Fear as weapon of domination: admiration, dread and victory in the warrior king’s image in the early hellenistic world
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/gladius.2014.0004Keywords:
Hellenistic kings, Alexander the Great, Macedonia, Invincible warrior, Medusa, Phobos, Pan, AegisAbstract
The King was the most important figure of all the Hellenistic period. He was an invincible warrior, wise ruler, god, general and medicine man. All these aspects of Hellenistic kingship are well known, however there is one subject that has not been studied by scholars, namely the capacity of Hellenistic kings to scare their enemies with their mere presence. In this paper we analyze stories attaching to Perdiccas, Olympias, Pyrrhus and Alexander the Great. Our opinion is that all these stories are based on the same model, the fight between Achilles and Trojans in the Iliad (XVIII 203-23). The aegis is studied as the mythical justification of the invincibility and terribleness of the kings. Furthermore, we consider the possibility that this phenomenon was associated with the Macedonian kings prior to Alexander.
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