Birth
Alexander IV was Alexander the Great's son and Philip II of Macedonia's grandson. Because Roxana was pregnant when her husband died and the sex of the baby was unknown, there was dissension in the Macedonian army regarding the order of succession. While the infantry supported the baby's uncle, Philip III (who was both feeble-minded and illegitimate), the chiliarch Perdiccas, commander of the elite Companion cavalry, persuaded them to wait in the hope that Roxana's unborn child would be male. The factions compromised, deciding that Perdiccas would rule the Empire as regent while Philip would reign, but only as a figurehead with no real power. If the child was male, then he would be king. Alexander IV was born in August, 323 BC.
Read more about this topic: Alexander IV Of Macedon
Famous quotes containing the word birth:
“Nature seems at each man’s birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“The condition that gives birth to a rule is not the same as the condition to which the rule gives birth.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“For God, nothing is impossible. And, if he wanted, in the future women would give birth from their ears.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)