Ptolemy Keraunos
Ptolemy Keraunos was passed over for the throne of Egypt, murdered the man who had sheltered him, took Macedon, and was killed by Gauls within two years. He was the eldest son of Ptolemy I by his first wife, and he lost the Egyptian succession when his father named a younger half-brother instead. He left for the court of Lysimachus in Thrace, where his sister was queen, and was there through the family quarrel that ended with Lysimachus executing his own heir. When that court broke apart he went on to Seleucus. Seleucus took him in, defeated Lysimachus at Corupedium in 281 and crossed into Europe to claim Macedon as the last of Alexander's generals alive. Keraunos murdered him near Lysimachia within months of the victory, and had himself proclaimed king by the army - which is where the surname comes from, Keraunos meaning the thunderbolt. He secured the throne by the methods of the period. He offered to marry his half-sister Arsinoe, widow of Lysimachus, and killed two of her sons at the wedding; she escaped to Egypt and later married her own brother, the Ptolemy who had displaced him. In 279 a Gallic migration came down through the Balkans. Keraunos refused both an alliance with the Dardanians and the tribute the Gauls demanded, met them in the field with a smaller army, and was thrown from his elephant and killed; his head was carried on a spear. Macedon had no settled king for two years afterwards, until Antigonus Gonatas destroyed a Gallic force at Lysimachia and founded the dynasty that held the country until Rome.
- Lived: 319 BCE – 279 BCE
- Nationality: Macedonian
- Roles: head_of_state, royalty
