Cassander

Eldest son of the regent Antipater, born c. 358 BC. At Pella under his father's regency through Alexander's Asian campaign; sent to Babylon in 324 to negotiate with Alexander on his father's behalf and reportedly received from the king the public humiliation that Plut. *Alex.* 74 has the suspicion would later motivate the assassination claim. Refused the regency Antipater bequeathed to Polyperchon in 319 and fought the second Diadochic civil war against Polyperchon and Eumenes through 318–316. After Olympias the queen-mother had executed Philip III Arrhidaeus and a hundred of his partisans in her year of dominance 317–316, Cassander besieged her at Pydna and stoned her to death by the relatives of those she had killed (Diod. 19.51) — the political-cultural taboo on the violent death of the queen-mother that no Macedonian had previously broken. Took Roxane and the boy-king Alexander IV into custody at Amphipolis. In 311/310 had the boy and his mother poisoned at Amphipolis in secret (Diod. 19.105) — the formal end of the Argead dynasty. Took the royal title 305 with the other Diadochi after the Antigonid example. Founded Cassandreia and Thessalonica in the late 310s. Died of natural causes 297; his three sons by Thessalonica (the half-sister of Alexander) failed to hold the kingdom and the Macedonian throne devolved through five years of dynastic chaos before Demetrius Poliorcetes took it in 294.

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