Forty years later they - along with every other city-state, not least Athens and Thebes - realized the truth: that they had fatally weakened the one power-group which might conceivable have checkmated Macedonia's meteoric rise to power before it was well begun. Knowledge, as so often, came too late (Chapter 1, pg. 13)

Alexander's favorite line in the Iliad shows his declared ambition, to be 'at the same time a good king and a strong speak-fighter.' Yet he must surely have remembered Achilles' other, perhaps most characteristic aim - 'ever to strive to be best, and outstanding above all others.' (Chapter 2, pg. 41)

But even so his act was a danger-signal which Philip surely recognized. Alexander's appetite for royal power, long fostered by Olympias, would not long content itself with a temporary regency; and Philip himself was still a vigorous man in the prime of life. Sooner or later...