s death,
there was a brother of Alexander, or, rather, a half-brother, whose
claims to the succession seemed to be more direct, for he was living
at the time that Alexander died. The name of his brother was Aridaeus.
He was imbecile in intellect, and wholly insignificant as a political
personage, except so far as he was by birth the next heir to Alexander
in the Macedonian line. He was not the son of Olympias, but of another
mother, and his imbecility was caused, it was said, by an attempt of
Olympias to poison him in his youth. She was prompted to do this by
her rage and jealousy against his mother, for whose sake Philip had
abandoned her. The poison had ruined the poor child's intellect,
though it had failed to destroy his life. Alexander, when he succeeded
to the throne, adopted measures to protect Aridaeus from any future
attempt which his mother might make to destroy him, and for this, as
well as perhaps for other reasons, took Aridaeus with him on his
Asiatic campaign. Aridaeus and Roxana were both at Babylon when
Alexander died.

Whatever might be thought of the comparative claims of Aridaeus and of
Roxana's babe in respect to the inheritance of the Macedonian crown,
it was plain that neither of them was capable of exercising any actual
power--Alexander's son being incapacitated by his youthfulness, and
his brother by his imbecility. The real power fell immediately into
the hands of Alexander's great generals and counselors of state. These
generals, on consultation with each other, determined not to decide
the question of succession in favor of either of the two heirs, but to
invest the sovereignty of the empire jointly in them both. So they
gave to Aridaeus the name of Philip, and to Roxana's babe that of
Alexander. They made these two princes jointly the nominal sovereigns,
and then proceeded, in their name, to divide all the actual power
among themselves.

In this division, Egypt, and the African countries adjoining it, were
assigned to a very distinguished general of the name of Ptolemy, who
became the founder of a long line of Egyptian sovereigns, known as the
Ptolemaic dynasty--the line from which, some centuries later, the
renowned Cleopatra sprang. Macedon and Greece, with the other European
provinces, were allotted to Antipater and Craterus--Craterus himself
being then on the way to Macedon with the invalid and disbanded troops
whom Alexander had sent home. Craterus was in feeble health at this
time,