I never really knew much about Alexander the Great, except that he cut the Gordian Knot, and that, when his evil mother Olympias insisted that their relationship gave him an obligation of lifelong loyalty to her, he is supposed to have replied, "That’s a high price for 9 months rent!"

Alexander’s conquests aren’t especially interesting to me, but the aftermath — the so-called "Wars of the Successors" — makes for entertaining reading.

Alexander died unexpectedly and without declaring an heir. His generals decided to support the ascent to the throne of Alexander’s retarded half-brother, Philip III of Macedon. (According to Plutarch, Olympias damaged young Philip’s brain through a failed poisoning — or rather, a successful poisoning but a failed assassination — in an attempt to eliminate a possible rival to her son Alexander.) One of the generals, Perdiccas, was made regent to the mentally challenged monarch and soon also to Alexander’s baby son, born after Alexander’s death. The other generals decided to model the Macedonian empire on the political structure of the Persian Empire, each becoming governor (satrap) of a different "province" under the nominal kings, retarded Philip III and baby Alexander IV.

Eventually, this conceit broke down and each governor became a king, each province a kingdom.

Ptolemy had been one of Alexander the Great’s most trusted generals and among his seven personal "body-guards." According to Wikipedia, "He was a few years older than Alexander, and his intimate friend since childhood. He may even have been in the group of noble teenagers tutored by Aristotle." And he may have been another one of Alexander’s illegitimate half-brothers.

Ptolemy’s imperial "province" had been Egypt. Now he declared himself Pharaoh Ptolemy I.

Almost four decades later, at the age of 82, Ptolemy I decided to retire and write the history of Alexander the Great. He abdicated and handed his throne over to his younger son, who became Ptolemy II. The older son, Ptolemy Ceraunus was none too happy to have been passed over. He stormed out of the Egyptian court, out of Alexandria, and out of Africa, so to speak, ending up in Thrace, where his sister Arsinoe had been married off to Lysimachus, the Macedonian general turned governor turned king. Arsinoe was at least 30 years younger than her father’s old comrade in arms; their marriage was a political alliance, and Arsinoe knew that the heir to the throne of Thrace was Lysimachus’s full-grown son from a previous marriage.

These royal castoffs, Ptolemy Ceraunus formerly of Egypt and his sister the queen of Thrace, accused the crown prince of plotting to assassinate his father King Lysimachus (with the aid, supposedly, of Seleucus, the third surviving general of Alexander and now king of Persia and the Middle East). Lysimachus was old and paranoid and tried to poison his supposedly treacherous son. Apparently assassination-by-poison was commonly attempted but also commonly unsuccessful. Or maybe Olympias and Lysimachus were just bad at it.

Ptolemy Ceraunus murdered the accused prince, then traveled east to Seleucus to enlist his assistance in attacking the paranoid, son-poisoning king of Thrace.

Now remember, this is all 40 years after Alexander. These kings were already seasoned imperial generals long before they took their thrones. Lysimachus was 71 years old and his old war buddy Seleucus was 80. They met on the battle field, man to man, and the 80-year-old killed the 71-year-old.

Seleucus was getting ready to annex his mother country, but before he could march onward to Macedonia, Ptolemy Ceraunus, whom Susan Wise Bauer calls "the most underappreciated villain of ancient times" (p. 623), murdered the old man. He wasn’t finished. He then married his sister (!) and claimed the Macedonian-Thracian throne. He still wasn’t done. Perceiving his nephews, Arsinoe’s sons, to be potential threats to his rule, he murdered them too.

What did Arsinoe do? She fled back to Egypt, back to her other brother, Pharaoh Ptolemy II, and … wait for it … married him.

Here’s my favorite part: the Greeks started calling Ptolemy II "Philadelphus" meaning "Brotherly Love."

All those years I lived just outside of Philadelphia, the "City of Brotherly Love," and I had no idea that it was an ancient sniggering euphemism for incest.