Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

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Cassander and the Legacy of Philip II
and Alexander III in Diodorus’ Library
Franca Landucci Gattinoni
I n Books 18 and 19 of his Library, Diodorus devotes considerable space
to the so-called Second War of the Diadochoi fought by Polyperchon
and Eumenes against the broad coalition of Cassander, Antigonus,
Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Seleucus. 1 The war also involved Alexander
the Great’s heirs against their will: in effect, both Alexander’s halfbrother,
Philip III Arrhidaeus, and his own posthumous son, Alexander
IV, were crushed by the events, as was Olympias, Alexander’s
mother, who, having survived her son and Antipater, her most hated
enemy, allied with Polyperchon against Cassander. 2 As known, in
October 317 3 Olympias, who wished to safeguard the kingdom for her
young grandson, Alexander IV, killed king Philip III Arrhidaeus and
his wife Adea Eurydice 4 a few months later. Albeit reaching Macedonia
too late to save the Argead rulers, Cassander defeated and killed
Olympias, becoming de facto the master of the territory. 5
At 19.52.1–6, Diodorus describes the measures Cassander took to
sanction his defi nitive seizure of Macedonia after his three-year exile.
The narration of events aside, he lays particular emphasis upon Cassander’s
wish to appropriate Macedonian sovereignty and conveys
the point at linguistic level by the frequent and repetitive use of terms
connected with the semantic fi eld of “sovereignty.”
More specifi cally, as early as 19.52.1, we read not only that “Cassander’s
ambitions included the kingdom of Macedonia” ( τὴν
Mακεδόνων βασιλείαν ), but also that he decided to marry Thessalonice,
daughter of Philip II, because he was “eager to appear as a relative to
the royal house” ( οἰκεῖον . . . τῆς βασιλικῆς συγγενείας ). Later, at 19.52.4,
speaking of the young Alexander IV and of his mother, the Persian
princess Roxane, 6 Diodorus tries to prove that Cassander’s conduct
aimed at “preventing the existence of successors in the kingdom”
(διάδοχος τῆς βασιλείας ): to this purpose, he had decreed that the
young Argead was to be given “no royal education ( τὴν ἀγωγὴν οὐκέτι
βασιλικήν ) but a common man’s.” Finally, at 19.52.5 the historian
reports that Cassander “behaving as a king ( βασιλικῶς ) had had
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