#karanos

Philip’s (Lack of) Sons

So, first I need to correct the bit about Karanos. He didn’t exist. Justin gave baby Europē a sex-change. No historian reports two children for Kleopatra Eurydikē, and Justin alone names a boy. We get two children when modern historians try to reconcile Justin and Diodoros/others. But Justin gets things wrong a lot. So, where Justin disagrees with other historians, I’ll go with the others (especially if it’s more than one). Justin wasn’t simply epitomizing Pompeius Trogus; he had his own agendas and themes, so he changed things when it suited him.

Therefore, “Karanos” = Europē,* born just a few days (maybe a week or two) before Philip’s murder.

The wives and children of Philip are reported in a fragment from Satyrus preserved in Athenaeus (13.557b-c). Of his (living) children, we have four girls (Kynannē, Kleopatra, Thessalonikē, and Europē), and only two boys (Arrhidaios and Alexander).

I specify living because ancient accounts don’t usually list children who died young unless it somehow impacted events. So, the murder of Europē, which led to the suicide of Kleopatra Eurydikē, means Europē got a mention whereas if she’d died of some childhood disease, we’d probably not hear about her.

Ergo, it’s possible Philip did sire other children who simply didn’t survive long enough to make it into the histories—especially if they’d been born (and died) in his earlier years. In Dancing with the Lion, I invented a son (Menelaos) by the shadowy Phila of Elimeia, who died young, specifically to illustrate that point.

The two-to-four ratio of boys to girls suggests Philip fathered girls more than boys. Would more boys have endangered Alexander’s place? Certainly, if they were around his age. But not if they were notably younger—another point I make in Dancing with the Lion: why Alexander is less upset by Philip’s seventh marriage than his mother. The chance that Kleopatra Eurydike might bear a male child threatened Olympias’s position far more than Alexander’s. Even some of my colleagues seem to forget that. While yes, sons and mothers did form a political unit at polygamous courts, that doesn’t mean that threats to the mother’s status necessarily entailed threats to a son’s. Philip’s marriage to Kleopatra Eurydikē was just such a case. Any son she produced would’ve been so far behind Alexander in achievements (and thus, a shot at the throne), that the marriage was no threat—which is why he attended the wedding. That makes events at the wedding very curious indeed! And convinces me that we don’t even begin to have the whole story there.

I made up some things in Rise (no spoilers), precisely because we don’t know and I had to come up with something that didn’t make Alexander into a reactionary rube. Too often people point to him as a “hotheaded youth” who made a mountain out of a molehill at his mother’s instigation. Folks, he was eighteen or nineteen. Hotheaded (always), but not some little kid to jump at shadows and Mommy’s tales. Something truly threatening generated that level of reaction from him (and beyond what Diodoros relates at the wedding). It wasn’t fear of being replaced by an as-yet-not-even-conceived infant brother--unless Philip had other reasons to replace him, and there weren’t any … on the face of it.

Anyway, I want to end by pointing to the Big Pink Elephant in the room that way too many people seem to forget….

AMYNTAS PERDIKKA was Alexander’s chief rival, not Arrhidaios or a fictional infant brother. Amyntas was older than Alexander, the only son of Philip’s older brother Perdikkas (III), who’d been king before Philip. Amyntas didn’t become king when his father died in battle precisely because he was only about a year old, while Philip was c. 23/24, and the kingdom was in crisis. Being a baby was also why Philip didn’t kill him. He needed an heir until he could father his own.**

So despite being the eldest Argead after Philip and the legitimate son of a former king, Amyntas spent his life as “the spare.” Imagine the resentment that would have generated. It’s not an accident that Alexander had him killed inside six months of taking the throne. And it’s probably in that time frame that Amyntas would’ve staged a bid for the throne himself. After all, not only was he an Argead, with military experience, he was married to Philip’s eldest child, who was already pregnant, showing he was fertile. He had a really good claim.

Such a clearing out of competing Argeads was standard for any new king’s first year or so. It’s what whittled down available Argead males from the five sons (and progeny) of Alexandros I to just three at Philip’s death, a hundred years later: Amyntas, Alexander, and Arrhidaios. Alexander wasn’t unique in house-cleaning. Philip had killed various collateral Argeads upon taking the throne, keeping only Amyntas, his nephew.

So basically, given Argead patterns, the survival of male siblings/cousins depended on a couple things:

The age of the sibling(s)/cousins. Siblings and half-siblings who were notably younger were likely to be spared if they didn’t appear to offer an immediate threat. After all, the new king needed an heir until he could father his own.

The apparent competence of the sibling(s)/cousins. Arrhidaios is our best evidence for this: Alexander took him with him to Asia to keep an eye on him—prevent his use as a stooge in a coup—but he otherwise kept him alive.

The king’s personal relationship with the sibling(s)/cousins. This is obviously very hard to determine, as our sources may not tell us, or not tell us honestly, but even if it’s hard, that doesn’t mean we should neglect it as a possible motivating factor. It may, in fact, explain why Alexander II (Philip’s older brother) didn’t kill his siblings. He may have loved them (and them, him). While we can’t say from the evidence, we also shouldn’t dismiss that as a possible motivating factor.

Here's an earlier posts about Amyntas, btw.

AMYNTAS PERDIKKA

* The names themselves are a give-away. “Europē,” like “Thessalonikē” was bestowed in celebration of Philip’s military victories. By contrast, “Karanos” (which means generic “chief”) isn’t a royal Macedonian name at all. Bill Greenwalt talks about the name’s significance in one of his articles, but I can’t now recall which.

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Annoyance as an act of potential beauty

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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.

some nights are nighter than others and plastic bag reflections on the wall look like moonlit water - Jacaranda

My mom found this on Reddit and I had to share it on Tumblr.