Cassander, was king of the Kingdom of Macedon from 305 BC until 297 BC, son of
Antipater, and founder of the Antipatrid dynasty. He was the namesake of his
paternal uncle, Cassander. Early history
In his youth, Cassander was taught by the philosopher Aristotle at the Lyceum
in Macedonia. He was educated alongside Alexander the Great in a group that
included Hephaestion, Ptolemy and Lysimachus. His family were distant
collateral relatives to the Argead dynasty.
Cassander is first recorded as arriving at Alexander the Great’s court in
Babylon in 323 BC, where he had been sent by his father, Antipater, most
likely to help uphold Antipater’s regency in Macedon, although a later
contemporary who was hostile to the Antipatrids suggested that Cassander had
journeyed to the court to poison the King.
Whatever the truth of this suggestion, Cassander stood out amongst the diadochi
in his hostility to Alexander's memory. As Cassander and the other diadochi
struggled for power, Alexander IV, Roxana, and Alexander’s supposed
illegitimate son Heracles were all executed on Cassander's orders, and a
guarantee to Olympias to spare her life was not respected. Cassander's decision
to restore Thebes, which had been destroyed under Alexander, was perceived
at the time to be a snub to the deceased King. It was later even said that he
could not pass a statue of Alexander without feeling faint. Cassander has
been perceived to be ambitious and unscrupulous, and even members of his
own family were estranged from him. Later history
As Antipater grew close to death in 319 BC, he transferred the regency of
Macedon not to Cassander, but to Polyperchon, possibly so as not to alarm
the other diadochi through an apparent move towards dynastic ambition, but
perhaps also because of Cassander’s own ambitions. Cassander rejected his
father’s decision, and immediately went to seek the support of Antigonus,
Ptolemy and Lysimachus as his allies. Waging war on Polyperchon, Cassander
destroyed his fleet, put Athens under the control of Demetrius of Phaleron,
and declared himself Regent in 317 BC. After Olympias’ successful move against
Philip III later in the year, Cassander besieged her in Pydna. When the city
fell two years later, Olympias was killed, and Cassander had Alexander IV
and Roxanne confined at Amphipolis. Cassander associated himself with the
Argead dynasty by marrying Alexander’s half-sister, Thessalonica, and he had
Alexander IV and Roxanne poisoned in either 310 BC or the following year. By
309 BC, Polyperchon began to claim that Heracles was the true heir to the
Macedonian inheritance, at which point Cassander bribed him to have the boy
killed. After this, Cassander’s position in Greece and Macedonia was reasonably
secure, and proclaimed himself King in 305 BC. After the Battle of Ipsus in 301
BC, in which Antigonus was killed, he was undisputed in his control of
Macedonia; however, he had little time to savour the fact, dying of dropsy in
297 BC. Cassander’s dynasty did not live much
beyond his death, with his son Philip dying of natural causes, and his other
sons Alexander and Antipater becoming involved in a destructive dynastic
struggle along with their mother. When Alexander was ousted as joint king by
his brother, Demetrius I took up Alexander's appeal for aid and ousted
Antipater II, killed Alexander V and established the Antigonid dynasty. The
remaining Antipatrids, such as Antipater Etesias, were unable to re-establish the
Antipatrids on the throne. Of more lasting significance was
Cassander’s refoundation of Therma into Thessalonica, naming the city after his
wife. Cassander also founded Cassandreia upon the ruins of Potidaea.
Cassander as a fictional character Mary Renault refers to Cassander in the
Alexander Trilogy by his Greek name, Kassandros, and depicts him highly
negatively. In Funeral Games, he is the villain of the piece.
In the Oliver Stone film Alexander, he is portrayed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
Notes References
Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca chapters xviii, xix, xx
Green, Peter, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age, Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 2007. ISBN 9780297852940 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, "Demetrius",
18, 31; "Phocion", 31 Franca Landucci Gattinoni: L'arte del
potere. Vita e opere di Cassandro di Macedonia. Stuttgart 2003. ISBN
3-515-08381-2 External links
A genealogical tree of Cassander