Neoptolemus

Neoptolemus (; died 321 BC) was a Macedonian officer who served under Alexander the Great. According to Arrian he belonged to the race of the Aeacidae, so he was probably related to the family of the kings of Epirus. Neoptolemus is mentioned as serving in the Macedonian royal guards (ἑταῖροι) and distinguished himself particularly at the siege of Gaza, 332 BC, where he was the first to scale the walls. Little has been written about him during the subsequent campaigns of Alexander; however, he appears to have earned a reputation as an able soldier. Dexippus lists the satrapy of Carmania as assigned to Neoptolemus after the death of Alexander; however, Diodorus and Justin assign this satrapy to Tlepolemus instead. A. G. Roos revised Dexippus' text to assign Carmania to Tlepolemus and Armenia to Neoptolemus. Pat Wheatley and Waldemar Heckel found this revision to be unlikely to represent the original text, and considered it more likely that the fragment of the text of Dexippus includes a scribal error, as "Neoptolemus" is an easy corruption of "Tlepolemus". Neoptolemus apparently campaigned in Armenia after the death of Alexander, but his official status in this area is unclear; he might have been a strategos rather than a satrap. Neoptolemus managed only to create havoc in Armenia, which suggests that he wasn't cooperating with any existing satrap.