#archelaos

The last of my 3 discussions of conspiracies at Alexander's court, this time the Page's Conspiracy, which was a horse of a different color, compared to the prior two. This time, we deal with timé (τιμή), which I've talked quite a lot about here. I also wrote on Hermolaos and the Page's Conspiracy before on Tumblr:

"Say goodbye."

1359 Words; Buried Beneath AU

TW for attempted murder

AO3 ver

Raz shouldn’t have rushed in.

Not My Type | Alright | Cute | Adorable | Pretty | Gorgeous | LORD MERCY The moment he is asked, a warm deep smile finds his features as he opens his mouth to reply, but in that same moment a certain scene from the night before flits before his very eyes almost as if someone triggered them to memory as he grows weak at the knees and practically reaches for the wall. “Light have mercy on this old man… “

[ Though out of order, I’m going to begin reposting stories from Olivia’s past since they aren’t yet accessible on this blog. This one took place in April 2017 and is one of my personal favorites. ]

[ Mnemophobia: the fear of memories. ] They say to fear your own memories is to fear losing them, or to remember only the bad things: your trauma. They say it happens slowly, it happens in people as they get older, but they don’t talk about what it’s like to have them taken. They don’t tell you what it’s like to be in a body you don’t recognize, inside a mind with no stream of coherent thoughts, surrounded by people who all know you - but you have never met them.

Thirty-two days. It had been exactly thirty-two days since the slate of Olivia’s mind had been wiped clean. Her mindscape existed of four people: her, Archelaos, Winston, and Demetrius. Olivia knew how to talk, how to eat, and how to drink. She couldn’t remember living outside of a cage in the woods of the Redridge Mountains. There was no other family, no friends, not a job, no clothes, no other home - no past life at all.

“We’re going to Stormwind.” Her uncle had told her of the kingdom, but nothing past. The King was there, she grew up there, there were people there, and that’s where he lived; that was it. It sounded daunting. Was she going to have to pretend to be someone she wasn’t now? The confirmation of the fear of disapproval came shortly after her arrival. It mattered little that others hadn’t taken much of a liking to her, but rather, the fact that she couldn’t do much about it. They’re staring; they hate me. “They just have to get used to you.” Comfort. She wondered what Winston Redright would say differently had he been there for the awful display of Olivia attempting to make friends, or even how Archelaos would act with his father over his shoulder.

Olivia enjoyed who her uncle was when his father wasn’t around; he was kind, gentle, more patient - he cared about her. But that’s not to say she always hated him with his father at his side, either. He was more strict, less patient, more aggressive, but he was her teacher, her superior, her rock, her blood - it was a labor of love.Nevertheless, no matter the audience.

“Goodnight, sunshine.” Olivia feigned the lack of reaction her uncle’s parting words had drawn out of her. And so she kept on walking, from the city of Stormwind to the mountains of Redridge.

It came in waves.

Over one year ago: I’m Olivia. He’d smiled, laughed even. He was supposed to be serious, formal, professional. “I’m Archelaos Draco.” I like that name.

In front of a building she now knew as the Command Center stood a dark-haired man in attire fitting of a Stormwind Guard. What will your nickname for me be?“Sunshine.”

Sitting on the mixture of dirt and sand by a pond by the same name as her own. “Sunshine, I’m your uncle.”

A grassy area in a district now known as Mage Quarter. “I’m not a good person, Sunshine.” But I love you anyway.

On the outskirts of Stormwind. Look at my new scars. Will you come with me? “I’ll come to protect you, Sunshine.”

The first time she felt he’d came to her with his hurt, the torture that was being taken advantage of. And now I’ll always protect you.

And then when he was caught. Please let me come help you. “You have to stay away, Sunshine. I can’t let them take you with me.”

On the porch of a house she once owned. Do you think anyone will ever love me like I loved him? “I know they will, Sunshine.”

In an abandoned town recognized to her as Moonbrook. “I don’t want you to die, Sunshine. I want you to be stronger.”

Outside the offices of a newspaper remembered as The Royal Courier. “Just because I have new family doesn’t mean I love you any less, Sunshine.”

The first time he gave her the gift of letting her in his mindscape. “Only two others have seen it, Sunshine.” I’m special to him.

And then by a tree, outside the grand opening of a place named the Silk Road. He loves me, she’d told him of another. “Do you think I don’t?” I always know you do.

Archelaos: Wow, you want really big concessions

Sulla: Yeah, you know what else is really big?

It wasn’t numb shock as he’d experienced after other tragedies; it was more of an incredulous disbelief.  Things happened to everyone, of course, but Archelaos was not the sort of man who just up and got himself killed in some explosion.  (That was what the rumor mill said it was; Rask had needed to hear of the death from three different sources before he even considered that it might in some way be true.)  Going to the cemetery on Valentine’s Day was a little macabre, but it felt like a perfect irony to Rask.

He’d brought his kids along; death wasn’t a new concept for the orphans, but this was the first person that had died whom they had met prior.  Idalee’s hand was clenched firmly around his, and he carried little Ash in the other arm.  Irvin was more interested in collecting the worms that had risen out of the ground thanks to the early spring shower a few hours prior, but that was just Irvin.  “What’re you gonna do with those?” Rask had asked.  Irvin’s reply was to set the worms at the base of the headstone, like a gruesome bouquet, before continuing on his quest.  Rask grinned; Archelaos would’ve considered it a fitting offering, he was pretty sure.

“He’s really under there?” Idalee queried, her dark, serious eyes fixed on the stone.  She was wearing her best dress, kinky hair tied back with blue bows.  She had insisted it be so, because that’s what people wore to graveyards; it had taken some convincing that it wasn’t necessary to wear black, as she owned nothing in the shade, though Rask knew his adopted daughter well enough to know that he would soon need to remedy that.

“Aye, I reckon so,” Rask replied, giving her hand a squeeze.  “His ashes, at least, if he was cremated.” He headed off the next question before it came, “Cremated is when tha body’s burned, ‘till it’s nothin’ more’n ash an’ bits of bone.”  He smiled briefly at Ash when his namesake was used; the elf boy wasn’t looking at him, through, his large eyes roaming the graveyard, his little child thoughts obfuscated as always by his silence.

Idalee’s gaze wandered over at her brother mucking about in the dirt.  “Irvin-- Pa, is he allowed to do that?”

“He ain’t harmin’ nothin’,” Rask replied easily.  “All tha bodies an’ whatnot are too far down fer him ta get to, Idalee.  Most he’s doin’ is makin’ a fat worm’s day a little harder.”  He smiled down at her.  The eleven-year-old nodded, seeming unconvinced.  Rask gave her little hand another squeeze, then gently detached it, reaching into his pocket.  “Y’wanna say anythin’ out loud?” he asked of the two verbal children,  “Or jus’ leave yer letters?”

Irvin plopped his new handful of worms at the base of the headstone, patting it with a muddy hand.  “Yer good,” he told the stone with a grin.  “I like-- I like your, uh, your metal legs.”

Idalee chewed on her lip, pulling an envelope out of the little bag she’d brought.  “I’ll just leave mine,” she answered, voice suddenly shy.  Rask smiled, ruffling Irvin’s hair and moving him away from the headstone a little.  “Good job, bud,” He told him, stepping closer to lie his own envelope at the base of the stone, his daughter mimicking the motion and placing it carefully so it was propped up, pale white shining against the grey stone.  They had no fear of the wet grass; Rask had gotten specific envelopes that would weather the moisture, ones that were common among seafaring folk.

His eyes lingered on the scene for a beat, thinking about Archelaos, thinking about the dinner he’d been planning on cooking him, at some undecided future date, in the very house the man had sold him.  Too late for that, now.

“Alright,” he murmured, fighting back the aching melancholy that welled unexpectedly within him as he scooped Irvin up out of the mud.  “We’ve paid our respects, each in our own way.  Let’s get ourselves home an’ get some dinner, eh?”

Macedonian (Argead) Origin Story

We don’t really know, to be fully honest. I will say that the story their ancestors came from Argos in the Peloponnese is not true. I won’t even say “almost certainly” not true. It’s just not true and was (probably) begun in the reign of Alexander I to enhance his connections to the Greek south.

That said, and as I’ve noted elsewhere, later Macedonian kings absolutely believed it. The sort of cynical eye we bring to modern politics was…spotty…in the ancient world. Some figures applied it—Kritias of Athens, notably. But more didn’t. I think Alexander I probably found the claim convenient, and after surviving the Greco-Persian War, needed the bolstering. It may even have predated him, and he was simply repeating it. It's what we call a "charter myth," or a story that justifies the status quo.

One thing current archaeology is showing us: the Macedonian kingdom may be older than we’ve tended to date it, coexisting in the area around Aigai among competing dynasties for some time. For a while, the coming of the Persians was viewed as the “destabilizing” force that helped Alexander I and the Macedonians seize control of the lowlands. But now, it looks like it may have been the Euboian (and Phoenician) colony of Methone instead. Who was the group at Arkontiko, or the one at Sindos? Bottiaians? Almopians? Somebody else entirely? How closely were they related to the Macedonians? We don’t know. But I think we need to push back the arrival of a tribe called “Makedones” at least into the 800s and possibly early 800s/late 900s.

As for the tale of Perdikkas and his brothers’ seizure of the kingdom… it has all the hallmarks of classic folktale. Imagine it as told by, say, the Brothers Grimm instead of Herodotos. We have 3 brothers, with the youngest as the “destined” one, we have magic bread, we have an unjust king, we have animal guides, and we have the symbolic “acceptance” (3xs!) of sunlight: the reason why the sunburst became a special symbol for Macedonians. It’s great stuff. I’ve cut and pasted it below for those who haven’t read it.

Now of this Alexander the seventh ancestor was that Perdiccas who first became despot of the Macedonians, and that in the manner which here follows:

From Argos fled to the Illyrians brothers of the descendants of Temenus, Gauanes, Aeropus, and Perdiccas; and passing over from the Illyrians into the upper parts of Macedonia they came to the city of Lebaia. There they became farm servants for pay in the household of the king, one pasturing horses, the second oxen, and the youngest of them, Perdiccas, the smaller kinds of cattle; for in ancient times even those who were rulers over men were poor in money, and not the common people only.

The queen cooked for them their food herself. And whenever she baked, the loaf of the boy their servant, namely Perdiccas, became double as large as by nature it should be. When this happened constantly in the same manner, she told it to her husband, and he understood that this was a portent and tended to something great. He summoned the farm-servants, and ordered them to depart out of his land. They replied that it was right that before they went forth they should receive the wages which were due.

Now it chanced that the sun was shining into the house down through the opening which received the smoke, and the king when he heard about the wages said, being inspired by a divine power: "I pay you then this for wages, and it is such as you deserve," pointing to the sunlight.

Gauanes and Aeropus, the elder brothers, stood struck with amazement when they heard this, but the boy, who happened to have in his hand a knife, said: "We accept, oh king, that which you gave", and he traced a line with his knife round the sunlight on the floor of the house, and having traced the line round he thrice drew of the sunlight into his bosom, and after that he departed both himself and his fellows.

They were going away, and one of those who sat near the king at table told what the boy had done, and how he had taken that which was given with some design. When the king heard this, he was moved with anger, and sent horsemen to slay them. Now there is a river in this land to which the descendants of these men from Argos sacrifice as a savior. This river, so soon as the sons of Temenus had passed over it, began to flow with such great volume of water that the horsemen became unable to pass over.

So the brothers, having come to another region of Macedonia, took up their dwelling near the gardens of Midas the son of Gordias, where roses grow wild which have each one sixty petals and excel all others in perfume. [...] Above the gardens is situated a mountain called Bermion, which is inaccessible because of the cold. Having taken possession of that region, they made this their starting-point, and proceeded to subdue the rest of Macedonia.

From this Perdiccas, Alexander descended as follows: Alexander was the son of Amyntas, Amyntas was the son of Alcetes, the father of Alcetes was Aeropus, of him Philip, of Philip Argaeus, and of this last the father was Perdiccas, who first obtained the kingdom. (Hdt. 8.137-38, from Livius)

That is also our earliest extant king list up to Alexander I. Keep in mind that, other than Alexander’s father Amyntas, we have no record of any of these guys, so like the Roman king list, I think we can feel confident of only the last 2-3.

Later, that list changes so the founder becomes even more mythical, a certain “Karanos,” which just means “ruler.” There may have been an in-between version that named the founder as “Archelaos” (which popped up, naturally, under King Archelaos), based on a play written by Euripides of that name. Bill Greenwalt has done some speculating about this lovely, morphing founding story. I went looking for the article’s title, but can’t now locate where it was, but essentially, Bill speculates that the founder’s name changed as later kings needed to connect it to themselves. I believe he even theorizes that the version Herodotos recorded came from Perdikkas (II), not Alexander I, but as Alexander I used the Argos tie to (supposedly) compete in the Olympics (many problems with that story), it suggests maybe Perdikkas is the original name.

Anyway, that’s where the Argos connection arose.