Hephaestion Amyntoros
9. ALEXANDER OF EPIRUS
Another possible scholar at Mieza was Olympias’s brother Alexander. Younger than Olympias, he was perhaps 6 to 8 years older than Alexander when, at the age of about 12 or 14, he was brought to Pella by Philip in 350 BC, exactly the right age to join the Royal Pages, and also a hostage for Arybbas’s loyalty. Philip had reduced the Molossian king Arybbas (the Molossians were a Greek tribe who ruled Epirus) to a client kingship. Arybbas was the uncle of Olympias and Alexander, the brother of their father Neoptolemus with whom he had shared the throne, and he had married their sister Troas.
It is perhaps a mark of Olympias’s royal status that her brother was brought to court and groomed for kingship by Philip, for in about 342 BC, when the Epirus Alexander was around 20, and our Alexander about 14, that Philip ousted Arybbas and installed his young brother-in-law as king of Epirus. Did this seem a romantic and heroic enterprise to the younger Alexander?
Alexander of Epirus was a descendant of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. Even his father was called Neoptolemus. Given our Alexander’s tendency towards hero-worship, we can only speculate about how much the older boy would have fed his young nephew tales of their shared heroic ancestor Achilles.
Unlike Amyntas, the older Alexander was a soldier, and died trying to conquer Italy in 331 BC, only about 30 years of age, leaving a young son Neoptolemus and a daughter Cadmeia. His expedition to Italy was surely with Alexander of Macedon’s approval, and it is interesting to wonder if Alexander sent Craterus back to Greece in 324 BC with the aim perhaps, not of ousting Antipater, but of moving westward into Italy. Alexander certainly wouldn’t have forgotten his uncle’s death and would have wanted to avenge it at some point.
Philip had an affair with the young Alexander of Epirus, and he may have had one with his nephew Amyntas too We can only wonder how Philip’s behaviour contrasted with Aristotle’s teaching in the adolescent Alexander and Hephaestion’s eyes as they reached puberty. Perhaps Aristotle inadvertently contributed to the rift that developed between Alexander and Philip in Alexander’s later adolescence.
On Philip’s marriage to Attalus’s niece Cleopatra, about 18 months before his death, the 18 year old Alexander fled with his mother to the other Alexander in Epirus, which must have placed the Epirote Alexander in a difficult position. He owed his kingship to Philip, but his loyalty might have been to his sister and nephew. This is probably why Alexander soon moved on to Illyria, and Philip must have been prepared to allow his son this cooling off period or he could have tracked him down and either killed him or brought him back to Macedon. Was the young Alexander aware of this and did he take care not to antagonise Philip by his actions in Illyria? Illyria was a hereditary foe of Macedon and it was only about 20 years since Philip had recovered Upper Macedon from the Illyrians. Alexander was making a statement of rebellion by going there, and it must have caused some concern to Philip, although one of his wives was an Illyrian princess. However, we do not know what Alexander did in Illyria, or if Hephaestion accompanied him. Almost the first thing Alexander did though when he returned to Macedon was to antagonise his father by becoming embroiled in the Pixodarus affair. Philip showed great parental leniency towards Alexander during this period, indicating, even if Alexander couldn’t see it, that he did want to keep his son as his heir if he could.
It has been suggested that Philip kept Alexander of Epirus on friendly terms by promising him his daughter, and Alexander’s own niece, Cleopatra, in marriage. Yet the marriage did not take place for 18 months, so either the two events were not connected, or Cleopatra was not old enough to marry in 337 BC. How old she was is difficult to gauge. They may have had to wait until she reached marriageable age at 13 or 14 in the autumn of 336 BC, which would indicate that Philip and Olympias were still having sexual relations 8 or 10 years after Alexander’s birth, despite Plutarch’s assertion about the snakes driving Philip from Olympias’s bed. Alternatively, the marriage may have waited until Cleopatra was physically and emotionally more mature.
If, however, the marriage of Alexander and Cleopatra had nothing to do with Alexander and Olympias’s flight to Epirus, it is more likely that it was connected to Philip’s invasion plans for the Persian Empire. In marrying his daughter to neighbouring king, Philip was securing his borders before he left the country and, in effect, willing Macedon to Alexander of Epirus should the invasion go disastrously wrong and both he and Alexander fell. If Philip did not take Alexander with him, and he fell, then his son would have one neighbour who, hopefully, wouldn’t rise up against him to overthrow Macedonian supremacy.
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