The power of the Argead name was still strong in Macedonia, and Cassander had reason to be concerned. He took his own forces to meet Polyperchon’s on Macedonia’s borders, and there, as the armies prepared for battle, he offered a bargain to his enemy: if Polyperchon would murder Heracles, Cassander promised to make him a firm ally and bestow high honors and office upon him. Polyperchon accepted the deal.

Plutarch records a chilling account of the assassination, though there is no way to gauge its veracity. Polyperchon invited Heracles to a dinner party, an ominous move on the eve of a battle. Heracles was suspicious and came up with a pretext to avoid attending. Polyperchon sent a message that he knew could not fail to sway the boy: “Young man, the first thing you should learn from your father is how to be adaptable, and how to oblige your friends.” Heracles came to the dinner, ate well, and was strangled to death.

Cassander had Heracles’ body buried secretly so as not to arouse an outcry. Then he gave Polyperchon an inglorious position as major general in the Peloponnese. It was a small prize Polyperchon had won in return for the irrevocable extinction of the Argeads. Presumably, he did little in his new post or did not live much longer, for our sources know nothing more of him.

At around the same time as Heracles’ death came that of Cleopatra, Alexander the Great’s sister. She had remained at Sardis, a widow separated from her children, for more than a decade following her journey there in pursuit of marriage to Perdiccas. Her adoptive home had long since come under the control of Antigonus, a general whose interests were not served by her survival. Even so, she lived on, perhaps under some kind of house arrest, a mere spectator of the struggle to dominate her brother’s empire. She and Antigonus seem to have struck some sort of bargain, for she had not attempted to marry any of his rivals, nor had he attempted to marry her.

While she remained a virtual prisoner in Sardis, Cleopatra’s fertile years slipped away. At the time her two nephews, Heracles and the young Alexander, were killed, she was already in her late forties. She was past childbearing but could still perhaps lend royal stature to any general she married. It was this prospect that led Ptolemy, lord of Egypt, to seek her hand, and in 308, for some unknown reason, she accepted his offer and attempted to leave for Alexandria.

Alexander wearing elephant-skin headgear, as depicted on Ptolemy’s coinage, starting in 321 B.C. (Illustration credit epl.1)

A city official in Sardis reported her plans to Antigonus. One-eye immediately sent his agents—women in this case, perhaps to avoid arousing Cleopatra’s suspicions—to kill her. Then, just as Cassander had done for the young Alexander, he provided her with a magnificent funeral and tomb, and executed the assassins he himself had hired.

The end of the Argeads brought the first era of the post-Alexander world to a close. The contest for power among Alexander’s generals would continue and would be passed on to their sons and grandsons. But the question of succession had at last been answered. Legitimate monarchy was dead; sovereignty henceforth would indeed belong “to the strongest,” to those who had the military muscle and bravado to makethemselves kings. Within a few years Antigonus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Cassander had done just that, placing crowns on their own heads, creating five royal dynasties to replace the one they had lost.

The diaspora of Alexander the Great’s power became irreversible with the near-simultaneous deaths of Eumenes and Olympias. The empire broke up into parts that were kept in balance by the jealousies and suspicions of the men who ruled them. Whenever one seemed to be gaining in strength or ambition, the others banded together to counterweight him. A new political order had emerged, not at all the world-state that Alexander had hoped for and planned but a multipolar world marked by rivalry, shifting alliances, and long-running small-scale conflicts—in many ways, a world like our own.

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Notes

Preface

  1   “Diadochs”:The word has ancient authority as a proper noun used to designate the group of men who competed for power after Alexander’s death; it appears once in Diodorus’ history.

  2   valid evidence:The best recent review of the welter of chronological data for this period is Wheatley’s “Introduction” (in the bibliography under “Chronological Problems”).

  3   recently proposed hybrid:Boiy’s chronology, which he claims is “between high and low,” is laid out in the book whose title begins with that phrase, listed under “Chronological Problems” in the bibliography.

  4   perhaps even his kinsman:Eumenes’ father was also named Hieronymus, and since names in the Greek world tend to run in families, it has been thought that Eumenes and Hieronymus were somehow related.

  5   Modern historians:See especially Bosworth, “History and Artifice” (in the bibliography under “Eumenes”).

Introduction: The Opening of the Tombs

  1   “Be as calm as possible”:The quotation, and other details of the discovery of Tomb 2 at Vergina, are taken from Andronikos’ own description in “Regal Treasures.”

  2   one leading theory:The attribution of the tomb to Philip III and his wife, rather than to Philip II and hiswife, has been gaining support in recent years and was vigorously defended by a panel of experts at the January 2008 meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. Eugene Borza and Olga Palagia, the leading proponents of the theory, have summarized their arguments in “Chronology of the Macedonian Royal Tombs at Vergina.” The attribution to Philip II, however, first asserted by Andronikos, is still supported by many Greek and some European and American scholars (most recently by Ian Worthington in Philip II of Macedonia, New Haven, 2009, app. 6). The bibliography on the subject is vast, and can best be accessed through the article by Borza and Palagia.

  3   one expert judged:The paleoanthropologist Antonis Bartsiokas reported evidence of “dry” cremation in “The Eye Injury of King Philip II and the Skeletal Evidence from the Royal Tomb II at Vergina,” Science228 (2000), pp. 511–14. His conclusions have been accepted by some scholars, but just as this book was nearing completion, a challenge was mounted by a team led by Jonathan Musgrave; their arguments appeared in the International Journal of Medical Sciencesfor 2010, http://www.medsci.org/v07p00s1.htm. The debate is likely to continue for some time, since it can be conducted only by experts in forensic pathology and these disagree among themselves.

Chapter 1: Bodyguards and Companions

  1   their thoughts went back:The recollection is reported by Arrian ( Anabasis7.18.6).

  2   an interloper never seen before:The episode of the stranger who took the throne is recounted in different versions by several ancient writers. Arrian ( Anabasis7.24.1–3) reports that the man was tortured by Alexander and claimed only to have acted on a whim. Diodorus (17.116) says that the man refused to explain his actions, while Plutarch ( Alexander73.6–74.1) says he attributed his act to the promptings of Serapis. Both Diodorus and Plutarch say Alexander had the man killed.

  3   Belshazzar, his descendant:The feast of Belshazzar is described in the Old Testament book of Daniel 5.

  4   The prophecy came to pass:According to a curious tale related by the Jewish historian Josephus, Alexander was shown the passage from the book of Daniel on the occasion of his visit to Jerusalem and interpreted it as referring to his own conquest of the Persian empire ( Jewish Antiquities11.8.5).