Olympias realized she needed a male protector, and there were few to be found. Her brother Alexander, king of the Molossians, was dead, leaving her daughter, Cleopatra, a young widow (at her husband Philip’s behest, uncle had married niece), with two fatherless young children, a boy and a girl. Back in Macedonia, old man Antipater and his son Cassander had become her mortal enemies, foreclosing any hope of a safe haven there. She needed an alliance with one of the generals in Asia, those who controlled her son’s invincible army, if she were to survive long enough to get one of her two grandsons onto a throne.

Marriage and fertility were what had brought her power to begin with; now she needed to tap these resources again, through a surrogate this time, her daughter, Cleopatra. Cleopatra’s ability to bear children might rescue all three generations of royals. Mother and daughter together hatched a plan: Cleopatra would offer herself as bride to Leonnatus, a high-ranking member of Alexander’s Bodyguard and a nobleman of good pedigree. Leonnatus would be asked to return from Asia to Macedonia and take charge of affairs there. He would no doubt accept, lured by the prospect of gaining royal stature as soon as he fathered an heir to the throne.

A letter was sent to Leonnatus in the months after Alexander’s death, offering him Cleopatra in marriage and, implicitly, control of the royal house. Olympias played her trump card, indeed the only card she had. But just then, the Hellenic War broke out, Antipater became besieged, and Europe was thrown into confusion. It was no longer clear what would be left of Macedonian power there, even if Leonnatus did agree to return.

3. LEONNATUS AND EUMENES (

NORTHWESTERN ANATOLIA, WINTER, EARLY 322 B.C.)

Olympias was not alone in hoping to lure Leonnatus back to Europe; her great adversary Antipater was also in urgent communication with him. For the first time in his half century of generalship, including the twelve years he had managed the troublesome Greeks on Alexander’s behalf, Antipater had lost control of events. He could only wait behind the stout walls of Lamia while his supplies ran thin, hoping that a rescuer, either Leonnatus or Craterus, would arrive in time. He had written to both men, promising each of them one of his marriageable daughters in exchange for alliance and support (a third daughter had been offered to Perdiccas and a fourth to Ptolemy).

As the siege wore on, Antipater sent a second message to Leonnatus, the nearest of the generals, reiterating the marriage offer and the urgent plea for relief. He sent Hecataeus, the puppet ruler of Cardia, as his messenger, somehow getting word to this useful Greek from behind the siege curtain that he must cross the Hellespont and find Leonnatus. It was not the first time Hecataeus had crossed into Asia as a Macedonian errand boy. When Alexander had first claimed the throne, it was Hecataeus who carried into Asia, and then executed, an order to rub out one of the king’s political enemies.

Hecataeus found Leonnatus across the straits, conferring with Eumenes, Alexander’s former Greek scribe, over the coming campaign to pacify Cappadocia. The encounter was an awkward one for Eumenes, since he and Hecataeus, both natives of Cardia, had a long history of enmity. Eumenes was also uncomfortably aware Hecataeus was now working for Antipater, with whom he had also had poor relations during their days together at Philip’s court. These old tensions hung in the air as Hecataeus relayed Antipater’s plea to Leonnatus.

For Leonnatus, this was the second stunning message to arrive from Europe in the short time since Alexander’s death. A letter from Cleopatra and Olympias had already come, inviting him to marry into the Argead family and assume control of its destiny. He had kept that invitation secret as he pondered his response. Now another trophy bride was being offered him and another chance to return home as hero and savior. To Leonnatus, the ironies of his position must have seemed amusing. Slighted by Perdiccas in Babylon, done out of his role in administering the empire, he was now sought as son-in-law by two powerful leaders, the iconic mother and father figures of the Macedonian state.

Leonnatus now saw a way he could advance himself by aiding both these leaders. First, he would cross the Hellespont and, with a dashing cavalry assault, break the siege of Lamia. Then he would return in triumph to Pella, the Macedonian capital, and claim the hand of the waiting princess, Cleopatra. That would mean rejecting Antipater’s proffered daughter, for he could not marry both (only a king had the privilege of polygamy). But the slight would mean little once he had rescued the entire army from near-certain destruction and put himself very near the Argead throne, if not actually upon it.

Having resolved on this plan, Leonnatus decided to recruit Eumenes as his accomplice, a man he esteemed as a clever and loyal subordinate. Keeping hidden for the moment his true aim, to seize control of the Argead house and thus the empire, Leonnatus urged Eumenes to go with him to Europe to respond to Antipater’s summons. He offered to help reconcile Eumenes with Hecataeus, the messenger who had brought the summons to their camp, so that the two old enemies could work together and prosper in Antipater’s service. Eumenes, however, felt the rift could not be healed and feared that Antipater would have him killed as a favor to Hecataeus. Perhaps too he had doubts about Leonnatus, who, like many Macedonian nobles, showed a worrisomely high self-regard and an inordinate fondness for wrestling and hunting.

Stymied in his first approach, Leonnatus took Eumenes fully into his confidence, revealing his letter from Cleopatra and his plan to join the royal family. This disclosure, which clearly implied disregard of the orders framed by Perdiccas in Babylon, was fraught with perils for Eumenes. He had to choose sides. He must either become Leonnatus’ confederate, by concealing from Perdiccas what he had learned, or become his enemy by reporting it. Eumenes knew what path he would choose but for the moment contrived to say nothing. That night, however, Eumenes slipped away. He took with him a small corps of five hundred men and a chest of gold coins, money meant for hiring mercenaries to fight in Cappadocia. He made straight for Perdiccas’ headquarters in Babylon.

When Leonnatus woke and found Eumenes gone, it was clear that the die had been cast. The secret of his plans to seize control in Europe would soon be out, and a showdown with Perdiccas was surely coming. But as the favorite of Olympias and Cleopatra, the man they had selected to father the next heir to the throne, he had good hopes of prevailing in that contest. He made haste to cross the Hellespont and return to Europe, where his destiny, and his queen, were waiting.

4. ARISTOTLE (CHALCIS, 322 B.C.)

While this fissure was opening in the ranks of Alexander’s Bodyguards, the philosopher Aristotle died in his adopted home on the island of Euboea. Throughout his life he had suffered from a stomach ailment, and this had grown more severe after his departure from Athens. Perhaps the change of diet and routine hastened his demise. He was sixty-two years old.

Aristotle’s wife, Pythias, had died long before, while the family was in Athens. Thereafter, Aristotle had shared his bed with Herpyllis, a former slave to whom he had given freedom. Perhaps it was Herpyllis who bore his son, Nicomachus, still a youth at the time Aristotle died; his daughter, Pythias, was also young, not yet in her teens. In his will—a document that survives complete, quoted by the ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius—Aristotle placed both children in the care of his adopted son, Nicanor, the man who had read aloud the Exiles’ Decree to the Greeks at Olympia. The will instructs Nicanor to look after Aristotle’s children as though he were both their father and their brother, but, in a shift of roles not uncommon in the Greek world, to marry Pythias as soon as she came of age.