To reconstruct the history of ancient Macedonia is a tricky exercise. Not only did they leave no traces in textual records, they also remained absent from Greek political and cultural life until the arrival of Philip II. Consequently, no sources from their heydays survive, and we are left with narratives from when the Romans controlled the Mediterranean centuries later. Originating from a conference in Athens in 2012 as part of the 10th International Conference on History: from Ancient to Modern, the eleven essays under review address the problems that this great loss of the historiographical tradition has created. The editors state that the unifying principle is to unpack ‘the process through which history becomes historiography’ with a focus on those ‘ways in which specific Macedonian figures and events were portrayed in the later Greek and Roman sources’ (p. viii). This results in four distinct approaches all addressing elements of this main problem: (1) the role of the Macedonian royal women and their portrayal in Greek and Roman sources (three essays), (2) the ways in which later sources portrayed the political friendships and alliances of the Macedonians (three essays), (3) the Macedonian king's own self-fashioning and how it was portrayed in the source tradition (three essays), and (4) the important role that Alexander the Great played as a model for later rulers in the Roman period (two essays).
The first part, ‘Succession and the Role of Royal Women’, opens with Howe's study on Eurydice I, the mother of Philip II, which examines the different source traditions attached to the portrayal of the Macedonian queen (‘A Founding Mother? Eurydike I, Philip II and Macedonian Royal Mythology’). Howe detects a negative portrait in Justin/Trogus and a positive one in Cornelius Nepos and Plutarch. He argues persuasively that the two portrayals stem from the struggle for succession between dynastic lines at the Macedonian court, the positive portrayal coming from the influence of her son Philip II and picked up by Theopompus, and the negative one coming from the rivals to the throne and picked up by Aeschines. As to the most plausible portrait of Eurydice, Howe places himself between the two extremes of a nursing, caring mother and a lust-driven, murderous harpy. Furthermore, the essay functions as a great introduction to the volume in general as the first pages contain a thoughtful discussion of recurring Roman historiographers (pp. 2–4). The next essay, ‘Royal Women as Succession Advocates’, is by E. Carney, who studies how Argead women worked to ensure their family's succession and how this is portrayed in the surviving sources. Carney focuses on Eurydice I, Olympias (mother of Alexander the Great), Thessalonike (wife of Cassander) and Arsinoe (daughter of Ptolemy I) and shows that they willingly resorted to dynastic violence if they were unable to provide enough military support through their networks. These violent methods were condemned by the sources, and Carney, like Howe, ends up pointing to the propaganda in dynastic politics of the Argead house to explain the origin of the negative portrayals. In the final essay of the section, ‘A Roman Olympias: Powerful Women in the Historiae’, R. Frank discusses the portrait of Olympias in Justin/Trogus. This includes a clever comparison between Justin's/Trogus’ Olympias and Horace's Cleopatra VII, which Frank uses to argue that Justin/Trogus aimed to transform Olympias into a Roman figure in order to connect the Macedonian kingdom to his own political circumstances, i.e. the war between Octavian and Antony.
The second part, ‘Philia, Politics and Alliances’, begins with an essay by Pownall, who examines Callisthenes’ role as the tutor of Alexander's Royal Pages (‘Was Kallisthenes the Tutor of Alexander's Royal Pages?’). Pownall argues that Callisthenes’ connection to the so-called Pages’ Conspiracy comes from two separate source traditions: one from early pro-Alexander historians who aimed to absolve Alexander of blame for the death of Callisthenes (i.e. Aristobulus and Ptolemy), and one from the Roman period (e.g. Curtius) who used Callisthenes as a parallel for Nero's elimination of his tutor Seneca in order to offer a criticism of contemporary Imperial politics. In the second essay of the section, ‘Hephaistion – a Reassessment of his Career’, S. Müller aims to reassess Hephaestion's career in order to rehabilitate him as more than just Alexander's trusted friend. In the quest to create a profile of the ‘historical’ Hephaestion, Müller finds that Ptolemy provides us with the most plausible portrayal. This is despite the fact that the future founder of the Ptolemy dynasty needed to excel in military matters in order to legitimise his rule and therefore portrayed Hephaestion as a competent administrator. Müller ends up rejecting the stories that describe Hephaestion as Alexander's lover, his own personal Patroclus or his second self (which stems from the Hellenistic and Roman era) and concludes that a separation from Alexander must be made if we are to appreciate his importance for the campaign. The last essay, ‘Friendship and Betrayal: the Alliances among the Diadochoi’ by A. Meeus, studies the nature of the alliances among the successors. Meeus argues that alliances and treaties in this period were simply strategic, meaning that they were shifting, opportunistic and not regarded as having any formal constitutional significance. Meeus underlines this by examining the terminology used in the surviving sources and of the alliances’ impact on the behaviour of the contracting parties. He concludes that no such thing as permanent territorial recognition in the Hellenistic world existed as the aims were rather to either isolate an opponent, avoid wars or obtain support. The essay is accompanied by a comprehensive appendix with examples of the flexibility with which the successors approached treaties and alliances.
The third part, ‘Royal Self-Presentation and Ideology’, opens with V. Alonso Troncoso's piece on the variety of zoological types on Argead coinage (‘The Animal Types on the Argead Coinage, Wilderness and Macedonia’). Troncoso finds at least ten different animals (horses, goats, lions, eagles, dogs, wolves, boars, bulls, serpents and frogs) depicted on Argead coinage from Alexander I to Alexander III and points to the geography of Macedonia to explain this remarkable variety. Some animals were associated with the aristocracy (horses and dogs) and others with the monarchy (lions), but together they evoked the animal kingdom and were meant to reinforce the Hellenistic identity of the Argead dynasty. Yet, it was only with Philip II that the focus shifted towards Panhellenic images with the aim of symbolising his aspirations to a Panhellenic empire. The second essay, ‘Alexander as Achilles: Arrian's use of Homer from Troy to the Granikos’, is a discussion of Arrian's narrative from Alexander's arrival in Troy to his victory at Granicus in 334 bce. H. Bowden argues that Arrian modelled this section from the Iliad and thus calls for setting aside the actual description of the battle at Granicus to instead focus on the literary themes of the narrative. While I do believe we are forced to make a choice between Arrian and Diodorus in order to understand the merits of Alexander's military achievement, Bowden is right in dismissing the exchange between Parmenio and Alexander as a literary construction and to view Arrian as having an aim of being the new Homer (seen, for example, in the way he highlights a connection between Alexander and Achilles). I also agree on the importance of the self-fashioning element in Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire and have elsewhere argued that Callisthenes was the fundamental source for Arrian's portrayal of Alexander as a Homeric hero (B. Pedersen, ‘Callisthenes and the Creation of a Homeric Hero’, C&M 66 [2015]). The last essay is on the ideology of the Ptolemaic dynasty (‘The Grand Procession, Galaterschlacht, and Ptolemaic Kingship’). P. Johstono challenges the widespread assumption that Ptolemy II converted the display of wealth into legitimacy rather than possessing praiseworthy qualities on the battlefield. By focusing on the Galatian shield displayed during the so-called Grand Procession, which was the setting to demonstrate monarchical and martial powers, Johstono shows that military victories played a dominant place in Ptolemy II's propaganda. The shields were symbols of his victory over his Galatian mercenaries, which made it possible for him to present himself as the defender of Greek civilisation. By arguing for the presence of the Galatian shields at the Grand Procession, Johstono also creates a possible terminus post quem for Ptolemy's Galatersieg of 274/3 bce.
The fourth and final section, ‘The Memory of Alexander’, focuses on the use of the figure of Alexander and begins with D. Ogden's essay on the legends related to the death of Seleucus I (‘Legends of Seleukos’ Death, from Omens to Revenge’). By focusing on the time and place of Seleucus’ murder, his supposed retirement just before his death, omens foretelling his death and the revenge of Seleucus’ ghost upon his murder, Ogden argues that many of the constructed elements correspond to the Alexander tradition (especially the Alexander Romance), which underlines Seleucus as a figure who lived on vigorously in the minds of the Greeks and Romans. The second essay, ‘The Memory of Alexander in Plutarch's Lives of Demetrios, Pyrrhos, and Eumenes’, is a long piece by S. Asirvatham, who examines Plutarch's use of an idealised Alexander in his biographies of Demetrius, Pyrrhus and Eumenes. Asirvatham argues that by using his portrayal of a Panhellenic Alexander from other works, Plutarch was able to show how post-classical history was connected to ‘Greek history’ and to properly measure the achievements of Demetrius, Pyrrhus and Eumenes. In a final section, Asirvatham discusses the importance of Plutarch's treatment of Alexander and the successors in relation to his self-presentation as a Greek authority on imperial Roman rule.
The great value of this volume is that it successfully shows how contemporary concerns affected the portrayal of the Argead dynasty, Alexander and the successors. While this distortion, manipulation and misrepresentation are often examined in relation to the surviving sources from the Roman era, the strong focus in this volume on the ‘invented tradition’ among the first generation is a great addition to the scholarship. Stemming from political rivalries in the Argead royal house and from sources that wrote to legitimise and justify their own claims to the throne, these competing source traditions possess complex literary layers that must be separated from the historical reality. In summary, the great merit of these essays is that they effectively illustrate the numerous pitfalls scholars face when they set out to reconstruct the history and historiography of ancient Macedonia.
