23   The negotiations:Details of the two scenes that follow are taken from Plutarch, Phocion26.3–28.

24   a winking acknowledgment:This is my understanding of a remark that, like many pithy replies quoted by Plutarch, is open to more than one interpretation.

25   had largely opposed:See this page and note 24.

26   for a long time:According to the Lives of the Ten Orators(846), Antipater began to demand the surrender of Demosthenes after he besieged the Thessalian town of Pharsalus, soon after the battle of Crannon.

27   could find safety there:For example, Themistocles, the great Athenian leader and hero of the Persian Wars, forced from Athens and threatened with arrest and trial after his political enemies gained ascendancy, ended his life as a satrap in the Persian empire.

28   Arrian:The brief reference to Archias’ downfall is in chapter 13 of Photius’ summary. The wording indicates Arrian made it a major episode, but Photius gives us only this tantalizing bit of information.

29   Hyperides apologized: Lives of the Ten Orators849.

30   was cut out:An alternative account holds that Hyperides bit his own tongue off to avoid giving incriminating information ( Lives of the Ten Orators849).

31   Demosthenes awakened:Details taken from Plutarch, Demosthenes29. Plutarch gives no guidance as to the dream’s meaning or importance.

Chapter 6: A Death on the Nile

  1   coffin of hammered gold:Diodorus 18.26.3.

  2   usually after cremation:The question has been raised as to whether the remains in Tomb 1 at Vergina, which may be those of Philip II and his wife (see next note), were cremated before burial or simply inhumed. Both cremation and inhumation were practiced by the Macedonians, but in the period of Alexander they favored cremation, as attested by the written sources.

  3   Tomb 1 or Tomb 2:Proponents of the theory that Tomb 2 contains the remains of Philip III, a.k.a. Arrhidaeus, generally believe that Tomb 1 contained Philip II, his wife Cleopatra, and their infant child. The remains of three people, roughly corresponding in age to these three royals, were scattered on the floor of the tomb by ancient robbers.

  4   Archias the Exile-chaser:I have assumed that the Archias mentioned by Arrian ( Events After Alexander) is the same person as the bounty hunter encountered in Chapter 5.

  5   Alcetas argued:The reasoning attributed to Alcetas here is not directly attested but inferred on the basis of Justin 13.6.5. Arrian ( Events After Alexander21) says only that Alcetas pushed Perdiccas toward Nicaea.

  6   impaled Ariarathes:Diodorus 18.16.3, but contradicted by a fragment of book 31 of the same historian, which claims Ariarathes died in battle.

  7   left there by Craterus:The presence of the Silver Shields in Cilicia after Craterus’ departure must be inferred from their later movements; see this page and note 34.

  8   Perdiccas married:The term “married” is used loosely since it is not clear whether an actual marriage ceremony took place before the later rupture.

  9   Just after the arrival:Arrian’s Events After Alexanderclaims that only a few days separated the episode of Cleopatra from that involving Cynnane.

10   In her teens:Much of what follows, including the details of the confrontation between Cynnane and Alcetas, is taken from Polyaenus 8.60.

11   (almost certainly):There is little evidence for Alcetas’ early life, but his brother Perdiccas grew up at court as one of Philip’s page boys, and there is every reason to think Alcetas did so as well.

12   on instructions:This second alternative is assumed by Bosworth ( Legacy of Alexander, pp. 11–12), as well as several contemporary observers, but there is no evidence.

13   a name with good Argead pedigree:Not only Philip II’s mother bore the name Eurydice; it seems to have been adopted as well by two of Philip’s wives (see Ogden, Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death, pp. 22–24).

14   Somehow, Antigonus had learned:Perhaps his friend and ally Menander, satrap of Lydia, had observed the comings and goings at Sardis of Eumenes, Perdiccas’ emissary to Cleopatra, and had asked questions about the goal of his missions (this at least was what occurred later).

15   The hearse was built:The description is taken from Diodorus 18.26–27. Various points are unclear in both the Greek text of the description and its interpretation. The most consequential is at 18.27.2, where the change by a nineteenth-century editor of a single letter gives a description of a sculpted-gold olive wreath, rather than a picture of one done in gold on a purple cloth. Detailed discussion by Stewart, Faces of Power, pp. 215–21.

16   no doubt coordinated:No evidence directly suggests a conspiracy between Arrhidaeus and Ptolemy, but most scholars assume that one existed, if only because the body snatching would have been difficult without one. It bears noting also that Ptolemy later put forward Arrhidaeus for the vacant post of guardian of the kings (see Chapter 7, section 1). Aelian, in Historical Miscellanies(12.64), tells a wonderful but likely spurious story in which Ptolemy constructs a decoy body and coffin, then switches these for the real ones. Aspects of the hearse and its journey are discussed by Erskine (“Life After Death”) and Badian (“A King’s Notebooks”).

17   A legend was fabricated:The legend is found in a work dating from much later, the Alexander Romance(3.32), but its early provenance is assured by the fact that only under Ptolemy Soter did Alexander’s body reside in Memphis. Pausanias (1.7.1) informs us that Ptolemy II brought the body from Memphis to Alexandria, though many scholars believe that Ptolemy I must have moved the body himself when he changed royal residences.

18   fiercely devoted:An inference from the later willingness of the Shields to follow the orders of Polyperchon, guardian of the kings, even when these were contravened by four other generals (Chapter 9).

19   Perdiccas was enraged:Attested by information recovered from one of two pages of a manuscript of Arrian’s Events After Alexanderthat was broken up and overwritten, the so-called Vatican palimpsest (F 24.1 in the Roos edition of Arrian).

20   still residing in Sardis:Apparently, Perdiccas had made Cleopatra satrap of Lydia, demoting the former satrap, Menander, to the post of garrison commander. The extraordinary appointment of a woman as satrap is attested only by the Vatican palimpsest containing one leaf of Arrian’s Events After Alexander(F 25.2).

21   Eumenes almost got caught:The story was recovered from the Vatican palimpsest (F 25.3–8), and is otherwise unknown; even Polyaenus, a collector of such deceptions, fails to mention it in Stratagems of War.

22   Alcetas refused:Details of the diplomatic maneuvers that follow are taken primarily from Plutarch Eumenes5–6.2.

23   a curious dream:Plutarch Eumenes6.3–6. Information of this kind can only have come to Plutarch from the history written by Hieronymus of Cardia, a close companion and confidant of Eumenes’ throughout the post-Alexander years.

24   Muttering curses:An unusually piquant detail even for Plutarch, found at Eumenes7.2.

25   an intense single combat:Plutarch’s description at Eumenes7.4–7 and the closely matching one by Diodorus at 18.31 have here been accepted as authentic though doubted by some scholars as deriving from Hieronymus’ efforts to heroize Eumenes.

26   He may even have had:Plutarch says that Eumenes found Craterus still alive and conscious and mourned him while clasping his hand, but this seems too operatic to be credible. In the version of Diodorus, Craterus dies before Eumenes has engaged Neoptolemus. Nepos ( Eumenes4.4), relying on a different source from either of these, reports that Eumenes made a vain effort to save Craterus’ life.