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his execution was near, sent his son Cassander with poison contained in a hollowed-out mule’s hoof; that Cassander met with his brother Iolaus in Babylon; that together they administered the poison at a dinner party given by Iolaus’ male lover, Medius. With sober fanfare, the treatise then lists the guests present at the fateful dinner and exonerates seven, including Perdiccas, Eumenes, and Ptolemy. It leaves more than a dozen named guests accused as conspirators. The treatise describes how Alexander drank the poisoned wine he received from Iolaus, felt a stabbing pain, cried out, and retired to his room while the fearful plotters dispersed. In a final act of treachery, Iolaus, asked by Alexander for a feather to help him vomit, gave him one dipped in poison.

This document was almost certainly a propaganda weapon deployed by one of the generals vying for power, but which one? Since Antipater stands accused of Alexander’s murder while Perdiccas and Eumenes are cleared, it seems at first glance to be the work of Perdiccas or his allies. But Ptolemy was as much Perdiccas’ enemy as Antipater, and Ptolemy is exonerated by the treatise. Perhaps there are different strata of material here, as successive forgers added new elements. Whatever its purposes, The Last Days and Testament of Alexander shows that charges of regicide came increasingly into play in the Macedonian power struggle, principally to undermine old man Antipater.

Probably in response to these poisoning charges, someone published the final segment of the Royal Journals, a sober, day-by-day eyewitness account of Alexander’s illness and death. The original is lost but existed in the second century A.D., when it was read (in differing versions) and paraphrased by both Arrian and Plutarch. The Royal Journals depicted Alexander’s illness as a gradual descent into fever and coma and made clear that it had not begun with a sudden, stabbing pain as the Last Days claimed. Perhaps Antipater himself had the Journals published, or fabricated, as a way to dispel the rumors that shadowed his family. No certainty is possible in this hall-of-mirrors world of forged, composite, and anonymous documents.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, Ptolemy was undertaking a different kind of propaganda, a history of Alexander’s Asian campaign highlighting his own role and obscuring that of Perdiccas. In all likelihood, Perdiccas was dead when Ptolemy began this history, but probably Perdiccas’ supporters, and his memory, were not. There was much to be gained from concealing a wound Perdiccas suffered at the battle of Gaugamela, or blaming Perdiccas’ lack of discipline for the onset of fighting at Thebes, or, most important, omitting mention of Alexander’s greatest mark of favor, the handing over of the signet ring. Perhaps Ptolemy hoped that, as one of few witnesses present, he could consign that moment to oblivion. It did not reflect well on him if the man whose downfall he had largely caused was the king’s legitimate, handpicked successor.

Many others likewise had an interest in blackening Perdiccas’ name—those who colluded in his murder, inherited his power, or joined in the hunt for his partisans. Any or all of these may have helped color the portrait of Perdiccas preserved in the ancient sources. We find in those sources condemnations of Perdiccas’ arrogance, high-handedness, and brutality, a portrait that at times verges on slander. Diodorus uses the word phonikos, or “man of slaughter,” to describe him, an odd barb to throw at a soldier whose stock-in-trade was killing enemies. But when a leader has failed, the very qualities that made him a leader suddenly appear as flaws. Perdiccas’ arrogance and bloody-mindedness were no more pronounced than Alexander’s, indeed much less so. But Alexander, unlike the hapless Perdiccas, knew little of failure.

6. CLEOPATRA, EUMENES, AND ANTIPATER (SARDIS, SPRING 320 B.C.)

For two years Alexander the Great’s sister, Cleopatra, had stayed in Asia, watching the war unfold from the satrapal palace of Sardis. Perhaps she longed to return to her Macedonian homeland