In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

by David Grant

  The ‘late’ publishing Cleitarchus would, as we have argued, have been on safe ground when dispensing with the Will and probably the detail of the partition of the empire with it; when he came to publish (we suggested the late-280s through the 270s BCE), the first generation of the Diadokhoi, the testament inheritors who fought for control of far larger domains than any granted to them by Alexander, were dead, and their offspring were embroiled in internecine strife. But to reinsure his position, we propose Cleitarchus highlighted Ptolemy’s noteworthy grant of Egypt and he provided an encomiastic description of his honouring Alexander’s newly interred corpse at Memphis.173 The task facing Cleitarchus was daunting. The Journal and the Pamphlet were essentially the two outer-limit posts between which he could build his syncretic account of events at Babylon; he needed to accommodate ‘silent’ intestacy alongside rumours of a clearly vocal king, and incorporate claims of conspiracy (aware it had exonerated Ptolemy) with reports of death-heralding portents and alcohol excess.

  Finally, Cleitarchus had to maintain the notion that it was Perdiccas who orchestrated the division of the empire, when the Pamphlet made it clear that the appointments came from Alexander’s Will (T1, T2). All this had to be achieved from a desk in Ptolemaic Alexandria at a time, if he published sufficiently late, when competing claims from Hieronymus were entering circulation. The city was full of veterans, or by now their offspring, and so Cleitarchus’ final result needed to incorporate additional detail he had garnered from them: the infighting, the challenge to Perdiccas, the executions and the proclamation of the new half-wit king, Arrhidaeus, who became Philip III. It was a construction that required deft hands, lateral thinking and the sacrifice and subordination of parts of one account to another.

  So, finally, what do scholars, old and new, make of the Vulgate claims? Arrian and Plutarch, adherents to the Journal, adopted a dismissive stance on the allegations of the conspiracy that led to Alexander’s poisoning: ‘I do not expect them to be believed’ and they are ‘pure fabrication’.174 As far as the lingering hearsay of the Will, Cleitarchus’ erasure of its presence, alongside his epitaphic ‘to the strongest’ and the reference to Homeric ‘funeral games’, were the nails in the testate coffin for the Roman-era historians.175 But it was Curtius who made the most vocal assault on the Will (T11):

  … some have believed that the provinces were distributed by Alexander’s Will, but we have learned that the report of such action was false, although handed down by some authorities.176

  The repeated plurality of the ‘some’ (the plural has been challenged) and ‘sources’ suggest Curtius knew of more than one Will-adhering account.177 Although he would have been undermining his own credibility if he was referring above to the Romance as we read it today, we must again accommodate the possibility (or probability) that the archetypal text ‘α’, then named something along the lines of The Life of Alexander of Macedon, had not yet become so blatantly ‘romanced’. Because if Curtius was echoing Cleitarchus’ own testate denial, we would expect to see it reappear in other Vulgate verdicts; moreover, as Cleitarchus’ book was so popular in Rome, Curtius’ statement would have been a ridiculous plagiarism when he presented it, as he did, as investigative skill. Curtius’ short melete, or forensic speech (written mid-1st century CE we propose), is quite out of character with his final chapter narrative, and we will argue for its political significance to him at the political heart of Rome’s imperium.178

  Apart from Curtius’ Will dismissal, we additionally have an earlier comment from Diodorus (written before ca. 30 BCE) which appeared in the prelude to his account of the siege of Rhodes (his narrative commencing with events in 305 BCE); it confirmed Alexander’s testament had resided with the islanders: ‘… honouring Rhodes above all cities [Alexander] both deposited there the testament disposing of his whole realm and in other ways showed admiration…’179 Once again, it is highly unlikely that Diodorus would have included this detail in his Library of World History if extracted from the Romance (the Metz Epitome post-dated both Curtius and Diodorus). Arrian did refer to one ‘brazen’ writer who recorded that the dying Alexander attempted to throw himself into the Euphrates and yet he stopped short of branding this source a book of ridiculous fables, so he, perhaps like Curtius and Diodorus before him, was either dealing with an early ‘α’ text Romance, or the still free-floating Pamphlet.180

  It is not impossible that other bona fide historians we are unaware of, or those we know of but whose accounts are lost, accepted the Will as factual. One of them was potentially Hieronymus, an eyewitness to the events of the Successor Wars and Diodorus’ principal source, and we explain in later chapters how his reference to a testament could have been overlooked, or simply dismissed by historians epitomising his account.181

  We have already speculated when the Pamphlet first entered circulation and we have proposed a link to the scheming of the king’s former secretary, Eumenes. We do have additional corroborating reports from Plutarch, Diodorus and Curtius that the detail of its conspiracy hit Greece a few years after Alexander’s death (T10, T6, T11).182 The allegations, we are told, spurred Olympias into a bloody pogrom of revenge against the house of Antipater, the architect of the plot.

  A further (though more dubious) corroboration is found in the Lives of the Ten Orators, erroneously attributed to Plutarch, but now considered pseudepigrapha (literally those ‘inscribed with a lie’);183 it alleged that in the Lamian War, Hyperides, the Athenian logographer, gave a speech just a year after Alexander’s death proposing honours to Iolaos for his serving the poisoned wine. The source of this detail is unreliable and it seems to conflict with Plutarch’s statement that it took five years for rumours of regicide to filter back to Olympias in Epirus. That would make it 318 BCE, the year Eumenes was freed from captivity at Nora, though the allegations would have taken time to travel and percolate.184 Moreover, Olympias’ revenge killings of ca. 317 BCE do appear historical, even if the claims that justified them were not.

  A fragment of Arrian’s Events After Alexander somewhat dispels the earlier Pamphlet release date as well, for it claimed Iolaos met with Perdiccas to broker a marriage to his sister, Nicaea; Perdiccas was not murdered until 321/320 BCE, and if Iolaos was already a publicised assassin (whether true or false), it seems unlikely that he would travel back to Asia to discuss a marriage with the dead king’s chiliarchos, for Perdiccas, like Eumenes, was a clear ally of Olympias.185 Ominously, Iolaos was said to have been accompanied by Archias; this may have been Antipater’s ‘unconvincing’ actor-turned-assassin from Thurii who became infamous for his hunting down of Hyperides, Aristonicus, Himeraeus (the brother of Demetrius of Phalerum) and Demosthenes who had made a career out of anti-Macedonian speeches.186

  CONSPIRACIES WITHIN TESTATE CONSPIRACY

  The acolytes to intestacy are surely correct on one point: the Pamphlet-based Will, in the form we have it today, was published by a person (or people) at the centre of the Successor Wars to further his, or their, political ends. However, it appears that all theorising to date has overlooked a very basic logic: recirculating a Will that had never existed would have been dangerous and self-defeating for any one of the six innocents (or anyone in their employ), for all were notable figures; even Holcias had a taxiarches command at the very least, and he may even have hailed from a prominent Illyrian family.187 A reissued Will would only have been an effective tool if it played on the knowledge, or the suspicion, that a real Will had been read at Babylon. The author of the Pamphlet was appealing to those who knew full well what had taken place in June 323 BCE, and he, or they, positioned their reproduction with such effective verisimilitude that nothing short of a full-scale campaign to eradicate it had to be undertaken.

  As we will discover, Eumenes’ actions in the Successor Wars, and his alliance with Olympias, strengthen his candidacy for Pamphlet authorship to the point where a partisan document of this nature appears an inevitable production from his campaign tent. Linking Ptolemy and Lysimachus to it
s genesis by proposing they witnessed the Will’s drafting was a stroke of genius that provoked an equally deceptive retort: Ptolemy’s Journal extract with its implication that Eumenes and Diodotus of Ethyrae were the royal secretaries who compiled it.

  In 309 BCE, fourteen years after the settlement at Babylon and while based on the island of Kos overseeing the birth of a son who would eventually be epitheted Philadelphos, Ptolemy I, now satrap of Egypt and soon to name himself king (and soon to gain the epithet Soter for his part assisting the Rhodians under siege), compelled Polemaeus, a talented though ‘presumptuous’ defecting nephew of Antigonus, to drink hemlock.188 Following this Cassander, via Polyperchon, arranged for Alexander’s oldest son, Heracles, to be executed, having already disposed of Roxane and the young Alexander IV, so exterminating Alexander’s direct branch of the Argead line.189 Diodorus reported that Ptolemy was ‘relieved’, as were Cassander, Lysimachus and Antigonus.190 Ptolemy was now in league with Cassander and so rumours of the Pamphlet-based conspiracy were indeed ‘extinguished by the power of the people defamed by the gossip’, a comment no doubt recalling Olympias’ execution by Cassander in 316/315 BCE.191 With allegations of treason at Babylon buried, the Will soon succumbed to a similar acid bath in Ptolemy’s book.

  Although Alexander’s Will had been the legitimising agent for kingdoms that emerged from the governorships of Antigonus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus, built around their ‘rightfully’ inherited satrapies and regional strategoi roles, once they had established themselves the Will became redundant, and its memory fell into the hands of men who neither wanted it, nor could afford it, to resurface.

  As far as the reporting of Alexander’s death, it seems that little, save Cleitarchus, squeezed in between the Heraclean stelae of the silent Journal on one hand, and the vociferous Pamphlet on the other, except perhaps the teenage Heracles himself for a moment, care of Polyperchon, care of Antigonus;192 and of course Ephippus’ On the Death (or Funeral) of Alexander and Hephaestion with its tales of hard drinking, which linked the deaths of the king and his closest Companion to alcohol abuse. Arrian cited an ‘Ephippus of Chalcidice’ as overseeing the garrisoning of Egypt; did he stay on and become a tool that Ptolemy put to work?193

  ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’ is an adage often applied when sources are thin, and it is particularly apt for the Journal and the Pamphlet, for their origins have stonewalled historians, the Journal dividing the community into believers and atheists, while the Pamphlet has no disciples at all. Fighting their cases in different arenas, they have done nothing but stare each other down since the Successor Wars, for the genesis of both lay there. As for the final outcome, Ptolemy’s Journal entry became something of a glacis at the foot of Alexander’s intestate walls, and no subsequent historian’s inquisitive scaling ladders have quite reached to the top.

  NOTES

  1.Arrian 7.25.6, translation by A de Selincourt, Penguin Classics edition, 1958.

  2.Curtius 10.5.5-6, based on the translation in the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1946.

  3.Based on the translation in Stoneman (1991) p 32.

  4.The Phaistos Disk from Crete is covered in a number of symbols whose meaning remains unknown. It dates to the Minoan Age ca. second millennium BCE. Its authenticity is nevertheless debated and even if genuine, the symbols might not represent words.

  5.Aristophanes Clouds. Originally produced for the Dionysia of 423 BCE and targeting the intellectual trends within the city; the ridicule of the Sophists and their methods of arguing is a theme running throughout the play.

  6.Historia Augusta, Life of Commodus 9.6 and Cassius Dio 73.20.3 reported Commodus rounded up those with diseases of the feet and armed them with sponges alone whilst he clubbed them to death himself in the arena imagining they were giants.

  7.For Diodotus, see Athenaeus 10.434b for Diodotus and Eumenes, and Aelian 3.23 additionally for Eumenes. Archigrammateus may well be a Hellenistic term that would not have been used before; Sekunda (1984) p 12.

  8.Arrian Indike 18.8 for Evagoras.

  9.The manuscript is referred to as the St Mark Codex A. Recently Chugg (2007) pp 226-229 suggested Diodotus was a bematistes (map maker) and thus, an author of the Stathmoi, the Stages correcting the name to Diognetus of Ethyrae mentioned as a bematist at Pliny 6.61. This has no bearing on our argument except to illustrate how misidentification has crept into extant texts. Further identification suggestions from Heckel (2006) p 308 footnote 301.

  10.Plutarch 77.3-4. By then Antigonus was referred to as ‘king’ but this does not necessarily mean the rumours circulated after 306 BCE when he was formally crowned. Plutarch may well have not been clinical in the differentiation between when Antigonus was considered a dynast and king.

  11.Holcias’ role in the Will reading and his satrapal inheritance of Illyria is mentioned at Metz Epitome 97-98,103,106,109, 111-112, 114-116, 122, and also Romance 3.31-23. Heckel (2006) p 314 footnote 373 for citations. Polyaenus 4.6.6 mentioned he was pardoned for his opposition to Antigonus on the proviso that he retired to non-activity; his role discussed in greater detail in the last three chapters.

  12.Fraser (1996) p 41 for the correct title of what we now term the Liber de Morte. The oldest manuscript of recension A of the Romance is the MS Parisinus 1711, a descendant of the original Romance from some 700 to 800 years earlier; fuller discussion in chapter titled Mythoi, Muthodes and the Birth of Romance.

  13.Discussion of the Excerpta Latina Barbari (so-named barbari after Scaliger’s description of the translator’s poor skills: ‘homo barbarus ineptus Hellenismi et Latinitatis imperitissimus’ in Fraser (1996) pp 14-15. Other similarities with the Romance suggest this was its source.

  14.See discussion in Stoneman (1991) p 14. The oldest fragment containing the Will is considered to be Pap. Gr. Vindobonesis 31954, see Pearson (1960) p 261 and footnote 96 for details. See chapter titled Mythoi, Muthodes and the Birth of Romance for dating discussion of the earliest texts.

  15.For its preservation in other Romance recensions, see Bosworth-Baynham (2000) pp 207-208; Heckel (1988) p1 footnote 1; Stoneman (1991) pp 8-11. For further discussion on dating of the first Alexander Romance and Metz Epitome see Stoneman (1991) pp 8-9. Fraser (1996) pp 41-46 for discussion of the Liber de Urbibus Alexandri.

  16.Fraser (1996) p 213 for discussion of the Egyptian papyrus containing a fragment of the Will. Of course the Will could have been extracted from the Romance and reproduced as a stand-alone document, but it remains more likely that it came from a stand-alone document.

  17.Romance 3.30, Metz Epitome 90-94. Scylla was a part-human, part-beast monster from Greek mythology; here a baby born as a human boy from the belly up, below which it was part lion, panther, dog and boar. As Merkelbach and Heckel (1988) p 9 agrees, the beast represented Alexander’s own men and their betrayal and not his subject nations as translations suggest. See A Baleful Birth in Babylon by EC Carney in Bosworth-Baynham (2000) p 242 ff for the context of the Scylla and its possible historicity. Spargue de Camp (1972) p 140 for the sirrush.

  18.Antipater’s fear of assassination by Alexander expressed or implied at Justin 12.14.3, Curtius 10.10.5, Arrian 7.12.4-7 who alone reported that Alexander had summoned Antipater to Babylon; this may well have been a hangover of the whole conspiracy rumour. Arrian nevertheless attempted to defend what he believed was an actual summons.

  19.Quoting Stoneman (1991) Introduction p 12 for ‘clotted officialese’. Metz Epitome 110 for the roles of Perdiccas and Antipater. Heckel (1988) pp 12-14 for full discussion referring to Recension A of Pseudo-Callisthenes and Heckel-Yardley (2004) p 285 for a full translation of the Metz Epitome version of the Rhodian ‘interpolation’. Bosworth-Baynham (2000) p 213 agrees the Rhodian issue could have formed part of the original Pamphlet Will. See Stoneman (199) pp 152-153 for a translation of the Romance version of the Letter to the Rhodians. The Letter to the Rhodians is concurrent in Pseudo-Callisthenes. A. Fraser (1996) p 212 for the Boule and demos and disc
ussion on the Latin manuscript in which the letter appeared separately. Discussed in further detail in chapter titled The Silent Siegecraft of the Pamphleteers.

  20.Heckel (1988) p 14 for translation and discussion. Chapter titled The Reborn Wrath of Peleus’ Son for more on the chiliarchy. Atkinson (2009) p 178 proposed chiliarchos was the equivalent post of the Achaemenid hazarapati, the king’s second in command. The term traditionally meant commander of a thousand men, but the Persian usage was adopted, meaning the king’s second in command. Also Collins (2001) for the development of the chiliarch role.

  21.For the five days citation see discussion in Heckel (1988) p 13.

  22.Metz Epitome 118, Romance 32 for confirmation of Roxane’s Bactrian (or Sogdian) father whereas Romance 20; Stoneman (1991) p 110, 113, 114 – she became the daughter of Darius. Discussed in Tarn (1948) p 335 footnote 2, thus Tarn concluded the Will is far older than the rest of the Romance.

  23.Merkelback (1954); Ausfeld (1894) pp 357-366; discussed in Baynham p 74. The detail describing pre-death portents was not part of the original Pamphlet but a later addition. Fraser (1996) p 213 for the Escorial manuscript attachment.

  24.Quoting Heckel (1988) p 1.

  25.Quoting Bosworth-Baynham (2000) p 240.