Funeral Wisdom of the World

If you watched a move about 300 brave Spartans, you know that king Leonidas was one of the most important figures in Greco-Persian wars. But there was also another equally or even more important statesman whose name is is rarely mentioned due to certain reasons that need to be explained.

I am talking about famous Themistocles from Athens. It was him who persuaded Athenians to build a powerful fleet and it is thanks to him that Greek ships defeated the much larger Persian navy and forced king Xerxes I of Persia to retreat. The naval battle of Salamis took place in 480 BC and was the turning point of the campaign, leading to eventual Persian defeat.

After the war Themistocles showed himself as a brilliant statesman again and again by making his native Athens the finest trade place in Greece. But then his life took a really tragic turn. He was accused by his fellowmen of arrogance and taking bribes. That led to the exile of Themistocles from Athens to Argos. Yet, his troubles did not end there. Soon Spartans accused Themistocles of treasonable intrigues with Persia. Subsequently he was proclaimed a traitor in Athens and all his property was confiscated.

As a bitter irony, Themistocles could only find shelter at his enemy whom he fought for so many years. Artaxerxes I, successor of Xerxes I, offered him asylum and took Themistocles under his protection. Artaxerxes even made Themistocles a governor of the province of Magnesia in Asia Minor. He probably was well received in Magnesia and showed his talents there too, because Magnesians worshiped Themistocles as a god.

From what we know, Themistocles died of illness n Magnesia , when he was sixty five. He was probably a broken-hearted man, because there were persistent rumors that his death was not of natural causes but that he committed suicide by taking poison.

When Alexander the Great took over Persian empire, he officialy married Darius’s daughter Stateira II  in 324 BC at Susa. It was a great wedding ceremony, where many officers of Alexander were married to noble Persians.  Alexander’s favorite Hephestion had as his bride Drypetis, sister of Stateira II.

Later, in 327 BC  Alexander also married a Bactrian noble Roxana from Balkh province.  Alexander professed his love for Roxana and took his new wife to accompany him during his military campaign in India.

After the end of campaign Hephestion died leaving Drypetis a widow. Within eight months after his death Alexander died too.  Roxana was pregnant when king died and soon gave birth to posthumous son Alexander IV Aegus.  The empire that Alexander built started collapsing, his generals were successfully tearing it apart. Thus Roxana and her son became the pawn in the intrigues of the generals.

In her own turn Roxana mercilessly murdered Stateira II and her sister Drypteis and ordered to throw their bodies into a well.  For a while Alexander’s mother Olympias managed to protect both Roxana and her son in Macedon. Yet soon Olympias were assassinated by the orders of Cassander in 316 who were seeking kingship over Macedon.
In the end the surviving Alexander’s generals signed the peace treaty recognized Alexander IV’s rights and explicitly stated that when he came of age he would succeed Cassander as ruler.

As the son of Alexander was growing up, his supporters started to declare that he  should now exercise full power and that a regent Cassander was no longer needed. Well, the response of Cassander’s response was extremely swift and definitive because he was not going to say goodbye to his kingdom.  So in 309 BC he commanded to secretly assassinate the 13-year old Alexander IV and his mother Roxana. The orders were carried out, and they were both poisoned. This was the end of the great Argead dynasty, the founders of the Macendon kingdom, to which Alexander the Great belonged.

The only fragile thread of the dynasty was Heracles, an illegitimate son of Alexander the Great, who was born from Persian concubine Barsine.  Heracles was never acknowledged by Alexander the Great, but still he was a threat to Cassander. So Cassander gave a minor bribe to Heracles protector Polyperchon  in exchange for his murder. When Heracles was finished the ancient Argead dynasty terminated completely.

It seems that Alexander the Great not only defeated Darius III and captured his family. He also became the new head of household, replacing the former Persian king. At the time of the Battle of Isis in 333 BC, Darius was married to Stateira I, who was known as the most beautiful woman on Earth. After Darius fled from the battle, Alexander captured his family and treated it with great respect.

Unfortunately, very soon Stateira I died giving birth. It looks like the child that she was pregnant with, was not from Darius but from Alexander. Maybe, that partially explains why , Sisygambus, who was Darius’s mother, refered to Alexander as her only son. It is possible that he took over all household and have assumed the role of a king and husband to Stateira I.

When Alexander the Great died one year later after Stateira’s death, all Darius’s family mourned him as a very close relative. Sources say that they were very much in grief because of this loss. This also indicates personal relationships.

At the decisive Battle of Issus that took place in 333 BC, Darius III and his army were completely defeated by a young Macedonian king Alexander the Great. It was not just any defeat, it was an event that changed the course of history. By losing the battle Darius lost everything, including his family.

It was the habit of Persian kings of those times to carry their harem and all family during the war campaigns. So after Darius’s army was routed, he fled leaving his mother Sisygambis, his wife Stateira I, his children, and many others to the mercy of Alexander

Sisygambis was a very proud woman, so never forgave Darius for his desertion. After all, she was the daughter of king Artaxerxes II Memnon. Alexander captured her but threated mother of Darius extremely well. Sisygambis was so ashamed of Darius that she even refused to mourn his death. When Persian noblemen called upon her with the news, she said that she had just one son Alexander and he was the king of all Persia.

It seems like a true statement, because Sisygambis really experienced maternal instincts towards Alexander the Great. Contemporary sources say that when she learned about Alexander’s death, Sisygambis was so devastated that she did not want to live anymore. She had herself sealed into her rooms and died of grief, starvation and sorrow.

Mother of Alexander the Great, Olimpias was quite a blood thirsty woman. In the movie, Angelina Jolie plays Olympias as all dreamy, dabbling in magic, sensitive lady. Well, in real life she was a real witch, to say the least! Contemporaries claim, that she was the one who provoked Pausanias to kill her husband and Alexander’s father king Philip II. She was angered by Philip’s marriage to Cleopatra Eurydice. Although Philip already had multiple wives, he fell in love with Cleopatra so much that he even divorced Olympias and disowned their son, Alexander.

As you probably know, Alexander the Great crucified Pausanias and left his body on public display for many days. But later, the head of the body of Pausanias was found to have on it a golden crown, supposedly put there by Olympias. She even dedicated a memorial to Pausanias. The sword used by Pausanias to kill Philip was hung in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, per Olympia’s special orders.

Eventually, Olympias got to Cleopatra Eurydice too. In fact, she murdered Caranus, son of Philip and his sister Europa. Obviously, this was not enough for her, because she also forced Cleopatra Eurydice to hang herself. Olympias also killed many others but in the end she was brought to trial for the numerous and cruel executions. She was condemned without hearing and put to death by the friends of those that she killed in 316 BC.

Great British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the most successful writers in the beginning of the twentieth century. His most famous work - stories about detective Sherlock Holmes brought him fame and fortune. As we know, Sherlock was a hard core realist and intellectual who relied on the method of “deductive reasoning”. This helped him to solve any case of crime no matter how weird, bizarre or fantastic it looked.

Unfortunately Sherlock’s creator himself in the second half of his life did not follow the steps of his hero. Conan Doyle fell the victim to the Spiritualism. The reason for this were very tragic events in his family that affected and traumatized Doyle on the deep personal level. His beloved wife Louisa died in 1906. Some years later other started happening one after the other. Doyle lost one by one his son Kingsley, his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law, and his two nephews. After World War I, because of these unfortunate and sad deaths, Conan Doyle sank into deep depression. So it happened that the only solace he found was Spiritualism and its alleged scientific proof of existence beyond the grave.

For many years Conan Doyle was friends with the famous American escape artist and magician Harry Houdini. Unlike the famous writer, Houdini was an opponent of the Spiritualist movement. His contempt for Spiritualism even doubled in the 1920s when his mother died. He was touring America and Europe making public speeches against mediums.

Houdini made his goal to publicly expose Spiritualist mediums as frauds and presented many examples as proof that they employed trickery fooling gullible people. But for some reason Houdini’s efforts had an opposite effect on his friend Conan Doyle. The famous author became utterly convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers. Conan Doyle even wrote a book about it. No matter how hard Houdini tried, he could not dissuade Conan Doyle. Harry unsuccessfully tried his best convincing Conan Doyle that his feats were simply magic tricks. In the end two friends had a bitter quarrel in public. This even ended their friendship and they never spoke to each other again.

Without going into history details, people sometimes think that Alexander the Great did not have children and, thus his vast empire had to be divided by his generals. Quite the opposite, Alexander had two sons.  Although one of them was from a concubine and could not really pretend to take the throne, the other one was a legitimate heir - Alexander IV.

The problem was that he was a posthumous child, who was born after the death of his father. While Alexander the Great was dying, his wife, Bactrian princess Roxana was pregnan, and nobody knew if the child would survive or what gender it would be.  There was another legitimate pretender to the throne - Alexander’s half-brother Philip Arridaeus, who was mentally ill.

This led to the split of Alexander’s generals in two conflicting parties. One wanted to give full power to Phillip, while the other wished to wait for the birth of the heir of Alexander and to give him the throne under the control of the regent. The last one led by general Perdiccas won, eliminated all partizans of Phillip and repartitioned all the territories between former generals and satraps of Alexander. In its turn these tragic events led to the infamous War for Succession or Wars of the Diadochi.

This time I would like to tell you about one of the strangest barbaric rituals of ancient Rome that started after 390 B.C. and took place for centuries. Once a year dozens of Roman guard dogs were crucified on the Capitoline hill. At the same time Capitoline geese were present at the ceremony. They were watching the ceremony of poor dogs crucification, from the most prestigious place, sitting on gilded purple cushions.

This way Roman citizens were commemorating a tragic event that occurred in 390 B.C. which is known to historians as sack of Rome by Gauls. It was a collective initial shock for people of Rome that was hard to forget. The memory of the catastrophic defeat stayed with Rome for generations. The dogs were crucified because they did not alert Romans when the Gallic troops attacked. And the geese were rewarded because honking provided the only warning of approaching Gauls.

In the archives of my web analytics company I read an intriguing ancient story related to sudden and unexpected death of Alexander the Great.  Alexander’s death has been reinterpreted many times over the centuries. And the debate surrounding the cause of Alexander’s sudden death has never been clearly resolved. Here are some clues from the ancient sources.

In the fourth century BC there were quite persistent rumors claiming that Alexander the Great did not die of illness but was poisoned by one of his generals. Well, many had powerful motivations for seeing Alexander gone. Yet, people whispered to each other only one name of the alleged assassin: “Antipater”.  The latter was a famous Macedonian general, supporter of Phillip II of Macedon and his son - future Alexander the Great.  So, how close to truth were these rumours?

Antipater was a great friend to both the little Alexander and his mother, Olympias. In fact, Olympias and Antipater were so close that there was a gossip at the time that he was the real father of Alexander. Later Antipater aided Alexander in his struggle to secure his succession after Philip’s death.

After Alexander left to conquer the world, Antipater remained in Greece serving as the regent of Macedon in his absence. He successfully won many battles against other Greek states and subdued them. Plutarch even mentions, that Alexander the Great became jealous when he heard of Antipater’s victories.

Everything seemed fine, but Antipater’s former close relationship with the  Olympias greatly deteriorated.  Ancient Greeks used to say that Olympias had psychic abilities. Maybe, she already smelled a rat?

Probably, due to Olympias requests, suddenly Antipater lost his title of Macedon regent and was replaced by another general old Alexander’s  veteran Craterus.  Antipater was  ordered the latter to lead fresh troops into Asia.  Exactly at that time Alexander the Great suddenly dies in Babylon which allows Antipater to procrastinate with the transition of power from him to Craterus. Amazing coincidence, isn’t it?

Exactly dated to that time ancient sources start consistently mentioning the rumors that Antipater had been responsible for poisoning the great king.  Sources say that there was a huge threat to  Antipater’s position.  In numerous letters Olympias had been writing to her son that Antipater was preparing unrest and disloyalty in Macedon. Antipater was summoned to apear in front of Alexander in Babylon and answer these charges.

Citing his fear of an uprising in Greece, Antipater had sent his son Cassander in his place. Cassander managed to bring the poison to Babylon in a mule’s hoof. He passed the poison to his younger brother Iollas was the royal cup bearer, who administered it while serving wine to Alexander.

I found an interesting story about another lost land while doing my web analytics research. This legend surfaced in Canada during French colonization in the the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. French colonists in North America learned from Algonquin Indians that somewhere in the north, there was a mythical kingdom which is inhabited by blond men rich with gold and furs. Algonquin Indians even had a name for this land - Kingdom of Saguenay. One of the Indian Chiefs named Donnacona also told a lot of stories about this kingdom while being imprisoned in France in the 30s of the sixteenth century. Donnaconna claimed that blond inhabitants of the kingdom also have in their possession great mines of silver and gold.

French colonists tried hard to find kingdom of Saguenay, but all their attempts ended in vain. Up until now, specialists speculate about the source of this legend. Some even say that it was an ancient pre-Colombian settlement of Europeans. They believe that Indian oral tradition referred to Viking settlements in America, although this has not been definitely proven.

Nevertheless the name Saguenay exists in many modern canadian placenames. One of the regions in Quebec even refers to itself as Kingdom of Saguenay trying to attract tourists and for other marketing purposes.