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

60 FATHER, SON, AND COURT
from its beginnings, the careers of Philip and Alexander (as the heirs to
Persia in both luxury and “otherness”) appear to have given it new life
in the late fourth century. 20
Duris of Samos offers near-contemporary and probable eyewitness
commentary on Macedonian royal symposia as well, 21 when he
informs us that Philip customarily slept with a gold wine cup under
his pillow ( FGrH 76 F 37a and b). Duris’ motives in including this
detail in his Macedonian History are equally suspect, however,
because he was interested in emphasizing the enervating moral effects
of excessive drinking, particularly among the Successors ( FGrH
76 F 12 and 15; cf. F 27), and the themes of luxury and extravagance
serve for him, like Theopompus, as explanatory factors for political
and military decline. 22
Similarly, the Greek sources emphasize the heavy drinking and
extravagance of Alexander’s symposia. Eyewitness accounts of
Alexander’s (allegedly) excessive drinking can be found in the poison
pen of a certain Ephippus of Olynthus, who served with Alexander
on his expedition and wrote a pamphlet on the deaths of Alexander
and Hephaestion. It is clearly a hostile work (and indeed it is not
surprising that any contemporary Olynthian would have no love
lost for the Macedonian monarchy), 23 and the few fragments which
are extant from this work emphasize the luxury, extravagance, and
generally un-Hellenic nature of Alexander’s court in general, and
his symposia in particular ( FGrH 126 F 1–5). 24 Ephippus is the
source of the observation ( FGrH 126 F 1) that the Macedonians were
unable to drink in an orderly fashion, but immediately made large
toasts, so that they became drunk as the appetizers were being served
and were not able to enjoy their meal. He also is the earliest extant
authority to attribute the onset of Alexander’s fatal illness to his
draining of a twelve-pint drinking cup ( FGrH 126 F 3). Another hostile
pamphlet that was probably published soon after Alexander’s
death and emphasized his heavy drinking is attributed to a certain
Niobule. 25 It provides the additional details that Alexander exchanged
toasts individually with all twenty of his fellow symposiasts at his fi nal
drinking party ( FGrH 127 F 1), and that after declaiming a scene from
Euripides’ Andromeda, he proposed a toast of unmixed wine and
forced the other guests to do the same ( FGrH 127 F 2). Another eyewitness,
Chares of Mytilene, the king’s Royal Usher, emphasizes the luxury
of Alexander’s symposia ( FGrH 125 F 4) and is our earliest surviving
source for the drinking contests of unmixed wine that Alexander held
in honor of the Indian Sage Calanus, which led to the deaths of fortyone
of his men. 26 Chares also hints that Alexander was known for
drinking large cups of unmixed wine in his anecdote of Callisthenes’