In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

by David Grant

  Curtius claimed Alexander had once vocally rejected Polyperchon’s advice (termed a subterfuge), likening it to the council provided by ‘brigands and thieves’. This hostile treatment extended into the texts of Aelian who, indeed, termed him a brigand, and Athenaeus, who (drawing from Duris) described him as a ‘dancer when drunk’. Curtius went as far as claiming Alexander once threw him in prison after he mocked a Persian performing proskynesis.51 This sounds like propaganda, for Alexander entrusted Polyperchon with significant responsibilities; he became a taxiarches commanding a taxeis of some 1,500 pezhetairoi (plus thirty or so supernumeraries) from 330-325 BCE, operating alongside the likes of the prominent infantry commanders Coenus and Meleager. He was later designated second-in-command to Craterus when escorting some 10,000 veterans back to Macedonia from Opis.52 Polyperchon’s own son, Alexander, had been appointed a personal bodyguard to the new kings at Triparadeisus, and a year or two on in late 319 BCE, now likely well into his sixties, he was at Antipater’s bedside when the failing regent passed away.53

  Antipater had retained his position in Macedonia from an unexpected combination of events: the clamour for his continued regency by the infantry at Babylon, his eventual (though much assisted) victory in the Lamian War, and the early deaths of Leonnatus, Perdiccas, and then Craterus, any of whom could have challenged for the regency or even the throne. His alleged Aetolian secrets and his abrasive relations with Olympias aside, Antipater appears to have displayed nothing but loyalty to the Argead house until the end, despite the execution of his son-in-law, Alexander Lyncestis. The Pamphlet allegations, along with the regent’s reported fear of being summoned to execution in Babylon, have led some scholars to conclude he had actually rebelled against Alexander in 323 BCE, but the evidence is scant and circumstantial.

  Antipater had been among the first of Philip’s generals to acknowledge Alexander as king upon his father’s death, though as it has been aptly put, there is a difference between loyal service and devotion to an individual.54 It was also claimed that Alexander maintained the affectionate salutation, chairein (formally ‘greetings’, less formally ‘joy to you’), exclusively with Phocion in Athens with Antipater too, who presided over the Pythian Games in place of his king.55 His presence had certainly helped Philip II rest more easily, if Plutarch’s Sayings of Kings and Commanders are accurate (and by him): after oversleeping on campaign, Philip explained, ‘I slept soundly because Antipater watched.’56

  Antipater, in turn, had confidence in Polyperchon, entrusting him with the defence of the kingdom when campaigning in Greece in the Lamian War.57 On his deathbed, and to the disgust of his son, Cassander, Antipater passed the regency to Polyperchon; he was now epimeletes kai strategos autokrator: the principal guardian of the kings and caretaker of the kingdom.58 The choice was, in fact, unsurprising when reviewing his career, for ‘Polyperchon, who was almost the oldest of those who had campaigned with Alexander, was held in honour by the Macedonians.’59

  Unfortunately, this new arrangement in Pella both overestimated Polyperchon’s ability and underestimated Cassander’s ambition, which would feed off his father’s well-established network of agents. Moreover, Cassander was to prove remarkably good at operating on limited resources, a skill he must have learned from his father.60 This potentially fractious state of affairs doubtless added to Antigonus’ delight, plotting as he was his own independence across the Hellespont. But understanding what took place next requires the unravelling of a severely knotted and tight-packed string of events that were formative to the shape, and the issue date, of the Pamphlet.

  A disgruntled Cassander immediately aligned himself in Pella with Adea, now Queen Eurydice by virtue of her marriage to the mentally deficient Arrhidaeus, crowned King Philip III by the recalcitrant infantry at Babylon, though we argue that the crowning was in line with Alexander’s wishes. It seems Eurydice exerted control over her husband despite Polyperchon’s attempt to exploit the halfwit himself.61 She was the daughter of Cynnane, Alexander’s widowed warlike half-sister who reportedly slew the Illyrian queen, Caeria, with her own hands when in her mid-teens; it was perhaps a clan revenge killing on behalf of her Illyrian grandmother Audata, Philip’s first or second wife who had also taken the regal title ‘Eurydice’. Cynnane had never been afforded (as far as we know) a state-celebrated marriage by Philip like that given to Cleopatra and Alexander Molossus.62 Her husband Amyntas, the son of former King Perdiccas III (thus Philip’s nephew), was executed by Alexander on accusations of treason at Philip’s death, but Amyntas had left Cynnane with child: Adea.63 Alexander had attempted a useful new political match for Cynnane with Langarus, king of the Agrianians, before departing on campaign, but Langarus died before the marriage ceremony took place.64 The Agrianians, a Paeonian tribe, nevertheless became an indispensable part of Alexander’s campaigning army.

  Sometime before Perdiccas’ failed invasion of Egypt in 320 BCE, Cynnane raised her own corps of Macedonian soldiers (probably a modest bodyguard contingent despite Polyaenus’ inference otherwise) and crossed the River Strymon into Thrace and onto Asia with Adea (who was not older than fifteen) against Antipater’s wishes.65 Previously living in obscurity in Macedonia under Antipater’s watchful eye, Cynnane clearly saw their chance to re-enter the dynastic game; as Polyaenus put it, ‘upon Alexander’s death, his generals parcelled out his dominions among themselves, in exclusion of the royal family’, or so it must have appeared to the Roman historians who never contemplated the historicity of the Will. Cynnane next demanded that Adea be presented as a bride to the newly elevated Arrhidaeus, and it was not the first time the hapless halfwit had been strategically targeted for marriage.66

  Perdiccas, whose own position would be also undermined by Cynnane’s move, had equal reason to block the passage of the Argead women, and so he sent his brother, Alcetas, to intercept them. The defiant Cynnane was killed and yet curiously Alcetas’ men mutinied at this outcome and demanded that Adea be duly presented to King Philip III; some of them who ‘… at first paused at the sight of Philip’s daughter’, according to Polyaenus, could conceivably have seen Cynnane in action with her father in the Illyrian campaigns (mid-340s BCE).67 Perdiccas was forced to agree to the match, and Adea boldly assumed the regal title ‘Queen Eurydice’.68 Unfortunately for the ‘royalists’ and the dynastically minded Somatophylakes, the daughter of Alexander’s half-sister was now married to Alexander’s half-brother (an ‘Amazon and an idiot’) and Eurydice became, as Heckel notes, the ‘first true Macedonian queen in almost a generation’.69

  With the new turn of events in Pella after Polyperchon assumed the regency, Eurydice, who seemingly harboured a hatred of Alexander’s side of the Argead line (surely for the murder of her father; moreover, Alexander’s former chiliarch was responsible for the death of her mother), had her new husband issue letters demanding Polyperchon deliver up his army to Cassander who was obviously promoting himself in the parallel role of regent to the kings.70 Justin recorded that a similar demand for submission was sent to Antigonus in Asia, which presumably meant she and Cassander required his military support.71 ‘When everything necessary for his departure was ready’, Cassander journeyed to Celaenae with the kings’ edict, whereupon he secured for himself 4,000 infantry (probably Greek mercenaries) and a useful fleet of thirty-five of Antigonus’ ships with which to return to Greece and build an opposition bridgehead.72

  The assumption that Antigonus declared war on Polyperchon by agreeing to this requisition does not need to be made; he simply, though rather conveniently, complied with a directive from Pella. Cassander simultaneously reached out to Ptolemy (now his brother-in-law) in Egypt, and probably to Lysimachus as well (married to, or soon to wed, Nicaea).73 With an oathless Eumenes now on the loose, and with the Cardian general and Polyperchon apparently corresponding with Olympias, Antigonus was only too happy to assist the old regent’s son to embroil himself in a war with the new regent across the Aegean.74 Antigonus’ true intent was nevertheless clear:
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  … he pretended to be aiding him [Cassander] because of his own friendship for Antipater, but in truth it was because he wished Polyperchon to be surrounded by many great distractions, so that he himself might proceed against Asia without danger and secure the supreme power for himself.75

  Polyperchon finally ‘… foresaw the serious character of the war that was to be fought with him.’ According to Diodorus, he sought council approval before taking any actions and that ‘many shrewd suggestions’ were made about the war; the council was presumably the veneer of an Assembly, but here, with the Pellan royalty being tugged at from both sides, it was more likely a synedrion convened with philoi, court friends.76 ‘But it was clear that Cassander, reinforced by Antigonus, would hold the Greek cities against them… since some of the cities were guarded by his father’s garrisons and others dominated by Antipater’s friends and mercenaries.’

  Cassander must have promised his dying father he would serve Polyperchon well. He lied; as a direct result of his hostility, Polyperchon and his advisers ‘… decided to free the cities throughout Greece and to overthrow the oligarchies established in them by Antipater… for in this way they would best decrease the influence of Cassander and also win for themselves great glory and many considerable allies.’77 Demades had pleaded with Antipater to take these steps himself, but his words had fallen on deaf ears; Cassander executed him in Pella after killing the orator’s son standing at his father’s side.78

  Polyperchon’s move in Greece appeared legitimate, perhaps even to some Macedonians; it was ostensibly a continuation of Alexander’s earlier instructions to Craterus to ‘guard the freedom of the Greeks’, an edict closely linked to the Exiles Decree. Its central promise harked back even further to the battle at Gaugamela when Alexander had allegedly inferred that ‘tyrannies were abolished and they might live under their own laws.’79 In reality the slogan promised little; new oligarchs would replace the old under a ‘Macedonian Peace’ that offered no more a prospect of true independence than did the later Pax Romana. Certainly, after the battle of Megalopolis some thirteen years earlier, when the Spartan king, Agis, was aided by Peloponnesians, Antipater would have tightened his grip on the Greek city-states.

  Future calls for ‘freedom’ would be repeated in the years to come for various political ends. We have Antigonus’ ‘Proclamation of Tyre’ (315 BCE, he was by then in league with Polyperchon) which was similarly designed to challenge Cassander’s oligarchs, and a proclamation by Ptolemy in response, though he too reinforced ‘freedom’ with garrisons, this time at Sicyon and Corinth. Antigonus’ son, Demetrius Poliorketes, followed; he even revived Philip’s League of Corinth in 302 BCE, but had garrisoned Athens by 295 BCE. These pledges of ‘freedom’ were by definition ‘a declaration of power over their fate’, or as Anson put it, the promise of freedom was a ‘sound bite’ to ‘excuse war and revolution in the name of a broad philosophical ideal’.80

  Here, in 318 BCE, ‘many in fact obeyed’ Polyperchon and ‘there were massacres throughout the cities’ whilst others ‘were driven into exile; the friends of Antipater were destroyed, and the governments… began to form alliances with him.’ Although Polyperchon had clearly been ‘forced into a political stance that was diametrically opposite’ to the Antipatrid regime in Greece, at no time was a declaration of war against Antigonus mentioned, a contention backed up by the fact that they would join forces three years later.81 Polyperchon had, nevertheless, been manoeuvred into a position not of his own choosing, and he would have surely avoided a confrontation in Asia when Greece itself was now in turmoil. In this light the ‘remarkable’ missives he allegedly sent to Eumenes empowering him to wage war in the name of the kings look rather suspicious, especially so when recalling Eumenes’ local deceits. Diodorus recorded the content of the avowed Pellan correspondence in the greater detail:

  He [Polyperchon] also sent to Eumenes, writing a letter in the name of the kings, urging him not to put an end to his enmity toward Antigonus, but turning from him to the kings, either to cross over to Macedonia, if he wished, and become a guardian of the kings in co‑operation with himself, or if he preferred, to remain in Asia and after receiving an army and money fight it out with Antigonus who had already clearly shown that he was a rebel against the kings. He said that the kings were restoring to him the satrapy that Antigonus had taken away and all the prerogatives that he had ever possessed in Asia. Finally he set forth that it was especially fitting for Eumenes to be careful and solicitous for the royal house in conformity with his former public services in its interest. If he needed greater military power, Polyperchon promised that he himself and the kings would come from Macedonia with the entire royal army.’82

  Polyperchon additionally compensated Eumenes for his losses providing him with a useful war chest and the crack infantry brigade:

  Eumenes, just after he had made good his retreat from the fortress [Nora], received the letters that had been dispatched by Polyperchon. They contained… the statement that the kings were giving him a gift of five hundred talents as recompense for the losses that he had experienced, and that to effect this they had written to the generals and treasurers in Cilicia directing them to give him… whatever additional money he requested for raising mercenaries and for other pressing needs. The letter also added that they were writing to the commanders of the three thousand Macedonian Silver Shields ordering them to place themselves at the disposal of Eumenes and in general to co‑operate wholeheartedly with him, since he had been appointed supreme commander of all Asia.83

  Polyperchon, under whose higher command the Silver Shields had once operated, must have appeared apo mechanes Theos, ‘God from the machine’, to everyone but Eumenes, for we suggest the true intervention was something less divine.84 Diodorus obviously believed the correspondence to be genuine, but Hieronymus’ pro-Eumenes hand was at work, we suggest.

  Polyperchon could not have dispatched the letters in the format we read them; he would not have crossed to Asia from Macedonia when Cassander was recruiting an army in Greece and with Adea on the loose in Pella beckoning Cassander north and issuing her own ‘king’s’ edicts. If Eumenes had elected to return to Macedonia, Polyperchon would have at once declared war on Antigonus through the missives and yet invited the only man capable of executing it away from the theatre of operations; it is a prospect rendered even more unlikely when considering the size of Monophthalmos’ conglomerated army, and when factoring in the support the one-eyed veteran might receive from Ptolemy and Lysimachus, related as they now were.85 And at none of the synedria Polyperchon held was there mention of open hostilities in Asia, or the inciting of other Asian satraps to rise against him, a wholly necessary step if he was to head an Asian counterchallenge. Polyperchon, the Tymphaean jackal, would have indeed then become a lion among the predatory Diadokhoi. So what was really couriered east from the beleaguered regent’s desk?

  First of all, the two missives were potentially one: a king’s edict and a regent’s covering letter, that is if Polyperchon sent anything at all, for at this point in his narrative, Nepos only mentioned correspondence and messengers from Olympias to Eumenes which outlined a dialogue both ways. In the accounts of Diodorus and Plutarch these dispatches appeared to have arrived together, so we might credit Olympias with covertly ‘assisting’ Polyperchon with his ‘royal’ directives on behalf of Eumenes’ cause.86 Additionally, Polyperchon’s communications and pledges need to be considered in light of what was clearly reported to be faked correspondence drafted by Eumenes in the camp of Peucestas at Persepolis some two years on:

  Eumenes had fabricated a false letter… the purport of which was that… Olympias, associating Alexander’s son with herself, had recovered firm control of the kingdom of Macedonia after slaying Cassander, and that Polyperchon had crossed into Asia against Antigonus with the strongest part of the royal army and the elephants and was already advancing in the neighbourhood of Cappadocia.87

  As Roisman elegantly put it: ‘In the mu
rky world of Macedonian “constitutionalism” and legitimacy, a recent edict issued by the kings and their regent, and endorsed by Alexander’s mother, carried more weight than a disinterred resolution of the Macedonian assembly sanctioned by the same kings.’88 Realising just that, it seems more likely that Eumenes and Olympias between them had fully concocted, or partly exploited, an original letter from the regent in Pella and turned it into a mandate for war in Asia. As Eumenes also knew, this was not an age of high literacy or readily available writing materials, and so there was no widespread counterfeiting. The arrival of a state missive, penned in court officialise on fine parchment with an ornate Argead seal, and delivered by a suitably primed courier, would have carried the weight of unquestionable authenticity and an aura of royal gravitas for all but a privileged syntrophos more familiar with the royal secretariat.

  Other deceits aside, fabricating court correspondence would have been too preposterously bold to contemplate, as would its repercussions, and those that knew how to carry it off were even rarer still. Anyone who might dare to challenge the veracity of a king’s edict would be a brave man indeed, as the former king’s secretary knew, and it was a state of affairs Eumenes now exploited. After all, he may well have crafted the bogus letters Philip II send out for Athenian ‘interception’ in 340 BCE during the siege of Byzantium; one falsely claimed Philip was abandoning the siege and it resulted in a Greek sea blockade being lifted, and a further letter to Antipater, again designed for capture, betrayed his army’s (imaginary) position, duping the allied command guarding a strategic pass.89

  THE DAGGER, THE ROPE AND THE HEMLOCK: OLYMPIAS’ RETURN