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

32 FATHER, SON, AND COURT
impression of an enmity between father and son. Olympias was
portrayed negatively as the key fi gure inciting her young and susceptible
son against Philip. 66 The notion that Alexander tried to
surpass his father throughout his career, spurred on by a traumatic
kind of rivalry, 67 seems to derive from this image and should be
regarded with caution. Obviously, the confl ict between Alexander,
Olympias, and Philip was a popular theme and became topical. 68
As far as we can tell, Alexander probably had fewer problems with
the living Philip than he did with the dead Philip and his legend.
Certainly he did not intend to renounce Philip as a part of his
policy, but he was forced to reduce the references to his father in his
public presentation at the point when his father’s memory was transformed
into a counterimage of his own rule. The watershed seems to
have been the victory at Issus. 69 After Issus, Alexander referred to his
father only occasionally. 70 In short, the different phases in Alexander’s
treatment of Philip’s memory were dependent upon the perception of
Philip within the Macedonian aristocracy and were shaped by political
confl icts within the Macedonian hierarchy. Confronted with
Philip as hero of the Macedonian opposition, Alexander necessarily
had to keep his distance. The reason was not a kind of megalomaniac
desire for divine paternity or a personal change of heart. As soon as
the Macedonian opposition had taken possession of Philip, Alexander
let go of him. But this step caused new problems. His distance from
Philip was criticized by the Macedonians as a deceitful act of renunciation
of Philip’s paternity. 71
For this reason, it is no wonder that Alexander preferred to refer to
his divine and heroic forefathers, Achilles and Heracles, and to stress
these family bonds. 72 Among his mortal relatives, he was far better off
projecting his mother in the role of Thetis than in tussling with the
shadow of Philip.
While in his lifetime Philip had enough trouble with the nobles,
even though he seems to have been much more popular than his son,
the difference between him and Alexander is fi rst of all marked by his
death. He died before he could invade Persia and increase his a uthority
and so enable himself to take steps similar to those subsequently
taken by Alexander to stabilize his position. Thus, only after Philip’s
death could he become the ideal Macedonian ruler for the Macedonian
nobles and soldiers, a weapon of propaganda and the model
Alexander was constantly judged by. As the political motives of Hermolaus’
conspiracy also reveal, the legend of Philip primarily
consisted of idealized memories of the infl uence Macedonian noble
factions had been able to exercise during his reign. After Issus,
Alexander could by no means measure up to this.