Heracleid family of Argos, which had taken refuge in the north; and this
descent was so capable of proof, that, on the basis of it, one of the
earlier kings was admitted to the Olympic games. Herodotus, the great
story teller, relates the incident of the founding of the dynasty.
According to his narration, three brothers of the royal race of
Temenus,--the fourth in descent from Heracles,--Gauanes, Eropus, and
Perdiccas, exiles from Argos, went into Illyria, and thence into upper
Macedon, where they placed themselves, as herdsmen, at the service of
Lebea, one of the local kings. Now, when the queen baked the bread for
their food, she always noticed that the loaf destined for Perdiccas
doubled its weight; she made this marvel known to her husband, who saw
danger in it, and ordered the three brothers to depart from the country.
They replied that they would go as soon as they had received their
wages. Thereupon the king, who was sitting by the hearth, on which fell
sunlight through the opening of the roof, as if by divine inspiration
said to the brothers, pointing to the light on the floor: "I will give
you that; that is your wages." Upon this, the two elder brothers stood
speechless; but the younger, who held a knife in his hand, said: "Very
well; we accept it." And having traced with his knife a circle on the
floor surrounding the rays, he stooped down thrice, feigning each time
to take up the sunshine and place it in the folds of his garment and to
distribute it to his brothers; after which, they all went away. One of
those who sat by called the attention of the king to this conduct on the
part of the young man, and the manner in which he accepted what was
offered him; and the king, becoming anxious and angry, sent horsemen to
follow the brothers and slay them. Now in that country is a river, to
which the descendants of these Argives offer sacrifice as to a god. This
river, after the fugitives had crossed it, became suddenly so swollen
that the horsemen dared not follow. The brothers arrived in another part
of Macedon and established themselves near the lake called the Gardens
of Midas, and, when they had subjugated the country in those parts, they
went thence to conquer the rest of Macedon.
Herodotus states that Perdiccas I. founded the reigning dynasty in
Macedon, and he mentions as his successors Argaeus, Philip, Eropus,
Alcetas, and Amyntas I., whose son, Alexander "the Philheliene," the
Greeks permitted to take part in the Olympic games. This Alexander on
one occasion visited dire punishment upon a party of Persian envoys who
at a banquet forgot the respect due to the ladies at the court of
Macedon; he caused them to be assassinated by a company of young men
whom he had disguised in women's attire. When the Persians sent to
require the punishment of the guilty, Alexander won over the envoy by
giving him his sister in marriage.
This Alexander, who became king in the year 500 before the Christian
era, begins the series of those Macedonian kings who felt the need of
Hellenizing their people, and his reign accordingly marks a turning
point in the history of Macedon. Perdiccas II., Archelaus I., and
Amyntas II. were his successors, who continued this policy; but this
forced civilization by no means reached the mass of the people, and,
while it refined the nobility and the court and paved the way for the
Macedonian inroads into Greece, it also introduced luxury and
corruption. Amyntas II. left three sons, Alexander II., Perdiccas III.,
and Philip, the last of whom was the one so well known to fame; and
Eurydice, the mother of these three valiant sons, was the first of that
series of remarkable women, noted for their power, their beauty, or
their crimes, who from this time on fill the annals of Macedonian
history.
In her barbarous instincts, Eurydice gives evidence of the non-Hellenic
blood in her veins. Her career in crime was such as to place her among
the Messalinas and Lucrezia Borgias of history. To begin with, she was
implicated in a conspiracy with a paramour, Ptolemaeus of Alorus, against
her husband's life; but when the plot was detected, she was, out of
regard for their three sons, mercifully spared by her husband.
Alexander, the eldest, succeeded his father, but, after reigning two
years, was assassinated by Ptolemaeus, with his own mother as an
accomplice of the murderer. When Perdiccas grew to manhood, he avenged
his brother's death and his mother's disgrace by slaying Ptolemaeus; but
he himself, a few years later, fell in battle against the Illyrians, or,
as was asserted, at the hand of an assassin hired by his mother
Eurydice. Philip, the next in succession, then ascended the throne, and
succeeded in securing himself against the attempts of his mother and in
conciliating all factions. Eurydice then disappears from the scene, and
the manner of her death is unknown. Heredity, without doubt, had much to
do with the cruelty in Philip's nature, and in spite of her crimes he
seems to have had much respect for his sanguinary mother, for he placed
a figure of her among the gold-and-ivory statues embellishing the
monument he erected to commemorate his victory over the Athenians and
Thebans at Chaeronea.
We are not concerned here with the rise of Philip's power over Hellas,
nor with the history of his son Alexander and the empire he established,
except in so far as the spread of Hellenism and the union of the world
under one dominion brought about changes in social conditions which
affected the status of woman. We shall, for the present, confine our
attention to the consideration of those women, chiefly royal princesses,
whose names group themselves about the careers of Philip and Alexander
and their immediate successors, and who by their strong personalities
greatly influenced the course of events.
A few general reflections will prepare us for the sombre history which
we are about to read. The Macedonian kings were, as a rule, not content
with one wife; they either kept concubines, or married a second wife, as
did Philip and Alexander, while the first was living. This practice led
to jealousy, envy, and hatred, and the attendant ills of constant and
bloody tragedies in the royal families. We find henceforth a
combination of Greek manners and Macedonian nature. In the life of the
courts, women as well as men, in spite of their Greek culture, show the
Thracian traits of passion and cruelty. Owing to the intense respect in
which women were held, the royal princesses occupied an exalted station
and hence found willing instruments for the carrying-out of their cruel
practices. Every king was either murdered or conspired against by his
family. Women entered into matrimonial alliances with a view to
increasing their power and extending their influence. Hence, the women
who played so prominent a part in the great struggles that attended
Philip's extension of his power over all Hellas, Alexander's conquest of
the world, and the founding of independent dynasties by the Diadochi and
their descendants, were not women who attained the Thucydidean ideal of
excellence; namely, that those are the best women who are never
mentioned among men for good or for evil. They were, on the contrary,
powerful and haughty princesses, who possessed royal rights and
privileges, who had resources of their own in money and soldiery, who
could address their troops with fiery speeches and go forth to battle at
the head of their armies, who made offers of marriage to men, and who
finally got rid of their rivals with sinister coolness and cruelty.
Philip the Great followed the Oriental fashion of marrying many wives;
according to Athenaeus, he was continually marrying new wives in war
times, and seven more or less regular marriages are attributed to him.
Of his numerous wives or mistresses, the strong-minded Olympias was the
chief; and, as she survived both her husband Philip and her son
Alexander, she played a dominant part in Macedonian history and was the
most prominent woman of those stormy times. Olympias was the daughter
of Neoptolemus, King of Epirus, who traced his lineage back to
Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. Philip is said to have fallen in love with
Olympias while both were being initiated into some religious mysteries
in Samothrace, at a time when he was still a stripling and she an
orphan. He was ardent in his suit, and, gaining the consent of her
brother Arymbas, he shortly after married her. We know nothing of the
first few years of their married life, but the union seems never to have
been a happy one. Both were of too decided individuality to blend well
together. Says President Wheeler: "Both were preeminently ambitious,
energetic, and aggressive; but while Philip's ambition was guided by a
cool, crafty sagacity, that of his queen manifested itself in impetuous
outbreaks of almost barbaric emotion. In her, joined a marvellous
compound of the mother, the queen, the shrew, and the witch. The
passionate ardor of her nature found its fullest expression in the wild
ecstasies and crude superstitions of her native religious rites."
Plutarch gives a graphic account of the religious intensity of
Olympias's nature: "Another account is that all the women of this
country, having always been addicted to the Orphic and Dionysiac mystery
rites, imitated largely the practices of the Edonian and Thracian women
about Mount Haemus, and that Olympias, in her abnormal zeal to surround
these states of trance and inspiration with more barbaric dread, was
wont in the sacred dances to have about her great tame serpents, which,
sometimes creeping out of the ivy and the mystic fans, and sometimes
winding themselves about the staffs and the chaplets which the women
bore, presented a sight of horror to the men who beheld."
In Olympias we find all the traits of character which selfishness and
love of power, combined with intense religious fervor, could engender;
and her devotion to weird religious rites makes more ghastly the story
of her life. With a different husband she might have been a good woman,
but when two such natures clash much evil is bound to result. To her
young son, Alexander, she was ardently attached, and she expected great
things of him. Just before her marriage with Philip she dreamed that a
thunderbolt fell upon her body, which kindled a great fire, whose
divided flames dispersed themselves all about and then were
extinguished. This was later regarded as a presage of the rapid spread
of Alexander's empire and its ultimate breaking-up among the Diadochi.
Philip's numerous infidelities and marriages caused an estrangement
between him and Olympias that was far-reaching in its consequences. They
reached their culmination when Philip with great ceremony wedded
Cleopatra, a niece of his general, Attalus. At the wedding banquet,
Attalus, the uncle of the bride, heated with wine, cried out:
"Macedonians, let us pray the gods that from this marriage may spring an
heir to the throne!" Whereupon, Alexander, who was present, violently
irritated at the speech, threw one of the goblets at the head of Attalus
and exclaimed: "You villain, what! Am I, then, a bastard?" Philip,
taking Attalus's part, rose up, and would have run his son through with
his sword, but, overcome by rage and by drink, he slipped and fell to
the floor. "Here is a man," scornfully exclaimed the prince, "preparing
to cross from Europe into Asia, who is not able to step safely from one
table to another." This incident brought to a climax the estrangement
between Philip and his wife and Alexander. Olympias and Alexander fled,
the one taking shelter with her brother, the King of Epirus, and the
other going into Illyria, where he remained until a sort of
reconciliation was effected by the marriage of Philip's daughter,
Cleopatra, with the Epirote king. When Philip was assassinated,
suspicions of complicity in the murder attached to both Olympias and
Alexander. The young man's conduct fully acquits him of the crime, but
it would not be strange if the mother, seeking her own vengeance and her
son's preferment, should have abetted the youth Pausanias, who committed
the deed.
Olympias could not brook any rivals, and shortly after the murder of
Philip she despatched that king's last wife, Cleopatra, and her infant
son. Throughout Alexander's brilliant but short-lived career, Olympias
remained in Macedon, exercising a queenly power. She and her son seem to
have been bound by the closest ties of affection and respect. With
Antipater, however, who had been left behind by Alexander to govern
Macedon in his absence, she was continually falling out. Plutarch gives
an interesting account of the intimate relations between mother and son
and of the quarrels between the old queen and the regent:
"How magnificent he, Alexander, was in enriching his friends appears by
a letter which Olympias wrote to him, where she tells him he should
reward those about him in a more moderate way. She said: 'For now you
make them all equal to kings, you give them power and opportunity of
making many friends of their own, and in the meantime you leave yourself
destitute.' She often wrote to him to this purpose. To her he sent many
presents, but would never suffer her to meddle with matters of State or
war, not indulging her busy temper; and when she fell out with him on
this account, he bore her ill humor very patiently. Nay, more, when he
read a long letter from Antipater, full of accusations against her,
'Antipater,' he said, 'does not know that one tear of a mother effaces a
thousand such letters as these.'
"The tidings of the difficulties he had gone through in his Indian
expedition had begun to give occasion for revolt among many of the
conquered nations, and for acts of great injustice, avarice, and
insolence on the part of satraps and commanders. Even at home, Olympias
and her daughter Cleopatra had raised a faction against Antipater and
divided his government between them--Olympias seizing upon Epirus, and
Cleopatra upon Macedon. When Alexander was told of it, he said his
mother had made the best choice, for the Macedonians would never consent
to be ruled by a woman."
Upon the death of Alexander, Olympias espoused with great devotion the
cause of her daughter-in-law Roxana and the young Alexander against the
intrigues of the generals, and she did everything in her power to
maintain their rights in opposition to the cold and calculating
Cassander. Diodorus gives a graphic account of her last days:
"As soon as Olympias heard that Cassander was entering Macedonia with a
large army, she, taking with her the son of Alexander and his mother
Roxana, and other kindred and eminent relations, entered the town of
Pydna. Neither was there provision in that place sufficient for such a
multitude to hold out any long siege. Yet she was resolved to stay here,
expecting many Greeks and Macedonians to come in to her assistance by
sea. Now spring came on, and the famine increased every day, whereupon
most of the soldiers came up in a body and entreated Olympias to suffer
them to leave the place because of the scarcity, who, not being able to
supply them with bread, let them go. At length Olympias, perceiving that
many went over to Cassander, without delay got ready a galley of five
oars with a design to rescue herself and her kindred; but being
discovered to the enemy by some of the deserters, Cassander sailed to
the place and seized the vessel. Whereupon Olympias sent a herald to
Cassander to treat upon terms of pacification, but he insisted upon the
delivering up of herself to his mercy; she at length prevailed only for
the preservation of her person. He then incited the relations of such as
were put to death by Olympias to prosecute her in the general assembly
of the Macedonians, who readily complied with what they were desired to
do; and though she herself was not then present, nor had any person
there to plead her cause, yet the Macedonians condemned her to die.
Cassander therefore sent some of his friends to Olympias and advised her
to get out of the way, and promised to procure for her a ship and to
cause her to be conveyed safely to Athens. He did not do this for her
preservation, but that, as one confessing her own guilt by her flight,
it might be judged a just vengeance upon her if she was cut off as she
was on her voyage; for he was afraid as well of the fickle disposition
of the Macedonians as of the dignity of her person. But Olympias refused
to fly, and said she was ready to defend her cause before all the
Macedonians. Cassander therefore, fearing lest the people should change
their minds and so take upon them to defend the queen, sent to her a
band of two hundred soldiers with orders to despatch her forthwith, who,
rushing on a sudden into the palace, as soon as they saw her, in
reverence to her person, drew back without executing the command. But
the kindred of those she had put to death, both to ingratiate themselves
with Cassander, and likewise to gratify their own revenge for the death
of their relations, cut her throat, she not in the least crying out in
any womanish terror or fear to spare her. In this manner died Olympias,
the greatest and most honorable woman in the age wherein she lived,
daughter of Neoptolemus, King of Epirus; sister of Pyrrhus, who made the
expedition into Italy; wife of Philip, the greatest and most victorious
prince of all that ever lived before in Europe; and lastly the mother of
Alexander, who never was exceeded by any for the many great and
wonderful things that were done by him."
So Olympias showed herself in her death, as in her life, every inch a
queen; and, in spite of her temper and her bloodthirstiness, she
deserves a high place in the history of womanhood, because of her
untiring devotion to her son and to his helpless widow and child against
the machinations of cruel and powerful men.
Philip had three daughters who appear prominently in Macedonian history:
Cynane, by an Illyrian princess, who figures in the history of her
daughter Eurydice, which we shall recount later; Thessalonica, whom
Cassander married after he had slain Olympias and all the heirs of
Alexander, and after whom he named the famous city which he built; and
Cleopatra, full sister of Alexander, who was first married to her uncle,
Alexander, King of Epirus, murdered in Italy while he was trying to
subdue the West. The young Princess Cleopatra was left a widow in good
time to enter upon a career in the stormy days that followed the death
of the world-monarch. She returned to Macedon, and notwithstanding the
fact that she and her mother Olympias were both of violent tempers, and
frequently quarrelled, yet their interests were too closely united to
permit any permanent estrangement. Her claims to the throne were the
strongest, next to those of the infant Alexander, and, in consequence,
she was much sought after in marriage, and had her choice of almost all
the distinguished men of the time. She regarded marriage as a legitimate
weapon of diplomacy to advance her interests and to increase her
influence. Yet a sad fatality seemed to attach to the men whom she
proposed to honor with her hand. She first chose, probably from ardent
affection, Leonnatus, one of the most gallant of Alexander's generals,
but he was killed while assisting Antipater before Lamia. Her mother
then offered her hand to Perdiccas, when he became regent, and he gladly
accepted; but before the nuptials were celebrated, he was slain in an
attack on Egypt. Had the loyal Eumenes been victorious in his long
struggle against Antigonus, Cleopatra would doubtless have married him,
in spite of the fact that he was not of royal blood. She then resided
for fifteen years in Sardis, amid all the pomp and luxury naturally
attending so noble and beautiful a princess, and became the object of
intrigue among the rival generals. Old Antipater, when appointed regent,
accused her of treason and sedition; but she publicly defended herself,
in their native tongue, before the Macedonian soldiers, and so great was
the influence she exerted over them that Antipater wisely concluded to
withdraw the charge, and harassed her no further. At last, however, at
Sardis, she fell into the power of her old enemy, Antigonus. Realizing
her peril, this redoubtable princess, although past fifty, was planning
escape and flight to Egypt to marry Ptolemy, who had already two wives
and grown-up children. To prevent this marriage of the queen with his
strongest rival, Antigonus put her to death.
Cleopatra manifested the same strength of personality and independence
of character as her mother Olympias, and she had, in addition, all the
advantages of education and culture which would naturally accrue to the
sister of Alexander. She differed most strongly from her mother and
other Macedonian princesses of the day, in that no murders could be laid
at her door.
When we come to Cynane, the third daughter of Philip, we find another
type of womanhood. She showed her Illyrian blood in her fondness for
outdoor exercise, being a skilled horsewoman, and she would even enter
into battle at the head of her troops. She was first married by Philip
to her cousin Amyntas. Left a widow, she devoted herself to the
education of her daughter, Eurydice, whom she trained in the same
martial exercises for which she herself was famous. When Philip
Arrhidaeus, the imbecile half-brother of Alexander, son of a female
dancer, Philinna of Larissa, was proclaimed joint heir with the
posthumous son of Roxana to Alexander's dominions, Cynane determined to
marry him to her daughter, and started over to Asia to accomplish this
end. As her influence was great, Perdiccas and Antipater determined to
forestall such a contingency by the murder of the mother, and Perdiccas
sent his brother Alcetas to meet her on the way and put her to death. By
her valor and her eloquence, however, she won over the Macedonian
warriors, so that the schemes of the generals could not be publicly
carried out; but, in defiance of the feelings of the soldiery, Alcetas
secretly consummated the ruthless plot, and Cynane met her doom with
dauntless spirit. After the death of the mother, the discontent of the
Macedonian troops and the respect with which they looked on Eurydice, as
one of the few surviving members of the royal house, induced Perdiccas
not only to spare Eurydice's life, but also to give her in marriage to
the unhappy King Philip Arrhidasus, whose weakened intellectual powers
were due to the drugs of Olympias--the queen who never ceased to wreak
her vengeance upon her rivals in Philip's affections and upon their
ill-fated offspring.
Then began the long and bitter struggle for mastery between the new
queen, Eurydice, and the old queen, Olympias, who took the part of
Roxana and her son; and only the superior claims of Olympias, as the
mother of Alexander, to the respect of the Macedonian soldiery led to
her final victory over her gifted and powerful rival. These hostile
factions in the royal party of Macedon were to lead to the extinction of
all the legitimate heirs to the throne. After the death of her mortal
enemy Antipater, Eurydice determined to make an active campaign against
his successor, the less able Polysperchon, who had allied himself with
Olympias. She therefore concluded an alliance with Cassander, assembled
an army, and took the field in person. Polysperchon marched against her,
accompanied by Olympias and Roxana, with the young Alexander, and the
presence of Olympias decided the day.
"As the troops of Alcetas would not fight against her and Cynane, so the
troops of Eurydice deserted her when she led them against the
queen-mother. It was the moment when Olympias's pent-up fury burst out
after many years. Amid her orgies of murder and of disentombing her
enemies, she was not likely to spare the offspring of Philip's
faithlessness; for Philip Arrhidaeus was the son of a Thessalian dancing
girl, and Eurydice the granddaughter of an Illyrian savage. She shut
them up, and meant to kill them by gradual starvation. But her people
began to expostulate, and then, having had Philip shot by Thracians, she
sent Eurydice the sword, the halter, and the hemlock, to take her
choice. But she, praying that Olympias might receive the same gifts,
composed the limbs of her husband, and washed his wounds as best she
could, and then, without one word of complaint at her fate, or the
greatness of her misfortune, hanged herself with the halter. If these
women knew not how to live, they knew how to die."