Fiona wrote:Paralus wrote:
In complete contrast Alexander showed not one whit of interest in marriage or the succession other than a political marriage forced upon him by more than two years of insurrection in the eastern provinces.
It might be observed that the lack of a defined heir at his death was indeed for lack of trying.
It might be so observed, but that would hardly be fair. Are we not tip-toeing around the elephant in the room here? It is very difficult for a man to get a woman pregnant if he's not that way inclined.
That just may go charging through this thread as did Seleucus’ pachyderms Antigonus' battle line at Ipsus.
You might well be right. We don’t know though and we likely never will. All that we do know is that the record suggests he gave no thought to the provision of an heir until it was far too late. It will be argued that we only
know it was far too late via hindsight. That ignores the fact that Philip set about it at an early age for the very reason that one living such a life – and a Macedonian monarch to boot – could reasonably expect to depart for Hades long before one reached Isocrates’ age.
If his utterance about leaving his empire to “the strongest” to fight over is anywhere near the truth – and not simply a later Diadoch invention to cover their grasping ambitions and actions – then such recklessness is confirmed.
Phoebus wrote:I would think that this sort of cultural compromise shows that there was an understanding of the need to be culturally inclusive (even as part of a greater agenda), that this needed to extend beyong the battlefield and that the king was willing to do all this.
Yes, but, all within the understanding that the Macedonians were the ruling socio-ethnic elite now. This is demonstrated by the seating at the banquet. The Achaemenids had done very well in establishing their ruling socio-ethnic elite over some two and a half centuries. The Persian “diaspora” amongst the wholly absorbed territories was well entrenched and the King’s “friends” and “kinsmen” as well as those accorded royal favour worked well within the local populations. Mazaeus, whose sons bear Babylonian names, would seem to show he had close connections to the Babylonian “elites”. Hence Alexander’s diplomatic moves that saw him turn the city over to him post Gaugamela.
Whether Alexander’s experiment would have succeeded we don’t know. It was a rather abrupt re-aligning of the power elite. In any case, after his death, his marshals were to have little taste for it. Macedonian/Greek implants were to be the order. Even if Seleucus – from a weak position and with everything to gain – seems to have succeeded where Peucestas did not.
Phoebus wrote:Well that' a rather poor batting average on Phillip's end, then, isn't it? I'd argue that he married young because he took the throne young and married often because the political need was there.
Alexander, on the other hand, was not in a situation where he required to establish dynastic marital alliances to keep his kingdom together. If anything, marrying in Macedon before leaving would have only led to perceptions of favoritism. Where his scion is concerned, there is hardly a guarantee that he would have survived his the events after his father's death.
Although the corpus of literary evidence for Philip is not that of Alexander, I would think it a stretch to say that any of his wives and (surviving) children were not recorded in what we do have. That said the sources are not always so interested in children who may have died soon after birth. They are not always clear on those who didn’t – the doubts over Caranus are a case in point. That Philip did not sire further sons may be due to anything from miscarriages to infant mortality to being quite happy with Alexander (after he’d gotten by the danger period) or plain bad luck. We don’t know. Seven wives do indicate a decided willingness though. We should note that he was in the process of leaving behind another at the time of his murder.
I wouldn’t so much argue with the wife for every campaign theme. That in no way diminishes the fact that he did marry and he did procreate. To Philip the Macedonian state was a plasticine work constantly being remodelled. That which we know as this state is largely down to him. Within that remodelling process he opened up both the citizenship of the state and the
hetairoi (including pages) to “outsiders” including Greeks. Thus any of these women might – and did, Olympias – bear him heirs.
I would disagree about Alexander. To begin with, if Philip took the throne "young" (22 or 23 depending which year), Alexander took it even younger. Philip, however, was going nowhere without there being a provision for the – always likely – fact that he or Alexander would not come back. A pity it was a girl he was leaving. In any case, there were clear Argaed claimants to the throne (which Alexander subsequently eliminated). Alexander was leaving no-one. As well, he wasn’t planning to be back next winter, or summer - he was going for the duration; however long it took him to achieve his ends.
Arguments have been run about Antipater and Parmenio having a vested interest in such a child. So will have any other decent Macedonian baron with a marriageable daughter. Any such issue will have been the responsibility of Antipater – and of the Queen mother. Arguments that any such child will have suffered the fate of Alexander’s later son by Roxanne are not a reasonable comparison. By the time Alexander IV was murdered by Cassander, at the age of thirteen, the Diadoch wars had been raging for some dozen years curtesy of the power vacuum created by Alexander's death. An Alexander IV left in Macedonia will have been a similar age at the time of his father’s death. All in all a different thing to six month unborn foetus of indeterminate sex, to be born of a barbarian and not at all assured of surviving its first year.
Regardless of the marshals at Babylon and the Macedonians with Craterus, one can rest reasonably assured that Olympias will have engineered the acclamation of her grandson with some alacrity. How it might have played from there is the realm of fiction. The scheming of Perdiccas would, most certainly, have been that much more difficult though.
Alexander did, though, have a dynastic marriage forced upon him: Roxanne. This was the price of peace in the eastern rim. As well I would argue that his
personal marriage alliances in Susa were exactly that: alliances to attempt a similar accord with the Iranian aristocracy after the insubordination and rebellion whist he was in India.
Phoebus wrote:Did Perdiccas ever express such a disdain (not yours, I by no means you think of Alex. IV in such terms) for the heir? You know I respect your opinions and scholarship, but I think sometimes you can be quite cynical!
Moi? Cynical? Not on your nelly. Next thing you'll suggest I enjoy the odd rhetorical hand grenade!
That was not intended as Perdiccas’ view of the unborn child. It was the view of the Macedonian majority though. Perdiccas’ feelings over the mixed ethnicity of the yet to be born Alexander IV were limited only to the splendid opportunity it offered him. To Perdiccas getting this unborn heir “up” and accepted would guarantee him a regency of eighteen years and if the issue was female then so much the better. A new Philip was the man Perdiccas saw gazing back at him from his resplendent silverware.
In the end, after much argument and spilled blood, he accepted the regency of the dual kings . He had won what he wanted: primacy among the marshals of empire. His exercise of that primacy was somewhat high-handed and naked in its ambition and it would do him in ignominiously.
Yes, I meant that the women were likely camp followers and their offspring so we're in agreement here, and you're quite right that it's likely only the female children and the very young males would have been with them at this time. I shouldn't have referred to the women as "wives" but I forgot about the fact that the Silver Shields were certainly more than old enough to have left wives behind in Macedonia, so they probably didn't/couldn't marry their captives when Alexander encouraged his army to do so at Susa. But Athenas Owl will doubtless be pleased to see that I've had a change of heart here in that I believe this is evidence that the average soldier did not discard his Persian woman and children after Alexander's death. I can't for one moment accept that the "families" mentioned after the battle of Gabiene were Macedonian women and children.
I have been agreeing with you in this thread...and your responses are much better than mine ever were.