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

HIS SON’S FATHER? 203
also helps Arrian establish proper limits on Alexander’s outsized
ambition.
Arrian, whose main sources are two of Alexander’s men, Ptolemy
and Aristobulus, is in some ways more forgiving of the king even than
Plutarch. While Arrian does not shy from criticizing Alexander
for his acts of cruelty—he describes the king’s treatment of Bessus as
“barbaric” (4.7.4)—this rarely affects his assessment of Alexander as
a great military leader. A clue to his attitude may be found in his own
biography. Like Dio and Plutarch, Arrian was a philosopher, and also
friend of fellow stoic Hadrian; he was also a Roman general, provincial
governor, and probably a senator. 47 Unlike Dio and Plutarch, and
despite his philosophy “credentials,” Arrian does not imbue
the Macedonian king with philosophy. According to the Anabasis’
“Second Preface,” his Alexander is, rather, the living embodiment of
the warrior Achilles, to whom Arrian himself plays “Homer.” 48
The fact that Arrian is the only Second Sophistic author to give the
Macedonian fi ghting forces their due 49 seems to line up with his unusually
positive attitude toward Philip as their original leader. The
action of the Anabasis begins at Philip’s death, but his memory lives
on. In his speech at Opis, Alexander shows fi lial piety when he lectures
his soldiers on how Philip civilized their Macedonian ancestors
and put them into towns with good order and customs, helping them
stave off the threat of the Illyrians and the Triballians, and put the
Greeks in their place and became leader of the expedition against
Persia (7.9.1–5). Alexander goes on to note in the same chapter that
his father left him a lot of debt—thus reasserting his superiority over
Philip—but his segue into his own achievements is rather organic,
and the result is that Philip and Alexander appear as co-civilizers.
Brian Bosworth has called this story of civilizing the Macedonians
“wildly inaccurate” 50 and has suggested a parallel to Arrian’s account
in the Indica of Dionysus’ transformation of the Indian “barbarians”
into city dwellers (7.2–7). If this is the case, it seems that we are seeing
Arrian’s own (unphilosophical) version of humanitas at work, and
one that effectively gives as much credit to his father as to Alexander.
Indeed, Philip may, for once, have the “real” last word. Near the
end of the Anabasis, Arrian tells us a story hinting at Aristobulus’
ambivalence over Alexander’s insatiability (7.20), the pothos referred
to elsewhere (e.g., 2.3.1, in the episode of the Gordian knot). 51 According
to Arrian, Aristobulus compared this insatiability to that of Icarus,
who fl ew to his death specifi cally against his father’s warning. Perhaps
in his death, Philip has here managed (fi rst through Aristobulus
and now Arrian) to fl ip paternal authority back to himself. An imprecise
but nonetheless compelling Roman parallel suggests itself. After