[3] Plato, through his interlocutors in Gorgias, wrote that Archelaus murdered both his uncle Alcetas and his unnamed seven year old half-brother to gain the throne, but this can not be confirmed.

[6] His actual son, Orestes, would go on to be king, but there is confusion over whether or not Archelaus is the father of Argaeus II and Amyntas.

[7][12][13] The argument is based in part on a line from Aelian's Varia Historia about an Amyntas being Menelaus' son.

[14] The alternative theory holds that the polygamous Archelaus married his son (Amyntas) to his daughter to cement the branch lines: a half-brother and a half-sister.

[15] Almost immediately after he took power, Archelaus was faced with a situation which allowed him to completely reverse Macedon's relationship with Athens, which had been a major threat for the past half century.

This left the Athenians in desperate need of a huge amount of timber to build new ships and Archelaus in a position to set the price.

In his new palace at Pella (where he moved the capital from the old capital at Aegae), he hosted great poets, tragedians, including Agathon and Euripides (who wrote his tragedies Archelaus and The Bacchae while in Macedon), musicians, and painters, including Zeuxis (the most celebrated painter of his time).

Decamnichos was permitted to remain in the court of Archelaus; however, he did not forget about this treatment and thus participated in the killing of his king a few years later.