Somewhere, perhaps, a man whose proper name is Aléxandros Argead, walks and dreams strange dreams.  He is strong, brilliant and ambitious but also very confused.  He is an amnesiac. He believes that Aléxandros Argead is his name because it is inscribed on a rectangular metallic tag with rounded edges he wore on a ball chain around his neck but he does not know where he was born or where he was raised, although his dreams seem to provide impossible hints.  His oldest memories, all too recent, involve waking, somewhat injured, on a battlefield near the city of Al-Hillah in Iraq along the Euphrates River, approximately 85 kilometers (53 miles) south of Baghdad; the sole survivor of some sort of major military conflict.  He was the only survivor and thus had no one he could ask what it was about or on whose side he fought.  But he was somehow certain that the “Americans” were not his friends.  Fortunately, a certain amount of currency was strewn nearby and he’d collected it, all of it, somehow aware that it would prove important. 

It does.  Eventually.  Although perhaps eventually has not yet made its appearance.

So, what does he look like?  Well, his body is athletic and muscular and he is a little less than five feet seven inches tall, with what had once been a fair skin bronzed by prolonged exposure to the outdoors into a naturally ruddy, sun-flushed complexion.  His hair is thick, golden and swept upward from his forehead in a distinct, lion-like “anastole” style. His face has sharp features, including a prominent forehead, a short, strong chin, and a slight, characteristic tilt of his head toward his left shoulder. Most striking are his intense, deep-set eyes that carry a sharp, melting gaze which creates an impression of vulnerability but also, of commanding power.

He is, unbeknownst to himself, of a line founded over twenty seven centuries ago, one that over twenty-three centuries ago was thought to have become extinct, one founded by a certain Perdiccas from the ancient Greek city-state of Argos who was, in turn, descended from a certain Temenus, purportedly a great-great-grandson of Heracles.  Temenus was at one time king in Argos.  Perdicass, however, along with his two older brothers, Gauanes and Aeropus, had a fate further to the north in what was to become known as Macedon.  Of course, being aware of nothing, Aléxandros Argead knew nothing concerning the foregoing, and perhaps he never had.  Perhaps he never would.  According to history, every member of the Argead family had been assassinated by a certain Cassander, son of Antipater, millennia ago.  Seemingly as is frequently the case, historians were mistaken.

So, for a bit of context, context for us if not for Aléxandros Argead. 

According to the earliest and most widely accepted historical traditions from Herodotus and Thucydides, Perdiccas was the founder of what came to be known as the Argead dynasty, hence Aléxandros’ surname.  Purportedly, at least according to legends of which Aléxandros was unaware, perhaps because of his apparent amnesia, or perhaps because his family history had been lost in the mists of time as his ancestors first escaped from their jealous enemies, enemies who had purportedly been faithful followers, and then hid, hid for millennia, but sought to keep their family history somehow alive while hidden, although after several centuries, history had been conflated with myth, and the term myth attributed to actual facts.

Perdiccas had eventually attained power to the north of Argos, to the north of Greece, through a legendary journey of exile, labor, and a prophetic omen as famously recorded in Herodotus’s The Histories.  According to what passed for history at the time (and may or may not have been accurate), Perdiccas and his two older brothers, Gauanes and Aeropus, were born and, for a time, lived in the Greek city-state of Argos, claiming descent, however, from the mythical hero Heracles who was born in Thebes.  But that was not the most unlikely of the many legends that surround this particular family.

For reasons lost to history, Perdiccas and his brothers, Gauanes and Aeropus, were exiled from Argos, most probably for reasons having to do with disputes concerning royal succession.  After being exiled from Argos, the brothers traveled through Illyria to the Macedonian town of Lebaea.  There, for a time, they worked as shepherds of sorts for a local king.  Not a major king by any means.  In those days, almost any independent ruler of a territory, even one the size of a town, tended to proclaim himself a pasireu (petty king).  In this case, it involved a pasireu rather than a basileus (more substantial king).  Indeed, the king’s own wife baked bread for the royal household including its servants and those who herded livestock.  According to an unlikely legend, whenever the queen baked bread, the loaf meant for Perdiccas miraculously doubled in size.  Disturbed by the consistent anomaly the queen discussed it with her husband who viewed it as an omen from the gods that Perdiccas was destined for greatness. Fearing this sign, the king ordered the brothers to leave his territory immediately.  The brothers agreed, after all, their stay in Lebaea was not meant to be permanent, they were of royal stock and probably meant to somehow or other reclaim their birthrights, so they readily agreed to leave, asking only for the wages they had earned.  The king however, for some stupid reason, reneged on his obligation to pay them, supposedly mockingly pointed to a patch of sunlight shining through the chimney and told them that was all they would get. Surprising the king and his wife as well as his brothers, Perdiccas accepted the offer, symbolically scraping the sunlight into the fold of his garment. Abruptly, shortly after the brothers departure, the king, not a total idiot, realized that the acceptance by Perdiccass and his symbolic act of gathering up the sunlight symbolized claiming the land itself and he sent riders to kill them.  However, again according to improbable legend, a sacred river flooded to protect the brothers, allowing them to escape.  Perdiccas and his brothers settled near Mount Vermion in a fertile area known as the Gardens of Midas. Using this location as a secure base, Perdiccas’ charisma and legendary heritage allowed him to unite the local Macedonian tribes and he led his new people eastward into the plains, conquering the surrounding territories and eventually founding the city of Aigai (modern Vergina in the Northern Greek region still known as Macedonia), which became the first royal capital of the Argead kingdom. 

Because of their origin in Argos, the lineage founded by the brothers became known as the Argead dynasty and it ruled the ancient kingdom of Macedon from its founding around 700 before the Common Era until 310 of that epoch.  While the house ruled Macedonia for seven centuries, it was only towards the end under Phílippos II and his second son, Aléxandros III, that the Argead dynasty rose from a peripheral northern kingdom to a global superpower unifying Greece, dismantling the Persian Empire and extending as far as Western India. The dynasty seemingly ended shortly after Aléxandros III’s’ death as a result of the power struggles of his generals (the Diadochi), culminating in the murder of his young son, Aléxandros IV, in 310 BC.  However, ignored by history was the reality that Aléxandros III was not the only heir of the Argeads, nor, perhaps, was Aléxandros IV the only surviving offspring of Aléxandros III.

Which brings us to Aléxandros Argead, the one who thought that he knew his name but little else.  Concerning his personal past or his likely future neither we nor he know anything and, of his present, only the foregoing (as to which he was, at the moment, unaware).  But the world needs heroes today, today perhaps more than ever, and perhaps his appearance near the city of Al-Hillah is, like so many other things in his family’s past, an omen.

From deep within the deepest pit in Hades, a furious Cassander looks on.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television in both Colombia and abroad; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.