Amyntas

Philip, planning his Asiatic war under the convenient banner of the Hellenic ‘crusade’ created by Isocrates and other intellectuals, sends to Asia Minor an advance force of the Macedonian army under Amyntas, a son of Philip's brother late Perdiccas, and generals Parmenio and Attalus (Parmenio's son-in-law) early in 336 BCE.

Philip will presently lead the grand army into Asia, and the Greeks will be with him.

Perhaps some Macedonian soldiers, who might have preferred Athenian loot to an Athenian alliance, are puzzled about Philip's motives.

Thus, it may be for the benefit of such doubters that Philip has himself depicted in a domestic Macedonian context (he would surely not risks such a thing in Greece) as a “thirteenth Olympian god.”

On the eve of the Persian invasion, however, during the wedding of his daughter, Cleopatra, to his brother-in-law, Alexander of Molossia in June/July 336, the forty-six-year-old Philip is assassinated in mysterious circumstances, perhaps at the instigation of Persian king Darius III.

The assassin, a bodyguard (somatphylax) named Pausanias, is quickly slain, perhaps accidentally, by one Leonnatus; but suspicion immediately falls upon Alexander, never far from Philip's side that day, and Alexander's abused mother Olympias and her political party, those with most to gain from Philip's death.

Alexander, however, is quickly presented to the army as Macedon's new king, and immediately executes two highly placed suspects, the princes of Lyncestis, alleged to be behind Philip's murder, along with all possible rivals and the whole of the opposition faction.

Not many actual rivals have to be eliminated, however, because Alexander's succession is not in serious doubt.

Amyntas is still alive, but there is no reason for Alexander to see him as a threat (in any case, he is probably dead by 335).

Olympias, on her return from Epirus, has Cleopatra and her infant daughter killed.

Ptolemy returns from exile also and joins the King's bodyguard.