Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire (Ancient Warfare and Civilization) by Waterfield Robin

Author:Waterfield, Robin [Waterfield, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2012-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

THE END OF THE ARGEADS

There was still a major obstacle to the Successors’ increasingly obvious ambitions. The Peace of the Dynasts had proclaimed, as had all previous general agreements, that the current administrations were temporary, and had named the expiration date: in five or six years’ time, Alexander IV would come of age and inherit the lot. Already there were murmurs in some quarters of Macedon that it was time for the boy to be brought out of seclusion and taught to rule. But of course in reality none of the Successors wanted to cede power to Alexander, now or in the future. They read the treaty clause “when Alexander comes of age” as “if Alexander should come of age.” They had risked everything to get where they were; they had not the slightest intention of handing it all over to the new king in a few years’ time. For years Cassander had kept him and his mother in comfortable custody in Amphipolis; in 310 or 309 he had the teenager poisoned, along with his mother Rhoxane.

There was a telling lack of protest or reaction from the others. Surely this, if anything, should have triggered war. From time to time, when it had made practical sense, they had all professed themselves loyal to the Argead line. Where was the Antigonus of 315, who had condemned Cassander for killing Olympias? Had he and the others given Cassander the nod at the 311 conference? Probably nothing needed to be said openly; they would all benefit from the freedom of no longer being constrained by the existence of a royal family to whom they owed nominal allegiance. “Since there was no longer an heir for the empire,” Diodorus observed, “all those who held nations or cities began to hope for royal power, and began to regard their subordinate territories as a spear-won kingdoms.”1 From now on, the Successors made less use of the magic of the Argead name to legitimate their positions; they were in effect kings in their own right, with kingdoms consisting of what they could gain and hold by force of arms. And, before long, they would all begin to style themselves kings.

The precise date of Cassander’s removal of the boy king is uncertain. His basic tactic was obfuscation; he already had him and Rhoxane in seclusion, and the killings were carried out in secret by a trusted agent. He may even have denied that they had died, or spread the rumor that they had escaped, because coins and documents from various parts of the empire still used the name of Alexander IV for a few years yet.2 Even though Cassander had been the one who ordered the murders, the victims were later buried in a suitably royal fashion (in Tomb 3, the “Prince’s Tomb,” at Aegae), and presumably by Cassander himself—a public act designed not just as a display of piety, but also as a brazen way of disassociating himself from their deaths. Moreover, by Macedonian tradition, the burial of a king was undertaken by the next king: Cassander was further staking his claim to Macedon.

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