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

20 FATHER, SON, AND COURT
observe that this is a character portrait, 46 and Goukowsky has pointed
out that the spectators could recognize in this Alexander a genius of
war and a conqueror, but never more than a man: he does not have
divine attributes, nor does he exhibit the oriental symbols of kingship,
not even the diadem, and, although he no longer sports the traditional
beard of a king, his eyes, his countenance, and his courage
suggest the charismatic aura of a hero. 47 Here, therefore, is the icon of
a politically acceptable Alexander in Macedonia, and it was surely
attractive also to the neighboring dynasty of the Aeacids: Pyrrhus,
emulous of the Argead (Plut. Pyrrh. 8.1), would exhibit the same ardor
in combat and the same long whiskers on a shaven face.
Oral memories of Alexander, no doubt, lived on during the Successors’
generation, at the new Hellenistic courts, like Alexandria, where
the Molossian apprentice spent some time (Plut. Pyrrh. 4.3–4). His
early mentors, Antigonus I and Ptolemy I, remembered many things
about Alexander’s outward appearance, which maybe also explains
the length of the sideburns on the octadrachm busts of Philadelphus.
They all were kings and they all knew better than later sources that
were a bit obsessed with physiognomic and metaphysical readings.
Even the Iranian and peripheral Mithridates Eupator correctly interpreted
the iconographic traditions, and there we have his splendid
Louvre head as well as his portraits on his fi rst coin issues, matching
the image of Alexander as hero in pose, gestures, and facial hair. 48
Now, when Chrysippus reports that beardlessness came into fashion
under Alexander, he surely refers, in the fi rst instance, to the
Diadochi, yet even among them the royal image proved to be more
complex than is normally assumed. As far as the extant portraiture
allows us to conclude, the Diadochi did not faithfully imitate the
long hairstyle of Alexander. Although they have smooth chins, their
hair is shorter and not swept up in a cowlick. They defi nitely do not
have a mane, and still less a leonine mane. Their choice means that
the new Hellenistic kings reached a kind of compromise between
Alexander’s heroic or divine style and the sober athletic type. The
revolutionary iconography of Alexander with fl owing and nearly
shoulder-length hair is very seldom attested in the art of the High Hellenistic
Age: “for Alexander the Diadochs developed a longer-haired,
more Apollo/Dionysos-style of image, and for themselves a shorterhaired,
more Herakles-based fi gure image.” 49 I agree also with Smith
that for Alexander and his Successors, shaving the beard represented
an important way of setting their image apart from both the Greeks
of the cities and the Persians and other Iranians, many of whom
wore full beards. In my opinion, however, Alexander’s innovation
did not have continuators everywhere (not, for instance, among Greek