Straightaway, it was necessary for the new king to establish his authority. Rivals for the throne, and their supporters, were swiftly despatched: first of all, two sons of Lynkes-tian Aeropos, Arrhabaios and Heromenes, were publicly executed on charges of complicity in the assassination (Arrian [all references in this chapter are to Anabasis unless another work by Arrian is referred to] 1.25.1). The murderer himself, Pausanias of Orestis, had been killed in flight by the king’s bodyguards. If there was any truth to the charge that the Lynkestians had conspired with him (Bosworth 1971a), they appear to have given little help (unless they supplied the horses that were meant to facilitate his escape), nor was it clear if they sought the throne for a member of their own family, or for Amyntas son of Perdikkas (Plutarch Moralia 327c). The vagueness in the reporting of their alleged crime is doubtless Alexander’s doing; for it suited his purpose to eliminate all contenders, including the hapless Amyntas. Indeed, it is hard to credit the existence of such a conspiracy without dismissing its perpetrators as inept, if not downright stupid. The Lynkestians ought to have secured the support of Antipatros, the powerful father-in-law of their brother, Alexandros. But clearly they did not. Alexandros was reportedly the first to proclaim Alexander ‘King’, doubtless at the urging of Antipatros, who proved his own loyalty and bought the life of his daughter’s husband by abandoning Arrhabaios and Heromenes. Even in later years, when distrust had tainted the relationship between king and viceroy, no charge of conspiring to kill Philip or prevent Alexander’s accession was ever levelled against him. Amyntas son of Perdikkas, too, appears to have been eliminated swiftly - certainly he was dead by the spring of 335 (Arrian 1.5.4). A companion of his, Amyntas son of Antiochos, fled Macedonia and took service with the Persian king, but it is unlikely that this occurred before the death of Perdikkas’ son. The latter was a nephew of Philip II and rightful heir to throne, whose claims the state, in need of strong leadership to combat external foes, had swept aside in the years that followed the death of Perdikkas III in 360/59 (Hammond & Griffith 1979: 208-9). Married to Philip’s daughter by an Illyrian wife, the discarded heir had lived quietly, without incurring suspicion; in all likelihood, he became the victim of the aspirations of others and of his own bloodline (see, however, Ellis 1971, rejected by Prandi 1998; but: Worthington 2003a: 76-9).
Elsewhere, Attalos, guardian of Philip’s last wife Kleopatra-Eurydike, may have been perceived as a threat. But, in this case as well, stories that Attalos was conniving with the Athenian Demosthenes and other Greeks (Diodoros 17.5.1), if they are true, point only to the desperation of his situation. So weak was his position that he could not even persuade his own father-in-law, Parmenion, to side with him, though together they commanded a substantial force in northwestern Asia Minor. Alexander’s agent, Heka-taios, secured Attalos’ elimination, something that could not have been achieved without Parmenion’s acquiescence. Some scholars have been misled into attributing too much power to Attalos; for his influence with Philip must be explained by the fact of his relationship to Kleopatra-Eurydike (Heckel 1986a: 297-8). His remark at the wedding feast in 337, that the marriage would produce ‘legitimate heirs’ to the throne, marked him for execution when Alexander became king. It was the tactless utterance of a drunken man, but fatal nonetheless. His relatives by blood and marriage, though hardly contemptible, could do little to save him and found it expedient not to try. Parmenion obtained a more suitable husband for his widowed daughter in the taxiarch, Koinos son of Polemokrates. The father-in-law and his sons received high offices in the expeditionary force (Heckel 1992: 13-33; 299-300).
Domestic problems were, moreover, balanced by defection in the south and challenges on the northern and western marches of the kingdom. In western Greece, Akarnania, Ambrakia and Aitolia openly declared themselves hostile to Philip’s settlement (Roebuck 1948: 76-7); the Peloponnesians too evinced wide-spread disaffection. But Alexander made a rapid foray into Thessaly, effected by means of cutting steps into Mt Ossa (‘Alexander’s Ladder’), and induced the Thessalians to recognize him as Philip’s heir as archon of their Thessalian League, thereby also gaining a voice in the Amphiktyonic Council. With the added moral authority, the new king granted independence to the Ambrakiots, and then moved south into Boiotia pre-empting military action there. The Athenians saw to their defences and sent an embassy to Alexander; Demosthenes was said to have abandoned the embassy at Kithairon, fearing the king’s wrath (Diodoros 17.4.6-7; cf. Plutarch Demosthenes 23.3, in the context of Alexander’s destruction of Thebes). Now, too, the League of Korinth declared Alexander its hegemon, but the sparks of disaffection were yet to ignite into full-scale rebellion.
In the north, Alexander turned against the so-called ‘autonomous’ Thracians and the Triballians, tribes dwelling near the Haimos range and beyond to the Danube. South of the Haimos, the Thracians sought to blockade Alexander’s force by occupying the high ground and fortifying their position with wagons. Unable to resist the attacking Macedonians, even after pushing the empty wagons into the path of the oncoming enemy, they were dispersed with heavy casualties. The Triballians responded by transferring their women and children to the Danubian island of Peuke, which their king, Syrmos, defended with a small but adequate force. The remainder of the Triballians evaded the Macedonian army as it hastened north, and occupied a wooded area near the River Lyginos, less than a day’s march from the Danube. But Alexander turned back and dealt with them, using his skirmishers to dislodge the Triballians from the forest before catching them between two detachments of cavalry and attacking their centre with the phalanx. Some three thousand were killed; the remainder escaped into the safety of the woods.
An attempt on Peuke failed: the ships which Alexander had brought up from the Black Sea were insufficient in numbers and the banks of the island too well defended. Instead the Macedonians launched an attack on the Getai who lived on the north bank of the river. After destroying their town and devastating their crops, they forced the Getai to come to terms. Syrmos too sent a delegation asking for terms; possibly, Alexander demanded that he contribute a contingent to serve in his expeditionary army, in which some 7,000 Illyrians, Odrysians and Triballians are found in 334.
To the west, the Illyrians, inveterate enemies of Macedon, threatened the kingdom’s borders as Glaukias son of Bardylis allied himself with the Taulantian chief, Kleitos. At Pellion Alexander displayed what a superior army led by a brilliant tactician could do. The campaign was a textbook example of speed and manoeuvre: the discipline of Alexander’s troops mesmerized the Illyrians, outwitting them with a display of drill that turned them into spectators when they ought to have been taking counter-measures (Fuller 1960: 225). But the preoccupation with northern affairs gave new impetus to the anti-Macedonian party in central Greece. The reckoning was long overdue, and the consequences for Thebes devastating.
Encouraged by rumours that Alexander had been killed in Illyria and by the false hope of Athenian aid, the Thebans besieged the Macedonian garrison established on the Kadmeia after Chaironeia (Wust 1938: 169; Roebuck 1948: 77-80). The king’s response was swift, far more so than they could have imagined; for Alexander bypassed Thermopylai and arrived before the gates of Thebes within two weeks. Negotiations amounted to little more than posturing by both sides and Thebes, abandoned by the very Athenians who had incited the rebellion, was quickly taken, though not without great bloodshed. The city was razed and the survivors enslaved, all as later - and doubtless contemporary - apologists claimed by the decision of a council of Alexander’s allies. Many of these were Boiotians and Phokians with a long history of enmity towards the city, but it could also be argued that it was condign punishment for a century and a half of collaboration with Persians ( medismos or ‘Medism’). So it proved both a warning to other cities in Greece that Alexander would not tolerate rebellion and a symbolic beginning of the campaign against the true enemy of Greece and its supporters.
The Athenians, for their part, hastened to display contrition, foremost among them the very self-serving politicians who had fomented the uprising from the safety of the bema. Nevertheless, their prominence diverted the young king’s wrath from the common citizens: instead he demanded the surrender of ten orators and generals. In the event, only the implacable Charidemos was punished with exile, although Ephialtes fled to Asia Minor in the company of Thrasyboulos; several of the others outlived Alexander to rally their citizens to another disastrous undertaking in 323/2. It is important to note, however, that whereas the destruction of Thebes could be justified with reference to the city’s history of Medism, any hostile act against the Athenian state as a whole would have undermined Alexander’s Panhellenic propaganda (Will 1983: 37-45; Habicht 1997: 13-15).
World History
