In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great
Page 76
Of course, a Will would have provided those missing ingredients: a form of statute law, fixed positions and procedures; a defined mandate yet open to ambiguity, abuse, and inevitably, to challenge. For here in foreign lands ‘the king’s power was not institutional but situational’, and so too was the Common Assembly of Macedones, the koinon Makedonon.49
THE CONCLAVE OF THE KOINON MAKEDONON
The origins of the Common Assembly are obscure, as is the extent of its constitutional authority at home and more so overseas in Babylon in 323 BCE; arguments on Macedonian constitutionalism have, as one scholar recently noted, generated a ‘cottage industry’.50 On one extreme, commentators on the issue see the Assembly representing formalised state law, and on the other it was nothing but a nomos (here an established ‘characteristic of a free society’ or a tradition) that enabled traditional isegoria, freedom of speech, with a dominant warlord.
The debate on whether the Macedonians had even formalised the national title ‘king’, basileus Makedonon, remains just as vigorous, though Herodotus and Thucydides believed that they had.51 Nevertheless, basileus was never minted on Philip’s coins, which suggests in Macedonia the warlord status may have eclipsed any regal recognition; he simply remained ‘Philippos Amyntou Makedonios’ to his men. Only towards the end of Alexander’s reign were coins struck with Alexandrou basileus;52 again this suggests the unique army-commander bond was not supplanted by the formalities of regnum until the campaign was well advanced; symbolically this correlates with Alexander’s character metamorphosis in the Vulgate biographies.
With probable roots in a conclave that supported the sovereign power of a warrior-elected leader, the Assembly continued to evolve as equestrian aristocratic landowners emerged in the military state; they acted as a balance, or conduit of authority, between the king and the growing power of the nobility on whom mineral extraction, harbour levies, timber felling, and other commercial leases had been bestowed. The king was deemed to control all the state assets, the judicious distribution and gifting of which assured him their support; this does not undermine the notion that the ‘people’ considered that the treasury was to be used for their wellbeing and protection.53
In turn, the Assembly guarded against a coup by nobility, who, for their privileged positions, were doubtless expected to furnish troops on demand and organise local defence. Whilst in the reign of Philip II ‘hardly more than a hundred chiefs of aristocratic families formed the King’s Companions’, he could have easily become a hostage if he abused their support, which is perhaps why he instituted his own private royal guards brigade.54 Under Philip, the northern and western cantons, which had previously enjoyed a degree of autonomy, were eventually folded into a more centralised state; their nobles and their sons were enrolled into the elite Companion Cavalry.
It was probably at this point that a more formalised Assembly was convened to represent wider national interests, perhaps held in an amphitheatre to house its larger diverse audience; at less formal occasions, ad hoc ekklesiai were called to discuss a broader range of issues.55 This public forum of expression would have provided the veneer of checks, balances and regional representation, even if the Macedonian ‘king’ could ultimately sway its vote, whether by charm or execution, or by the threat of his personal pike battalions.56 We should note the tradition in close-by Epirus of swearing ‘solemn oaths’ to Zeus Areius at Passaro each year in which the people and king agreed to abide by the laws.57 But when it came to voting on matters of state during a military campaign, inevitably the common ‘people’ were the Macedonian ‘army’. More often than not, under these circumstances – war – the ‘Assembly’ became a hastily convened synedrion, for the army was in fact a far easier body to assemble; it was also easier to manipulate and manage than scattered peasants and the landlord nobility of peacetime.
Where a synedrion represented a more frequently assembled privy council of the king and his philoi – his close friends and advisers (the ‘companionate’) – an Assembly was a more formal and far less frequent gathering of all the leading men-at-arms, perhaps convened twice a year: at the beginning of the campaign season (the panaitolika or Xandika in the month of Xandikos, broadly March) and at its end (the panegyris in Dios, broadly October).58 At an Assembly, the hetairoi who had become the king’s Companions, and the peasant-stocked infantry (many of whom started life as pastoral herders: ‘milk-drinkers’, Euripides would have labelled them) represented by senior battalion commanders, came together to vote on critical state decisions;59 if the idea of some quasi-democratic process is suggested by such a conclave, it remains unlikely that representation ever saw uneducated tenant farmers in the king’s hall. In fact, it may have been only military men, perhaps one-tenth of the national male population, who were ever enfranchised in any way.60
The Assembly was, in effect, an extension of the king’s own personality in what may still have been the absence of wider constitutional laws in Macedonia; when the court gatherings ended in komoi, the traditional drinking parties with their distinct Homeric origins, bonds were galvanised between officers and their commander-in-chief – the national strategos autokrator – whose office now represented the foremost religious official, a role in which he became their intermediary with the national gods.61 It was a relationship that permitted the nobles and army officers access without the formalities of rank, ceremony, and formalised obeisance, and though they were still subjects of a monarchy, this explains the Macedonian abhorrence of Achaemenid-style proskynesis.62
The king was effectively inviting select guests into his oikos (household), and that, in turn, provided him the opportunity to monitor revellers who would have been watched, probed and eavesdropped upon for any signs of dissent. Attending the guests were the corps of royal pages, paides basilikoi, aged fourteen to eighteen, the sons of the nobles prudently retained as behavioural security. Alexander continued the custom of maintaining these unofficial ‘hostages’, though it almost led to his undoing in Asia.63
The principal functions of the koinon Makedonon appear clearer than its origins. The common Assembly retained the ability to elect a new state leader and it became judge and jury in cases of treason. Although it had been invoked, for example, at the trial of Philotas (and his father, Parmenio, in absentia), and at Cassander’s revenge-fuelled trial of Olympias some eight years on, quicker executions appear to have taken place on the king’s direct command; Alexander did not wait for common opinion to execute the thirteen ringleaders of the dissent at Opis.64 But to what extent, as basileus, he could act independent of the Assembly, remains conjecture; Curtius stated that in capital cases, ‘… the position of the king counted for nothing unless his influence had been substantiated before the trial.’
If, on the other hand, the king’s power was absolute (as some scholars see it), how far that could extend probably depended, once again, on his personal charisma, his diplomatic skills, the weight of support he enjoyed from his nobles (as a result), and the nature of the immediate danger being faced; a popular leader would get his way with a minimum of formality, where an unpopular figurehead (or a popular king making an unpopular decision) would need formal Common Assembly approval to avoid revolt.65
This would explain why the dividing line between constitutionalism and autocracy is blurred in the evidence we have; we can see the Assembly’s ‘meteoric’ appearance when Philip ascended the throne, and its complete disappearance once he had established himself. Similarly, we see the same trend in Alexander’s reign: an Assembly was convened for the trial and executions of his father’s (alleged) assassins, when he himself had little established support, and we have scant references of its convening in the spectacular successes of Alexander’s early campaign years in which his leadership was unchallenged. Only when storm clouds gathered did the Assembly feature once more – at the trials of Philotas and then Alexander Lyncestis, and for Cleitus’ posthumous condemnation.
The Assembly featured even more loudly in the army mutinies th
at followed.66 Consider this phenomenon in light of the timing of Cassander’s later appeal to the people to justify Olympias’ execution (the point at which his own rule commenced, probably 316 BCE), and Demetrius Poliorketes’ speech in 294 BCE which undermined Cassander’s reign.67 Notably, Perdiccas did not gain (though he sought) Assembly approval when attacking Ptolemy in Egypt (a sham trial appears to have backfired), and that may well have cost him his life.68
The Assembly also had to deal with the rules of succession, which are not wholly clear. Primogeniture was not the absolute requirement in Macedonia, although elder brothers (or uncles) often prevailed for purely practical reasons, often on the pretext of guardianship of the young; Philip II’s epimeletia for his brother’s son, Amyntas Perdicca, is just one example.69 But as suggested in a speech recorded by Livy, in which the Macedonian prince Perseus was berating his younger brother (Demetrius), primogeniture was an established tradition.70
Alexander’s ancestors had often produced several male heirs who were proclaimed joint kings: Alexander I left five sons behind him who, in turn, produced ten (known) grandsons from five collateral branches of the royal line. The period 399-391 BCE saw six kings in eight years from three competing lines,71 and six sons and a daughter were born to Amyntas III (died ca. 370 BCE), including Philip II. In practice, the conflicts engendered by this ‘oversupply of kings’ often led to pretenders to the throne (often backed by interested neighbouring states) and, inevitably, to fratricide, a result the Successor Wars were to amplify.72 At other times kings were elected in utero or brothers shared the rule, and if still immature, more formalised guardians would be appointed; here again the Assembly could play its part, though whether this represented a succession requirement is again unclear.73
Considered against the background of the Assembly’s traditional function, the situation in Babylon in 323 BCE was unique, and it would inevitably challenge the judicial boundaries and the authority of those presiding. Alexander’s early ‘security measures’ – the execution of conspirators, pretenders and their relatives upon his own accession (including Amyntas Perdicca) – ‘had ensured the Argead house was virtually extinct’, and of course that had suited his immediate cause.74 But Alexander had filled the void by unsatisfactory means, as far as the rank and file picking up the pieces at Babylon were concerned.
The Macedonian army was, we propose, now being subordinated in a king’s Will to what were deemed defective options: an as yet unborn half-Asiatic child, a further juvenile half-Asiatic son, and a mentally defective Argead, while a distrusted chiliarch was acting as de facto head of state. Moreover, the endowments of the Will failed to recognise, or even mention, the common foot soldiers who had played a major part in transforming a kingdom into an empire. If we assume that the attendance by the infantry officers was a requisite part of the Assembly vote, at Babylon they were hamstrung, for they lacked the voice of the influential veterans, Craterus, Antipater and Antigonus. For these were the men who commanded their true respect and they were generals who could have overshadowed the presiding and now hugely wealthy Persian nobility-married Somatophylakes.
In his earlier coverage of events, Cleitarchus might have envisioned a gathering in the great throne room of the palace, and though it is tempting to visualise a sea of men, the Bodyguards most likely orchestrated a quarantined affair; three courtyards are thought to have led to the throne room of the Summer Palace and they presented a practical means of separation.75 Indeed a herald called the officers by name; although ‘many were unable to enter the royal quarters’, the select summons was widely disregarded and others squeezed through the cordon. Wherever the gathering took place, waiting outside of the palace grounds was surely a sea of anxious and impatient men.76
Perdiccas, now something of a ‘grand vizier’ in the temporary absence of a king, chaired the meeting and the salient points of the king’s Will were read aloud. Curtius described how ‘a crowd of the rank and file was anxious to know to whom the fortune of Alexander would pass’ (scire in quem Alexandri fortuna esset transitura).77 But before we jump into the boiling caldron of disquiet that followed, we should take a look at Perdiccas’ first course of action on which the parties were all agreed: the cancelling of the ruinously costly and unrealistically ambitious ‘last plans’. For embedded within them may be the remains of the bequests from an equally extravagant and ruinous Will.
HIDDEN HYPOMNEMATA AND A MISSING FUNERAL PYRE
For when Perdiccas found in the memoranda of the king orders for the completion of the pyre of Hephaestion, which required a great deal of money, and also for the other designs of Alexander, which were many and great and called for an unprecedented outlay, he decided that it was inexpedient to carry them out. But that he might not appear to be arbitrarily detracting anything from the glory of Alexander, he laid these matters before the common assembly of the Macedonians for consideration.78 (T25)
Historians appear to accept that although Alexander declined to write a Will, he had kept personal hypomnemata in which his grandiose plans were outlined in detail. Immediately after his death Perdiccas apparently ‘found’ in the king’s memoranda, en tois hypomnemasi tou basileos (we might suppose in the Eumenes-managed secretariat), a number of incomplete projects and wishes. The most prominent of them included a funeral pyre for Hephaestion, fleet building on an unheard of scale, harbour constructions that could dock 1,000 warships, population transfers and racial synoikismoi through the establishment of new mixed cities, as well as plans to campaign in Arabia and the West, supported by an ambitious new network of roads.
Some are credible as part of the projects that featured in the main narrative of ongoing military preparations with the associated harbours, canals and dredging improvements at Babylon, though the reported scale, if anywhere near accurate, is extraordinary.79 As far as the remainder, reaction amongst scholars ranges from wholehearted acceptance to wholesale disbelief,80 but obvious Hellenistic and Roman embroidery has been spotlighted and some non-authentic-looking embassies appeared from far-off supplicants seeking Macedonian ‘friendship’ at the same time.81
What remain notably out of tune in Diodorus’ list of scuppered projects were the king’s requests for tombs, temples and monuments, for these have a distinctly ‘testamental’ aroma:
… to erect six most costly temples, each at an expense of 1,500 talents… The temples mentioned were to be built at Delos, Delphi, and Dodona, and in Macedonia a temple to Zeus at Dion, to Artemis Tauropolus at Amphipolis, and to Athena at Cyrnus. Likewise at Ilium in honour of this goddess there was to be built a temple that could never be surpassed by any other. A tomb for his father Philip was to be constructed to match the greatest pyramids of Egypt…82 (T25)
This detail should be compared with the donatives and memorials demanded in the Metz Epitome and Romance Wills, in which we read of a tomb for Philip to ‘rival the pyramids’; this was, more credibly, to be a great earthwork tumulus in the established Macedonian tradition.83 The label hypomnemata could credibly have accompanied a lifetime covenant or a written testament as well, and it can be equally translated as ‘drafts’, ‘accompanying notes’, or even ‘inventories’, such as the list of names, deeds and events that once featured in Strabo’s Historika hypomnemata and in the Hypomnemata of Aristoxenus and Hegesander which we do now refer to as ‘memoirs’ or ‘commentaries’.84
Texts are ambiguous on whether these so-called ‘last plans’ were discussed at the first, or possibly a second, Assembly; it seems the degeneration of the initial gathering required a further conclave once the infighting that followed Alexander’s death had died down, and it was here that decisions were finally ratified. Claims that Alexander’s body was left untreated for some three, six, or even (an impossible) thirty days, before the seer Aristander addressed the Assembly, add to the confusion.85 When he did finally broach the issue of the hypomnemata, Perdiccas’ arguments would have focused on treasury limitations and the impracticalities of implementing such heady scheme
s; he would surely have used the opportunity, now that the Will had been broadcast aloud, to solicit the cancelling of both the ongoing campaign plans and the Will-demanded monuments in a single breath, thus they were fused together in the recounting of the session.
Making the Will contents public, as Hatzopoulos has pointed out, would have reflected contemporary Macedonian practice, and according to Polybius, a century later Antigonus III Doson left a Will in which ‘he gave account of his administration to the Macedonians’ and he notably appointed an epitou grammateiou, who Hammond believed was a secretary in charge of the royal archives; this surely paralleled the role of Eumenes.86 And here at Babylon, rather than sounding controversial, the project abandonments proposed by Perdiccas likely brought a sense of relief to the soldiers who must have been thinking of heading home with booty and back-pay; it would have been additionally supported by the Bodyguards who planned to journey to their new satrapies with the treasuries still intact.
Also annulled was the pending change of command in Macedonia, in which Antipater was supposed to step down in favour of the returning Craterus who would have then enjoyed the support of the 10,000 veterans discharged at Opis.87 On this issue, Perdiccas may have disguised his true intent by arguing for a ‘respectful’ status quo – in terms of both Craterus’ location (Cilicia) and Antipater’s regency – as he is unlikely to have relished the prospect of such a sizeable and experienced force congregating in Macedonia under a potentially hostile regent (old or new). Perdiccas would have wanted to assimilate Craterus’ veterans into his own ranks when considering that as few as 13,000 Macedonian infantry and 2,000 cavalry are thought to have remained at Babylon in the royal army; the rest were Asiatic troops, though newly arrived recruits make calculations uncertain. This annulment may have been contentious as Craterus had supporters in Babylon; many infantry officers present would have served under him, including the vocal battalion commander, Meleager, the most important infantry officer then present and the man at the centre of what would next take place.88