If the story is true, what does it mean and why did it happen? Clearly it signifies that Olympias, the group of Companions around Alexander, and Alexander himself feared that Philip no longer intended that Alexander would succeed to the throne or, at the very least, they thought he was trying to hedge his bets. The incident therefore occurred because they no longer trusted Philip. The Attalus affair had generated distrust between father and son that the public peacemaking had not eliminated. Attalus’ continued prominence may have contributed to the reaction of Alexander’s camp. Moreover, though Philip arranged a number of royal marriages in this period, he did not find a bride for Alexander, his supposed heir. That omission does seem odd, whether Philip planned to take Alexander with him to Asia or whether he intended to leave him behind. It is, however, perfectly possible that Philip, who probably continued to fault Alexander for their recent troubles, may have planned the Pixodarus arrangement as a kind of rap on the knuckles to an overly independent son, not a serious indication of his viability as heir.
Whereas the reaction of Alexander and Olympias to the Attalus episode seems appropriate and effective in the context of the Macedonian court, their response to Philip’s marriage plans for Arrhidaeus can more reasonably be characterized as an overreaction. More to the point, even if their reading of the proposed alliance was correct, their solution could and did only make matters worse. Philip lost a valuable ally, Alexander lost much (though hardly all105) of his support base, angered his father, and yet failed to gain even a Carian bride. Even if the marriage had taken place, Philip’s anger would surely have been greater than any possible benefit. If Plutarch is right that Olympias and her son’s friends advocated this foolish strategy, then, despite the diplomatic victory of Alexander’s recall, they remained rattled and perhaps angry and so offered advice that weakened rather than strengthened his position. They called Philip’s bluff only to find it was no bluff.106
Just a short time can have passed between the collapse of the proposed Carian alliance and departure of Alexander’s companions for exile and the murder of Philip.107 As has been noted, he was murdered in the midst of the wedding festivities for his daughter Cleopatra and his brother-in-law, and now son-in-law, Alexander of Molossia. Though our sources for the assassination are poor,108 the identity and motivation of the assassin are clear enough. Pausanias, a young Macedonian noble and former lover of Philip, having become involved in a dispute with another of Philip’s young lovers, was gang-raped at the command of Attalus and Cleopatra,109 who were associates of Pausanias’ rival. Pausanias had expected justice from his former royal lover but Philip, thanks to the importance of Attalus, failed to punish his new bride’s guardian and tried to placate Pausanias in other ways. His honor in jeopardy, Pausanias planned and carried out the assassination of
Olympias, wife of Philip II 39
Philip, choosing to stab or spear him in the midst of a public procession.
Although it is not certain, Pausanias was probably killed soon after the regicide. Alexander, with the likely support of Antipater, was recognized as king and he, rather than his father, led the great Graeco-Macedonian expedition to Asia.
Immediately suspicions arose that Pausanias had not acted alone but that he was supported or even employed by Olympias and/or Alexander (Plut.
Alex. 10.4; Just. 9.8.1–14). Two factors explain why contemporaries suspected that they were implicated in the murder. First, past Macedonian history, especially recent Macedonian history, was full of regicides and attempted regicide of one Argead against another, whereas only the assassination of Archelaus, more than sixty years earlier, may have involved non-Argeads who acted for reasons somewhat similar to those of Pausanias. So the first and natural assumption was that Argeads lay behind Pausanias’
crime.110 That assumption seemed to be confirmed by the recent troubles between Philip and his wife and son, particularly since Olympias and Alexander shared with Pausanias the same enemies, Attalus and Cleopatra.
It was easy to deduce that mother and son found in Pausanias a handy means to extract vengeance against their enemies and guarantee Alexander’s succession at a time which meant that he, not his father, would command the great Asian expedition.111
Our sources permit no certainty about the innocence or guilt of Alexander and his mother. Probably few at the time knew in any absolute way whether they had played a role in Philip’s death, but it is impossible to deny that they might have been involved. Both later committed acts of political violence and proved capable of public acts of anger and vengeance. Philip had given them, even if unintentionally, reason to doubt their futures and perhaps reason to fear for their lives. Not only Alexander but Olympias benefited from Philip’s elimination. She exercised much more influence, as we shall see, as the mother of a king than she had as the wife of one.
Nonetheless, though Alexander and Olympias may not have much regretted Philip’s murder, they were not likely to have been involved in it, for a number of reasons. First, though his death brought advantages to both, their involvement would have put at risk everything each of them wanted. As things had stood, no matter how much they had come to distrust Philip and he they, the king had no viable alternative heir in the immediate future. Philip was a middle-aged man committed to years of dangerous campaigning with a high level of personal danger. Alexander continued to stand an excellent chance of inheriting the throne, quite possibly in the near future. If, however, the Macedonians had discovered that Alexander had killed his father, they would not have accepted him as their king; the same would be true if evidence implicated Olympias.112 (One could, perhaps, imagine that Alexander and Olympias at some point became aware of Pausanias’ plot and, though not directly involving themselves, failed to inform Philip. However, even this possibility seems remote for some of the reasons discussed below.)
40 Olympias, wife of Philip II Moreover, the circumstances of the murder strongly argue against their participation.113 Olympias and Alexander had easy access to Philip, both in person and via agents. They had no need to commit a public murder and had considerable reason to avoid it. Alexander and Olympias were not likely to humiliate young Cleopatra and her Aeacid groom on their wedding day, a day meant (among other things) to restore the good repute of Olympias’
family with a grand show. The assassination seriously threatened Macedonian domination of Greece and hardly guaranteed that Alexander would replace his father as commander of the joint Graeco-Macedonian expeditionary force. Indeed, it could have led to the collapse of the planned invasion, and it did cause internal instability (see Chapter 3). Alexander had to work very hard to establish his control over Macedonia, the Greeks, and the expeditionary force. No matter what group Greeks blamed for the assassination, the very fact that it happened seemed to show that Macedonia really was the barbaric, chaotic, and unstable kingdom that Philip had tried so hard to convince his southern neighbors that it was not. The regicide made it appear that Macedonia had returned to the bad old days of weakness and instability and thus encouraged the Thebans and others to attempt the overthrow of the existing order so newly established by Philip. Alexander and Olympias, if they intended harm, had every reason to arrange a discreet murder at home or on some convenient battlefield. They had no need to humiliate both royal dynasties and threaten the destruction of things they held dear by this embarrassing episode that seemed to confirm southern Greek stereotypes about the peoples of northern Greece.
Though mother and son undeniably benefited from Philip’s death, they were hardly the only ones to do so. Moreover, some of the other beneficiaries of Philip’s demise risked virtually nothing if their participation in or support of Pausanias’ plot were to be revealed. The Athenians and Persians would not have been embarrassed if they had participated and their participation were exposed. Philip’s death did delay the invasion of the Persian Empire for two years. Members of the Persian elite had spent time at Philip’s court and could easily have found agents to collaborate with Pausanias.114 In
deed, if, as the evidence suggests, Pausanias had hoped to survive his regicide, he must have had reason to expect that some power not formally allied with Philip would take him in. That power would most likely have been the Persian king.
Furthermore, elements within Macedonia itself benefited and yet did not share the risk of exposure that Alexander and Olympias did. Separatist elements within Macedonia, most likely members of one of the formerly independent dynasties of Upper Macedonia, may have felt that the cost to Macedonian prestige was much less important than the chance to eliminate the man who had ended their liberty, before he set off to cover himself with yet more glory. Philip’s nephew Amyntas, though a less likely conspirator than the others, cannot be ruled out.115 Uncles and nephews had murdered each other in Macedonia before, but no king had been killed by his own son.
Olympias, wife of Philip II 41
Finally, Pausanias really could have been a lone assassin. The humiliation of his unavenged gang-rape, the failure of his former lover to punish the guilty, and the increasing prominence of those responsible were powerful motives in a culture that endorsed tyrannicide. The mere attempt would have helped to restore his public honor and reputation.
Whatever the truth, Alexander and Olympias tried to direct suspicions away from themselves and toward some of the groups just mentioned (see Chapter 3 for further discussion). Their official line on the murder of Philip seems to have been that Pausanias did not act alone. As we shall see, this approach not only provided other people to blame but enabled them to eliminate a number of inconvenient rivals.
If my reconstruction of events and motivation is correct, the evening after the assassination of Philip would have found Alexander and Olympias surprised, possibly even somewhat grief stricken, but surely also very relieved. They had negotiated the dangers and complexities of Philip’s court successfully—Olympias may well have credited herself for her son’s accomplishment—and the throne was now Alexander’s. In a sense, though, it was theirs, his and Olympias’. That, at least, was almost certainly Olympias’
opinion. The last-minute threat to Alexander’s succession may have made mother and son closer than they would have been had events proceeded as they had expected. Their close political bond, forged by the unusual circumstances of the last months of Philip’s reign, would endure, though it would also grow more complex.
3
Olympias, mother of the king,
Alexander the Great
During the reign of her son (336–323), Olympias managed to play a significant role in in the public life of Macedonia, her homeland Molossia, and the Greek peninsula in general. The contrast to her comparative obscurity during her husband’s reign is striking. Assessing the degree of her power during this period presents many difficulties, only some the result of the prejudices and omissions of the sources. Whatever her personal mix of feelings at the time of her son’s departure for the Asian campaign, Olympias’ actions imply that she regarded his absence as an opportunity to exercise greater authority than would have been possible if Alexander had remained in Macedonia.1
Her influence with her son fluctuated during his reign, depending, to some degree, on the issue at hand. As we shall see, she had greater clout with him in the earliest and latest stages of his reign, less when his campaign was at its glamorous height and Antipater (the man to whom he had entrusted supreme military control of Macedonia and Greece) was most critical to him.
If the issue was a potential threat to his throne, Alexander paid considerable attention to his mother’s views, but if it was not, he sometimes treated her much as he did other members of the highly competitive and rancorous Macedonian elite, appearing to keep an amused distance between himself and their quarrels, consequently allowing them to fester, and occasionally even encouraging them, all for reasons of his own. Nonetheless, mother and son remained a political unit. So long as Alexander lived, Olympias might not always have got what she wanted, but she was always physically safe, and those who opposed her in even the smallest matter must have needed to keep a weather eye on the king, uncertain as to whether he would take offense.
The beginning of Alexander’s reign proved even less stable than the troubled final years of his father’s. Plutarch ( Alex. 11.1) commented that at his accession the young king faced “great jealousies, terrible hatred, and danger everywhere.” Alexander had to confront grave external and internal problems. Successions in Macedonia were always moments of uncertainty, likely to produce foreign invasions and alternative Argead candidates, often backed by foreign powers. Such a scenario was especially likely to develop after an assassination. Philip’s unprecedented power within Macedonia and
Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great 43
over the entire Greek peninsula, the tensions of the last years of his reign, and the rumors about the possible involvement of Alexander and/or Olympias in his death only increased the chance that Alexander’s succession as Macedonian king, let alone as hegemon (leader) of the Corinthian League (the Greek alliance his father had formed and led), would be opposed.
In less than two years, between Philip’s murder and his own departure, Alexander had to handle threats to both positions. Externally, he dealt with a Greek revolt, gained recognition as hegemon, campaigned against the Thracians, crushed an Illyrian invasion, and put down the revolt of the Thebans.2 Internally, he caused the deaths of a number of prominent Macedonians. A rash of such deaths typically occurred in the context of royal succession in Macedonia. Usually it is impossible to determine if those eliminated had conspired against the king, whether the king eliminated them in order to prevent such plotting, or whether fear of the latter precipitated the former. Moreover, the degree to which those killed were said to be (or actually were) part of a common conspiracy remains murky. This is particularly the case in terms of Alexander’s reign because the chronology of these deaths is unclear. Alexander seems to have justified their deaths on the grounds that they had been involved in the plot against Philip and/or plotted against Alexander himself. Plutarch ( Mor. 327c) said that at the beginning of Alexander’s reign, all of Macedonia was unstable and looked to Amyntas and the sons of Aeropus. Alexander eliminated his cousin Amyntas (son of Philip’s predecessor, and presumably the Amyntas to whom Plutarch referred3) and two of the three sons of Aeropus.4 Perhaps the most inevit-able5 death was that of Attalus, the uncle and guardian of Philip’s last bride, the man who had publicly questioned Alexander’s ability to succeed. Attalus was in Asia at the time of Alexander’s accession, having been sent as one of the commanders of Philip’s preliminary force. Alexander arranged the death of Attalus on the grounds that he was, in collaboration with Athenians, planning a revolt.6
Alexander’s post-accession purges affected the life of Olympias because she took part in them. She probably murdered Attalus’ niece Cleopatra and Cleopatra’s baby daughter, Europa, by Philip. The evidence for the crime is poor,7 apparently because it did not take place in public.8 Only one of the major Alexander narratives clearly mentions it: Justin (9.7.12) asserts that Olympias first killed the daughter in her mother’s arms and then forced Cleopatra to hang herself out of a desire for revenge (see below). Later, Justin (12.6.14) lists Alexander’s murdered stepmother (as well as unnamed brothers) among those whose deaths he had brought about, thus implying that Alexander was also complicit in the crime. Plutarch ( Alex. 10.4) crypti-cally reports that Alexander was vexed with his mother because, while he was absent, she “treated Cleopatra savagely.” Plutarch’s choice of words could mean that he was not aware of the accusation of murder or might even suggest that Alexander reproached his mother not for the fact but the manner of Cleopatra’s death, but more likely it constitutes a euphemistic
44 Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great reference to murder. Like Justin, Plutarch does not implicate Alexander in the murder directly, but implies that he was complicit: he attributes a quotation from Medea (289) to Alexander that hints the king brought about the deaths of Philip, Attalus, and Cl
eopatra. Finally, the second-century CE
geographer Pausanias (8.7.5) claims that Olympias killed Cleopatra and her infant son by dragging them over a burning brazier. Thus the only extant sources that refer to the incident disagree about the method of the murders and the sex of the murdered infant (Plutarch omits all mention of the child) and are uncertain or unclear about Alexander’s involvement in the crime.
Granted the absence of a standard account and the probability that this was a secret crime, one could even suppose that Cleopatra killed herself and her child out of despair.
Certainly none of these sources inspires much confidence in their veracity.
Pausanias’ version is the least credible. The method of execution (lurid but inconvenient), the supposed sex of the infant,9 his hostility to the Macedonian royal house, and his generally poor reputation for accuracy all engender doubts.10 Plutarch’s discussion is so vague (one cannot determine which of the two methods of execution inspires his remarks) and ambiguous as to be useless. Justin’s narrative is never especially accurate or trustworthy and his reference to the murder follows his particularly over-the-top account of Olympias’ behavior immediately after Philip’s death. Nonetheless, one piece of external evidence suggests that his version of the death of Cleopatra and her child deserves more respect than the other accounts. Diodorus (19.11.
2–7) recounts that nearly twenty years later, Olympias forced another royal woman, Adea Eurydice (Philip’s granddaughter and then wife of Alexander’s successor Philip Arrhidaeus), to kill herself by hanging. The Diodorus episode lends credibility to Justin’s account.11 In sum, it is likely that Olympias somehow arranged the death of the baby and forced Cleopatra to hang herself.
In terms of understanding Olympias’ life, it would be useful to know why she wanted the mother and child to die and how her actions might or might not fit into the context of her times. Only Justin mentions her motivation—
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