Pausanias of Orestis

Pausanias of Orestis assassinated Philip II of Macedon in 336 BC and changed the course of history by accident. He was a member of the somatophylakes, the seven bodyguards who attended the king in person, and had at some earlier point been Philip's lover. Aristotle and Diodorus give the same account of the motive. Pausanias had insulted a rival for the king's affection, who then deliberately got himself killed in battle after leaving a message accusing him of cowardice. The dead man's kinsman Attalus — a powerful noble and the uncle of Philip's new young wife Cleopatra — took revenge by getting Pausanias drunk at a banquet and handing him over to his grooms and servants to be raped. Pausanias demanded justice. Philip, who needed Attalus for the Persian campaign and had just married his niece, gave Pausanias gifts and a promotion and did nothing about it. At Aegae in the autumn of 336, during the wedding festivities for Philip's daughter, the king walked into the theatre deliberately unarmed and without his guard, between statues of the twelve Olympians and one of himself, to show the assembled Greeks that he needed no protection. Pausanias stabbed him through the ribs with a Celtic dagger and ran for horses waiting at the gate. He caught his boot on a vine and was speared by three of his fellow bodyguards. Whether Olympias, Alexander or Persia stood behind him has been argued for twenty-three centuries and cannot be settled. Alexander was twenty. His body was crucified and the men accused of complicity were executed over the king's grave.

• Nationality: Macedonian
• Roles: other