Professor, speaking of the statuary group of Krateros… I was wondering why he was celebrated for saving Alexander’s life during the hunt, while Lysimachos was punished by Alexander and locked in a cage with the lion. Surely, the latter must be an exaggeration 😂, but it does make me think. Sorry for the stupid question!
Lysimachos of Thessaly (then Thrace)
So, Lysimachos was supposedly locked in with a lion because he got poison to Kallisthenes, after Alexander had condemned him to be carried around in a cage. Justin tells us about it (15.3-10), as does Pausanias (1.9.5), albeit more briefly. Curtius has the real story (8.1.13-17). Lysimachos was among the king’s Companions during a hunt in Baktria, where he tried to protect Alexander from a lion, but the king ordered him to step aside and killed the beast himself. He reminded Lysimachos of a time in Syria when he’d been badly mauled by a really BIG lion, and Alexander didn’t want a repeat. (He also wanted show he was king and didn’t need “protecting”!)
Lysimachos was a Bodyguard (Somatophylax) of the king, perhaps from early on, depending on his age. He was Thessalian by ancestry, but his father had been important at Philip’s court, as an Hetairos, so he was probably raised in Pella. He had several brothers who also held important positions in the army. In the novels, I have him as a contemporary of Alexander as part of my “let’s reduce the number of names floating around in the series,” but he was probably a little bit older by 4-6 years. He was much too important for the king to get away with throwing to a lion. Haha. Certainly not for anything less than treason.
Later, after Alexander’s death, he was allied with Kassandros, as he’d married his sister Nikaia, before Antipatros’s death. In the 323 divisions after ATG’s death, he was assigned the satrapy of Thrace, which he eventually became king of probably in the very late 300s. Another oddity, in 302, he married Amastris, who’d been the widow of Dionysos of Herakleia…but before that, she was the highborn princess given to Krateros at the Susa Marriages. Krateros divorced her (apparently with her blessing) in order to marry Phila, who was Nichaia’s (older?) sister. She then married Dionysos. Lysimachos died in 282/1.
(Also, btw, the statue group of Krateros and Alexander was made long after Alexander was dead. And Krateros was dead.)
