[The following is in regards to the murder of Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great.]
Philip’s murderer was a King’s Bodyguard called Pausanias, from the out-kingdom of Orestis: an aristocrat, if not of royal blood. A year or two before, Philip, attracted by his remarkable youthful beauty, had taken him as a lover. Later, however, the king transferred his homosexual attentions elsewhere, upon which Pausanias made a great jealous scene with the new favourite, calling him, among other things, a hermaphrodite and a promiscuous little tart. However, the other boy (also, to confuse matters, named Pausanias) proved his manhood by saving Philip’s life at the expense of his own, in battle against the Illyrians (? 337). This Pausanias was also a friend of Attalus, whose niece Philip had married [she was named Cleopatra].
The incident caused a great scandal in court circles, and Attalus decided to revenge himself on its instigator. The method he chose, though both brutal and revolting, had a certain poetic aptness about it. He invited Pausanias to dinner, and got him dead drunk. Then he himself, and all his guests, took turns to rape the wretched youth, while the rest of the company looked on, laughing and jeering. Finally, Pausanias was turned over to Attalus’ grooms and muleteers, who subjected him to the same treatment, and then beat him up for good measure.
When Pausanias recovered, he went straight to Philip and laid charges against Attalus. This placed the king in a very awkward position. We are told that he ‘shared [Pausanias’] anger at the barbarity of the act’, which may well be true. At the same time he could not possibly afford to alienate Attalus, who was not only his father-in-law, but had also just been appointed joint-commander of the advance expedition into Asia Minor (spring 336).
Cleopatra also pleaded forcefully with Philip on her uncle’s behalf. So Philip kept putting Pausanias off, making one excuse after another, or (if we can trust Justin) treating the incident as a joke, until finally he dismissed the charges altogether. The whole affair, he hoped, would soon be forgotten. It was not.
Bonus:
Here is a great illustration of Philip’s assassination by Pausanias, by André Castaigne.
Author’s Note:
Justin 9.6.5, says that he [the second Pausanias] was primis annis at the time, i.e. a young adolescent; and the last recorded campaign which Philip fought against the Illyrians (there must have been many more) had been in 344/3 (Diod. 16.69.7). On this somewhat flimsy evidence the whole episode is normally placed in 344, i.e. eight years before Philip’s murder. This is to strain credulity well past breaking-point – and unnecessarily so, since both Plutarch (Alex. 10.4) and Diodorus (16.93.8-9) make it quite clear that the event was of recent occurrence. It seems more likely that the battle with the Illyrians was a skirmish provoked by Alexander’s activities there in exile (and for that reason perhaps afterwards suppressed), which would date it to 337, just the right period. Justin’s phrase can then be treated as mere rhetorical hyperbole. Valerius Maximus (8.14.ext. 4) has a dubious anecdote of Pausanias [the first Pausanias] asking a philosopher named Hermocles (otherwise unknown: the sculptor commissioned by Seleucus Nicator will hardly fit the bill) what he must do to reap immediate fame, and being told to kill a famous man.
Source:
Green, Peter. “From a View to a Death.” Alexander of Macedon: 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography. Univ. of California Press, 2005. 105-6. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Diod. 16.93 passim.
Plut. Alex. 10.4.
Justin 9.6.4-8.
Arist. Pol. 1311b 2.
Further Reading:
Φίλιππος Β΄ ὁ Μακεδών (Philip II of Macedon)
Παυσανίας ἐκ τῆς Ὀρεστίδος (Pausanias of Orestis)
[Ἄτταλος (Attalus)]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attalus_(general\))
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