Antipatrid dynasty

The Antipatrids were a short-lived royal house of ancient Macedon, named after the general Antipater and established on the throne by his son Cassander. In the struggles that followed the death of Alexander the Great, Cassander made himself master of Macedonia and much of Greece and took the title of king in 305 BC. His sons could not hold what he had built, and by 294 BC the crown had passed to the rival line that became the Antigonid dynasty.

Antipater, born around 400 BC into a Macedonian noble family, was one of the most trusted officers of Philip II. When Alexander marched against Persia in 334 BC, Antipater stayed behind as regent of Macedon and Greece, putting down revolts in his absence. After Alexander's death in 323 BC he fought the Lamian War against the Greek cities and, in 321 or 320 BC, was chosen regent of the whole empire. He died in 319 BC, but passed the regency not to his son but to an officer named Polyperchon.

Cassander refused to accept this. With support from other generals, among them Ptolemy and Lysimachus, he went to war with Polyperchon, placed Athens under Demetrius of Phaleron and by 317 BC was regent in Macedon himself. Alexander's mother Olympias was besieged at Pydna and killed after the town fell in 316 BC. That year Cassander married Thessalonike, a half-sister of Alexander, linking himself to the old Argead royal house. The boy-king Alexander IV and his mother Roxana were held at Amphipolis and secretly poisoned in 310 or 309 BC.

Once the last Argead heirs were dead, Cassander's hold on Macedonia and Greece was fairly secure, and in 305 BC he took the royal title, as did Ptolemy and Lysimachus, after Antigonus had claimed it. He founded Thessalonica, named after his wife, built Cassandreia on the site of Potidaea, and rebuilt Thebes, which Alexander had destroyed. He also strengthened the northern borders and encouraged trade around the new cities.

Antigonus and his son Demetrius Poliorcetes pushed Cassander out of central Greece in 304 BC. Cassander rebuilt the alliance against them with Lysimachus, Ptolemy and Seleucus, holding Demetrius in Thessaly while allied forces gathered in Asia Minor. In 301 BC, at the Battle of Ipsus, the coalition, including troops under Cassander's brother Pleistarchus, defeated and killed Antigonus. Cassander was now unchallenged in Macedon, but he died of dropsy in 297 BC.

His eldest son, Philip IV, died the same year. The two younger brothers, Antipater and Alexander V, ruled jointly but soon turned on each other; Antipater killed their mother and drove Alexander out. Alexander appealed to Pyrrhus of Epirus and to Demetrius. Demetrius had Alexander V murdered at Larissa in 294 BC, expelled Antipater and took the throne. A later member of the family, Antipater Etesias, briefly held power in 279 BC but could not restore the line.

Cassander stood out among Alexander's successors for his hostility to the dead king's memory, and no other successor had as many of Alexander's relatives put to death. He has long been portrayed as ruthless and ambitious. Some modern historians, such as John D. Grainger, argue that this picture owes much to his rivals' propaganda. His most lasting legacy is Thessalonica, still one of the great cities of Greece.

Our 300 BC map shows the realm as the Kingdom of Kassander, covering Macedonia and much of mainland Greece north of the Peloponnese. The kingdoms of Antigonus and Lysimachus and the Ptolemaic Kingdom appear on the same map, as rival successor states carved from Alexander's empire.