Pyrrhus / Makers of History

by Jacob Abbott

Moreover, Ptolemy Ceraunus had lived for a long time in Macedon, at the court of Lysimachus, having fled there from Egypt on account of the quarrels in which he was involved in his father's family. He was a man of a very reckless and desperate character, and, while a young man in his father's court, he had shown himself very ill able to brook the preference which his father was disposed to accord to Berenice and to her children over his mother Eurydice and him. In fact, it was said that one reason which led his father to give Berenice's family the precedence over that of Eurydice, and to propose that her son rather than Ptolemy Ceraunus should succeed him, was the violent and uncontrollable spirit which Ceraunus displayed. At any rate, Ceraunus quarreled openly with his father, and went to Macedon to join his sister there. He had subsequently spent some considerable time at the court of Lysimachus, and had taken some active part in public affairs. When Agathocles was poisoned, he fled with Lysandra to Seleucus; and when the preparations were made by Seleucus for war with Lysimachus, he probably regarded himself as in some sense the leader of the expedition. He considered Seleucus as his ally, going with him to aid him in the attempt to recover the kingdom of his ancestors.

His plans.
Ceraunus's meditated treachery.

Seleucus, however, had no such design. He by no means considered himself as engaged in prosecuting an expedition for the benefit of Ceraunus. His plan was the enlargement of his own dominion; and as for Ceraunus, he regarded him only as an adventurer following in his train—a useful auxiliary, perhaps, but by no means entitled to be considered as a principal in the momentous transactions which were taking place. Ceraunus, when he found what the state of the case really was, being wholly unscrupulous in respect to the means that he employed for the attainment of his ends, determined to kill Seleucus on the first opportunity.

Argos.

Seleucus seems to have had no suspicion of this design, for he advanced into Thrace, on his way to Macedon, without fear, and without taking any precautions to guard himself from the danger of Ceraunus's meditated treachery. At length he arrived at a certain town which they told him was called Argos. He seemed alarmed on hearing this name, and, when they inquired the reason, he said that he had been warned by an oracle, at some former period of his life, to beware of Argos, as a place that was destined to be for him the scene of some mysterious and dreadful danger. He had supposed that another Argos was alluded to in this warning, namely, an Argos in Greece. He had not known before of the existence of any Argos in Thrace. If he had been aware of it, he would have ordered his march so as to have avoided it altogether; and now, in consequence of the anxious forebodings that were excited by the name, he determined to withdraw from the place without delay. He was, however, overtaken by his fate before he could effect his resolution. Ptolemy Ceraunus, watching a favorable opportunity which occurred while he was at Argos, came stealthily up behind the aged king, and stabbed him in the back with a dagger. Seleucus immediately fell down and died.

Ceraunus proceeds to Macedon.

Ptolemy Ceraunus forthwith organized a body of adherents and proceeded to Macedon, where he assumed the diadem, and caused himself to be proclaimed king. He found the country distracted by dissensions, many parties having been formed, from time to time, in the course of the preceding reigns, each of which was now disposed to come forward with its candidates and its claims. All these Ptolemy Ceraunus boldly set aside. He endeavored to secure all those who were friendly to the ancient house of Antipater by saying that he was Antipater's grandson and heir; and, on the other hand, to conciliate the partisans of Lysimachus, by saying that he was Lysimachus's avenger. This was in one sense true, for he had murdered Seleucus, the man by whom Lysimachus had been destroyed. He relied, however, after all, for the means of sustaining himself in his new position, not on his reasons, but on his troops; and he accordingly advanced into the country more as a conqueror coming to subjugate a nation by force, than as a prince succeeding peacefully to an hereditary crown.

His rivals and enemies.
Their various claims.

He soon had many rivals and enemies in the field against him. The three principal ones were Antiochus, Antigonus, and Pyrrhus. Antiochus was the son of Seleucus. He maintained that his father had fairly conquered the kingdom of Macedon, and had acquired the right to reign over it; that Ptolemy Ceraunus, by assassinating Seleucus, had not divested him of any of his rights, but that they all descended unimpaired to his son, and that he himself, therefore, was the true king of Macedon. Antigonus was the son of Demetrius, who had reigned in Macedon at a former period, before Lysimachus had invaded and conquered the kingdom. Antigonus therefore maintained that his right was superior to that of Ptolemy, for his father had been the acknowledged sovereign of the country at a period subsequent to that of the reign of Antipater. Pyrrhus was the third claimant. He had held Macedon by conquest immediately before the reign of Lysimachus, and now, since Lysimachus had been deposed, his rights, as he alleged, revived. In a word, there were four competitors for the throne, each urging claims compounded of rights of conquest and of inheritance, so complicated and so involved, one with the other, as to render all attempts at a peaceable adjudication of them absolutely hopeless. There could be no possible way of determining who was best entitled to the throne in such a case. The only question, therefore, that remained was, who was best able to take and keep it.

The first contest was with Antigonus.