Zopyrion, governor of Thracia in Macedonian service

Thracia had been annexed by Philip II in his efforts to extend the power of the Macedonian kingdom and to safeguard its borders. After his death, Alexander had to stamp his authority and his rule over the many tribes once again, all the way to the mighty Danube River to protect his back before setting out to Asia. 

One would expect the northern tribes to live happily ever after, especially since Alexander took a substantial contingent of Thracians with him as far as India and back under the command of their general Sitalces (see: Sitalces, commander of the Thracians). 

However, the many Thracian tribes never united and kept fighting among themselves, putting their individual interests above all. It was one of Antipater’s tasks, as Regent of Macedonia, to enforce the peace. 

[Helmet from Zopyrion's army, found in Olanesti, Moldova]

Ancient historians have left us very little information about what happened in Alexander’s homeland while he moved further east. One governor of Thrace is known as Zopyrion. His name caught my attention after seeing the picture of a helmet found in Olanesti, Moldova, that is linked to Zopyrion’s army. 

Unfortunately, the only reliable source of Zopyrion comes from Curtius. He simply stated that the governor made an expedition against the Getae and that his army was overwhelmed by sudden tempests and gales. He allegedly lost 30,000 men - a figure that is probably exaggerated. At that time, about 324 BC, Alexander was in Persia, facing the misconduct of many satraps he had left in charge before moving on to Central Asia. 

However, another, much less trustworthy story is told by Justin. This one circulates widely on the internet, mostly repeating the content of the Wikipedia page. 

Justin, in full Marcus Junianus Justinus, probably lived in the 2nd/3rd century AD and got hold of the 44 books called the Philippic Histories by Pompeius Trogus that are now lost. Justin decided that Trogus’ history was far too voluminous, and he wrote his own abridged version. Sadly, accuracy was not Justin’s strong point, and he was not very concerned about his sources or the chronology of the events, already a weak point in Trogus’ account. 

As a result, the vivid description found on Wikipedia and the like is fraudulent with pitfalls. Here, Zopyrion is said to have assembled an army of 30,000 men. He started his march along the southern banks of the Black Sea and laid siege on Olbia, a colony of Miletus. At that time, Miletus was already incorporated into Alexander’s Empire, but Olbia was not. Left on its own, the city managed to survive the siege by granting freedom to its slave population and citizenship to the foreigners living there. An alliance with the Scythians counteracted Zopyrion’s ambition even further, and he ran out of resources. At this point, he ended his siege of Olbia and started to retreat. At the same time, his navy was apparently hit by a severe storm, devastating his fleet. In Justin’s account, Zopyrion’s campaign was short-lived, and he died with his troops at the end of 331 BC. He also reports that Antipater, as regent of Macedonia, conveyed the news to Alexander in a letter that also informed him that his uncle and brother-in-law, Alexander of Epirus, was killed in Italy. 

While it is correct that Alexander of Epirus was killed in Italy in 331 BC, the ambitious campaign of Zopyrion took place seven years later, in 324 BC. In the end, the details based on Justin’s account may contain some truth, but it is hard to filter them out. 

Debates about the Tomb of Kasta Hill near Amphipolis still ongoing …

Poor Alexander! It seems that 2,500 years after his death, we are still fighting over his body. He certainly does not deserve this!

It took me a while to sift through the different theories exposed by the author of the Empedotimos blog, which are evidently not entirely absurd but cannot be taken at face value either. History can be explained in many different ways, and the author picked his own choice, making his viewpoint quite clear, but that does not mean we have to agree with him. Comments left on both his posts in August and September clearly prove that I am not the only skeptic here, and I thank "Redumbrella" for bringing this to my attention.

So I started digging again into those dark and complex days that followed Alexander's death in Babylon in 323 BC, a quarrel that went on for forty years. There are far more sources than Pausanias or Diodorus to be used like Empedotimos did, and I thought I might as well explain my point of view here.

To begin with, Curtius Rufus and Justin state that Alexander's last wish was that his body would be taken to Ammon. Also, Diodorus and possibly Trogus (Justin) wrote this, as well as the Alexander Romance. Whatever the "Macedonian" twist today's Greeks want to give to the story, Alexander's request is entirely consistent with what we know of his personality and beliefs at the time of his death. As the "son of Ammon," he definitely accepted Ammon's authority, which is sustained by his request for Hephaistion's worship. It is, therefore, absolutely possible that Alexander did ask to be buried in Egypt and that the Macedonians at his deathbed accepted his request while under the emotions of the moment.

Meanwhile, Alexander's half-witted half-brother Arrhidaeus had been proclaimed king together with the newly born Alexander IV by Roxane. Upon Alexander's death, Perdiccas was underway to Macedonia to relieve Antipater from his function and replace him as Regent.

Diodorus indeed states that Arrhidaeus spent two years preparing the catafalque for Alexander (as referred to by Empedotimos). Still, since the funeral procession reached Syria in the winter of 322/321 BC after moving literally at a crawling pace, it must have left Babylon in the summer of 322 BC at the latest. That substantially reduces the time to build a tomb for Alexander in Amphipolis.

It is clear that the entire trip from Babylon to Egypt is wrapped in contradictions. Perdiccas may have changed his mind and refrained from the initial acceptance of Alexander's orders to bring his body to Egypt, and wanted it to come to Macedonia. It was the new king Philip-Arrhidaeus who accompanied the body of Alexander. There are indications that he agreed with Ptolemy to bring the carriage to Egypt (confirmed by Arrian). We should remember that at this point, Perdiccas was officially Regent, meaning that under the Macedonian constitution, it was his prerogative to bury his king. This implies that he was also reluctant to cede this honor to Ptolemy. Besides, he must have considered Olympias' wrath had he returned to Macedonia without her son's remains!

And then there is the legend or prophecy that the Macedonian kingship would end when the king was not buried at Aegae. Aelian, in his Varia Historia, tells us about Aristander of Termissus, who had been Alexander's faithful soothsayer. Aristander, after seeing the king's body unburied for thirty days, addressed the Assembly of Macedonians, stating that both in life and in death, Alexander had been most fortunate and that the gods told him that the land that would receive his body, "the former habitation of his soul," would be blessed with the greatest good fortune. Aelian continues to tell us how Ptolemy "stole" the body and how Perdiccas chased him to recover it.

We must be aware that in the winter of 322-321 BC, Perdiccas and a major force of veterans were in Pisidia, about 1,100 km away. This meant the news that the funeral cortege bifurcated to Egypt took at least one week, if not two, to reach him. The bulky carriage with Alexander's remains made only slow progress, and Perdiccas must have figured out that he could catch up before it reached Egypt.

Aelian's account makes sense as Ptolemy had enough time to make a likeness of Alexander, clad in royal robes, to be laid in one of the Persian carriages, arranging the bier with sumptuous gold, silver, and ivory. Alexander's real body was then sent ahead in secret. When Perdiccas arrived, he obviously thought he had found the real prize and stopped his march. It was too late to go in pursuit when he realized the trick. How much this story is true remains debatable, but I find it strange that the author of Empedotimos did not mention it – unless I missed it (my Greek is only basic, and the provided English translation is not the best …). At least we know that a 'fake' Alexander was made, but we can only speculate what happened afterward. Probably Perdiccas got so mad that he destroyed it after recovering the precious gold and silver, of course.

Pausanias' version is entirely coherent with the overall situation where Ptolemy demanded the catafalque to be handed over to him. Ptolemy then went to bury Alexander's mummified body according to Macedonian rites in Memphis. What these "Macedonian rites" mean is not clear.

Please note that Plutarch mentions the arrival of embalmers about one week after Alexander was declared dead and that the body lay uncorrupted for days; Curtius says that the body had a lifelike appearance. This clearly confirms that Alexander was not cremated but embalmed.

Perdiccas did not accept Ptolemy's attitude and went to war against him, taking Philip-Arrhidaeus and the young infant Alexander IV with him to add more weight to his campaign. As we know, Perdiccas' attack ended in failure; his officers mutinied and stabbed him to death. The men then asked Ptolemy to take over the Regency of Macedonia, but for unspecified reasons, Ptolemy declined. However, he appointed Peithon, one of the bodyguards of Alexander the Great and later satrap of Media, to be co-regent with Arrhidaeus and sent the party back north.

In turn, Strabo, the geographer who lived in Alexandria for several years, asserts that the body of Alexander was entombed in Alexandria, "where it still now lies." Strabo lived in the first century BC/first century AD, a good two hundred years after Alexander's death, and by this time, Macedonia was a Roman territory. Nobody then had any interest in bringing Alexander back to Amphipolis. This also means that the corpse of Alexander was definitely not cremated.

My way of thinking may not be convincing, but neither are any previous theories I came across, even though they were expressed by academics…

Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus by Justin

The full title of this book is: Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeus Trogus, Volume I, Books 11-12, Alexander the Great. Translated and appendices by J.C. Yardley. Commentary by Waldemar Heckel (ISBN 0-19-814908-5).

The content of this book is far from straightforward, although, in the end, one could simply say this is a history of Alexander the Great. But …

The complexity starts with the authors. Marcus Junianus Justinus, Justin in short, probably lived in the 2^nd/3^rd century AD. He is said to have arrived in Rome around 200 AD, where he came to know the 44 books called the Philippic Histories written by a certain Trogus. Pompeius Trogus was a prominent historian from Gallia Narbonesis, probably from Vaison-la-Romaine. Justin decided that Trogus’ history was far too voluminous and wrote his own abridged version. As a consequence, the precious original History of Trogus slowly but surely vanished.

Trogus’ name, however, survives among the great Latin historians and is mentioned together with Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. It has been established that he was influenced by Livy and that Curtius Rufus, in turn, was influenced by Trogus. A small world, it seems.

Unfortunately, accuracy was not one of Justin’s strong points and he was not very concerned about his sources or the chronology of the events, this last point being also a weak point in Trogus’ account.

Justin’s Books 11 and 12 deal with Alexander the Great and as announced in the present title, it is this section that has been translated by J.C. Yardley – in a mere 27 pages. The great question remains: which elements come from Trogus and which were added or interpreted later on by Justin? This is more often than not an impossible task, but Heckel’s commentary tries to sort this out. He analyses every sentence and every word in a very meticulous and precise way using all possible ancient sources and consulting an enormous bibliography of later authors which are all referenced. This commentary is in fact so extensive and detailed that one could easily find all the available books ever written about Alexander the Great. By reading only the commentary, one acquires an excellent account of Alexander’s campaigns as seen by so many different scholars over the centuries.

The Introduction to this Epitome gives useful background information about Trogus and Justin, set in their own time-frame and the book concludes with a couple of very useful Appendices.

This is not exactly bedtime reading but a very thorough analysis of the massive literature ever written about Alexander the Great.

Historical Sources in Translation, Alexander the Great by W. Heckel and J.C. Yardley

Historical Sources in Translation, Alexander the Great by W. Heckel and J.C. Yardley (ISBN 0631228217) is a true gem, not for those looking for a historical account of Alexander’s life, but for whoever just wants to grasp a moment in time. Heckel and Yardley have researched many antiquity sources to present them to us in a handy succession of excerpts. What a job! Yet this is so terribly appealing if you are looking for that one date or event in Alexander’s thrilling life.

We know that his secretary, Eumenes of Cardia, kept official records while Alexander was still alive. Only fragments of those records have survived, and they seem to present a rather dull account of daily business with little military or political information. For that part, we have to refer to Callisthenes of Olynthus, but one may wonder how much truth there is in the propaganda he wrote to plead the Hellenistic cause and to please the Greeks at home.

More realistic are probably the accounts of Nearchus, Alexander’s general who commanded his fleet sailing from the Indus to Babylon, and those of Ptolemy, another of his generals who ruled over Egypt and lived to a blessed old age. But then there is Onesicritus of Astypalaea, who made the voyage with Nearchus and had his own version of this experience. These men all wrote while Alexander was still alive or shortly after that. Better known is Cleitarchus, who made use of texts from both Onesicritus and Nearchus, but in the end, it seems that most of the workable elements come from two men, Ptolemy and Aristobulus who told their version late in life - which makes us wonder how much they genuinely remember or believe to remember.

In any case, we are left with five extant historians of Alexander, which Heckel and Yardley use in their book. They are Diodorus Siculus, Curtius Rufus, Plutarch (later Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus), Arrian of Nicomedia, and Justin (Marcus Junianius Justinus), who summarized the work of Pompeius Trogus that is mostly lost.

In addition, Heckel and Yardley have also searched for relevant information from other authors. This list is a long one, and I won’t go into details but just name the sources: Aelian, Aristotle, Athenaeus of Naucratis, Cassius Clio, Cicero, Frontinus, Livy, Lucian, Pausanias, Pliny the Elder, Polyaenus, Polybius of Megalopolis, Stephanus of Byzantium, Strabo, Suetonius, and Valerius Maximus – i.e., geographers, tacticians, orators, and rhetoricians. Additionally, Heckel and Yardley consulted the Alexander Romance, The Metz and Heidelberg Epitomes, and the Itinerarium Alexandri (Itinerary of Alexander) of an unknown writer from about 340 AD.

It is evident that both Professors did their homework. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to investigate and explore Alexander’s character more in-depth. It is such a handy and pleasant tool to work with!

Also available as an ebook.