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

116 AFTER PHILIP AND ALEXANDER
existence of a nearby burial site for Eurydice’s mother, whose status,
as Philip II’s daughter, made her worthy of resting in the area of the
Great Tumulus, that is, in a burial area reserved for the last representatives
of the Temenid dynasty.
In my view, a possible solution to this debate lies in a brief note
drafted by Andronicos along with the description of the excavation
campaigns carried out at the Great Tumulus of Vergina from 1976 to
1980. In effect, Andronicos 26 writes that in the summer of 1980, about
thirty meters to the east of Tomb II, another “Macedonian tomb” was
excavated, which, unlike similar tombs, had freestanding columns on
its fa çade, the sole remains of the original monument (the rest having
been dismantled and transferred, perhaps to be used elsewhere, in circumstances
to us unknown). 27 This tomb, then, about chamber and
antechamber of which no further details are available, could be the
resting site for Cynna’s mortal remains, buried with all honors near the
richer and more important tomb of her son-in-law Philip III Arrhidaeus
and of her daughter Eurydice. Cynna was indeed part of the royal
family, although hierarchically subordinate to Philip III Arrhidaeus
and Eurydice, who had offi cially been the king and queen ( βασιλεῖς ) of
Macedonia and were therefore worthy of royal burial as prescribed by
tradition.
In the light of these observations, it is clear that for Cassander both
his marriage with Thessalonice and the celebration of royal funerals
for Philip III Arrhidaeus and his wife Eurydice were part of a strategy
aimed at presenting himself as Philip II’s spiritual heir, as conveyed by
Diodorus at 19.52.1–6. Furthermore, in the same passage, the historian
also mentions Cassander’s marginalization of the young Alexander IV,
whose mother, the Persian princess Roxane, was the living symbol of
the “betrayal” of Macedonian customs on the part of Alexander. In
Cassander’s view, the banishment of the boy and of his mother to
Amphipolis was intended to reaffi rm his stand against that process of
“orientalization” of the monarchy initiated by Alexander in the last
years of his reign and opposed by the more traditionalist Macedonians.
28 Most interestingly, according to Diodorus, Cassander, despite
wishing to eliminate Alexander IV, initially limited his action against
mother and son to removing their royal trappings, fearing the reaction
of the people, whose feelings of loyalty to the monarchic tradition had
already been strained by the elimination of Olympias.
Soon the Macedonian world would, however, change signifi cantly,
reaching a turning point in the 311 peace, whose signatories, Antigonus
on the one hand, and Lysimachus, Cassander, and Ptolemy on the other,
offi cially, and for the fi rst time, asserted their total political autonomy. 29
Until then, in effect, internal struggles to gain control of Alexander’s