How Archelaus came to power
PolusThen this Archelaus is wretched, on your argument?
SocratesProvided he is unjust, my friend.
PolusBut surely, how could he not be unjust? The rule he now holds did not belong to him at all, since he was the son of a woman who was a slave of Alcetas, Perdiccas’ brother; in justice he was Alcetas’ slave, and if he wanted to do just things, he would be a slave to Alcetas and would be happy, on your argument. But now he has become marvellously wretched, since he has done the greatest injustice. For first of all he sent for this very man, his master and uncle, as though he meant to give back the rule Perdiccas had taken from him; he played host to him and his son Alexander, his own cousin and almost his age, and got them both dead drunk; he threw them into a wagon, carried them off by night, cut both their throats and made them disappear.
And after doing these injustices he failed to notice that he had become most wretched, and he felt no regret; instead, a little later, as for his brother, the legitimate son of Perdiccas, a boy of about seven, to whom in justice the rule would fall—he did not want to become happy by bringing him up justly and giving the rule back to him, but threw him into a well and drowned him, and told the boy’s mother, Cleopatra, that her son had fallen in while chasing a goose and died. And that is why now, as the man who has done the greatest injustice of anyone in Macedonia, he is the most wretched of all Macedonians, and not the happiest; and perhaps there is someone among the Athenians, beginning with you, who would sooner become any other Macedonian at all than Archelaus.