How important was it, really, that Alexander didn't have more brothers? He had Karanos, and it there's the gossip that ATG or his mother killed the boy. Philip Arridhaios apparently wasn't seen as a direct challenge and ATG kept him around. But if Philip had more healthy male offspring around Alexander's age, would that have threatened his hold on power, the partition of the empire or even the military campaigns themselves (the brothers becoming generals for example)?
Philip’s (Lack of) Sons
So, first I need to correct the bit about Karanos. He didn’t exist. Justin gave baby Europē a sex-change. No historian reports two children for Kleopatra Eurydikē, and Justin alone names a boy. We get two children when modern historians try to reconcile Justin and Diodoros/others. But Justin gets things wrong a lot. So, where Justin disagrees with other historians, I’ll go with the others (especially if it’s more than one). Justin wasn’t simply epitomizing Pompeius Trogus; he had his own agendas and themes, so he changed things when it suited him.
Therefore, “Karanos” = Europē,* born just a few days (maybe a week or two) before Philip’s murder.
The wives and children of Philip are reported in a fragment from Satyrus preserved in Athenaeus (13.557b-c). Of his (living) children, we have four girls (Kynannē, Kleopatra, Thessalonikē, and Europē), and only two boys (Arrhidaios and Alexander).
I specify living because ancient accounts don’t usually list children who died young unless it somehow impacted events. So, the murder of Europē, which led to the suicide of Kleopatra Eurydikē, means Europē got a mention whereas if she’d died of some childhood disease, we’d probably not hear about her.
Ergo, it’s possible Philip did sire other children who simply didn’t survive long enough to make it into the histories—especially if they’d been born (and died) in his earlier years. In Dancing with the Lion, I invented a son (Menelaos) by the shadowy Phila of Elimeia, who died young, specifically to illustrate that point.
The two-to-four ratio of boys to girls suggests Philip fathered girls more than boys. Would more boys have endangered Alexander’s place? Certainly, if they were around his age. But not if they were notably younger—another point I make in Dancing with the Lion: why Alexander is less upset by Philip’s seventh marriage than his mother. The chance that Kleopatra Eurydike might bear a male child threatened Olympias’s position far more than Alexander’s. Even some of my colleagues seem to forget that. While yes, sons and mothers did form a political unit at polygamous courts, that doesn’t mean that threats to the mother’s status necessarily entailed threats to a son’s. Philip’s marriage to Kleopatra Eurydikē was just such a case. Any son she produced would’ve been so far behind Alexander in achievements (and thus, a shot at the throne), that the marriage was no threat—which is why he attended the wedding. That makes events at the wedding very curious indeed! And convinces me that we don’t even begin to have the whole story there.
I made up some things in Rise (no spoilers), precisely because we don’t know and I had to come up with something that didn’t make Alexander into a reactionary rube. Too often people point to him as a “hotheaded youth” who made a mountain out of a molehill at his mother’s instigation. Folks, he was eighteen or nineteen. Hotheaded (always), but not some little kid to jump at shadows and Mommy’s tales. Something truly threatening generated that level of reaction from him (and beyond what Diodoros relates at the wedding). It wasn’t fear of being replaced by an as-yet-not-even-conceived infant brother--unless Philip had other reasons to replace him, and there weren’t any … on the face of it.
Anyway, I want to end by pointing to the Big Pink Elephant in the room that way too many people seem to forget….
AMYNTAS PERDIKKA was Alexander’s chief rival, not Arrhidaios or a fictional infant brother. Amyntas was older than Alexander, the only son of Philip’s older brother Perdikkas (III), who’d been king before Philip. Amyntas didn’t become king when his father died in battle precisely because he was only about a year old, while Philip was c. 23/24, and the kingdom was in crisis. Being a baby was also why Philip didn’t kill him. He needed an heir until he could father his own.**
So despite being the eldest Argead after Philip and the legitimate son of a former king, Amyntas spent his life as “the spare.” Imagine the resentment that would have generated. It’s not an accident that Alexander had him killed inside six months of taking the throne. And it’s probably in that time frame that Amyntas would’ve staged a bid for the throne himself. After all, not only was he an Argead, with military experience, he was married to Philip’s eldest child, who was already pregnant, showing he was fertile. He had a really good claim.
Such a clearing out of competing Argeads was standard for any new king’s first year or so. It’s what whittled down available Argead males from the five sons (and progeny) of Alexandros I to just three at Philip’s death, a hundred years later: Amyntas, Alexander, and Arrhidaios. Alexander wasn’t unique in house-cleaning. Philip had killed various collateral Argeads upon taking the throne, keeping only Amyntas, his nephew.
So basically, given Argead patterns, the survival of male siblings/cousins depended on a couple things:
The age of the sibling(s)/cousins. Siblings and half-siblings who were notably younger were likely to be spared if they didn’t appear to offer an immediate threat. After all, the new king needed an heir until he could father his own.
The apparent competence of the sibling(s)/cousins. Arrhidaios is our best evidence for this: Alexander took him with him to Asia to keep an eye on him—prevent his use as a stooge in a coup—but he otherwise kept him alive.
The king’s personal relationship with the sibling(s)/cousins. This is obviously very hard to determine, as our sources may not tell us, or not tell us honestly, but even if it’s hard, that doesn’t mean we should neglect it as a possible motivating factor. It may, in fact, explain why Alexander II (Philip’s older brother) didn’t kill his siblings. He may have loved them (and them, him). While we can’t say from the evidence, we also shouldn’t dismiss that as a possible motivating factor.
Here's an earlier posts about Amyntas, btw.
AMYNTAS PERDIKKA
* The names themselves are a give-away. “Europē,” like “Thessalonikē” was bestowed in celebration of Philip’s military victories. By contrast, “Karanos” (which means generic “chief”) isn’t a royal Macedonian name at all. Bill Greenwalt talks about the name’s significance in one of his articles, but I can’t now recall which.
** There is some question as to whether Amyntas was ever king, however briefly, due to a reference to an “Amyntas IV.” But many of us believe that was part of a challenge to Alexander later, not proof that Amyntas was king briefly, and Philip his regent.
