The nature of Olympias’ alliance and her role in the army that accompanied her are no clearer than the position of her rival. As has been said, we know comparatively little about the specifics of Polyperchon’s offers and nothing of the terms to which Olympias (presumably) finally agreed.
Duris implies that Olympias as well as Adea Eurydice commanded an army, although he attributes a very different, non-military attire to Olympias, but one nonetheless that may have alluded to past Macedonian victories.52
According to Duris, she went into battle dressed as a Bacchant or worshiper of Dionysus. Diodorus’ narrative (19.11.2–4), however, implies that while Adea Eurydice literally exercised command, Olympias did not. He reports that Polyperchon, having made Aeacides (Olympias’ nephew) his partner, gathered a force in order to restore Olympias and her grandson to basileia (rule or kingdom). Diodorus’ subsequent narrative (19.11.4–9), though, indicates that, after the battle, Olympias was in political control. Justin (14.5.1–10) is somewhat less clear: initially he reports that Polyperchon intended to return to Macedonia and had sent for Olympias, thus intimating that Polyperchon was in charge, but in terms of the confrontation itself, he omits any mention of Polyperchon and says that Olympias returned accompanied by Aeacides.53
So the aging Olympias, probably following the same mountain passes by which she, as a young bride, had crossed the Pindus Mountains, returned to Macedonia. Despite her years and previous cautious policy, she set off on one last adventure, a final throw of the dynastic dice. It was a glorious moment. When the two armies were arrayed against each other, the Macedonian army caught sight of Olympias. Despite Adea Eurydice’s gifts and promises to the most prominent, the army defected to Olympias without a battle. Diodorus (19.11.2) attributes their action to respect for her reputation ( axioma) and memory of the benefits Alexander had conveyed to them. Justin (14.5.10) is not sure whether to explain this sudden reversal because of the troops’ memory of Olympias’ husband or the greatness of
Olympias on her own, 323–316 75
her son and the consequent shame involved in opposing her.54 In any event, at this moment Olympias reached the zenith of her power and influence.
However, from this high point, her decline was precipitate. Within a year Cassander had engineered her death and any chance that her grandson might ever rule in any true sense of the word died with her. When one turns to the question of why Olympias so rapidly lost the power and support she enjoyed when she first returned to Macedonia, many historians have answered that she failed because of a series of brutal actions she undertook soon after her return, actions they believe cost her popularity and support. According to this view, her bad actions led to her downfall. I shall argue that events in Macedonia at any point, let alone at this moment, rarely resembled a morality play where the good were rewarded and the unjust punished, that many of the male Successors committed similar or worse atrocities yet suffered no significant consequences (or the condemnation of historians ancient or modern), and that military losses (her own and others’) led to her failure, not the brutality of her actions. These actions did cost her some support, but they played no decisive role in her defeat.55
Let us begin with exactly what she did. Diodorus says (19.11.4–9) that when she captured the royal pair, she not only imprisoned them but, contrary to law (or custom), walled them up (apparently having them fed through an opening). When the Macedonians expressed pity for the sufferers, she consigned each a gender-appropriate death, ordering that Philip Arrhidaeus be stabbed, in keeping with the expectation that men die by the blade, and giving Adea Eurydice a choice of methods to commit suicide, thus ensuring her the private death suitable for a woman. Adea Eurydice chose hanging, the most appropriate option for her gender, the preferred method of royal women in tragedy. (Diodorus mistakenly sees Adea Eurydice’s punishment as the greater.56) Diodorus stresses that, in the light of these actions, Olympias deserved the death she would soon get and provides a play-like account of Adea Eurydice’s last moments.57 After Olympias had eliminated the royal pair, Diodorus reports that she killed Cassander’s brother Nicanor and overturned the tomb of another brother, Iolaus; all punishment, she said, for Alexander’s death. Finally, she selected a hundred of Cassander’s friends for slaughter. According to Diodorus, once she had satisfied her rage by these lawless acts, many Macedonians came to hate her savagery and recalled Antipater’s supposed deathbed warning against letting a woman be pre-dominant in the kingdom.
Other sources provide fewer details. Justin’s (14.5.10–6.1) account of these events is quite brief though similarly hostile. He simply reports that she killed Philip Arrhidaeus and Adea Eurydice and then comments that, acting more like a woman than a king, she transformed support into hatred because she killed the nobility indiscriminately. Plutarch ( Alex. 77.1) offers a more grisly version of Olympias’ treatment of Iolaus: she scattered about his remains. Pausanias (1.11.3–4) remarks mysteriously that Olympias did
“unholy” ( anosia) things to Philip Arrhidaeus (he does not mention Adea
76 Olympias on her own, 323–316
Eurydice) and that she was even more unholy to many others. His diction could signify that he believed she had left Philip Arrhidaeus and others unburied, but more likely refers to the manner of their deaths, or, perhaps, to the sense that she, as a woman, had no right to kill a king. It is unlikely that other authors would have omitted to mention it if Olympias had actually failed to bury the king. If, however, she buried him but did not cremate (the more expensive and prestigious method) him, both Pausanias’ choice of words and the omissions of other sources would be explained.58 Pausanias insists that her actions meant that she deserved what she later got from Cassander.
Were Olympias’ actions peculiarly savage, atypical of the time, as both Justin and Diodorus say (and Pausanias perhaps implies)? The winning side in Macedonian succession disputes typically killed the leadership of the losing side. The Argeads had done this for generations and now, in the age of the Successors, each round in their wars tended to precipitate more deaths in similar circumstances. Granted past behavior, Macedonians must surely have expected that Olympias would kill both Philip Arrhidaeus and Adea Eurydice.
If, however, we accept Diodorus’ more detailed account, then one aspect of Olympias’ treatment of them was unusual. Instead of immediately killing them off—apparently the traditional approach—she walled them up for a while first. A careful reading of Diodorus suggests that this was what made her unpopular, since, when she realized the effect her action was having among the population, she immediately ordered the death of the royal couple.
Torture was employed by the Macedonians, as witnessed by the treatment of Philotas. As torture goes, walling someone up seems fairly mild, but if Olympias wanted Philip Arrhidaeus to relinquish the throne, she might have chosen this method to extract an abdication. Compared to some of the Successors, her methods of execution were positively genteel. For instance, Antigonus had Antigenes burned alive (Diod. 19.44.1) and Perdiccas had elephants trample a large group to death (Curt. 10.9.11–18).
Let us consider the other bad deeds of Olympias. Justin, as we have seen, does not mention the murder of Cassander’s brother Nicanor or the dishonoring of the tomb of Iolaus. Nonetheless, these actions may well have occurred. A son of Antipater named Nicanor is otherwise unknown.59 Still, if there were a son of Antipater accessible to Olympias, it seems likely enough that she would have killed him. If so, such an act was fairly typical of the period. Iolaus, the youngest son of Antipater, had been Alexander’s cupbearer at the time of his death. Unsurprisingly, those who believed that Antipater had arranged Alexander’s death typically believed that Iolaus had administered to the king poison that had been conveyed to Babylon by Cassander at Antipater’s behest.60 Disturbing a grave was serious business, though simply overturning a tomb (Diodorus’ version) would have been less upsetting than disturbing the remains of the dead (Plutarch).61
If, however, Olympias did bo
th, she would not have been the only one.
Pausanias (1.9.7–8) cites Hieronymus of Cardia for the information that
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Lysimachus, while warring with Pyrrhus, destroyed the graves and scattered the remains of Aeacids. Pausanias, however, probably incorrectly, insists that the story is false.62 Diodorus (22.12) and Plutarch ( Pyrrh. 16.6–7) both say that some of Pyrrhus’ Gaulic troops plundered the royal graves at Aegae and scattered abroad the bones; though Pyrrhus had no prior knowledge of their action, he failed to punish them and took the matter lightly. Surely these two incidents were parts of a continuing vendetta, applied even to the dead of the two royal houses. Olympias’ treatment of Iolaus’ grave conforms to the same pattern of blood feud that was common in Macedonia63 and remains a feature of life in some parts of the Balkans to this day. One could also interpret her actions as a retroactive refusal to bury. In the Hellenic world, refusal to allow burial was often associated with charges of treason (see below), and that could have been the import of her deed.
Were the multiple murders our sources attribute to Olympias unprecedented? The details of this episode are not, of course, clear. Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch all mention the deaths of a number of unnamed members of the Macedonian elite. Diodorus specifies the round number of a hundred, specifically said to be friends of Cassander. Justin simply asserts that Olympias slaughtered many in the elite (apparently randomly). Plutarch, though similarly vague, connects these multiple deaths to Olympias’ charges that Alexander was assassinated. Curtius (6.11.20, 8.6.28) mentions a Macedonian “lex” (law) requiring that the kin of those who plotted against the king should be killed as well. In fact, the Macedonians do not seem to have had national written laws at this period, but Curtius could be roughly correct in believing that relatives of assassins were frequently eliminated, along with the assassins themselves. In a world where kin often (though hardly always) functioned as a kind of political party, such a practice would not be surprising.
In any event, it seems likely that Olympias tried to weaken Cassander’s faction in his absence, probably claiming that those she executed who were not Cassander’s kin had also contributed to the plot against her son. If large-scale purges like this had happened prior to Alexander’s death, we have no record of them. After the death of Alexander, however, the murder/execution of groups of people became more common. Soon after Olympias’ death, one of Cassander’s generals burned five hundred of Polyperchon’s followers to death and killed a few more by other means (Diod. 19.63.2). The people Perdiccas eliminated by elephant trampling numbered at least thirty and possibly three hundred (Curt. 10.9.11–18).64 After the fall of Perdiccas, the assembly condemned to death more than fifty of his followers and they also killed his sister and unspecified numbers of his most trusted friends (Diod.
18.37.2; Arr. FGrH 156 F 9.30).65 Olympias may have been the first to conduct such a purge in Macedonia proper, but otherwise her ferocity mirrored that of her rivals and allies alike.
Should or can we distinguish legalized violent deaths (executions) from those that lack legitimacy (murders)? If such distinctions existed, how should
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we characterize Olympias’ actions? More particularly, even if her authority was legitimate, did she have a right to kill Macedonians without trial, let alone kill a king? Quite apart from the general argument about the nature of the Macedonian “constitution,” royal power in the matter of trials is particularly unclear.66 Alexander tried some but not all of those he had killed.
Procedure varied, apparently based on whether or not the ruler would benefit from involving others in responsibility for an execution. The status of the accused mattered. Some tradition involving groups of Macedonians in trials for capital crimes existed, but a king could ignore it. This might cause the ruler political problems but did not precipitate a constitutional crisis. In a proto-legal system like Macedonia’s, the purpose of political trials may not have been to discover a legal truth but to settle disputes between powerful figures, and “mustering of support” may have mattered more than establishing the facts of the case.67 This was even more true after the death of Alexander, when, for practical purposes, there was no king.
As we have seen, categorizing the nature of Olympias’ authority is difficult at any time in her life, but particularly so after the death of Antipater. If, as appears likely, she held the epimeleia for her grandson, then she probably had the right to hold trials, but chose not to.68 The legitimacy of virtually all the Successors after Perdiccas seems dubious, as the series of outlawings and rehabilitations should indicate. Olympias had at least as much right as any of the others to eliminate dissidents, but, like the others, she had to cope with the consequences. Killing a king, however nominally he ruled, was unusual; generally they died in battle or were assassinated. Legality was probably not the main issue—it never was in Macedonia—but Olympias’
somewhat postponed murder/execution of Philip Arrhidaeus could have seemed different from the usual form of royal violence.
Although Olympias’ actions were comparatively typical of those of Alexander’s generals, did they, nonetheless, generate more negative reaction simply because a woman had performed them?69 Despite the fact that Diodorus’ narrative indicates that she lost support primarily for military reasons (see below), shock that a woman had done such violent deeds could have contributed to her loss of popularity. This would be particularly likely for southern Greeks who entertained narrower expectations about the role of women than those in the north. Her actions would have fit the paradoxical stereotype of women as both more and less violent than men (see above), and the association of women with acts of vengeance.70 Granted the importance of women’s role in the care of the dead, Olympias’ dishonoring of Iolaus’ remains and possible dishonoring of Philip Arrhidaeus’ corpse might have seemed particularly heinous, but no source claims this. Macedonians, who generally allowed elite women considerably more leeway than did the southern Greeks and who could have seen Olympias’ violence as legitimate revenge, may not have been much bothered by any of her actions. Certainly, Antipater’s supposed deathbed warning that the Macedonians should never allow a woman to be first in the kingdom (Diod. 19.11.5), in the
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unlikely event that he actually uttered it,71 spoke to his personal enmity with Olympias.72 One can hardly doubt which woman was the subject of his warning. No good information exists to indicate that Olympias’ actions, simply because they were the work of a woman, cost her support of Macedonians who were not already partisans of the Antipatrids.
Olympias’ post-victory violence did have consequences, but the narrative of Diodorus (see below) demonstrates that the moralizing ancient sources exaggerate their importance. Cassander was already Olympias’ enemy, but her actions may have pushed those merely inclined towards Cassander further into his camp and frightened others previously friendly to Antipater, but not necessarily to Cassander, enough to push them into his son’s faction.
Her attack on Cassander’s supporters was necessarily polarizing. While her desecration of Iolaus’ remains enraged Cassander,73 it may not have had wider impact. The manner in which she dealt with Philip Arrhidaeus is the most problematic, as we have seen. Her treatment of him (and his wife) prior to death may have seemed inappropriate for royalty, and certainly, if she did indeed leave royal remains unburied, that would have been upsetting to Macedonians. The loyalty of the mass of Macedonians to the royal family was a powerful force, one that could help or hurt Olympias. While her other actions would, primarily, only have further offended those who were already her enemies, it is possible that her treatment of the king (and possibly his body) alienated some who would not otherwise have disapproved.
One might suppose that Olympias’ motivation for this series of brutal acts was obvious: eliminating the opposition before they could eliminate her. More specifically, she almost certainly ho
ped that her pre-emptive strike against Cassander’s faction would ensure a more stable situation for her grandson.
Had her brutal acts been followed by military victories, that might well have happened. If Diodorus is correct, Olympias may have made, in relation to these acts, some public announcement about her belief that the Antipatrids had engineered her son’s death. In short, she may have proclaimed these acts to be vengeance for Alexander’s death. As I have suggested, she may well have believed them guilty. Our evidence about Olympias and many others is simply not good enough to demonstrate whether they acted out of personal thirst for revenge and/or out of pragmatic policy, the need to eliminate the opposition. Those, modern and ancient, who simply assume that Olympias’
motivation was only personal and emotional, and further assume that murders committed for policy are somehow more admirable74 than those committed for personal satisfaction, indulge in sexual stereotyping. In her willingness to employ remorseless political violence, Olympias showed herself to be just like, rather than different from, the male Successors.75
Knowing what happened next, let alone understanding it, is not easy. Most historians agree that Olympias’ victory and the deaths she inflicted happened in the fall of 317, but there is no consensus on the chronology of subsequent events. Diodorus (19.35.1) reports that Cassander abandoned his campaign in the Peloponnese and marched north as soon as he heard the news of events
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in Macedonia. While I accept this chronology, many scholars believe that Cassander did not march north until the spring of 316.76 In terms of the life of Olympias, my chronological view means that she was dead by late spring 316, whereas those who take the other view believe that the campaign that brought about her capture and death developed more slowly.
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