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

180 RECEPTION OF FATHER AND SON
to Patria”—duty and respect to one’s fatherland (5.6 ext.5). Valerius’
shift from ethical qualities to the achievements of great men ( res
gestae) keeps Alexander in the picture for “Things Momentously Said
or Done” (6.4 ext.3); “Things Wisely Said or Done” (7.2 ext.10, 11a,
13); and “Things Craftily Said or Done” (7.3 ext.1, 4). Here, the significance
of Alexander for a Roman rhetorical education, preparing
successive generations of politicians for bon mots and public duty, is
close to the surface. The subsequent headings are archetypes in his
characterization in the Roman imagination. His association with
artistic propaganda is a topos in and of itself, making inevitable his
appearance in “How Great Are the Effects of the Arts” (8.11 ext.2). 18
“Of Appetite for Glory” (8.14 ext.2); “Of Anger and Hatred” (9.3 ext.1);
“Of Arrogance and Outrageousness” (9.5 ext.1); and fi nally, “Of
Revenge” (9.10 ext.2) present quintessential themes where Alexander
comes to Rome’s service again and again in the production and
analysis of cultural norms. 19 As Faranda has observed, Alexander is
the predominant “external” fi gure in the text as a whole, 20 but as this
chapter suggests, Valerius’ emphasis on him as alienus (external, or
“other”) is compromised both by context (Valerius’ audience will
expect to meet with Alexander because anecdotes about Alexander
were common currency in rhetorical handbooks) and by association
(the threat to Rome posed by once and future Alexanders makes
playing Alexander a Roman game). 21
Valerius Maximus 7.5.2—an amalgam of four generations of
Scipio stories—is worth drawing in at this point. Maslakov speculates
that Roman rhetorical practice led to a process whereby “details
of family history tended gradually to become the property of popular
imagination, destined to be manipulated by it at random and
disseminated widely without much concern for keeping generations
and identities distinct and properly identifi able.” 22 To meet and
thereby refashion Rome’s exemplary heroes on a day-to-day basis,
then, is also to encounter a kind of entropic process operating on
historical memory. Alexander III of Macedon’s inability to continue
or found an imperial dynasty is thus ironically implicated in Rome’s
successful and enthusiastic claim-staking over the rights to make
Alexander “the Great” part of Rome’s backstory. He is constantly
available to perform as himself and in the guise of others as part of a
panorama of Roman history, and has left no awkward heirs of the
body to complicate matters.
In 338 B.C., Rome reached a rapprochement with the Latin states in
the wake of the Latin revolt. In the same year, Philip II of Macedon’s
victory at Chaeronea brought the Greek states under Macedonian control.
The coincidence of this historical parallel further enhances the