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

28 FATHER, SON, AND COURT
and symbolic signifi cance, and we must consider also the setting for
the confl ict, the hunting scene.
It seems to be important fi rst of all to emphasize that hunting on
horseback was an aristocratic and royal activity and constituted a
mark of excellence for a noble Macedonian as it was closely connected
to military skill and bravery. 28 The royal hunt symbolically
displayed royal prowess and the skills of the ruler as warrior and
guardian of his people, the ultimate archetypes of which were to be
found in the empires of the Ancient Near East. 29
In scholarship, it is suggested that Persian court practice in hunting
reserved the fi rst strike for the great king. This custom is supposed to
mirror his autocratic position. 30 Unfortunately, this practice is only
attested by Greek sources. 31 In general, Greek writers tend to exaggerate
the unlimited power of the Persian king. Their images of Persia
are infl uenced by Greek prejudices against the Persians as fl accid slave
natures spoilt by luxury and as subjects of a cruel tyrant king. 32 This
stereotypical image was produced as a contrast to the image of Greek
democratic freedom and is a product of political ideology. So, a
hunting prerogative of the Great Kings fi ts excellently into the cliché
of Persian political hierarchies in Greek eyes. Bearing this in mind, the
custom of the fi rst strike for the Persian king attested by Greek writers
sounds suspicious. In addition, it is not Herodotus, with his mostly
neutral perspective on Asia and his Persian sources, who mentions
the custom but Ctesias (as well as Plutarch and Xenophon in his Cyropaedia).
Ctesias did live at the Persian court of Artaxerxes II. However,
he tended to tell rather incredible stories in a determined attempt to
contradict Herodotus, while Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is a Greek philosophical
treatise revealing much about Greek culture and his own
ideas on education, military tactics, and principles of government, but
scarcely anything about Achaemenid Persia. 33 In consequence, there is
no certainty that such a law or court etiquette reserving the fi rst blow
for the king existed in Achaemenid Persia at all.
This is only one problem. Another one seems to be the suggestion
that there was a Macedonian counterpart of this practice, a custom or
even a law reserving the fi rst strike for the Macedonian ruler. 34 According
to Martin Seyer, this law was of Persian origin and Hermolaus
expressed his opposition to Alexander’s orientalizing policy by deliberately
ignoring it. 35 Some objections can be raised. First of all, there
were no laws but unwritten nomoi in Macedonia 36 and we have no
evidence for a custom like that. The informal code of conduct for the
royal hunt probably depended on the power of the individual ruler
and his concept of rulership. A privilege like this does not seem to
have room in Argead Macedonia where, as Elizabeth Carney has made