southwestern part of Asia Minor. The governor of this province had
offered his daughter to Philip as the wife of one of his sons named
Aridaeus, the half brother of Alexander. Alexander's mother, who was not
the mother of Aridaeus, was jealous of this proposed marriage. She
thought that it was part of a scheme for bringing Aridaeus forward into
public notice, and finally making him the heir to Philip's throne;
whereas she was very earnest that this splendid inheritance should be
reserved for her own son. Accordingly, she proposed to Alexander that
they should send a secret embassage to the Persian governor, and
represent to him that it would be much better, both for him and for his
daughter, that she should have Alexander instead of Aridaeus for a
husband, and induce him, if possible, to demand of Philip that he should
make the change.

Alexander entered readily into this scheme, and various courtiers,
Ptolemy among the rest, undertook to aid him in the accomplishment of
it. The embassy was sent. The governor of Caria was very much pleased
with the change which they proposed to him. In fact, the whole plan
seemed to be going on very successfully toward its accomplishment, when,
by some means or other, Philip discovered the intrigue. He went
immediately into Alexander's apartment, highly excited with resentment
and anger. He had never intended to make Aridaeus, whose birth on the
mother's side was obscure and ignoble, the heir to his throne, and he
reproached Alexander in the bitterest terms for being of so debased and
degenerate a spirit as to desire to marry the daughter of a Persian
governor; a man who was, in fact, the mere slave, as he said, of a
barbarian king.

Alexander's scheme was thus totally defeated; and so displeased was his
father with the officers who had undertaken to aid him in the execution