Possible family tree of the Argead kings (underlined in red) from Amyntas I to Philip II

Adapted from Elizabeth Carney (referenced below,  at p. xvii), my additions in red   

I have picked out the line of descent from Amyntas I to Philip II in red

Two surviving fragments of the work of Hesiod (7th century BC) combine to give us the earliest surviving foundation myth of the Macedonian ruling house: 

1. ✴an entry in the ‘Constantinian Excerpts’ recorded that:
   

2. “The district Macedonia took its name from Macedon, the son of Zeus and Thyia, Deucalion's daughter: as Hesiod says:
   

3. ‘... she, [Thyia], having conceived by Zeus (who delights in the thunderbolt), gave birth two sons:
   

4. •Magnes; and
   

5. •Macedon;
   

6. [both] rejoicing in horses, who dwell around Pieria and [Mount] Olympus ...", (‘Catalogues of Women’, fragment 3); and
   

7. ✴a scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius recorded that:
   

8. “Hesiod states in the first ‘Catalogue’ that:
   

9. •Deucalion was the son of Prometheus and Pronoea; and
   

10. •Hellen was the son of Deucalion  and Pyrrha", (‘Catalogues of Women’, fragment 1). 
    

Thus, according to Hesiod, Macedonia, a region around Pieria and Mount Olympus, was named for its first ruler, Macedon:

1. ✴a son of Zeus, and
   

2. ✴a nephew of Hellen (the ancestor of all the Hellenes).
   

This ancient myth is reflected in at least two much later sources:

1. ✴according to a surviving fragment of Strabo’s Book 7:
   

2. “What is now called Macedonia ... took [this] name from Macedon, one of its early chieftains.  ... [The] Argeadae, as they are called, [subsequently] established themselves as masters [of all the tribes of this region]”, (‘Geography’,  7: fr. 11); and
   

3. ✴Stephanus of Byzantium (‘Ethnnica’, entry ‘Argeou’, Topos Text A112.7) recorded that the Ἀργεάδαι (Argeadae) derived their name from Argeas, the son of Macedon.
   

Thus, although the Argeadae appear only at a late date in our surviving sources, it is possible that this reflects an earlier tradition in which they had indeed taken their name from Argeas, son of Macedon (see for example, Sławomir Sprawski, referenced below, at p. 130).

Nicholas Hammond (referenced below, at p. 142) took Stephanus’ testimony to mean that:

1. “From the start of their rule, ... [the Macedonian] kings became ‘Argeadae’: that is members of the royal tribe.”
   

He pointed out that, according to Appian: 

1. “There is an Argos in Peloponnese, another in Amphilochia [and a third] in Orestea (whence come the Argeadae Macedones (Macedonian Argeadae) ...” (‘Syrian Wars’, 63).
   

Hammond took this to mean that the Argeadae:

1. “... were one tribe in the group of tribes [in this region] that had the collective name ‘Macedones’”;
   

pointing out that, in our surviving sources (see below), the Argeadae are not associated with Argos in the Peloponnese before the 5th century BC (see below). 

Alexander I: Perdiccas (of the Line of Temenus)

As Eugene Borza (referenced below, at p. 80) observed, the Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 480 - 435 BC) was responsible for:

1. “... the earliest full version of the Argive origins of the Macedonian royal house ...”
   

As Borza pointed out, Herodotus recorded this version in a digression that provided the context for his account of the part that Alexander  had played in the Persians’ war with Athens in 480-79 BC.  The digression was in two parts:

1. ✴in the first part (‘Persian Wars’, 8: 137-8), Herodotus  dealt with the foundation myth of Alexander’s Macedonian dynasty; and
   

in the second part (Persian Wars’, 8: 139), he set out the genealogical link between Alexander and Perdiccas, the putative founder  of the dynasty. 

Foundation Myth of Alexander’s Dynasty 

Ancient Macedonia and Thrace

Perdiccas and his brothers:  Aegae = Perdiccas;  Elimia = Gaunes ?;  Lyncestis = Aeropus ?

(Detail from Robert Strassler, referenced below, 1996, Map 2:97, at p. 318, my additions in red)

Herodotus explained that Alexander was ‘7th in descent’ from Perdiccas, who, with his two older brothers, Gauanes and Aeropus:

1. “... came to Illyria as exiles from Argos. ... [From] Illyria, they crossed over into the highlands of Macedonia, until they came to the [otherwise unknown] town of Lebaea, ... [where] they served for wages as thetes in the [unnamed] king's household.  One [of the older brothers] tended the horses and the other tended the oxen, while Perdiccas tended the lesser flocks.  Now, the king's wife, [who] cooked their food, ... [noticed that] the loaf that she made for ... Perdiccas [always] grew double in size. [When the king] heard of this, he interpreted it as [an ominous ] portent ... He therefore sent for [the brothers] and ordered them leave from his territory. ... When they [demanded their unpaid] wages, he foolishly responded by pointing to the sunlight that shone down the smoke vent into the house,  saying:
   

2. ‘That is the wage you merit, and that is all I shall give you.’
   

3. [The two older brothers] stood in astonished silence when they heard this, but [Perdiccas] said:
   

4. ‘We accept your gift, O king.’
   

5. With that, he took a knife ... and used it to draw a line around the sunlight on on the floor and then scooped the sunlight three times into the fold of his garment, before gong on his way with his companions”, (‘Persian Wars’, 8: 137).
   

As David Coblentz (referenced below, at p. 11) pointed out, in this account, Perdiccas emerges as the most important of the brothers, albeit that he was the youngest:

1. ✴his loaf was the one that always doubled in size, portending his future greatness; and
   

2. ✴it was he who warned the king that the three brothers would one day rule Macedonia. 
   

Herodotus then recorded that, when the king realised the threat implicit in Perdiccas’ response, he:

1. “... sent riders after them, with orders to kill them.  However, there is a river in that land to which the [brothers’] descendants [still] offer sacrifice as their saviour; [this is] because, [after the brothers had] crossed this river, it rose in such flood that the [king’s] riders could not follow them.  [They were therefore able to continue unmolested] to another part of Macedonia, settling near the place called the garden of Midas son of Gordias, where [magnificent wild] roses grow ... : according to the Macedonian story, this was the garden in which Midas had captured Silenus.  Above it rises the Bermius mountain, which is impassable in winter.  When [the brothers] had won that country, they continued until they had also subdued the rest of Macedonia”, (‘Persian Wars’, 8: 138).
   

Herodotus  broke off at that point and proceeded directly to the genealogy of Alexander (at ‘Persian Wars’, 8: 139).  We are thus not told anything about:

1. ✴the circumstances in which Perdiccas won the lordship of Macedonia; or
   

2. ✴the future activities of Gauanes and Aeropus (albeit that Perdiccas had warned the king of Lebaea that the three brothers would one day rule Macedonia). 
   

Since Perdiccas accepted three scoops of sunlight as the brothers’ wages, we might reasonably assume that each of them received part of the kingdom. 

Interestingly, Thucydides (ca. 460-395 BC) in his account of the events of 429 BC (when Alexander’s son, by then king, Perdiccas II, faced an invasion by the Thracian King Sitalces) observed that:

1. “... the Lyncestians, Elimiotes, and other tribes of [upper Macedonia],  although in alliance with [Perdiccas II] and subject to [him], have kings of their own; but the country by the sea, which is now called [lower] Macedonia, was first acquired and made their kingdom by Alexander ... and his forefathers, who were originally ... from Argos”, (‘History of the Peloponnesian War’, 2: 99: 3, translated by Charles Smith, referenced below, 1919, at p. 451).
   

On the basis of this passage, Eugene Borza (referenced below, at p. 84) suggested that this myth:

1. “... may reflect the establishment of:
   

2. ✴Gauanes’ rule in Elimeia;
   

3. ✴Aeropus’ [rule] among the Lyncestians (where such a royal name appears later); and (of course)
   

4. ✴Perdiccas’ [rule] in [lower] Macedonia.” 
   

Alexander’s Genealogy

(I have ‘borrowed’ this format from the more extensive table published by Mait Kõiv, referenced below, at p. 266)

In the second part of this digression, Herodotus repeated that:

1. “... this Alexander was 7th in descent [counting inclusively] from Perdiccas, ... of the lineage of Temenus, since he was:
   

2. ✴the son of Amyntas;
   

3. ✴who was the son of Alcetes;
   

4. ✴[who was the son of] Aeropus;
   

5. ✴[who was the son of] Philip;
   

6. ✴[who was the son of] Argaeus;
   

7. ✴[who was the son of] Perdiccas, who won that lordship [of Macedonia]”, (‘Persian Wars’, 8: 139 - see the pink box in the table above).
   

Emily Varto (referenced below, at p. 55) pointed out, although this genealogy was an unusual feature of Herodotus work, it was not without parallels:

1. “There are three clearly genealogical passages in Herodotus’ [‘Persian Wars’], which recount:
   

2. ✴the genealogies of the Spartan kings Leonidas and Leutychides [II]; and
   

3. ✴that of Alexander of Macedonia.”
   

All three represented digressions from Herodotus’ main account, and the reason for their inclusion was that all three subjects had played an important role in the Persian wars of 480-79 BC.  Interestingly, none of the other Greek participants in the war had been given the same treatment, perhaps because the details of their forebears had not been easily available. 

Herodotus’ Genealogies of Leonidas and Leutychides  II 

Herodotus did not have a source problem in relation to Leonidas and Leutychides II, whose names would have appeared in the long-established Spartan king lists.  Their reigns overlapped during these Persian wars (since, unusually, Sparta was ruled by a pair kings from separate dynasties, the Agiad and the Eurypontid - see the green box in the table above).  However, Herodotus placed their genealogies in separate sections, in the context of each subject’s place in his main narrative: 

1. ✴At the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC:
   

2. “Each [Greek] city had its own general, but the one most admired and the leader of the whole army was a [Spartan], Leonidas, [whose Agiad lineage, as given by Herodotus, is set out in the green box above].  He had gained the kingship at Sparta unexpectedly”, (‘Persian Wars’, 7: 204: 1).
   

3. ✴At the Battle of Mycale in 479 BC:
   

4. “[The] general and admiral Leutychides, the son of Menores, was of the second royal house.  His [Eurypontid] lineage, from son to father, [as given by Herodotus, is set out in the green box above].  All of his ancestors except for the two [or, in some manuscripts, 7 - see below] closest to him in the list had been kings of Sparta”, (‘Persian Wars’, 8: 131: 2-3).
   

Eurypontid king lists (ca. 700-500 BC) according to Herodotus, Pausanias and Pherecydes of Athens

From Kilian Fleischer (referenced below, Table 7, at p. 13)

Kilian Fleischer (referenced below, English abstract) recently published:

1. “... a re-edition of a small fragment of a papyrus [P. Herc. 1788] from Herculaneum that probably stems from a papyrus of Metrodorus that was copied in the 3rd century BC.  New supplements of several names reveal that the piece contains the hitherto unknown, most ancient lists of the Kings of Sparta (Eurypontides) conducted by Pherecydes of Athens in the first quarter of the 5th century BC.  The list is [older] than the ones to be found in Herodotus and Pausanias and, ... [due to its age, ... might preserve the genuine succession of the Eurypontids between Theopompus and Demaratus (ca. 700-500 BC).”
   

Fleischer summarised the comparison between the three lists as his Table 7 (above).  In the ‘Herodotus’ column, Fleischer extended the list from that in 8:131 by adding Herodotus’ records of other Eurypontid kings of this period from elsewhere in his ‘Persian Wars’.  Since three names in Herodotus’ list (Hippocratides, Leutychides I and Archidemus) also appear in that of Pherecydes, it is clear that they were kings, making it likely that Herodotus recorded at 131: 3 that only two (rather than seven) of the immediate ancestors of Leutychides II had not been kings. 

Brenda Griffith-Wllliams (referenced below, at p. 44) observed that:

1. “The [genealogies] recorded [in these lists] reflect the Spartan tradition of an unbroken father to son succession from the mythical founder Heracles until 491/490 BC.  There is no firm evidence to refute the tradition, but modern scholars are almost certainly right to treat it with scepticism.”
   

Nevertheless, it seems that Herodotus had found it convenient to draw on an official list compiled on this basis for:

1. ✴all of Leonadas’ ancestors back Agis; and
   

2. ✴all of Leutycrides’ ancestors from Hippocratides back to Euryphon. 
   

It is important to note that Herodotus did not cite an official lists of kings for his genealogical list: however, since he explicitly stated that the father and grandfather of Leutychides II had not been kings, we can reasonably assume that all of the other men in his list had been kings, at least on paper.  It is clear from Herodotus’ account that the father-to-son succession within the official ‘Eurypontid’ list had recently broken down: Leutychides had succeeded his cousin, who:

1. ✴had become king as ‘Demaratus, son of Ariston’; but
   

2. ✴had subsequently been judged to be the son of someone else and therefore deposed. 
   

Herodotus must have taken the names of Leutycides’ father (Menares) and grandfather (Hegesilaus) from a different source (presumably in Leutychides’ own family archives). 

Herodotus’ Genealogy of Alexander I

While Herodotus’ sources had allowed him to produces son-to-father genealogies for the Spartans Leonidas and Leutychides II that extended back into prehistory, he obviously found nothing comparable for Alexander I: his sources yielded only the five names for his father-to-son list between Alexander and Perdiccas:

Perdiccas; Argaeus; Philip; Aeropus; Alcetes; Amyntas; Alexander

This was almost certainly a list that had been compiled by the Macedonians themselves: as Miltiades Hatzopoulos (referenced below, 2000, at p. 116) pointed out, the name Perdiccas, the first king on the list, seems to have been  exclusively Macedonian.  Furthermore, as David Coblentz (referenced below, at p. 13) pointed out, Herodotus apparently knew:

1. ✴very little about Amyntas, Alexander’s father;
   

2. ✴nothing about the next four rulers in the list apart from their names; and
   

3. ✴only two ‘hard historical facts’ about Perdiccas:
   

4. •he  was the founder of Alexander’s dynasty; and
   

5. •he was ‘of the lineage of Temenus’.
   

As Carol King (referenced below, at p. 307) reasonably argued, Herodotus genealogical list from Perdiccas to Alexander: 

1. “... may well be the ‘official’ [king] list from the Macedonian court in the mid 5th century BC.”
   

We cannot be certain when this list began to be compiled, but it seems to me that the most likely scenario is that:

1. ✴at the time of Amyntas and Alexander, the Macedonians had a list of five earlier kings, although they knew little about the earliest of them apart from their names; and
   

2. ✴by the time that Herodotus was writing, Amyntas and/or Alexander had:
   

3. •designated Perdiccas, the first name on the list, as the ‘official’ founder of the dynasty;
   

4. •given him his Temenid lineage; and
   

5. •proclaimed that the line had subsequently gone directly from father to son until their own time. 
   

Thucydides clearly accepted Herodotus’  genealogy as a king list:

1. ✴as we have seen, in his account of the events of 429 BC (when Alexander’s son ruled Macedonia as Perdiccas II), he recorded that:
   

2. “Alexander ... and his forefathers (who were originally Temenidae from Argos) first acquired the territory by the sea that is now called Macedonia and made it their kingdom”, (‘History of the Peloponnesian War’, 2: 99: 3, translated by Charles Smith, referenced below, 1919, at p. 451);
   

3. ✴he subsequently recorded that, in 417 BC, the Spartans and the Argives:
   

4. “... persuaded Perdiccas [II] to swear alliance with them.  He, however, did not immediately desert the Athenians, although he was considering doing so because he saw that Argives the had done so (for he was himself of Argive descent)”, (‘History of the Peloponnesian War’, 5: 80: 2, translated by Charles Smith, referenced below, 1921, at p. 149); and
   

5. ✴in 413 BC:
   

6. “When Archelaus, son of Perdiccas [II], became king, he ... organised his country for war by providing cavalry, arms and other equipment beyond anything achieved by all the eight kings who preceded him”, (‘History of the Peloponnesian War’, 2: 100: 2, translated by Charles Smith, referenced below, 1919, at p. 453).
   

It is clear from these records that Thucydides regarded the dynasty of Alexander and the forefathers, (including Perdiccas) as the Temenidae.  As noted above, the earliest surviving references to the alternative name Argeadae (by Strabo) date to the Augustan period.  However, since Herodotus named Macedonia’s second king as Argaeus, son of Perdiccas, it possible that the dynasty was sometimes referred to as the Argeadae long before Strabo (perhaps with this name taken to imply an association with Argos). 

Mait Kõiv (referenced below, at p. 267) pointed out that, if we: 

1. ✴accept Herodotus’ testimony that the Macedonians claimed that succession had passed from father to son in an unbroken chain from Perdiccas to Alexander; and
   

2. ✴assume that they would have pushed Perdiccas back as far as they credibly could by assuming an average reign for Alexander’s six predecessors of 30-40 years;
   

then this:

1. “... would date Perdiccas roughly to the 7th century BC.  Herodotus thus dated the foundation of the dynasty by Perdiccas many generations after Temenus and the Dorian invasion [of the Peloponnese at the time of Temenus].”
   

Interestingly, even on these ‘heroic’ assumptions, there was no disguising the fact that, in Alexander’s time, the Macedonian kings, despite their recently-discovered Temenid credentials, were relatively ‘new kids on the Greek block’.

Significance of Alexander’s Descent from Temenus 

Temenus was one of the so-called Heraclidae (also known as Heraclids), terms that are usually reserved for those descendants of Heracles who (in Greek mythology) invaded the Peloponnese some time after the end of the Trojan War.  This mythical invasion was recorded in two of the surviving early sources:

1. ✴the elegiac poet Tyrtaeus (ca. 650 BC), in a fragment preserved in the Oxyrhynchus papyrus (ca. 100 AD), had one of the invaders exhort his colleagues to:
   

2. “... obey (the kings, since they are?) nearer to the race (of the gods?).  For Zeus himself, the son of Cronus and husband of fair-crowned Hera, has given this state to the Heraclidae.  We, [the Dorians], left windy Erineus [in Doris] with them and came to the wide island of Pelops, ... of the grey-eyed [Athena] ... , (fragment 2, translated by Douglas Gerber, referenced below, at pp. 37-9); and
   

3. ✴Thucydides recorded that:
   

4. “The Dorians, ... in the 80th year after the [Trojan] war, together with the Heraclidae, occupied the Peloponnesus, (“History of the Peloponnesian War”, 1: 12: 3, translated by Charles Smith, referenced below, 1919, at p. 23).
   

Mait Kõiv (referenced below, at p. 262) summarised how the original myth of the Doric invasion had provided the foundation myths for the three most important Peloponnesian kingships of the 7th century BC:

1. “It was generally accepted by the ancients that the early Heroic Age of Greek history (the period in which the epic heroes like Heracles, Theseus, Achilles and Odysseus performed their glorious deeds) was brought to an end three generations after the Trojan War, when the Dorians from the northern parts of Greece invaded the Peloponnese and overthrew the rulers of [its] ancient strongholds.  The Dorians were [said to have been] led by three brothers, Temenus, Aristodemus and Cresphontes, [the sons of Aristomachus and] descendants of Heracles, thus known as the Heraclidae.  Before or during the conquest, the brothers allotted the Peloponnesian kingdoms among themselves:
   

2. ✴Temenus, the oldest and the leader of the venture, ... received Argos, the reputed homeland of their ancestor Heracles.
   

3. ✴Aristodemus was allotted Sparta but perished during the conquest. ... [His portion passed to] his infant sons, the twins Eurysthenes and Procles, who became the founders of the two royal houses of Sparta. ...
   

4. ✴Cresphontes received the land of Messenia.
   

Marshall Sahlins (referenced below, at p. 67) took the story forward into the 6th century BC: after the Dorian invasion, which had resulted in:

1. “... the elimination of the Atreids (the house of Agamemnon and Menelaus, which had held the sceptre of Zeus), the Heraclids were the last Greek royalty that could claim power by devolution from the Olympian [gods]: after the invasion, Temenus of Argos, Eurysthenes and Procles of Sparta and Cresphontes of Messenia and their descendants could all claim descent from Heracles, [the son of Zeus.  However, after] the destruction or demise of the ... Heraclid [kingships] in Messenia and Argos in ca. 600 BC, the Spartan [kings had] the only surviving Zeus-born lineage in the Peloponnese.  And (putting Macedonian claims to one side), by the beginning of the classical period, the Spartan kings were the sole blood heirs to the Zeusian sovereignty in all of Greece.”
   

This illustrates the audacity of the Macedonians’ dynastic claims at the start of the 5th century BC: by designating Perdiccas, the earliest of the Macedonian kings, as a direct descendant of King Temenus of Argos, they brushed aside 10 generations of obscurity and established themselves (at least to their own satisfaction) as Greek kings descended from Hercules and Zeus.