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

132 AFTER PHILIP AND ALEXANDER
Apart from demonstrating the precariousness of the balance of
power of the period, the almost frantic rate at which the Successors
were intermarrying serves also to direct our attention toward the
importance of royal women as guarantors of dynastic stability. 69 Even
if pragmatically the stability was more often than not short-lived,
their being offered in, and sought out for, marriage was a token of
their equation with their dynastic line, the legitimacy of which was
carried over to the family they were being married into. 70 Nowhere is
the prospect of legitimation through marriage more apparent than in
the later life of Cleopatra, the only full sister of Alexander. Diodorus
informs us that all of the Successors, including Ptolemy I, entertained
the idea of marrying themselves to her on account of the illustriousness
of her descent: “ διὰ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν οὖν τοῦ γένους .” 71 In
what is presented by Diodorus as a contest, the prize of an alliance
with the Argead royal house through Cleopatra was the loyalty of the
Macedonians and the prospect of universal rule over Alexander’s
Empire. In this, Ptolemy I would have emerged the victor, had Cleopatra
not been murdered by Antigonus Monophthalmus on her way
to the Alexandrian court. 72 Craftily enough, Ptolemaic propaganda
appears to have promoted this union post hoc as the expressed wish
of Alexander. 73
Even in the case of the marriage of Ptolemy II to his full sister,
which represents an anomaly, both by Egyptian and Hellenic/
Macedonian standards, one can discern the gravitas of Arsinoe’s
lineage weighing against any other probable bride. 74 The real motives
behind this union are beyond the reach of modern scholarship. However,
in a foreign environment like Egypt, where the most probable
course of action would have been native intermarriage (Alexander
certainly provided a template for that) or inter-dynastic marriage,
Philadelphus chose to lay the foundations of an introverted dynasty
the roots of which ran deeper into the Argead past than any other;
especially if one assumes that he took heed of his father’s Argive propaganda.
Conclusion
This paper has argued that in addition to the situational legitimation
born out of personal charisma, military victories, or benefactions, 75
and the methodical exploitation of Alexander’s image and name,
aimed at smoothing out in popular imagination the creases of
an irregular transition of power between the conqueror and the
nascent Ptolemaic dynasty, the early Ptolemies systematically made