In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

by David Grant

  197.Apollinaris Sidonius Epistle 4.14.1 and 22.2.

  198.Discussed in detail in Wilkes (1972) pp 179-180 and quoting Momigliano (1966) p 131.

  199.In translation ‘to put a finish to anything’.

  200.Quoting Wiseman (1982) p 67 and p 58. As has been pointed out, the issue is perhaps not as clear-cut as the conclusion of Wiseman. Tiberius, a Claudian, was adopted by Augustus, a Julian (by adoption), hence ‘Julio-Claudian’. Claudius was not related to Julius Caesar, but he was an integral part of the extended family that included (adopted) Julians and Claudians. So ‘Julio-Claudian’ is a valid term.

  201.See discussion of Josephus’ training and Pharisee teaching in Wiseman (1991) Introduction p ix.

  202.Quoting Mordechai (2007) with full discussion of events at pp 372–384.

  14

  LIFTING THE SHROUD OF PARRHASIUS

  What might Alexander’s original Will have contained, how would it have distributed the empire, and how much of its content might be retained in the testament read today?

  Guided by the settlements at Babylon and Triparadeisus and by the behaviour of the Diadokhoi in the wars that followed, we attempt to rebuild the content of Alexander’s original Will.

  We question whether the testament that appeared in the Pamphlet mirrored the true division of the empire and the intended position of the royal women and Alexander’s sons. Finally, we contemplate how the so-called ‘last plans’ might be reconciled with extant Will texts and with an original.

  ‘For illustrious men have the whole of the earth for their tomb.’1

  Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War

  ‘Let no one without knowledge of geometry enter.’2

  Written above the entrance to Plato’s Academy

  Philosophy and geometry were close relatives in the ancient Greek world, though they were not always happy partners: Diogenes the Cynic had no time for mathematicians ‘… who fixed their eyes on the sun and moon yet overlooked what was under their feet.’3 Nevertheless, squaring the circle, doubling the cube, and trisecting the angle, remained the three great geometrical mysteries, despite the theories and arguments that had been advanced by Pythagoras, Thales of Miletus, Hippocrates of Chios and the polymaths who followed them.

  Triangulating the content of Alexander’s original testament is no less of a task; we have what Euclid (floruit ca. 300 BCE) might have termed a porisma.4 For Alexander was an elusive equation: a calculable axiom of Aristotle’s empirical and categorising present, and an indefinable irrational number from the Homeric past. He was a mythopoeic conqueror who at once lived by the tenets of the strategically sound and the proportionally outrageous; a tribal leader recalling heroic deeds, and a mortal seeking apotheosis through his progression from Macedonian king, to Greek hegemon, pharaoh of Egypt and basileus basileon, a Persian king of kings. Indeed his was blood and ichor mixed in one and we suggest the content of his testament would have been no less.

  Euclid worked in Alexandria during the kingship of Alexander’s general, Ptolemy I Soter, where he published his geometry as Stoicheia, Elements, which systemised and tightened up the earlier propositions of Eudoxus of Cnidus, Theaetetus of Athens, and other mathematical works that may have carried similar titles.5 Euclid and Ptolemy undoubtedly knew one another; the neoplatonist philosopher Proclus the Successor (412-485 CE), who wrote a commentary on the treatise, claimed Ptolemy asked Euclid if there were quicker mathematical solutions than those he illustrated, to which the mathematician allegedly replied, ‘there is no royal road to geometry’.6 One had Pi to vex him and the other had an equally distracting geometrical dilemma: how to reshape a page of history in order to hide the outline of a royal Will. Eumenes and Olympias had already pointed the way with its tactical folding in the Pamphlet. So, recalling Alexander’s solution to the Gordian Knot, and defying Euclid’s prolix equations, Ptolemy found the quick route: he unyoked the Will altogether from Alexander’s death.

  Euclid’s original treatise is lost to us in its complete form, and he himself suffered a similar fate when Arab scholars alchemised his name to ‘Uclides’ claiming its roots in ucli and dis, the Arabic words that combine to suggest the ‘key of geometry’. It was a more creative identity theft than afforded him by the Middle Ages translators: they simply confused Euclid with the same-named philosopher from Megara.7 Name exploitation was common, however; Aristippus explained Pythagoras’ name derived from his celebrated wisdom – ‘he spoke the truth, agor, no less than did the Pythian, pyth’.8 If each could have anticipated Galen and Demetrius of Magnesia they might have wound up their careers with treatises titled On My Own Name.9

  The geometric tales from Alexandria, however, like so many stories attached to Alexander and his Diadokhoi, have similarly doubtful origins, and whether Ptolemy actually benefited from Euclid’s advice on the ‘royal road’ is unlikely. An earlier mathematician, Menaechmus, reportedly provided an identical retort when tutoring the young and impatient Alexander.10

  Found by Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus in 1896/7, this is one of the oldest complete diagrams from Euclid’s Elements explaining Proposition 5 from book 2, this fragment possibly dating to 75-125 CE. The geometric formulation would be rendered in algebra as ab + (a-b)2/4 = (a+b)2/4 though Euclid did not yet possess algebraic method. The papyrus now residing in the University of Pennsylvania reads: ‘If a straight line be cut into equal and unequal segments, the rectangle contained by the unequal segments of the whole together with the square on the straight line between the points of section is equal to the square on the half.’ Like many finds from the period, the continuous capital letters hampered translations and gave rise to numerous scribal mistakes. Information source www.math.ubc.ca.

  We have sought to explain the man, the motive and mechanisms behind the origination of the Pamphlet. In doing so we have argued why the re-emergence of a Will could have been so potent. But with no sacred geometry at hand, any attempt to trace the outline of Alexander’s original testament remains as precarious as charting the coastline of Britain from the gnomon readings in Pytheas’ On the Ocean, or navigating the coast of West Africa from Hanno’s Periplous, both historically challenged sources with attachments to Alexander’s day.11 Corruptions and later embellishment of the Romance and Metz Epitome Wills leave them laden with diversional traps, like ship-wreckers’ lanterns beckoning historians to perilous harbours of deduction. We know the problems and we have our theories, yet many can be argued in various directions so that we are often ourselves immersed in dissoi logoi, double arguments; moreover, facts, even when stated plainly, are sometimes bilingual.12

  It was Zeno of Elea who ‘invented’ (better, ‘developed’) dialectics, the art of arguing on both sides of an issue, and its spirals of debate have led us here.13 The Skeptikoi, who proposed human knowledge never amounts to certainty but only probability, would have termed it something of an acataleptic exercise.14 Yet Euclid also coined the axiom that all non-parallel lines will eventually meet, and here it seems they do, and it completes an investigative trivium in which we attempt to give some form to the lost first testament of Megas Alexander.15

  A STRATEGY FOR STRATEGOI: THE EMPIRE’S CENTRIPETAL STRINGS

  When considering the distribution of Alexander’s empire at his death, an impartial read of the list of appointed satraps, with its twenty-four-plus governors answering to no clear local hierarchy structure, transmits the inevitability of fragmentation; it was a fate underlined by Alexander’s alleged prediction of posthumous epitaphios agon, the immortal ‘funeral games’.16 Despite the superficial simplicity of such an arrangement, regional administration would have been further complicated by the divided responsibilities of satraps, garrison commanders and citadel officers-cum-treasurers, with their reporting lines to absent kings, a roving chiliarchos, and no doubt, local bureaucrats. Thus we read of the gazophylakes, phrourarchoi, hyparchoi, diskastai and dioiketai, the titles frequently attached to these posts under the overarching authority of an ep
istates, epitropos or epimeletes, hyparchos, hegemon or strategos autokrator.17

  We have further epigraphic evidence of the titles and roles of Macedonian-governed city magistrates that we assume operated under them: the gymnasiarchoi, politarches and exetastai, for example.18 But if this represented the true state of the administrations of the empire in Asia, loyalties would have crossed borders with bureaucratic bottlenecks, factions would have aggregated, garrisons would have walked out and locally recruited mercenaries could have poured in; each satrap’s own designs would have paid scant heed to the bigger picture.

  Some further regional cohesion was required, the centripetal strings that would hold those ‘centrifugal forces’ at bay.19 And when considering the locations of royal treasuries and mints scattered unevenly across the empire, counter balances must have been in place to ensure the accumulated wealth and incoming tribute, now nominally belonging to the kings in Pella, was not squandered by the local administration, or appropriated by a local warlord. This required pan-provincial governance that prevented accounting anarchy, and which, for example, did keep the treasuries broadly intact until 316/5 BCE; any financial extraction before that was mandated (genuinely or contrived) by the chiliarchos or the acting Macedonian regent on behalf of the kings.20

  Our explanation of the missing cohesive glue is relatively simple: Alexander appointed the Somatophylakes along with the most prominent of generals as regional strategoi autokratores in his Will; Ptolemy’s proposal that a select few Bodyguards – those Alexander customarily relied on for advice – should make crucial decisions on governance in his ‘group rule’ speech at Babylon, is a relic of just that.21 These super-governors oversaw their surrounding satraps, so binding the empire together in perhaps nine, or ten, pan-provincial jurisdictions (if we include a ‘greater’ Macedonia itself), in roles in which, according to Justin, they ‘became princes instead of prefects’.22 And to head up this arrangement Alexander nominated Perdiccas as the overseer of the new Asian empire, with Craterus in a similar position in Europe, with their responsibilities overlapping in their guardianships of Alexander’s sons.

  The greater cohesion this implies would have ensured the borders of the Macedonian-governed empire, stretching from Scythia in the north to the Indus in the east, from Arabia and Ethiopia in the south to the Adriatic in the west, did not soften under incompetent or secession-inclined satraps, to use the Persian term. It is highly probable that the men selected had already been groomed for the roles, so that Alexander could venture westward from Babylon leaving Asia distributed securely behind him. Perhaps the crowning of the unified body of Somatophylakes at Susa was a step towards this public declaration of intent.23

  Pan-provincial administrators had necessarily been installed throughout the Asian campaign. Philoxenus, who replaced the treasurer, Harpalus, after his first flight with funds, had an overarching authority west of the Taurus range as strategos of coastal forces and as hyparchos of the region; he potentially operated as dioiketes directing financial affairs in addition.24 Balacrus, a former Somatophylax, had enjoyed similar responsibilities stemming from his long tenure of Cilicia and certainly Antigonus enjoyed a regional mandate in the hinterland of Asia Minor from the Battle of Issus onwards (Curtius termed him praetor praerat–broadly ‘supreme commander’).25 Parmenio exercised similar power in all directions from Ecbatana with Alexander in the East, and Black Cleitus looks to have been appointed in a similar role in the upper satrapies shortly before his death at Alexander’s hand. Craterus had operated in a regional capacity from Bactria-Sogdia when Alexander was absent on expeditions.26 Moreover, we imagine that the Persian satraps, Mazaeus for example at Babylon, Abulites in Susiane, Phrasaortes in Persis and Phrataphernes in Parthia, as well as Artabazus and then Oxyartes (father of Roxane) in Bactria (later Parapamisadae), must have always answered to the Macedonian regime through these regional overseers.27

  Could such a fundamental command structure remain buried beneath the literary topsoil for so long? Well, to consider matters in archaeological parallels with an epigraphical and papyrological perspective, knowledge of the forgotten Hittite Empire remained underground (literally) for over 3,000 years, despite its profusion of cuneiform tablets and its contact with the three great kingdoms of antiquity; we only discovered the great Indus valley civilisation, larger than that of Mesopotamia, in the 1920s. Egyptian hieroglyphs remained substantially undeciphered until Champollion published his Précis du système hiéroglyphique in 1824, and the identity of the ‘sea people’, who caused such destruction at the end of the Bronze Age, still eludes us today.

  The name ‘Aegae’ was only uttered with any confidence again after excavations in 1977, the locations of Nora, Orcynia, and Alexander’s tomb remain unknown, as does the identity of the original occupant of the Alexander Sarcophagus; there remains no proof of gardens ‘hanging’ at Babylon to this day. Papyri fragments from excavations in Egypt over the past century have reminded us of the literature lost, and only now are the new tomb finds at Amphipolis, Katerini and Pella revealing more of Macedonia’s own past.

  How, and why, these regional over-arching roles were condensed to plainer governorships and core satrapies in texts is not difficult to explain. Hieronymus’ original extended detail may have simply been compressed by Diodorus and epitomisers into what we have today, just as the patronyms attached to important individuals were lost along the way. But we must also factor in the possibility, or even the probability, that Hieronymus’ Antigonid-sponsored book had no interest in reinforcing knowledge of the huge Will-mandated remits of the territorial stakeholders who remained steadfastly opposed to his patrons. But, as today’s ‘standard model’ of Alexander and his administration stands intimidating as ever, proposing a radical overhaul is inevitably controversial.

  If we take a closer look at the satrapal boundaries broadcast at Babylon, however, Ptolemy’s grant does appear extended. It included ‘all the Libyan peoples subject to Macedonia’ and ‘part of Arabia bordering Egypt’, presumably the Sinai. Similarly, Lysimachus received ‘Thrace, the Chersonese and the peoples bordering Thrace as far as the sea at Salmydessus on the Euxine’ as well as ‘the neighbouring tribes of the Pontic Sea’. The only other mandate that looks pan-provincial, or at least as expansively well-defined, is Eumenes’ Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and ‘the country on the shore of the Euxine as far as Trapezus’, alternatively transmitted as ‘all the lands bordering these that Alexander did not invade’.28

  The original Pamphlet in its less abbreviated form (and recalling that names were corrupted) may have likewise expanded on these regions, for the correlation between these governors, and the Pamphlet’s ‘coalition team’, should not be ignored. Antigonus’ control of Lycia, Pamphylia and Greater Phrygia is significant too, but Hieronymus had every reason to broadcast it once in Antigonid employ. So we may see in the Hieronymus-originating satrapal rundown given at the Babylonian settlement (T16, T17, T18, T19, T20) something of the original Will, something of the Pamphlet, and something of Hieronymus’ duty to his two early patrons as well.

  Ptolemy’s authority in ‘Libya’ suggests his continued ‘annexation’ of Cyrene was possibly more legitimate (in the eyes of the Diadokhoi) than historians have assumed.29 At Triparadeisus, Antipater did not demand Ptolemy’s withdrawal from the region, rather: ‘Egypt and Libya and all the territory that had been conquered to the West went to Ptolemy…’30 Cyrene had offered its supplication to Alexander on his way to the Siwa Oasis in 331 BCE and thereafter Cyrenaica enjoyed (almost) uninterrupted Ptolemaic rule for over two centuries until it passed to Rome.31

  Under the terms of Alexander’s original Will, Craterus would have enjoyed authority over a Macedonia that controlled its immediate Balkan neighbours (including Illyria, the Triballians, Paeonians and Agrianians), a domain that was referred to as ‘the Kingdom of Arrhidaeus’ (Philip III). The Epirus of Olympias and Cleopatra would have been dealt with respectfully but was for all intents and purposes now a vassal s
tate, while oligarchs and garrisons in Greece further extended Macedonia’s political arm, though regime change (away from the Antipater-installed oligarchs) was clearly afoot with Craterus’ planned return.32 His reported emulation of Alexander certainly suggests he felt endowed with an authority beyond a blunt prostasia, which, due to unforeseen demands at Babylon, manifested itself as Antipater’s second-in-command, a regent-in-waiting and joint epimeletes to the kings.33

  Perhaps more appropriately, Photius’ epitomes described Craterus’ intended office as protiston times telos, ‘the highest honour’.34 The new guardian of the kingdom even invited Diogenes the Cynic to dine with him: ‘I would rather lick salt in Athens’, came the reply.35 Craterus’ monument by Lysippus and Leochares overlooking the terrace of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, replete with a hunting scene bronze from Asia depicting him coming to the aid of Alexander who was attempting to down a lion (lion hunts had taken place in Syria and Sogdia) – the earliest and possibly the most significant of all the successor monuments (though likely completed by his son) – suggested the same; its surviving stone niche is over 50-feet long and 20-feet wide.36

  Peucestas was already administering what we argue was a pan-provincial Persia centred on the Achaemenid capitals of the now partly charred Persepolis (the palace complex at least) and Pasargadae before Alexander died.37 We propose his regional authority extended over the bordering lands that stretched eastwards to the Indus; the universal sentiment that in the East the governors were to remain unchanged is no doubt accurate, for Peucestas was popular and he commanded widespread loyalty. His new role may have cost him dearly if adhering to the old rites: Persian tradition obliged the ruler of ancient Parsa (the Persepolis region) to pay each matron a gold coin when they entered the province; this resulted in infrequent visits and Artaxerxes III Ochus, it is said, never set foot in his own homeland once he had been crowned.38