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

HIS SON’S FATHER? 201
his father, along with his mother Olympias 40 and his homeland of
Macedonia (which, unlike in Dio, gets no credit in Plutarch for being
the home of warriors). That is to say, we seem to have a more elaborate
version here of the heaped-together non-Alexanders whom we saw in
De Alexandri Fortuna aut Virtute. While Alexander is not as fully
idealized as he is in that rhetorical piece, he is still the same leader
whose virtue takes him far beyond backwater Macedon and toward
the ideal of the humane, civilizing rule of barbarians. Plutarch’s
cradle-to-grave method of writing creates a rather short and smooth
series of episodes in sections 5–10 of the 77-section long bios, in
which we watch Philip and Alexander interact prior to the king’s
murder. Unlike the rhetorical genre, biography required Plutarch to
deal with what everyone already knew about Alexander: that his journey
would ultimately end in blood and tears. Plutarch’s goal was to
emphasize that Alexander was, regardless of his future weaknesses,
from his very youth naturally philosophical and moderate—and that
he therefore had the great potential of turning into a philosophical
and moderate imperial ruler. 41 Indeed, in the end Alexander bears
little blame for his own shortcomings.
Philip’s specifi c role in the Life of Alexander is as a foil to Alexander’s
superior character, which is demonstrated already in his youth.
Take, for example, the young prince’s famous interview of the Persian
envoys who, upon meeting, him “were amazed and thought that
Philip’s much-discussed ability was nothing compared to his son’s
enthusiasm and eagerness to do great things”(5.3). The curiosity for
world affairs that Alexander shows here, while it will later help him
defeat the Persians, is accompanied by the lament that his father will
leave him nothing to achieve. This is certainly a fl attery of Philip’s
achievements, but one that is quickly swept aside to offer a comment on
Alexander’s superior motivation. Plutarch also shows Philip actively
disappearing from his son’s life—even showing explicit deference to
Alexander’s ambitions. In the wake of taming the wild Bucephalas—
perhaps a foreshadowing of Alexander’s taming of the barbarians—
Philip responds to his son in awe, and in the process ghettoizes himself
as merely “Macedonian”: “My son, go fi nd a kingdom equal to yourself;
Macedonia has no room for you” (6.8). Recognizing that Alexander
needs a tutor of the highest caliber, Philip hires Aristotle (7.1–9),
whom we saw replacing him as a father fi gure in De Alexandri Fortuna
aut Virtute, as well as in Dio’s Oration 2: 42 it is a Greek, not Philip, who
provides Alexander with the paideia he will use to civilize the east.
But in another episode, Philip allows himself to be subordinated to
his son as a king altogether, in the eyes of the soldiery: in 9.4–5,
Plutarch tells us that Philip “loved his son excessively, so as even