35.Following Suetonius Nero 32.2 and quoting Tacitus 13.42.4 on Seneca, though the accuser, Publius Suillius, may have been seeking revenge with spurious claims.
36.Quoting Wiseman (1991) Introduction p vii. Herodian 1.1.4.
37.Suetonius Augustus, from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914.
38.Discussed in Arnaoutoglou (1988) p 118.
39.See reference to Vegio in the chapter titled The Precarious Path of Pergamena and Papyrus.
40.Tacitus 12.31 for Prasutagus’ installation by Claudius, and 14.31 for the Will.
41.This is recorded by an inscription but does not appear in literary sources.
42.A ‘detersent against assassination’ proposed by Shipley (2000) p 210.
43.According to Justin 39.5. Ptolemy Apion was the son of the king and a concubine. The sources are the Periochae to Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita Libri 70.5 for the dating of 96 BCE. Confusion exists on the Will’s claims. Appian Mithridatic Wars 121 stated that Apion left Cyrene to Rome. Ammianus Marcellinus 22.16.24 corrected this to ‘the dry part of Libya’, whereas Cyrene and the other cities of the Pentapolis were handed over ‘by the generosity of King Ptolemy XII’. Bagnall-Derow (2004) pp 92-93 for the Will inscription at Cyrene and its ‘unholy’ allegation.
44.Bagnall-Derow (2004) pp 241-244 for Greek-style Wills of settlers in Egypt.
45.Suetonius Claudius 43-46, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914.
46.Discussed in chapter titled Comets, Colophons and Curtius Rufus.
47.Suetonius Nero 43-46.
48.Tacitus 13.16 for Britannicus’ coming of age and death; also Josephus 20.8.2; Suetonius Nero 33; Cassius Dio 61.7. For the various traditions of Agrippina’s death, see Tacitus 14.1-8, Suetonius Nero 34, Cassius Dio 63.11-14.
49.Cassius Dio 59.1 translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914-1927.
50.Suetonius Caligula 11 for ‘viper’. Suetonius Caligula 12; Tacitus 6.50 suggest the Praetorian Prefect, Macro, smothered Tiberius with a pillow, whereas Suetonius suggested Caligula did the killing himself. Suetonius Caligula 37 for his profligacy and 22.3, 52.1 for the suggestion of his self-deification.
51.Suetonius Caligula 57-58, Josephus 19.1.14.
52.Suetonius Caligula 56-58 and Josephus 19.1.13. More on Cluvius Rufus and his significance to the study in chapter titled Comets, Colophons and Curtius Rufus.
53.Arrian 7.28, Plutarch 77 for Aristotle’s involvement.
54.Quoting Chroust (1973) p 195 on ‘ample correspondence’.
55.Diogenes Laertius Aristotle 12 for the letters. Quoting Chroust (1970) p 12 for the correspondence with Antipater and pp 9-11 for Aristotle’s citizenship. See chapter titled The Silent Siegecraft of the Pamphleteers for more on Nicanor. At the time of Aristotle’s death, Nicanor was said to be away on a ‘dangerous mission’ which further suggests a role under Cassander; discussed in Chroust (1970) p 640; the known danger may explain why Theophrastus was named as ‘interim heir designate’ in Aristotle’s Will. Also Pausanias 6.4.8 for Aristotle’s influence with Antipater; discussed in Bosworth (1971) p 114.
56.Olympias and Antipater quarrelled and she departed Macedonia for Epirus: Diodorus 18.49.4, Pausanias 1.11.3, Arrian 7.12.6-7, Plutarch 68.4-5, Justin 12.14.3.
57.Plutarch Demosthenes 28.4 for the cutting out of Hyperides’ tongue, and Plutarch Moralia 849f (Life of Hyperides) for linking that to his proposing honours to Iolaos.
58.See discussion in Barnes (1995) p 6. Aristotle allegedly wrote to Antipater informing him the honours
bestowed on him had been stripped. An inscription honouring him and Callisthenes and dating to 330 BCE has been found in pieces down the bottom of a well at Delphi. Marasco (2011) p 45 for Aristotle’s letter to Antipater concerning the withdrawn Delphic honours, cited in Aelian 14.1; an inscription by Aristotle was mentioned in Diogenes Laertius Aristotle 5-6.
59.In the Romance 3.33 and Metz Epitome 122, Alexander requested gilded statues to be erected in Delphi and Athens; and statues of his mother, father and select gods in Egypt. See Heckel (1988) p 17 for Metz Epitome translation and Stoneman (1991) p 155 for the Romance.
60.Chroust (1979) p 637; Stagira was a colony of either Chalcis or Andros.
61.A visitor to the city (parepidemos) would have had some days’ exemption before taxes became payable ahead of becoming a metic.
62.Hansen (1999) p 130 for the fifty grants of citizenship.
63.Finlay (1973) p 116 for the breakdown of Demosthenes’ father’s estate. Aeschines On the False Embassy 93 claimed Demosthenes was called the ‘son of a sword-maker’.
64.Demosthenes Against Aphobus 1.9-11, Against Apaturius 4-5, Against Phormio 9 for details of Demosthenes’ commercial activity. Finlay (1973) p 162 for the dike emporike. Archibald-Davies-Gabrielson (2005) p 138 for loan payments.
65.Polybius 4.87.7-8; discussed in Marasco (2011) pp 57-58 and following the observations of C Bearzot p 58.
66.See discussion of the importance of waggons and wealth in Billows (1990) pp 102-103 citing Diodorus 19.42.4-43; and evidence of their vulnerability in battle in Plutarch Eumenes 16.5-6, Polyaenus 4.6.13. Also Anson (2004) pp 187-9. More details of the baggage trains that followed the campaigning Diadokhoi in chapter titled The Tragic Triumvirate of Treachery and Oaths.
67.Sophocles Ajax lines 565-577.
68.Discussed in Keyser (2011) pp 115-117. Details found in the Iliad 2.100-108, 6.476-481. Heracles’ oral Will as interpreted from lines 161-163 in Sophocles Trachiniae; discussion in Keyser (2011) pp 117-118 also referring to Euripides Heracles lines 460-473.
69.The Metz Epitome 120 and Romance 3.33 has Alexander leaving his arms and insignia to the temple of Hera at Argos.
70.For Alexander’s financial position and borrowing of 800 talents see Plutarch 15.1-3, Curtius 10.2.24 and Arrian 7.9.6 for his borrowing 800; discussed in chapter titled Sarissa Diplomacy: Macedonian Statecraft.
71.Diodorus 17.16.2.
72.Curtius 9.6.6-14 and 9.6.15 for Craterus’ and Ptolemy’s speeches and concerns.
73.Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics book 10 1177b32-1178a but a theme recurring through books 9 and 10.
74.Arrian 1.12.1 and Aelian 12.7 confirmed Hephaestion crowned, or wreathed, Patroclus’ tomb at Troy whilst Alexander did the same to the tomb of Achilles, suggesting their parallel relationship.
75.Plutarch Eumenes 16.2-4; see chapters titled The Tragic Triumvirate of Treachery and Oaths and The Silent Siegecraft of the Pamphleteers for more on Eumenes’ death.
76.Plutarch Sertorius 1.4 for comparisons with Philip, Antigonus and Hannibal.
77.Suetonius Augustus 68 for Antony’s accusation and Cicero Second Philippic 14 for accusations of Antony’s part in Caesar’s murder.
78.The rowing configuration of the larger Greek and Roman ships is uncertain; see chapter titled Sarissa Diplomacy: Macedonian Statecraft for further discussion.
79.Ovid Metamorphoses book 15 line 825.
80.Arrian 3.5.7 explained that Rome always kept Egypt under surveillance and never allowed senators to become proconsuls lest they raise an army.
81.Cassius Dio 51.21.8 for the orphans being paraded in Rome.
82.Plutarch Antony 86. According to Suetonius Augustus 17, Octavian had Psyllian snake charmers brought in to try and suck the poison from Cleopatra’s bite. Antony stabbed himself thinking Cleopatra was already dead.
83.Pliny 21.10.
84.For the malaria attack on the Egyptian crews, Cassius Dio 50.1.15, 50.12, 50.15.
85.For the defection of Quintus Dellius see Cassius Dio 50.23.1-3.
86.Suetonius Augustus 18, Cassius Dio 51.16.5 for Augustus’ comment and treatment of Alexander’s corpse. Plutarch Antony 81-82 for ‘not a good thing were a Caesar too many’ and also in Plutarch Sayings of Kings and Commanders 207D8. Lucan On the Civil War (Pharsalia) 10.14-52 for Caesar’s ignoring all the sites of Alexandria, intent on seeing the tomb of Alexander.
87.Following Erskine (2002) p 163 for the possible birth of the Alexandrian tradition.
88.Strabo 17.13 quoting Cicero for the 12,500 talents income.
89.Discussed in Pitcher (2009) p 59 quoting Syme (1939) p 1; as Syme explains, M. Junius Silanus, the grandson of Augustus’ granddaughter Julia, was born in 14 CE, the year Augustus died; Pliny 7.58.
90.For Augustus’ comment about Rome on his deathbed see Cassius Dio 56.30.3 Suetonius Augustus 28. Deeds of the Divine Augustus appendix 1 for the total expenditure during his office.
91.Suetonius Augustus 18.1 for ‘brick and marble’ and Plutarch Sayings of Kings and Commanders 207D8 for Augustus’ comment on Alexander’s lack of empire administration.
92.‘Royal landlords’ following Anson (1994) p 233.
93.Both Wills bequeathed funds to their veteran soldiers, as well as the state, and both provided a detailed breakdown of financial summary. For Augustus’ Will see Suetonius Augustus 101.
94.The table, which took six years to complete, now resides in Buckingham Palace.
95.Referring to ‘What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? Nothing more than a fable agreed upon’, Memoirs of Napoleon. Also attributed to Voltaire.
9
BABYLON: THE CIPHER AND ROSETTA STONE
What truly happened at Alexander’s death in Babylon and can events be reinterpreted in the presence of a Will?
The conflicting reports of what came to pass in the days either side of Alexander’s death raise more questions than they answer; Babylon was itself a city shrouded in myth.
The circumstances embodied in the claims of the Vulgate, the Journal and the Pamphlet texts were born here, and so was a mysterious list of projects known as the king’s ‘last plans’. What was really said at the gathering of men-at-arms, and by whom, and to what end? And could the dialogues have been related to a Will? Crucially, how were events at Babylon portrayed by the eyewitness writers who had a vested interest in the outcome?
We return to June 323 BCE and to the infighting that was a precursor to Macedonian civil war, and we overlay the testament on the confused narratives we have.
Diogenes to Alexander: ‘But now, whom did you leave your great empire to?’
Alexander to Diogenes: ‘Diogenes, I cannot tell you. I had no time to leave any directions about it, beyond just giving Perdiccas my ring as I died. Why are you laughing?’1
Lucian Dialogues of the Dead
[At Babylon] ‘the chiefs, moreover, were looking to sovereignty and offices of command; the common soldiers to the treasury and heaps of gold, as a prize unexpectedly presented to their grasp; the one meditating on the possibility of seizing the throne, the other on the means of securing wealth and plenty.’2 (T12)
Justin Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus
‘Babylon’ is the Hellenic variant of the Akkadian Bab-ili meaning ‘gateway of the gods’, though the origins of the name, from an unknown language, are otherwise obscure.3 In the Old Testament the Hebrew name for the city of the immortalised gardens appears as ‘Babel’ (or Bavel) derived from the verb bilbél, and its meaning was ‘confusion’.4
The emblematic Hanging Gardens of Babylon, once credited to Queen Semiramis, still elude us, however, and no cuneiform tablet found in the myriad excavated from the city ruins suggested their existence.5 In his three-book Babylonaika (known in antiquity as the Chaldaika), Berossus, wisely it seems, criticised the Greeks for too many attributions to Semiramis, including the founding of the city.6 Following the creation tale laid out in the Enûma Elis, many credited Babylon’s origins to the
god Bel-Marduk, though Josephus named Nabonidus as the constructor of its burnt-brick and bitumen walls, whilst Pliny preserved a tradition that Cyrus was an alternative founder of the gardens, though here he was termed ‘king of Assyria’, possibly because of a manuscript confusion of Σūpoς (Assyrian) with Kūpoς (Cyrus).7
Two further fragments that cite Berossus are preserved in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities and his Against Apion, and they proposed Nebuchadnezzar II as the creator of the gardens for his Median wife, Amyhia (or Amyitis), but without specifically saying where they were. Josephus, who was drawing from the compilation of Alexander Polyhistor (1st century BCE, literally the ‘much learned’), was himself chronically unreliable and ambivalent on their origins,8 for he credited Megasthenes (ca. 350-290 BCE) with a second and identical reference to them, rendering Eusebius and his Kronographia, which epitomised these earlier opinions, just as vexatious as a source.9 Curtius, who claimed the gardens were still visible in his day, and Diodorus, following either Ctesias or Cleitarchus (or the one through the other), proposed an unnamed Assyrian king as their founder, whereas Strabo and Pseudo-Philo of Byzantium steered clear of nominating anyone at all.10
The Greek historian Abydenus, in his History of the Chaldeans and Assyrians (date unknown, probably Hellenistic era) now preserved in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica, stated that Megasthenes also attributed gardens to Nebuchadnezzar II, and yet these were in Teredon some 200 miles to the south. One fragment recounting the deeds of the Assyrian king reads: ‘… and [he] built the city of Teredon to check the incursions of the Arabs; and he adorned the palaces with trees, calling them hanging gardens.’11 And certainly the poem by the Greek epigrammatist, Antipater of Sidon, in which he voted them to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, never specifically linked the Hanging Gardens to the ‘lofty walls’ of Babylon, which were reportedly wide enough for two chariots to pass and with a higher (but narrower) inner wall built of mud brick.12 To further confuse us, Diodorus included the 130 feet-long by 25 feet-wide (and just as thick) Obelisk of Semiramis at Babylon amongst the Seven Wonders of the World (originally theamata, ‘sights’, changed to thaumata, ‘wonders’ by Diodorus and Strabo), possibly following Callimachus, but the gardens, mentioned by Diodorus a paragraph earlier, were absent from the list.13