The Skull of Philip II of Macedon and the Mind of His Assassin

Abstract

The forensic evidence of the skull found in the funerary cask in the Royal Tomb IIA at Vergina coheres with the record that Philip lost an eye from an arrow wound at Methone in 354 BC. A deviation of the mandible to the affected side from what might be expected from the right eye injury can be explained. It is argued that a ‘nice’ version of the reconstruction of the face might mislead and not do justice to the clear evidence of traumatic facial disfiguration. That and the limp caused by a separate leg injury may have made Philip more sensitive to comments and thus in a way more vulnerable. The second focus here is on Pausanias, the assassin, resisting the common assumption that an assassin will have been someone mentally unstable and/or someone set up by others to remove the victim on his own, and thus deflect attention from the conspirators. The prosopographical evidence, the context of the assassination, the uncertainty about what Philip intended in launching action against the Persians, doubts about its wisdom, and Philip’s campaign to bring the Greeks more into partnership suggest that Pausanias may have been moved to action by more than his personal grievance.