Olympias, then, knew exactly where to point the finger over her son’s death. And she had a plausible case: not long before his death Alexander had ordered Antipater replaced, largely on the grounds of his “regal aspirations.” ³Like many of Alexander’s actions in his last months, this order was not easily justifiable: already over seventy-five years old, Antipater had served three Macedonian kings and, despite limited resources, he had done a good job of leaving Alexander free to concentrate on eastern conquest. He had defeated the Persian fleet at sea and quelled a Thracian rebellion and a major Greek uprising (though even then, in 331, Alexander had sneeringly dismissed this as a “battle of mice”). ⁴Nevertheless, Antipater was to be relieved by Craterus, Alexander’s favorite since the death of Hephaestion, and was to bring fresh Macedonian troops out to Babylon.

Recently, however, such summonses had acquired the habit of turning into traps. Antipater had good reason to think that he would be executed on some charge or other, just as other powerful and seemingly loyal officials had been. Unhinged by Hephaestion’s death in October 324, Alexander had instigated a veritable reign of terror against even incipient signs of independence among his marshals. Moreover, to strengthen Olympias’s case, two of Antipater’s sons had long been in Babylon—and one of them, Iolaus, was well placed to act as a poisoner, since he was Alexander’s cupbearer. And Alexander’s fatal illness had begun immediately after a heavy drinking session. Indeed, shortly after news of Alexander’s death reached Athens, the anti-Macedonian politician Hyperides proposed honors for Iolaus precisely for having done away with the king. Yet another of Antipater’s sons, Cassander, had arrived only a few weeks earlier, presumably to plead for his father’s retention in Macedon. His mission had not gone well. Unfamiliar with the changes that had recently taken place in Alexander’s court, he had fallen out with the king over his insistence on obeisance from his courtiers, and Alexander had publicly humiliated him in return. ⁵

Whatever the facts, it was a perfect opportunity for Olympias to sow mischief against her chief enemies. Antipater was compelled to respond: before long, someone in his camp published an account of Alexander’s last days that was supposed to be the official diary of the king’s secretary, Eumenes of Cardia. The document downplayed the idea that the king had died an unnatural death, and stressed the heavy drinking, while appearing to suggest that this was nothing unusual; it hinted at Alexander’s grief over Hephaestion, and at an unspecified fever that carried him off. ⁶

But even if Olympias was wrong about Antipater and his sons, there were plenty of others who could feel uncomfortable if people started speculating and looking for motives. And even if she was wrong that Alexander’s death was part of a power play by certain individuals, she was right that his death would free the ambitions of those who had been closest to her son—those, at any rate, who were still alive after thirteen years of hard campaigning and ruthless purges. As it turned out, even bloodthirsty Alexander would have been proud of the scope of their ambitions: they embroiled the known world in decades of war.

THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER

Philip II came to the Macedonian throne in 359. Within four or five years, by a combination of diplomacy, assassination, and military force, he had warded off internal and external threats and united the various cantons under his autocratic rule. It became clear that the Greek states to the south were his next target. He improved on Greek infantry tactics and developed the army until he had a stupendous fighting force at his personal command. He could call on two thousand cavalry and thirty thousand soldiers trained to high professional standards and equipped with superior weaponry. Many Greek states would have to unite in order to field an army of comparable size. Their failure to do so meant that he could pick them off one by one, or league by league.

Athens became the focus of what little resistance there was to Macedon, but it was the last gasp of traditional Greek city-state autonomy. War, financed in part by Persia, was waged in a ragged fashion by Athens and its allies against Philip, until in 338 he marched south. Alongside Boeotian troops, Athenians faced the Macedonians at Chaeronea in Boeotia. Numbers were almost equal. The battle was so hotly contested that the elite Theban Sacred Band died nearly to a man, and the Athenians too suffered crippling casualties.

Almost the first action Philip took as ruler of southern Greece was to form the conquered states into a league, the Hellenic League or League of Corinth, with himself at its head. Interstate conflict was outlawed, and so Philip, a Macedonian king, took the first step toward Greek statehood, finally attained over two thousand years later. In return for votes on the league council, every state was obliged, when called upon, to supply troops for military expeditions. He next got the league to appoint him supreme commander for the long-promised “Greek” war against Persia, in retaliation for a century and a half of Persian interference in Greek affairs and two destructive invasions, in 490 and 480 BCE. Though that was distant history, the Greeks had never forgotten or forgiven; Persia was the common enemy, and public speakers ever since had fanned the flames of Greek supremacism and revenge.

But Philip was murdered in 336, on the eve of his journey east, at his daughter Cleopatra’s wedding party. It is a sordid tale, but worth repeating for the insight it affords into the Macedonian court. The killer, Pausanias, was one of Philip’s Bodyguards and his lover. He had aroused the ire of Attalus, one of Philip’s principal generals, and Attalus allegedly arranged for Pausanias to be gang-raped. ⁷Philip refused to punish Attalus at this critical juncture, when he was about to lead a division of the army of invasion. Pausanias therefore killed the king. The water is further muddied by the fact that Attalus was a bitter enemy of Olympias and Alexander; it is not implausible to suggest that Olympias encouraged Pausanias’s desire for revenge.

In any case, both the Macedonian throne and the eastern expedition devolved on Philip’s son, Alexander III, soon to be known as “the Great.” In 334, Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia. His first act was to cast a spear into the soil: Asia was to be “spear-won land,” his by right of conquest. In a series of amazing and closely fought battles, he crushed the Persians and took control of the empire.

The battle at the Granicus River in 334 took care of the Persian armies of Asia Minor; four satraps (provincial governors), three members of the king’s family, and the Greek commander of the Persians’ mercenaries lay dead on the battlefield. The remnants of the king’s western army were ordered to fall back to Babylonia, where a fresh army was mustering. In 333 Alexander annihilated the Persians near Issus, not far from the border between Cilicia and Syria. It was a notable victory: not only were Persian losses serious, but eight thousand of Darius’s mercenaries deserted in despair after the battle, the Persian king’s immediate family were captured, and Alexander enriched himself with the king’s war chest.

Alexander returned to Phoenicia and protected his rear by taking Egypt in 332. By the time he returned from Egypt and marched east again, Darius had had almost two years in which to gather another army. Battle was joined near the village of Gaugamela, close to the Tigris, on October 1, 331. As usual, in addition to the formidable Macedonian fighting machine, both luck and superior strategy were on Alexander’s side, and despite its vastly superior numbers the Persian army was eventually routed. It was the end of the empire; it had been ruled by the Achaemenid house for over two hundred years. The king fled to Ecbatana in Media, and Alexander proclaimed himself Lord of Asia in Darius’s stead. Babylon and Susa opened their gates without a fight, and the rest of the empire lay open to his unstoppable energy. A minor defeat near Persepolis hardly delayed his taking the city, the old capital of the Persian heartland. In the summer of 330 he marched on Ecbatana. Darius fled before him with a scorched-earth strategy, but was killed by some of his own satraps and courtiers.