Difference between revisions of "Who Killed Alexander?"

Revision as of 14:56, 5 December 2008

I'm guessing Drelzna, disguised as Olcias, with Styx water hidden in a false foot of some sort.

From the Diadocomachia: Menander, who was the father of the notorious page Charicles, had just arrived in Babylon the day before the fatal dinner party, bearing with him the prisoner Diodorus the Ephesian, assassin of Hegesias. Others say another assassin, arrived in his company, but she in disguise.

In disguise, some say, she attended Medius the Sycophant’s dinner party.

From Eumenes' List of Suspects: Olcias: A friend of Medius', presumably? (Although frankly too old for the role.) Too much a nobody to pose any threat to Alexander. Walked with a limp going out that he had lacked going in, if I recall; but then, he drank immoderately.

And: Who was not at the party? Laomedon? Hercules? Harpalus had disappeared, I wish I knew where to. The women, of course, the wives, Roxanne and Strateira; some say Menander had arrived with the fat one-eyed bastard's wife in tow, but if so I never saw her. In any case, no woman was in the room, this much is certain, just as it is certain that no one was carrying an ass's hoof. The protections on Alexander counted for something.

From Fragments in Cassandreia: lcias had come from Nonacres, which lies near Ph

Now we must ask, why? Who was the intended target? Ptolmey?

Noah: I agree that Olcias is the most likely suspect, though I am not prepared to implicate Drelzna yet (although the thought did occur to me b/c of the above excerpt from Eumenes' list). I think more likely she was aware of the plot and trying to prevent it somewhere from the shadows, and failed. Besides, what possible motive could Drelzna have to kill her brother? If she had done it, would it really remain a mystery to Ikulu for that long? We now know (or we now think we know) the fratricides that would haunt Ikulu until the end of her days: Aramin by Kukuth (Drelzna's daughter), and then Kukuth by Drelzna. If there was even the slightest whiff that Drelzna was to blame, it would have come out long before now.

Further, I highly doubt Ptolemy was the target. The forces of darkness knew he had the periapt (at least in the Diodocomachia it is strongly hinted that they set him up) -- if he was to be killed, why try with Styx water against which he would be resistant? Alexander was the one who is impossibly difficult to kill -- Ptolemy might be challenging, but why go at him when Alexander & friends were in the room?

You do raise two points that I hadn't thought of, I don't think. First, I'm not sure I made the connection between that fragment and Olcias (though maybe I did and I forgot). I don't know where Nonacres is, though, and there are a lot of 'Ph' place names in the Greek lands (Phalerum, Phanagoria, Pharae, Pharnacia, Phaselis, not to mention Phoenicia, etc.). Perhaps a bard could help.

Second, the Styx water would have had to be borne in the hoof of an ass the whole time and smuggled into the party either ahead of time (seems unlikely) or with the assassin (unless it was somehow pulled from another dimension when needed). This would be not so easy to do, and dangerous.

My thought, though largely unfounded, was that Olcias was really the ghost dwarf Antanolia in disguise. Ikulu certainly takes violent enough revenge on she and Harpalus (although the Diadocomachia has it that Harpalus and Antanolia had already caused Ikulu and Alexander ample headaches to warrant her anger). The unknown author of the Diadocomachia certainly had someone in mind when he wrote that there was a female assassin in disguise at the party.

Then again, he only suggests that there was a female assassin in disguise present... not that she was necessarily the one who pulled the trigger... Drelzna may well have been there, disguised as someone else. Taking away the gender element... Olcias could be anyone who had natural shapeshifting abilities or magical ones. He could have been one of the sons of Proteus. He could have been Harpalus himself. At that time, however, Alexander possessed the fingernail of Vala, and one would think it could have been employed to make certain there were no party crashers.

Maybe Olcias really was some guy named Olcias who had been somehow retained to do the deed. Maybe we're barking up the wrong tree.