Dr. Graham Wrightson
speaker
123 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Graham Wrightson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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whatever it is mental disorder where he disappears from being able to rule and so the generals aren't sure that he's a reliable king and so there's a dispute between even amongst the generals themselves over who they follow and also who is the most important general alexander never had necessarily a designated right-hand man after his friend hefeistian dies just before he does
it's Pertikas and we get the statement that Pertikas was handed the ring by Alexander on his deathbed and said Pertikas supposedly according to Plutarch says who does this go to and he says to the strongest and he's giving it to Pertikas so Pertikas takes that to mean that he is the designated chosen successor as the strongest and the others say that that's not what he meant at all and that you were supposed to give it to the person who proved themselves to be the strongest and that's assuming you take Plutarch and the other sources at their word that this actually happened
We don't know what actually happened in Alexander's deathbed room. So the generals fight amongst themselves.
And immediately after Alexander dies, we get this sort of mini rebellion between Meleager, this really insignificant general who claims that he's speaking for the common soldier when he wants one person and that the main generals are the elite cavalry general people who are too fancy for the common soldiers. And so Meleager posits himself in opposition to Pertikas.
And there's this mini civil war and then Pertikas forces them to hand over Meliega, who he and his ringleaders get trampled by elephants in execution for their resistance and all that fun stuff. So there's all sorts of different things going on. So immediately after his death, it's who is going to be the next king that the generals will back. That's their main decision that they have to make.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, these generals, Alexander sort of created a somewhat level playing field amongst his commanders so that the army functions better in that context. Earlier in the army, he had Parmenion, who was his father's general, who was clearly the number two. But later on, he seems to be a Feistian, but Feistian's not the best commander.
So it's sort of Pertikas and Craterus at the same time. And he has sort of a cavalry general and an infantry general, but it's not clear which one is superior. So that when Alexander dies, there's no Feistian, which makes it... Easier for the squabbles to begin, I guess. Perdiccas claims it's him because he's there when Alexander dies.
Craterus, the old infantry general, has been released from service with 10,000 veterans like a year before. And he's halfway back to Macedon when he learns of Alexander's death. He's like, well, I'm just as important as Perdiccas. Why is Perdiccas in charge? And so these generals, they believe strongly that they are, you know, no worse than the other person. They are...
They're equals, and so they fight for recognition. There's two levels of generals, I guess. You get at the top, you have Craterus and Perdiccas, who fought with Alexander as his main generals. Then you have Antipater, who has been governing Macedon. Previously, he worked for Philip II, Alexander's father, and was the same level as Parmenion.
He sort of viewed himself as the most important individual left behind, because he's senior to everybody, and he's a generation above all these different upstarts. But he's not fought with Alexander, right?
And then below that, you have the generals who are named and had positions but weren't like senior commanders, like Ptolemy, who goes on to take Egypt, and Seleucus, and Lysimachus, and Leonartus, the bodyguard, and Polyperchon, who comes out later, and Prusestas, the bodyguard, who's become governor of... one of the satrapies.
So you get those level people, and Antigonus, who's a governor of a satrapy, they decide that they want to strike out to better their own positions too. And so Ptolemy heads off to claim Egypt before anyone can tell him not to. And Seleucus heads off to claim Babylon before anyone can tell him not to. And Craterus declares his independence and
And the complicating factor is the rebellion of the Greeks. Immediately after Alexander dies, Greece rebels, at least through Athens, and they begin what we call the Lamian War because of the main battles around the siege of the city of Lamia in northern Greece, in Thessaly. And it's headed by a successful general. Antipater, as the governor of Macedon in Greece, has to deal with that.
And he goes down and fights and loses to start with. So he calls for assistance. And Craterus is the closest. So he comes with Neoptolemus, another general, and Leonartus, and they go and they fight. Leonartus already, it seems, is aiming at kingship himself because he's put feelers out to marry Alexander's sister, who becomes a key...
figure in these early successor squabbles who gets to marry Cleopatra Alexander's sister because that's the closest you can get to the royal family right as a man you can't marry the sons right so you've got to marry the sisters and Alexander doesn't have a daughter he dies in battle against the Greeks so that gets rid of one of these upstart generals
Yeah, exactly. So the Lamian War is this... It's a crucial event, not because the Greeks win their freedom, but because they win their first couple of engagements. And that changes the presentation and propaganda ability of the generals who are involved. So Antipater loses some face because he can't defeat the Greeks by himself. So he has to invite Craterus in for assistance.
and leonardus dies obviously so that doesn't help but craterus wins the battle wins the war but he has to call in help from white clitus who brings the navy another name right yeah and he was a battalion commander who arrives late there's two clituses the black clitus is the one killed by alexander white clitus survives so he wins the lamian war on the navy craterus wins on land and they subdue athens in the name of antipater who's still nominally in charge
Yeah, so we have five main sources for Alexander himself. So we have Arian, Plutarch's Life of Alexander that's paired with Julius Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curcius Rufus, and then there's Justin's summary of the history of Pompeius Trogus. But all five historians are Romans, and they might be writing in Greek, some of them for a Greco-Roman audience, and
But they're still primarily Romans writing after the Romans have taken over everything. And they're using contemporary sources of Alexander, but none of them are closer than 250 years after Alexander died. So for modern historians, for my students, when I teach them, this is hard for them to get their head around that, like they're reading primary sources of a period.
that is very distant from what they're writing about, right? It's like studying American history, I always say, when you have only modern sources talking about the American Revolution, that there's no contemporary documents from the event that created America. as the USA that is now, not surviving.
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