Philip III Arrhidaeus

Son of Philip II by the Thessalian Philinna, born c. 358 BC and so the elder half-brother of Alexander; mentally disabled from childhood according to the unified ancient tradition (Plut. *Alex.* 77, the cause attributed to a poison administered by Olympias to remove him as a rival to Alexander, the explanation post-hoc and probably untrue; the modern reading is congenital epilepsy or a developmental disability). Lived at the court through Alexander's lifetime as a publicly visible but politically inert presence. At the Babylon settlement of June 323 the Silver-Shields infantry forced his proclamation as king against the cavalry's preference for the unborn child of Roxane — the joint kingship of Philip III and the eventual Alexander IV under Perdiccas's regency was the compromise (Diod. 18.2). Carried as a regalia of legitimacy by every successive regent through the 320s; married 322 to the strong-willed Eurydice (granddaughter of Philip II by the Illyrian Audata) who attempted in 318 to use the queenship to force a political role. Captured by Olympias the queen-mother at Pydna in 317 in her year of dominance and executed by her order along with Eurydice (Diod. 19.11) — the political-cultural taboo on regicide of the king Olympias broke that opened the way for Cassander to break the taboo on the queen-mother in turn at Pydna the following year. Buried at Aegae; the cremated remains in Tomb I of the Great Tumulus at Vergina are by some forensic readings (against the dominant attribution to Philip II) those of Philip III.

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