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Amyntas III – Grandfather of
Alexander III the Great
Macedonian King: 389-383
and 381-369 B.C.
Bronze 16mm (3.28 grams) Struck circa 389-369 B.C.
Reference: Sear 1512; B.M.C. 5. 17-22
Head of young Hercules right, wearing lion’s skin. Countermark.
AMYNTA above eagle standing right, wings closed, devouring serpent held in
talons.
Martin Price, in ‘Coins of the Macedonians’ (p.21), makes the interesting
suggestion that this type belongs to the reign of the infant Amyntas IV (359-357
B.C.), for whom Philip II was regent. This can scarcely be considered proven,
however, and the style of the coins seems to be more akin to the issues of the
early part
of the 4th Cent. B.C.
A great-grandson of Alexander I, Amyntas dethroned the usurper
Pausanias in 389 B.C. He was temporarily expelled from his Kingdom by the
Illyrians in 383, but returned two years later with Spartan assistance.
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Serpents
and snakes play a role in many of the world’s myths and legends. Sometimes these
mythic beasts appear as ordinary snakes. At other times, they take on magical or
monstrous forms. Serpents and snakes have long been associated with good as well
as with evil, representing both life and death, creation and destruction.
Serpents and Snakes as Symbols. In religion, mythology, and
literature, serpents and snakes often stand for fertility or a creative life
force—partly because the creatures can be seen as symbols of the male sex organ.
They have also been associated with water and earth because many kinds of snakes
live in the water or in holes in the ground. The ancient Chinese connected
serpents with life-giving rain. Traditional beliefs in Australia, India, North
America, and Africa have linked snakes with rainbows, which in turn are often
related to rain and fertility.
As snakes grow, many of them shed their skin at various times, revealing a
shiny new skin underneath. For this reason snakes have become symbols of
rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. The ancient Greeks
considered snakes sacred to Asclepius, the god of medicine. He carried a
caduceus, a staff with one or two serpents wrapped around it, which has become
the symbol of modern physicians.
For both the Greeks and the Egyptians, the snake represented eternity.
Ouroboros, the Greek symbol of eternity, consisted of a snake curled into a
circle or hoop, biting its own tail. The Ouroboros grew out of the belief that
serpents eat themselves and are reborn from themselves in an endless cycle of
destruction and creation.
Serpents figured prominently in archaic Greek myths. According to some
sources,
Ophion (“serpent”, a.k.a. Ophioneus), ruled the world with Eurynome
before the two of them were cast down by Cronus and Rhea. The oracles of the
Ancient Greeks were said to have been the continuation of the tradition begun
with the worship of the Egyptian cobra goddess,
Wadjet.
The
Minoan
Snake
Goddess brandished a serpent in either hand, perhaps evoking her role
as source of wisdom, rather than her role as Mistress of the Animals (Potnia
theron), with a leopard
under each arm. She is a Minoan version
of the Canaanite
fertility goddess
Asherah.
It is not by accident that later the infant
Heracles,
a liminal hero on the threshold between the old ways and the new Olympian world,
also brandished the two serpents that “threatened” him in his cradle. Classical
Greeks did not perceive that the threat was merely the threat of wisdom. But the
gesture is the same as that of the Cretan goddess.
Typhon
the enemy of the Olympian gods is described as a vast grisly monster with a
hundred heads and a hundred serpents issuing from his thighs, who was conquered
and cast into Tartarus
by
Zeus,
or confined beneath volcanic regions, where he is the cause of eruptions. Typhon
is thus the chthonic figuration of volcanic forces. Amongst his children by
Echidna are Cerberus
(a monstrous three-headed dog with a
snake for a tail and a serpentine mane), the serpent tailed
Chimaera
, the serpent-like chthonic water beast
Lernaean Hydra and the hundred-headed serpentine dragon
Ladon.
Both the Lernaean Hydra and Ladon were slain by
Heracles.
Python
was the earth-dragon of
Delphi,
she always was represented in the vase-paintings and by sculptors as a serpent.
Pytho was the chthonic enemy of Apollo
, who slew her and remade her former home
his own oracle, the most famous in Classical Greece.
Amphisbaena a Greek word, from amphis, meaning “both ways”, and
bainein, meaning “to go”, also called the “Mother of Ants”, is a mythological,
ant-eating serpent with a head at each end. According to Greek mythology, the
mythological amphisbaena was spawned from the blood that dripped from
Medusa
the Gorgon‘s
head as
Perseus flew over the Libyan Desert with her head in his hand.
Medusa and the other Gorgons were vicious female monsters with sharp fangs
and hair of living, venomous snakes whose origins predate the written myths of
Greece and who were the protectors of the most ancient ritual secrets. The
Gorgons wore a belt of two intertwined serpents in the same configuration of the
caduceus.
The Gorgon was placed at the highest point and central of the relief on the
Parthenon.
Asclepius, the son of Apollo and Koronis, learned the secrets of
keeping death at bay after observing one serpent bringing another (which
Asclepius himself had fatally wounded) healing herbs. To prevent the entire
human race from becoming immortal under Asclepius’s care, Zeus killed him with a
bolt of lightning. Asclepius’ death at the hands of Zeus illustrates man’s
inability to challenge the natural order that separates mortal men from the
gods. In honor of Asclepius, snakes were often used in healing rituals.
Non-poisonous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the
sick and injured slept. In
The Library
,
Apollodorus claimed that
Athena
gave Asclepius a vial of blood from the Gorgons. Gorgon blood had magical
properties: if taken from the left side of the Gorgon, it was a fatal poison;
from the right side, the blood was capable of bringing the dead back to life.
However
Euripides wrote in his tragedy
Ion
that the Athenian queen Creusa had
inherited this vial from her ancestor Erichthonios, who was a snake himself and
receiving the vial from Athena. In this version the blood of Medusa had the
healing power while the lethal poison originated from Medusa’s serpents.
Laocoön
was allegedly a priest of Poseidon
(or of Apollo, by some accounts) at
Troy;
he was famous for warning the Trojans in vain against accepting the Trojan Horse
from the Greeks, and for his subsequent divine execution. Poseidon (some say
Athena),
who was supporting the Greeks, subsequently sent sea-serpents to strangle
Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. Another tradition states
that Apollo sent the serpents for an unrelated offense, and only unlucky timing
caused the Trojans to misinterpret them as punishment for striking the Horse.
Olympias, the mother of
Alexander the Great
and a princess of the
primitive land of
Epirus
, had the reputation of a snake-handler,
and it was in serpent form that Zeus was said to have fathered Alexander upon
her; tame snakes were still to be found at Macedonian
Pella
in the 2nd century AD (Lucian,
Alexander the false prophet
) and at
Ostia
a bas-relief shows paired coiled serpents
flanking a dressed altar, symbols or embodiments of the
Lares
of the household, worthy of veneration (Veyne 1987 illus p 211).
Aeetes
, the king of
Colchis
and father of the sorceress Medea
, possessed the
Golden Fleece. He guarded it with a massive serpent that never slept.
Medea, who had fallen in love with Jason
of the
Argonauts,
enchanted it to sleep so Jason could seize the Fleece.
Amyntas III (died 370 BC), son of Arrhidaeus and father of
Philip II
, was king of
Macedon
in 393 BC, and again from 392 to 370
BC. He was also a paternal grandfather of
Alexander the Great
.
Reign
He came to the throne after the ten years of confusion which followed the
death of
Archelaus I
. But he had many enemies at home;
in 393 he was driven out by the
Illyrians
, but in the following year, with the
aid of the
Thessalians
, he recovered his kingdom. Medius,
head of the house of the
Aleuadae
of
Larissa
, is believed to have provided aid to
Amyntas in recovering his throne. The mutual relationship between the
Argeadae
and the Aleuadae dates to the time of
Archelaus.
To shore up his country against the threat of the Illyrians, Amyntas
established an alliance with the
Chalkidian League
led by
Olynthus
. In exchange for this support, Amyntas
granted them rights to Macedonian timber, which was sent back to Athens to help
fortify their fleet. With
money
flowing into Olynthus from these exports,
their power grew. In response, Amyntas sought additional allies. He established
connections with Kotys
, chief of the
Odrysians
. Kotys had already married his
daughter to the Athenian general
Iphicrates
. Prevented from marrying into Kotys’
family, Amyntas soon adopted Iphicrates as his son.
After the King’s Peace 387 BC,
Sparta
was anxious to re-establish its presence
in the north of Greece. In 385 BC,
Bardylis
and his
Illyrians
attacked
Epirus
instigated and aided by
Dionysius of Syracuse
,[1]
in an attempt to restore the
Molossian
king
Alcetas I of Epirus
to the throne. When Amyntas
sought Spartan aid against the growing threat of Olynthus, the Spartans eagerly
responded. That Olynthus was backed by Athens and Thebes, rivals to Sparta for
the control of Greece, provided them with an additional incentive to break up
this growing power in the north. Amyntas thus concluded a treaty with the
Spartans, who assisted him to reduce
Olynthus
(379). He also entered into a league
with
Jason of Pherae
, and assiduously cultivated the
friendship of Athens
. In 371 BC at a Panhellenic congress of
the
Lacedaemonian
allies, he voted in support of
the
Athenians
‘ claim and joined other Greeks in
voting to help Athens to recover possession of
Amphipolis
.[2][3]
With Olynthus defeated, Amyntas was now able to conclude a treaty with Athens
and keep the timber revenues for himself. Amyntas shipped the timber to the
house of the Athenian
Timotheus
, in the
Piraeus
.
Family
By his wife
Eurydice
, Amyntas had three sons,
Alexander II
,
Perdiccas III
and the youngest of whom was the
famous
Philip II of Macedon
. Amyntas died at an
advanced age, leaving his throne to his eldest son.
Alexander III of Macedon
, popularly known to history as Alexander
the Great,
(“Mégas Aléxandros“)
was an
Ancient Greek
king (basileus)
of
Macedon
. Born in 356 BC, Alexander succeeded his father
Philip II of Macedon
to the throne in 336 BC, and died in
Bablyon
in 323 BC at the age of 32.
Alexander was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and
it is presumed that he was undefeated in battle. By the time of his death, he
had conquered the
Achaemenid Persian Empire
, adding it to Macedon’s European territories;
according to some modern writers, this was much of the world then known to the
ancient Greeks (the ‘Ecumene‘).
His father, Philip, had unified most of the
city-states
of mainland Greece under Macedonian
hegemony
in
the
League of Corinth
. As well as inheriting hegemony over the Greeks, Alexander
also inherited the Greeks’ long-running feud with the
Achaemenid Empire
of
Persia
. After reconfirming Macedonian rule by quashing a rebellion of
southern Greek city-states, Alexander launched a short but successful campaign
against Macedon’s northern neighbours. He was then able to turn his attention
towards the east and the Persians. In a
series of campaigns
lasting 10 years, Alexander’s armies repeatedly defeated
the Persians in battle, in the process conquering the entirety of the Empire. He
then, following his desire to reach the ‘ends of the world and the Great Outer
Sea’, invaded India, but was eventually forced to turn back by the near-mutiny
of his troops.
Alexander died after twelve years of constant military campaigning, possibly
a result of malaria
, poisoning
,
typhoid fever
, viral
encephalitis
or the consequences of alcoholism. His legacy and conquests
lived on long after him and ushered in centuries of Greek settlement and
cultural influence over distant areas. This period is known as the
Hellenistic period
, which featured a combination of
Greek
,
Middle
Eastern
and
Indian culture
. Alexander himself featured prominently in the history and
myth of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. His exploits inspired a literary
tradition in which he appeared as a legendary
hero in the
tradition of Achilles
.
Alexander fighting Persian king Darius III. From Alexander
Mosaic, from Pompeii, Naples, Naples National
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