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

HIS SON’S FATHER? 195
who were now fi ghting the reinvigorated Parthians. I see here a
connection between pride in Greek paideia (shown by the act of
writing), personal authority on military matters (shown by the assertion
of Macedonian identity), and self-linkage to Rome (shown by
the composition of “stratagems” in particular)—very much akin to
that which is being exploited by Dio, Plutarch, and Arrian when they
idealize Alexander. The fi gure of Alexander helps our three writers
tread in that area where Greek and Roman aretē (i.e., cultural and
military) can conceivably meet. Philip, who died before attaining
an empire comparable to Alexander’s, is unable to occupy
that t erritory as fully. 13
Philip-Alexander as Father-Son—in Greek
and Roman Terms
Philip’s main purpose for Dio, Plutarch, and Arrian, then, is to help
support Alexander’s image as “Great.” To create this effect, each
writer rhetorically reverses the natural hierarchy of father over son—
in both subtle and more direct ways. The subtle rhetorical pattern,
and the one more prevalent in Dio and Arrian, bonds father and son
by acknowledging, in some way, the father’s contribution to the son’s
greatness. The more direct rhetorical pattern, on the other hand, is
more common in Plutarch, and argues forcefully for Alexander’s superiority
over his father by revealing Philip’s weaknesses or by criticizing
him. Ultimately, both of these patterns are used in some way
by all three authors, and both privilege Alexander over Philip. The
purely hierarchical situation in which father Philip appears to wield
authority over his son Alexander occurs rarely and, when it does, is
all the more striking for its rarity.
Barry Strauss has shown that the father-son relationship was a
dominant metaphor in earlier Greek thought. In Strauss’ analysis, the
greatly-desired young rogue Alcibiades represented a “powerful
minor key” of “admiration for the independence and vigor of the son”
that runs through the “Athenian (and Greek) normative discourse
[that] usually emphasizes the authority of the father, the obedience of
the son, and their mutual affection,” the latter represented by
Alcibiades’ adoptive father Pericles. 14 While Alcibiades’ strain of
independence is surely refl ected in the Second Sophistic Alexander,
what is in short supply in our authors is the classical anxiety over the
subverted “authority of the father.”
A Romanizing impulse may be at work. The more subtle rhetorical
patterns of interaction between Philip and Alexander seem to suggest