In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

by David Grant

  There is evidence that Olympias and Cleopatra were executing Alexander’s policy in their role as prostates throughout his absence on campaign, an arrangement wholly abrasive to his embattled regent, Antipater. Alexander’s mother and sister were listed as recipients on grain shipments from Cyrene (without patronymic, suggesting a head of state and probably in the famine years of 330-326 BCE) alongside other dignitaries.125 After the death of her husband, Alexander Molossus, Cleopatra may have been acting prostates in Epirus where women appear to have enjoyed a higher social status (as they did in Etruria), and where roles akin to ‘presidents’ were attested in the absence of a king. Cleopatra may well have held the office of thearodochos (an official who received sacred envoys) for the Epirote League; it has been argued that the whole Argead clan possessed this sacral power, and Olympias had certainly taken over custody of the oracle of Dodona during her tenure of Epirus, warding off Greek interference in the process. She had also attempted to intervene in the Harpalus affair by demanding he be surrendered up when he fled to Athens in 324 BCE, for she would surely have preferred to take control of the Asian treasury funds he absconded with rather than letting them be scooped up by Antipater.126

  In the post-Alexander world, Phila the sagacious daughter of Antipater, Cynnane the daughter of Philip II, her daughter Adea and Polyperchon’s daughter-in-law Cratesipolis were all involved in military actions or state decision-making.127 Stratonice the wife of Antigonus had a role in the conclusion of the siege of the Perdiccan rebels in Pisidia, and a generation on, the Successor Wars were permeated by intermarriages between more of these remarkable Macedonian women – the daughters of the Diadokhoi – as families sought dynastic advancement and protection from rivals. And none of them ‘… could be reproached either for cowardice or for scrupulousness.’128

  The Will preserved in the Romance and Metz Epitome is Greek in style, an endogamous document that saw the pairing of the royal women and the king’s leading men. But do any of these arrangements reflect Alexander’s original wishes, or are they the political machinations of the pamphleteers? Alexander appears to have trusted two men above all: Craterus and Perdiccas, though they inconveniently mistrusted one another, and despite allegations to the opposite, Alexander relied upon two women to protect his interests: Olympias and Cleopatra.129 Both men and women could presumably be counted as guardians of Alexander’s sons. ‘Macedonian kings arranged marriages for themselves and their offspring’, and Alexander would have wanted to stage-manage exactly that through his Will.130

  Although overwhelmingly influential, Olympias was past childbearing age and she could not in any case produce an Argead heir being Molossian in origin, now that there were no surviving or suitable Argead males. Cleopatra was in her early thirties when Alexander died and sources suggest was already the mother of two children; as the daughter of Philip II she could still provide a half-Argead heir.131 Contemplating their respective positions, Olympias saw the two obvious means to surviving the turmoil: find Cleopatra a powerful husband ‘complete with a Macedonian army’, and establish herself as principal guardian of the young Alexander IV.132 It appears she attempted both.

  With the strongest contenders – Perdiccas, Leonnatus and Craterus – dead by 320 BCE, Cleopatra courted, or was variously courted by, Cassander, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and possibly even by Antigonus, during her twelve years at Sardis.133 If Perdiccas’ approach to Cleopatra (brokered through Eumenes) had led to war with Antipater – suggesting this match was not endorsed or demanded by Alexander’s Will – and when considering that no other suitor appeared immediately after to claim the ‘right’ to her hand, then it follows that she was most likely paired with either the already dead Leonnatus or Craterus; it would further explain why Antipater was relieved when Leonnatus fell at Lamia. If Cleopatra had been paired with the fallen Somatophylax, then her correspondence with Leonnatus carried a legitimacy that has been lost or deliberately camouflaged; her overtures to Perdiccas and her crossing to Asia did only take place once Leonnatus had fallen in Thessaly.

  The pairing of Cleopatra with Craterus is more troublesome, for we would have to assume that he rejected Alexander’s sister in favour of Phila after considering the permutations and after crossing to Greece to assist Antipater in the Lamian War. Although Craterus does seem to have initially delayed his departure and only journeyed upon realising Leonnatus had not turned the tide,134 Arrian’s Events After Alexander makes it clear that once Menander revealed Perdiccas’ designs on Alexander’s sister, Craterus (and Antipater) was ‘more than ever determined to make war on Perdiccas’, hardly a position Craterus could adopt if he had himself rebuffed her, that is assuming our understanding of the event order is accurate.

  It seems even more unlikely that Cleopatra would have rejected Craterus, for his ‘bride price’ would have included his 10,000 veterans and an imminent Macedonian regency to underscore the guardianship of her and Alexander’s children, though Perdiccas and his royal army was equally attractive; logic demands, therefore, that we accept the (unlikely) possibility that Craterus’ increased determination to meet Perdiccas in battle was because of his undermining the union Craterus had yet to conclude.

  What of Thessalonice, Alexander’s half-sister who was paired with Lysimachus by the Pamphlet (T1, T2)? Cassander is said to have forced Thessalonice into marriage following her capture at Pydna; this clearly highlights Carney’s contention and the danger posed by the continued availability of an unmarried daughter of an Argead king. For exactly this reason, Olympias, most likely with Alexander’s approval (despite reports of the contrary), had murdered Europa, a daughter from Philip’s seventh marriage, upon Alexander taking the throne.135 Antipater had probably kept Thessalonice carefully quarantined at Pella (as he tried with Cynnane), just as Antigonus had attempted to keep Cleopatra ‘safe’ from marital intrigue at Sardis.136 Alexander would have likewise been cautious and planned a ‘safe’ pairing for Thessalonice in his Will. Lysimachus was a credible option as were several prominent others. But there is no evidence he ‘claimed’ his inheritance either; he married another of Antipater’s daughters becoming Cassander’s brother-in-law, and so this pairing does appear to be a Pamphlet overture to the satrap of Thrace and its bordering regions.

  What the early years of the Successor Wars made abundantly clear is that Antipater’s long control of Macedonia and Greece made his daughters desirable currency, and especially so in the face of an Argead dynasty promising a half-Asiatic and only one-quarter Argead princes (Alexander was half-Epirote) or a halfwit married to a troublemaking queen with Illyrian roots. Antipater’s daughters initially cemented a brief accord with Antigonus (via Demetrius), Craterus and Ptolemy, with Perdiccas and Leonnatus apparently being invited to join the fold to stave off immediate challenges; with the exception of Antigonus, these were effectively the surviving ‘guardians’ appointed at the Assembly at the Babylonian settlement, or, in Ptolemy’s case, the guardianship offered following Perdiccas’ death in Egypt (T11, T12).137 Clearly, Alexander would not have orchestrated, or condoned, this Antipatrid family dominance.

  In contrast to this early nuptial nepotism, none of the Diadokhoi or their offspring intermarried until after the battle at Ipsus in 301 BCE, when in quick succession Lysimachus took Arsinoe, a daughter of Ptolemy, and another, Lysandra, for his son Agathocles. Upon the death of his wife Deidameia (the sister of Pyrrhus) soon after, Demetrius was betrothed to a further daughter of the Egyptian dynast (though he married her twelve years later) and Seleucus asked for the hand of Stratonice, Demetrius’ own daughter by Phila (thus Antigonus’ granddaughter and Cassander’s niece). Cassander, in turn, later arranged for his young sons to marry daughters of both Ptolemy and Lysimachus; even the Epirote royal line was to marry into the ranks of the Macedonian Diadokhoi.138 The royal women, then, were indispensable to the survival of dynasties, and they would not have been bypassed in Alexander’s Will.

  THE HALFWIT KING AND THE HALF-ARGEAD PRINCESS

 
The testaments found in the Romance and Metz Epitome positioned the newly elevated King Philip III as a ‘caretaker king’ acting in the name of the juvenile Alexander IV: ‘In the interim Arrhidaeus, son of Philip, should lead the Macedonians.’139 Why would the pamphleteers have thrown what amounted to an idiotic spanner into their artful works?

  Bearing in mind Olympias’ hostility to Philip III and Queen Eurydice, this must have been an original Will edict that simply could not be hidden, a regal appointment already notorious for the conflict it caused in Babylon and further publicised by the antics of Eurydice at Triparadeisus. Alexander had presumably designed his half-brother’s role exactly as outlined in the extant Wills: it was a temporary regnum to housesit for his sons under the benign and trusted prostasia of Craterus to thwart any rivals coveting an empty throne; the office of prostates appears to be an extraordinary role only ever linked to the Macedonian court when the monarch was deemed incapable of immediate rule.140 Perdiccas’ charge of Roxane, whether their marriage was truly demanded or not, represented a balance that provided Alexander’s sons with a further guardian.

  Philip III was presumably physically developed and able to procreate (a fear that never materialised, as far as we know), so the pairing would be precipitous if they produced a son, and not much less dangerous if a daughter was born to them. So it is unlikely that Alexander would have provided Arrhidaeus with a bride in his Will, and certainly not an ambitious one who was hostile to his name. Eurydice was ‘no cipher to be manipulated at will’; her presence at Triparadeisus where her ‘rabble-rousing’ almost resulted in Antipater’s death, to her final face-off against Olympias’ army in 317 BCE, demonstrated how dangerous she was.141 Too young to be a threat when Alexander departed for Asia, she may well have been targeted for ‘removal’ in his private ‘last wishes’.

  THE PERSECUTORS AND PROTECTORS OF ALEXANDER’S BARBARIAN FAMILY

  Alexander would have additionally needed to provide for the welfare of his Asiatic wives and mistresses: Parysatis a daughter of Artaxerxes III Ochus, Stateira a daughter of Darius III, the already accounted for Roxane the daughter of Oxyartes, and Barsine who we are told was a daughter of Artabazus. The last two required special attention, as they were mothers of Alexander’s children. The noise from Babylon suggests Roxane was placed under Perdiccas’ protection (a contention reinforced by Meleager’s speech), and she could have credibly been pledged to him in marriage, as the extant Wills suggest. Macedonian tradition was indeed to appoint a relative of an immature king as guardian-cum-regent.142 If Barsine and her son Heracles were to remain in the region of Artabazus’ family estates in Hellespontine Phrygia, then Leonnatus would have been expected to assume the role of prostates; if he was paired with Cleopatra, then the ‘relative’ status held.

  Assuming that a prominent former Bodyguard was to safeguard the welfare of the remaining childless Achaemenid wives, that role would have likely fallen to the Persian-speaking Peucestas, controlling as he did the Achaemenid homelands.143 Stateira and her younger sister Drypetis (Hephaestion’s widow) were reportedly murdered in Babylon by Roxane and Perdiccas, possibly for that reason; their unfortunate fates had been determined by their recognition – so legitimisation – in marriage at Susa. Parysatis may have been executed too for she was never mentioned after, for the daughters of the last two Great Kings could have been influential Persian rallying points in the forthcoming uncertainty.144

  If so, it suggests an attack on Darius’ branch of the Achaemenid line had already commenced. Sisygambis, Alexander ‘second mother’, passed away with grief-laden suicide, which raises the question: was it suicide at all?145 Or did a quiet pogrom take place that has almost eluded history’s pages? Did Sisygambis’ dark reflections, fuelled by memories of Ochus’ onslaught of her eighty brothers a generation before, now anticipate a re-run at Macedonian hands?146 Ochus, Darius’ own son, was never again mentioned,147 and Darius’ brother, Oxyathres, who had been one of Alexander’s court hetairoi, disappeared from the texts; he was likely Sisygambis’ only remaining child.148 Although the prominent Asiatic wives of the Diadokhoi did feature in the new order – Oxyathres’ daughter Amastris, for example (she was briefly the wife of Craterus and later Lysimachus) – the women who were widowed or rejected faced far bleaker prospects with Alexander dead.

  In this period many attested children would have vanished with their parents: Eumenes’ children were never referred to after his death, and the daughters of Attalus by Perdiccas’ sister, Atalante, were captured with Thessalonice at Pydna and never reappeared.149 We may wonder what became of the myriad half-Asiatic offspring sired by Alexander’s soldiers and born in the wake of the decade long campaign. They must have had an estate claim or two in the name of their fathers, and surely this is one of the reasons why Alexander forbade their repatriation to Macedonia; the fear for their integration into families ‘at home’ was mentioned too. Although promises were provided by Alexander for their eventual return, it is difficult to imagine that such prejudice in Macedonia would change, and it sounds a rather hollow-sounding pledge bearing in mind these epigonoi were the most likely descendants to accept Alexander’s own half-caste sons as overlords in Asia.150

  When pondering the sons, now-stranded or forgotten at Alexander’s death, we inevitably arrive back at the identity of Heracles, Alexander’s eldest, and whose mother was, we are told, descended from a branch of the Achaemenid line, though sources suggest Alexander never legitimised Heracles as he could have, by marrying Barsine.151

  THE FORGOTTEN SON AND HIS MISIDENTIFIED MOTHER

  A read through the accounts of the Successor War years suggests it was Polyperchon alone who recalled the existence of Heracles, a figure so obscure that many historians have dubbed him a fraud.152 The boy did not feature at all in the main biographical narratives of Alexander; Curtius, and thus we suppose Cleitarchus, first brought him into the debate during the Assembly at Babylon after the king’s death. Yet Heracles and his mother featured briefly, though significantly, in Diodorus’ later books when we may reasonably assume he was still following Hieronymus’ narrative of events.

  After Cassander executed Olympias sometime in 315 BCE, the barometer dropped on the Antipatrids and a new Polyperchon-Antigonus alliance was cobbled together against him in the Peloponnese. Duplicities followed which saw sons turned and then assassinated in the next five years in which Polyperchon’s power and credibility was whittled away; he faded into a relative obscurity that bordered on ‘retirement’, and the peace treaty of 311 BCE in which he didn’t feature essentially isolated Polyperchon from any wider role.153 His last bid for power was to bring Heracles, and so himself, out of that obscurity in 310/309 BCE.

  Polyperchon was now past seventy and without the support of his own son, Alexander, who had been murdered in 314 BCE, and he also lacked the support of Alexander’s remarkable wife, Cratesipolis (literally ‘conqueror of cities’), a renowned beauty who had held the leaderless army together.154 Yet Polyperchon managed to extract Heracles from Pergamum and raise an army of 20,000 infantry (including Antigonus’ allies, the Aetolians) with 1,000 cavalry, to launch an invasion of Pella from his native canton of Tymphaea in Upper Macedonia. None of this could have been possible, as Tarn and others have since concluded, without the support of Antigonus who was once again attempting to undermine Cassander and his allies (Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus) in the wake of the failed peace.155

  Heracles was most likely ‘about’ seventeen by 310/309 BCE, so he had been born ca. 327/326 BCE when Alexander had been campaigning in the upper satrapies or planning to enter India.156 When Polyperchon tried to promote the youth, ‘… the Macedones regarded the restoration of the king without disfavour.’157 The terms Diodorus associated with this episode – ‘ancestral throne’ and ‘regal title’ – suggest Hieronymus recognised the legitimacy of the boy, or the legitimacy others attached to him. Tarn argued that because Hieronymus published in the rule of Antigonus II Gonatas he never revealed the role of
his king’s grandfather (Monophthalmos) in the venture; moreover, this is why Hieronymus omitted to mention that Pergamum, where Heracles had been installed years before, was under Antigonus’ control.158

  We may speculate whether Cassander, who had implored his father ‘not to get too far away from the kings’ after the conference at Triparadeisus in 320 BCE, was also thinking of the danger that Heracles posed in hostile hands, otherwise the warning is vexing, for Diodorus made it clear that Antipater kept the infant Alexander IV and the half-witted Philip III with him on his way back to Pella. The one short time Antipater might have deposited these two in temporary custody with Antigonus was during what reads in the Gothenburg Palimpsest as a humiliating campaign against Eumenes.159

  Tarn further suggested that Hieronymus knew full well Alexander had no second son, implying that any mention of Heracles at Babylon was part of a later fabrication.160 Other scholars have effectively turned the ‘intruder’ arguments back on themselves, and surely it would have been foolhardy for someone of Polyperchon’s standing (and that of Antigonus behind him) to try and dupe the remaining Diadokhoi with a late-entry pretender, for all would have been familiar with Alexander’s past liaisons and presumably with their results.161 Cassander was clearly unsettled by the move, and now that rumours (or open knowledge) of his recent execution of Alexander IV and Roxane were circulating, he could not trust Macedonian sentiment. With promises of reinstatement as his general in the Peloponnese with a share in power, Cassander convinced Polyperchon to murder the boy rather than grasping the opportunity to expose him as a fraud himself, which, as Errington has argued, is an argument for Heracles’ legitimacy.162 The conclusion to the sad affair, like all character-exposing outcomes, provided useful epideictic material for Plutarch’s On Compliancy in his Moralia.163