10-2-13. Thessaloniki, Greece
“The bull is garlanded. Everything is ready.” So had the Delphic Oracle prophesied. And Phillip, king of Macedon and Illyria, hegemon of the League of Corinth, the most powerful man in all Greece, had no reason to doubt that she had foreseen the success of his newest and greatest undertaking: the conquest of Persia. As he walked into the theater by his palace at Aegae, clad in a resplendent purple tunic, he raised his hand to greet the dignitaries assembled for the occasion of his daughter’s wedding. Then one of his bodyguards slipped a knife between his ribs. He died, Diorodus tells us, instantly. Phillip, it appeared, had been the sacrificial bull.
The crown prince Alexander – the future Alexander the Great – vowed a magnificent funeral; and on the appointed day, a grand ceremony took place among the ancestral tombs of the Argead kings. Phillip’s body, draped in cloth of gold, was borne on an ivory couch to heart of a pyre. Weapons and sacred vessels were heaped about his bier. The young queen Mede, obedient to the customs of her people, laid down to join her husband in the afterlife. Horses and cattle were slaughtered and sprinkled with meal. And then the pile was lit. Phillip’s soul, courtiers claimed, flew that instant up to join Heracles in Elysium. Below, once the flames guttered, the king’s bones were gathered up in a gold casket. A sarcophagus of marble received them in the inner chamber of a new-built tomb. Dedications and lustral vessels were laid on the floor around. The final prayers were said. The door was shut.
Thirty years later, on the other side of the great tumulus, another chamber was built. There was little fanfare this time. Cassander, marshal-regent of Macedon, presided over the interment, watched as the silver urn containing a boy’s blackened bones was carried into the waiting tomb, and silently congratulated himself on having so quietly disposed of Alexander the Great’s only son.
Miraculously, these tombs lay undisturbed until 1978, when Greek archaeologists announced their discovery to an incredulous academic community. A state of the art museum was built into the tumulus; and now visitors can view the tombs and artifacts, thoughtfully and attractively displayed in a space designed to mimic the original burial chambers. The golden sarcophagus which held Alexander the Great was melted down millennia ago, and the conqueror’s embalmed body burned (probably) by a fanatical mob. The wonderful artifacts buried at Vergina with his father and posthumous son are about as close as one can get to antiquity’s most legendary figure. I, for one, came away satisfied.
I began my “Alexander day” at Pella, the political center of fourth-century Macedon. Though the palace where Alexander was born was (inevitably) closed to visitors – I could only see a few low walls atop a brown hill –the monumental city center was open, as was the fine museum. There, amid a welter of late classical and Hellenistic domestic artifacts (including some very fine votive statuettes) gleamed three full-sized reproductions of the pebble mosaics found in Pella’s townhouses. The largest and most impressive of these (both in the museum copy and the rather weathered original) is certainly the “Abduction of Helen,” a massive composition whose flowing lines seem to have copied from a contemporary painting.
On the site itself (a shadeless mile’s walk from the museum), few walls stand higher than waist level. The scale of the partially-excavated agora, however, suggests the grandeur of the former capital.
Three bus rides brought me from Pella to Vergina (ancient Aegae), where I spent an awestruck hour in the museum of the royal tombs. The magnificent gold larnaxes (caskets) and wreaths were most immediately eye-catching.
The armor of Philip was also extremely impressive.
Vergina’s other attraction, a late fourth-century palace, was closed to visitors. I was, however, able to see the small grassy hollow which marks the site of the palace theater. Standing there, and looking over the harvested fields towards the distant mountains and Thermaic Gulf, I felt that thrilling sensation of being somewhere really historic. Phillip was struck down by his assassin feet from where I stood; Alexander, watching from somewhere on that grassy slope, became king; and the world was changed forever.
