Alexander knew that Caranus, perhaps even his mother and sister, had to be killed eventually. But this was too quick. Olympias thought only of revenge. He was now king and had to consider how he would solidify his position. Murders and liquidations there would be, but they would come when he was ready, not when his mother decided it was time for retribution. He returned to the throne room and his waiting mother.
"You operate on a completely vengeful level, don't you, mother? Don't you understand that I must first be accepted by the army and acclaimed by the people? Your vindictive actions will bring me to ruin before the crown is even on my head." He glared at her with exasperation. "There will be uprisings in the conquered lands when they learn what happened here today. Military matters must be handled first. Then I'll decide what is to become of the queen and her children."
Olympias smiled at her son. "You mean the former queen!" she quipped. "Life is cruel, son. As we must be. If you don't know it now, you will learn quickly that rulers must kill or be killed. Set a harsh example during the first days of your reign, and you can bring the world to its knees. Humans will speak your name with awe for millennia."
"I won't disappoint you. But you must understand from today forward that you're not king. You're the king's mother. That gives you certain prerogatives, but it doesn't give you the right to make king decisions. Only I will do that. A king is more than a loving son."
Olympias smiled and reached up to grasp the back of Alexander's neck. She kissed him. "Zeus-Ammon's promise has been fulfilled. My life culminates in you. Become king Alexander; grow beyond today’s political inconvenience. The years will diminish any guilt you have. The legend of your greatness begins today. That's all that matters."
The mother knew the son. Her words had long conditioned Alexander and prepared him for this moment. She knew he would not fail her. She walked slowly toward the throne room door, paused, and gave Alexander a final thought to ponder. "It would be prudent to take a wife, King Alexander. Giving a son to Macedon would help the people accept what happened here today. Hephaestion can never do that for you."
"Leave, mother! Hephaestion is none of your concern. Attend to palace intrigues and support my rear. That's your role."
Philip's body was brought into the throne room as Olympias was leaving. She looked at it briefly, shook her head from side-to-side, and left. Soldiers put it on the floor in front of the throne. It had been wrapped in several cloak layers so that blood would not stain its handlers' uniforms.
"Leave me alone with him," Alexander told the soldiers. "Close the door, I don't want to be disturbed."
The new king of Macedon walked slowly around the body. He bent down and uncovered his father's blood-spotted head; he was almost afraid to look at its contorted face. At last, he viewed his father’s dead, angry face. Philip’s lips were frozen in an unrealized effort to complete his last sentence, one that had started with Alexander’s name.
Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon, put interlaced fingers around the back of his burly neck, then sighed. "Why did you force this, Philip? What choice did you give me? You would have stood over my bloody body, as I now stand over yours. I tried to give you love, but your jealousy blocked my affection. Before Chaeronea, we were comrades, not father and son, but two men on a mighty quest. You honored me with command; I didn't let you down. But you couldn't abide mother. Why did you marry her if you wanted another witless concubine? You died when you expected an intelligent woman to be your slave. How could you be so wise in all else and fail to understand that?"
What had started as a barely audible lamentation had progressed to impassioned bellowing. Anyone standing outside the thick bronze doors could have made out most of Alexander's diatribe to the dead. Inside, only Philip's indifferent grayish-blue face answered his son. Alexander walked to a couch near the door, sat, and put his head between his small hands. Intermittently, he looked at Philip's body, and then buried his head again. Looking up, he stared at the empty throne, but couldn't bring himself to sit on it.
A potent presence had left the world, a presence that still radiated from the floor. He knew that one day he would surpass Philip, but it would take years, if not a lifetime to do it. His father was abrasive and crude—an incorrigible reprobate. He deserved to die; my inaction to stop the plot saved not only mother, but myself.
For the first time in his life, he allowed unbridled grief to escape and he sobbed uncontrollably.
Suddenly, he jumped from the couch, filled his lungs with air and kicked the throne room door. "Open," he commanded. The door swung open and Alexander walked briskly from the throne room. The conspirators awaited him at the edge of the open courtyard. There was much to do.
His first action concerned old Attalus. The general waited in Phrygia with Parmenio to begin the Persian invasion. It would be an invasion that the old man would never see.
Alexander was acclaimed king by the assembled Macedonian army the day after Philip's murder. Anyone who could have opposed the act had either been eliminated or sent out of Macedonia for life. The last symbolic act of this ceremony was the same one that Alexander's father had experienced when he became king. A live dog was brought before the king-designate. Perdiccas and Leonnatus cut the animal in half. The length of a sarissa separated the two pieces, and the army members walked between the bloody pieces to acclaim their new monarch. The primitive rite took all day and half of the evening, because of the thousands of men who had to pass between the carcass pieces. Philip's army was now Alexander's.
At dusk the day after his assassination, Philip's body was cremated. Wood for the fire had been stacked inside a brick wall for most of the day. The former king's body, clothed in his military uniform and carefully wrapped in a starburst cloak, was placed on top of the wood. Alexander presided over the ceremony. He said words of farewell and lauded his father's achievements. Then he gave the final ceremonial act over to the priests. After their incantations and songs of supplication for a rewarding afterlife, a signal was given to light the fire. Soon the stacks of wood were ablaze, and Philip's body could no longer be seen. Alexander heard a muffled explosion when Philip's brain exploded out the back of its skull. He saw his father's bier crash to the bottom of the inferno.
This was the end. Philip's flesh had left the earth. The incinerated flesh mixed with the smoke, ashes, and the heat of the blaze and followed the wide pass between Mount Bermion and the Pieria Mountains. It seemed to be seeking the headwaters of the River Haliakmon, as it wafted its way westward toward Macedonia's frontier mountain ranges.
Alexander left the funeral and went to the theater where Philip had been murdered. Gathered there were most of the visiting envoys and diplomats who had come to witness Philip's deification. Macedonian citizens who had come to acclaim their new king occupied the remaining seats. Alexander mounted the same platform stage where he had seen his father murdered and stood in the center of the dry, blood-covered starburst. A furrowed brow painted his face. He waited for the throng to quiet, and then addressed his subjects.
“Look at where I’m standing. Philip’s blood is beneath my feet. Today, I became King of Macedon. I want everyone to know that King Alexander will continue to stand on Philip’s achievements and policies.” He looked down at his father’s dried blood too theatrically, then continued. His voice was choked with emotion. “A worthless, little coward killed my father. Already, we know that he acted alone—out of personal revenge and jealousy. All members of his family are now being eliminated. We know that he had no one working with him. If I do find others who helped him, they will be executed. Philip’s memory demands no less.” Alexander used prolonged silence to punctuate his last remarks.
“Diplomats and envoys, nothing Philip worked his life to achieve is going to change. If I must, I will use the power of Macedon’s army to insure that. The invasion of Persia will proceed as planned. When you leave Pella, take those strong messages back to your countrymen.” Alexander paused again and looked directly at the amba
ssadors and foreign representatives seated in the first two rows of the theater. He knew that they had gotten his deadly intent.
“People of Pella and Macedonia,” he continued, saving the best for last.” “All Macedonian citizens, from this day forward, will be exempt from taxation. A citizen’s only obligation to the State will be to serve in and support the national army. Soon, Persia’s treasures will flood our homeland. Macedonians and Greeks alike will become rich. I give you my word on this,” he shouted.
A roar of approval surged from the theater. Alexander smiled briefly and knew that he had just purchased his countrymen’s allegiance. As long as he delivered on his bold promises, all doubts and suspicions about his role in Philip’s death would forever be removed. It was a ruse that Alexander had learned from Philip.
King Alexander then left the stage. He briefly bid farewell to the ambassadors and envoys, shouted greetings to some of Pella’s leading merchants, then left. Walking up the hill to the old Aigai palace, he was lost in thought. His bodyguards trailed silently behind. The new king had called for military planning sessions with his generals that would last far into the night. He fully understood the approaching storm that would soon challenge his kingship. He was Alexander of Macedon. He would prevail.
Olympias didn't attend the funeral, nor her son’s address at the theater. Instead, she presided over the funeral of Pausanius. The body of the king's murderer had been nailed to a gibbet and displayed in Aigai's main square on direct orders of Alexander. While Alexander officiated at Philip's funeral, Olympias, without her son's knowledge or permission, took a small group of priests to the square and removed the assassin's bloody body. He was quickly cremated. The mother of the new king watched as the assassin's fire grew in intensity. It soon removed Pausanius' fleshy body parts, causing his smoke to join Philip's, gently swirling high above and west of the old capital.
Olympias smiled and began chanting an Epirote hymn to Dionysus. She knew that Alexander would soon leave Macedonia to put down the inevitable rebellions that would be triggered by Philip's death. She would become queen again and have more power than ever. Her son didn't have the fortitude to oppose her, not when it came right down to it. She would transform Pella, Macedonia, and all Hellas into a Zeus-Ammon dominated religious empire, while the new king campaigned in Persia.
Alexander was right. She had won.
Read the exact sequel to Philip and Olympias: A Novel of Ancient Macedon
by
Peter Messmore
The book is titled Alexander the King: The Sequel to Philip and Olympias: A Novel of Ancient Macedon. It is available as an eBook from Amazon/Kindle at:
http://www.amazon.com/Alexander-the-Kingebook/dp/B007SRTZOU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380723940&sr=81&keywords=Alexander+the+King%2C+Messmore%2C+Peter
NAME PRONUNCIATION AND GUIDE TO CHARACTERS
Macedonian personal names pose a potential problem to the reader of Philip & Olympias. To make the novel more readable, ancient Macedonian and Greek names have generally been rendered in Latinized and Anglicized forms. The few exceptions to this practice are when the retention of the Macedonian or Greek spellings were kept because of readers’ familiarity with well-known historical figures. Thus, the personal name Alexander is represented in its familiar, historical, Anglicized form, rather than the less familiar, Alexandros.
Furthermore, Macedonians had a habit of using identical first names for different family members. Thus, early in Philip and Olympias, same-name usage occurs in Chapter 1. There, Alexander of Macedon and Alexander of Epirus appear in the same scene. These are, of course, completely different characters.
Later in the novel, the characters Perdiccas (Philip’s older brother, killed in a battle) and Attalus (Philip’s general and head of his intelligence service) appear. Near the novel’s conclusion, in Chapter 25, new characters appear with these same names. These latter characters are young, royal pages and friends of Alexander, unrelated to the earlier characters bearing the same names.
THE CHARACTERS: NAME & PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Aeschines— (Es’ ki nez) Athenian boule and
assembly member. Former
actor and teacher who
generally advocated peace
with Philip and Macedon.
Agis— (A gis) Aged king of the
Paeonians, a primitive people
north of Macedonia.
Alcimachus— (Al sim’ a kus) Macedonian
officer who participated in
peace negotiation with Athens
after Chaeronea.
Alexander— Prince of Macedon; son of
Amyntas Philip’s father. King of
Macedon 393 BC - 368 BC.
Husband of Eurydice.
Antipater— (An tip’ a ter) One of Philip’s
leading generals; often served
as Macedonian regent in
Philip’s absence.
Archelaus— (Ar ke la’ us) Philip’s
grandfather. King of Macedon
also
A rival pretender of the
Macedonian throne at the time
of Philip’s accession.
Archlus— (Ark lus) Philip’s personal slave
during his captivity in Thebes.
Argaeus— (Ar gi us) Athenian-backed
rival to the Macedonian throne at the
time of Philip’s accession.
Aridaios— (Ar id i os) Retarded son on
one of Philip’s concubines,
Philinna.
Aristotle— Teacher and philosopher;
Philip’s childhood friend;
teacher of Prince Alexander
and the Macedonian Royal Pages.
Arrhidaeus— (Ar hid i us) A rival pretender to
the Macedonian throne at the
time of Philip’s accession.
Arses— Son of the Persian Great King,
Artaxerxes Ochus.
Artabazus— (Ar tuh ba zus) Satrap of
Phrygia, father of Barsine;
found refuge in Philip’s court.
Artaxerxes— Ochus (Ar tak surk’ sez) Great King of
Persia during most of Philip’s reign.
Arybbas— Olympias’s/Myrtle’s uncle;
served as regent of Epirus
Aspasia— (As pa’ shi a) Prostitute in the
Theban House of Hetairai
during Philip’s captivity.
Attalus— (At’ a lus) Macedonian
nobelman; one of Philip’s
leading generals; cavalry
commander before Prince
Alexander; head of Philip’s
intelligence service.
Audata— Niece of Illyrian King Bardylis;
Philip’s first concubine.
Bagoas— (Ba go’ us) Grand Vizier to
Persia’s Great King,
Artaxerxes Ochus.
Bardylis— Elderly Illyrian king who
threatened Macedonia and
Philip; uncle of Audata.
Barsine— Daughter of Artabazus; taught
Alexander Persian.
Bucephalus— ( Bu sef’ a lus/ox head)
Alexander’s famous and
expensive horse.
Callixeina— (Cal ix e na) Courtesan to
royalty and the wealthy; failed
seducer of Prince Alexander
Cassander— Son of Antipater; Royal Page
student of Aristotle at Mieza.
Cersobleptes— (Ser sob’ lep tez) Son of Cotys,
Prince of Heraeon-Teichos in
the Propontus; Athenian ally
and Philip’s adversary.
Chares— (Ka’ rez) Athenian general and
naval commander.
Chaeronea— (Ki ro ne’ a) Site of Philip’s
great victory over the Greeks.
Cleitus— (Kli’ tus) Macedonian officer
and friend of Philip; brother of
Lanice, companion of
young
Prince Alexander.
Kleopatra— Daughter of Philip and
Olympias; sister of Prince
Alexander; wife of Alexander of Epirus.
Kleopatra-Eurydice— Niece of Attalus; last wife of Philip.
Cothelas— King of the Getai; father of
Meda, Philip’s concubine.
Cotys— King of Thrace threatened by Athens.
Darius— (Da ri’ us) Great King of Persia
before Artaxerxes Ochus.
Demaratus— Corinthian friend of Philip; gave
Bucephalas to Prince
Alexander; negotiated
rapprochement between Philip
and Alexander.
Demosthenes— (De mos’ the nez) Athenian
orator, boule and assembly
member; Philip’s nemesis.
Derdas— King of provincial Elimea.
Epaminondas (E pam i non das) Theban
general and leader; military
tactician and innovator.
Erigyius— Royal Page who studied at
Mieza with Aristotle
Eubulus— Athenian Minister of Finance;
sometime general.
Euphraeus Athenian tutor who taught King
Perdiccas
Eurydice— (U rid’ i se) Wife of King
Amyntas; mother of Philip.
also
Philip’s concubine; mother of Kynna.
Eurylochos— General in Philip’s army;
distinguished himself at Olynthus
Gorgias— Thasosan governor Crenides.
Harpalus— Royal Page who studied at
Mieza with Aristotle.
Hephaestion— (He fise’ te un) Royal Page
who studied at Mieza with
Aristotle; boyhood friend and
lover of Prince Alexander.
Hermias— (Her mi’ as) Tyrant philosopher
of Atarneus and Assos;
sponsor of Aristotle. Crucified
in Susa by Great King Ochus.
Hyperides— (Hi per’ i dez) Athenian orator
Philip and Olympias: A Novel of Ancient Macedon Page 39