How did I miss this?

One of the dark moments in the life of Alexander III was the assassination of Parmenion, his father's general par-excellence, which was stemmed from Alexander's execution of Parmenion's son Philotas. Now two theories exist about the incident, the first of which says that Alexander was trying to eliminate the Macedonian nobility and that he headed a conspiracy against Philotas in order to remove Parmenion. The second theory (and the one that I tend towards) is that Alexander led a bunch of willful soldiers, some of whom thought to attack Philotas in order to gain positions for themselves.

Various evidence is cited for both causes, both theoretical and non, but one that I hadn't seen, even though I mentioned it in my thesis is that Alexander clearly did not have a purely biased stance against Parmenion's family. According to Curtius Rufus 6.6.19 (yes, I memorized the location of the quote), Alexander is called the saddest person in the army at the news of Nikanor's death (Nikanor being Philotas' brother), and that he wanted to stay for the funeral, but was lacking in provisions so he had to carry on. This could be a purely literary issue to show Alexander to be a good guy, but I think it goes deeper towards indicating that Alexander was wary of Parmenion and Philotas, but this was true for almost every one of his officers--even those he liked, but that Alexander liked Nikanor and by extension actually liked or at least didn't hate Parmenion and Philotas. This may be a romantic notion, but I believe it, if for no other reason than that if we discount this as a purely literary device and Parmenion's advice as a purely literary device (as I say elsewhere), then we really don't have any sources for this time period and all of it should be thrown into the fiction category.

Erigyius

One of the more interesting people I have come across in my thesis is Erigyius, an older man typically ignored by modern scholars on account of him being Greek. He initially lived in Mytiline along the Ionian coast, but had moved to Macedonia where he was named as one of the Advisors to the young Alexander III. In the year before Alexander took the throne, Erigyius and the other advisers were exiled for their participation in the Pixodorus Affair in which Alexander usurped a plan of Philip's in which his mentally defunct half brother would have married the daughter of a Carian dynast. Alexander set up the marriage so it would be his marriage rather than his brother (Philip Arridheus). According to one variation, Parmenion's son Philotas was the person who ratted out the plan to Philip.

Erigyius and the others were recalled within the year when Alexander took the throne and went on to have distinguished careers, but when it came to the trial of Philotas, six years later, Erigyius was the only one listed participating who was a Greek. I asked why this was, as well as questioning one modern author stating effectively that he succumbed to peer pressure when it came to voting to arrest Philotas.

Through a degree of roundabout thinking, I think there is a case to say that Erigyius was more important than traditionally thought, and this may add to the argument that Philotas was actually the one who ratted on Alexander in 336.