The lameness of King Philip II and Royal Tomb I at Vergina, Macedonia

Discussion

One of the reasons Andronikos (4) suggested that Philip was buried in Tomb II rests on the flower passage made by the Latin author Justin (11.1.4) that Philip was cremated. However, this is because Justin was used to the Roman practices, where Roman emperors were cremated. Thus, Justin’s statement is false (3) and there is no earlier literary evidence from the sources to justify such a suggestion. This approach is against a previous speculation (27) that Philip’s status would have required cremation, not inhumation.

There are several ancient literary sources that describe the famous wound that was nearly fatal and left Philip lame. The wound occurred in 339 B.C.E. (i.e., 3 y before Philip’s death) (28). Combining Justin, Demosthenes, Plutarch, and Athenaeus with recent scholarship, we have the following story:

As Philip was returning to Macedonia from the Scythian campaign against Ateas, the Thracian tribe of Triballoi met him and refused to allow him passage unless they received a share of the spoils. Hence, a dispute arose and afterward a battle, in which Philip received so severe a wound through his leg by a lance that his horse was killed by it; and because it was generally supposed that Philip was dead, the booty was lost. However, as soon as Philip recovered from his wound, he made war upon the Athenians.

Therefore, Philip’s lameness is conclusive evidence for the identification of one tomb occupant as Philip (4). Because the knee ankylosis and the hole within it described above are conclusive evidence of lameness and tie perfectly with the historical evidence of the spear that went through Philip’s leg, it follows that Individual 1 identifies Tomb I as belonging to Philip. Thus, the knee ankylosis is the hallmark of Tomb I identification.

If Philip suffered from an infection associated with the wound, it could have been resolved long before his death, as is the case of Individual 1 in Tomb I. Again, the paleopathological evidence is in full agreement with the literary sources. Thus, one may deduce that Philip’s leg was not infected, or if infected it was soon healed. There is uncertainty in the sources as to the side and exact location of Philip’s injury: Seneca points to the lower leg (tibia?), Justin and Plutarch to the femur, and Demosthenes and Athenaeus to the leg (28). Only Didymus reports that one of the men thrust his lance into Philip’s right femur, laming him (28, 29). However, we chose only the word “leg” in the above story not only because all ancient writers agreed on that but also because Demosthenes is the only one who lived during Philip’s time, and he used just the word “leg” without specifying which one, whereas Didymus lived much later than Philip, in the late first century B.C.E. and early first century C.E., and his works were often contradictory. Thus, Didymus relied on earlier scholars who, as we know, gave no clue as to which leg was affected. Didymus was hardly without fault, as the mention of “sarissa” instead of “lance” that went through Philip’s leg shows (28), because a sarissa is a Macedonian weapon and would not have been used by the Triballoi. That is why there was so much doubt already in antiquity (i.e., Plutarch’s Moralia 739b) as to which leg of Philip was wounded (28).

Apart from the knee ankylosis, the ages-at-death of the three individuals confirm the identification of Tomb I as belonging to Philip, his wife Cleopatra, and their newborn child. Most scholars estimate that Philip was 46- (3, 30) or 47-y-old (31) when he was assassinated in 336 B.C.E. Arrhidaeus was around 39 y when he was murdered (32), some 7 y younger than Philip at the time of his death. Thus, the age-at-death of the male individual in Tomb I is more consistent with that of Philip. Cleopatra was a maiden (παρθένος κόρη) when she married Philip [Plutarch (Alex. 9.6)] in 337 B.C.E. and likely in her late teens when she died in 336 B.C.E., as estimated by historians (3, 32, 33). This finding is consistent with the skeletal age of the female of Tomb I, estimated at around 18 y (SI Appendix, Text S3.3). In contrast, the female in Tomb II is about 25-y-old, with no bone features that would allow any estimate as low as 18–20 y (27, 34). Thus, the age-at-death of the Individual 2 from Tomb I matches the age-at-death of Cleopatra derived from historical sources (35), rather than the female individual from Tomb II (27).

The age-at-death of the Individual 3, estimated here at between 41.3 and 44.3 “intrauterine” weeks, makes it a neonate. What we know from the literary sources is that Cleopatra’s baby was born a few days before Philip’s assassination, according to Diodorus 17.2.3 (1). Olympias murdered Cleopatra and her baby immediately after Philip’s assassination and Alexander’s election as a new king (1, 36⇓–38). Justin (9.7.12) wrote that a few days after Philip’s death, Olympias burnt the body of the assassin Pausanias and then forced Cleopatra to hang herself, having first killed her daughter in her lap. Therefore, Justin implies that Cleopatra and her child were murdered soon after her husband Philip’s assassination. Thus, the baby’s skeleton in Tomb I confirms that the female occupant had died soon after childbirth (39). This evidence is against previous speculation that Cleopatra was executed a few months after Philip’s assassination (7, 27). Because Eurydice did not have any children, we conclude that the newborn in Tomb I is Cleopatra’s child, because there are no neonate bones found in Tomb II (27) and no historical record of another royal child killed as young as this in Macedonia. Cleopatra was the only Queen with a newborn: for example, she cannot be Nikesipolis, as suggested by Kottaridi (2), because Nikesipolis’s daughter died at a much older age. Finally, there is a lot of confusion in the ancient sources contaminated by propaganda regarding the sex of Cleopatra’s child. The only agreement is that Cleopatra bore only one child. Thus, the sex of the newborn has not been determined by osteological means and cannot be known from the literary sources either.

Thus, the most conclusive evidence as to the identification of Tomb I are the knee ankylosis with the hole, likely produced by a penetrating impact of the male individual, and the ages-at-death of the three individuals found in Tomb I. These data, taken together, make the case even stronger that Philip II, his wife Cleopatra, and their newborn child are the occupants of Tomb I, overturning the current opinion of the archaeological establishment that Tomb II belongs to Philip II. As a consequence, Tomb II could only belong to King Arrhidaeus and Eurydice and may well contain some of the armor of Alexander the Great (5, 37). The recovery of Philip II after this terrible wound in the knee joint is a remarkable event in an era without antibiotics. It demonstrates remarkable skill by his doctors to avoid bleeding.