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

ARGEAD DUNASTEIA 159
what concrete example is Aristotle referring when he introduces this
type of rule? Although one might assume that Aristotle would associate
Persia with such absolute monarchy, that cannot be so here since
Persia is so obviously incorporated in his second type. Could the
mention of a kingship that associated the authority of a king to that
exercised by the master in his own household be an oblique reference
to what Aristotle believed he saw in Macedonia? Since it is self-evident
that Aristotle intended the Politics to be a serious analysis of politeiai
as they existed in his day and not a work of speculative philosophy, I
believe we must answer, that yes, here is where Aristotle meant to
place Macedon, while doing so obliquely so as to minimize antagonizing
his Athenian hosts. Of course, it does not follow that Aristotle
necessarily believed that the Argeads were men of such outstanding
virtue as to justify absolutism for long, but the virtue evoked by
Aristotle was relative, and I see no reason why the successes of Philip
and Alexander could not have been interpreted by Aristotle as giving
proofs of their unique superiority. And, of course, there is also the
issue which I will not pursue here of how some among Aristotle’s
audience, Alexander in particular, interpreted what the master had to
say about virtuous men and the law. As every professor knows, what
he says and believes is not always what his student takes away from
a discussion on any point.
Although I do not expect to have the last word on Macedonian
Staatsrecht when I argue that Aristotle imagined the Argead realm to
be an absolute one on the oikos model, because it fi ts the constitutional
arguments already put forward very well, I do fi nd it odd that
none of the most prominent scholars dealing with the issue makes
reference to Aristotle on this point. For the absolutists, it explains
why the Macedonian kings could frequently reject the impositions
placed upon them at times by their subjects without institutional ramifi
cations. It also fi ts the lack of independent political activity among
the Macedonians, the absence of an offi cial royal titulature, the personal
nature of the monarchy with the reckoning of status as a relationship
with the reigning king, the absence of any kind of political
bureaucracy, royal interaction with foreign powers, royal ownership
of natural resources, royal marriages as politics, and the one known
prerequisite for Macedonian kingship until the demise of the royal
house, being an Argead (if not necessarily the fi rst son of the previous
king). 29 On the other hand, if one considers what Aristotle says about
the kingdom as household in light of his discussion about the composition
of the typical oikos (household) and its various roles and statuses
in the fi rst book of the Politics (1.5.1 ff.), it also meshes well with
some of the points articulated by the Macedonian constitutionalists.