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

152 RECEPTION OF FATHER AND SON
as refracted through the prism of its two monumental kings. 9 The
magnitude of the accumulated successes of Philip and Alexander,
however, tended from the very start to eclipse any knowledge, or
interest in, the resources and institutions upon which both drew to
accomplish their deeds. Until the twentieth century, few knew or
manifested any care about Macedon the kingdom or its mores.
When modern scholars began to ask questions about ancient
Macedonian society, among the fi rst areas to be considered was that
of politics. The study of Argead (“Temenid” 10 ) kingship has generated
a cottage industry over the last century. Learned, if irreconcilable,
arguments about Macedonian Staatsrecht have been proffered by
Granier, de Francisci, Aymard, Briant, Lock, Errington, Anson,
Hammond, Borza, and Hatzopoulos, just to name a few of the more
prominent scholars who have worked in the fi eld. 11 A constitutionalist
interpretation of the evidence arose in earnest when Granier
maintained that Macedonian kingship had Germanic and Homeric
parallels, and that Macedon was traditionally a monarchy in which
an assembly (most frequently in the form of an army assembly) knew
judicial and elective rights which both subjects and kings consciously
recognized as constitutional, even if these rights were occasionally
violated. 12 Since Granier’s work, Aymard, Briant, Hammond, and now
currently Hatzopoulos have argued some version of a constitutional
monarchy from the origins of the Macedonian realm. The constitutionalist
interpretation of our evidence was vigorously challenged by
De Francisci, who argued that the sources simply did not support
such a reading, and that they rather suggested that Macedonian kingship
came in a personal form without any checks or balances. 13
Although subsequent scholars such as Lock, Errington, Anson, and
Borza have tempered this absolutist approach somewhat in deference
to the restraints of custom and immediate circumstances, fundamentally
they have been inclined to agree with de Francisci’s interpretation
of the evidence. Generally speaking, more scholars today (including
myself) lean toward the second of these interpretations. With the exception
of Borza, 14 however, most do so without giving much attention to the
distinct probability that Macedon constitutionally developed from whatever
it originally may have been, to what it eventually had become by the
time our literary sources began to pay more attention to Macedonian
realities. Macedonia moved from a more autocratic to a more constitutional
political culture, a transformation wrought in part because of
growth and in part because of the Hellenization of Macedonian culture.
I approach my topic with an appreciation for this gradual transformation.
Space concerns will, however, preclude a point-by-point rebuttal of
the extensive arguments proffered by earlier scholars.