Olympias

by Elizabeth Carney

  It is hard to know what Olympias and Polyperchon planned to do next.

  Even before his invasion of Macedonia, Polyperchon had already lost most of his dominance of the southern Greek peninsula, thanks to Cassander’s superior political and military skill.77 Diodorus’ narrative makes it clear that a series of successes of Cassander and failures of Olympias (and her supporters) led to her surrender and death. Olympias had no military experience, in battle or in command, and she had traveled to Macedonia with a group of non-combatants, children and women.78 It seems unlikely that she and Polyperchon had ever expected her to play a military role. They must surely have anticipated that Cassander would return to Macedonia when he heard what Olympias had accomplished. Indeed, Olympias’ actions after her victory seem almost calculated to bring about the return of Cassander. Nonetheless, from this point forward, Polyperchon took only a peripheral role, Olympias appears to have made many command decisions, and both Polyperchon and Olympias acted in ways that indicate they were unprepared for Cassander’s rapid advance.79

  Olympias’ position unraveled quickly. Though the Aetolians, allies of Olympias and Polyperchon (Diod. 19.35.2), blocked the famous pass at Thermopylae, Cassander, by means of naval transport, managed to move his forces into Thessaly anyway. Polyperchon waited for Cassander in Perrhaebia, on the Macedonian border, but Cassander sidestepped Polyperchon’s army and headed straight for Olympias. Meanwhile, Callas, one of Cassander’s generals, besieged Polyperchon and ultimately bribed his troops to desert (Diod. 19.35.3, 36.5–6). Polyperchon was therefore never able to come to Olympias’ aid or that of other forces supporting her. (One wonders about the comparative sizes of his forces and those of Cassander.)80 Olympias herself dispatched troops to prevent the advance of Cassander’s army through the passes into Macedonia but they found them already held by Cassander’s forces (Diod. 19.35.3).

  Realizing that Cassander was near, Olympias ensconced herself in Pydna,81

  accompanied by a large group of non-combatant courtiers but only a small and motley military force.82 Though she appointed Aristonous, Alexander’s former Somatophulax, her general and ordered him to fight it out with Cassander, he seems to have done little and ultimately withdrew some distance, to Amphipolis (Diod. 19.36.4–5, 50.3).83

  Despite the fact that Olympias found herself besieged in a city ill-prepared for such an ordeal, Diodorus observes that she consciously decided to remain.

  Although she knew the risk, he says she hoped that if she remained, Greeks and Macedonians would provide aid by sea (Diod. 19.35.6). As it turned out, aid did not come from her two closest allies (Eumenes and her nephew

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  King Aeacides), although Olympias could not have known that this would be the case when she made her decision.84 Eumenes’ brilliant military career in Asia suddenly spiraled downward. He surrendered and was murdered about the same time that Olympias herself died.85 Faithful Aeacides called up the Molossians to march to Olympias’ aid, but once more Cassander’s troops had taken early control of critical passes into Macedonia. Diodorus says that most of Aeacides’ troops had not wanted this campaign anyway and now revolted where they were camped.86 While he was still determined to help Olympias, the revolt forced Aeacides to allow most of his force to depart and he was able to do little with his small remaining army. Meanwhile, the dissidents returned to Epirus and inspired a political revolution. They decreed exile for Aeacides and temporarily abandoned Aeacid monarchy for an alliance with Cassander and rule by one of his generals (Diod.

  19.36.2–5). According to Pausanias (1.11.4), the Epirotes abandoned Aeacides on account of their hatred of Olympias, but Justin (13.3.16–18) blames it on Aeacides’ frequent military opposition to Macedonia and Epirote hatred of him (see further Chapter 6).87 In any event, Olympias’ personal antagonism with Antipater had, certainly by this stage if not years earlier, been transformed into a multi-generational feud between the Aeacids and the Antipatrids.88

  Diodorus’ narrative indicates that the Greek and Macedonian support Olympias had hoped for eroded as the military victories of her enemies increased. Generally, he describes people reluctant to abandon Olympias but fearful of the consequences of supporting the losing side. He says (Diod.

  19.36.5) that only after the Epirotes had allied with Cassander did people throughout the country who had favored Olympias despair and turn to Cassander too. As we have noted, Polyperchon’s troops had to be bribed to go over to Cassander; they had no inclination in his favor otherwise. When the siege of Pydna proved disastrous and the troops were starving to death, many of the soldiers under Olympias’ command begged her to let them go and she did. This presumably means that they did not want simply to desert (Diod. 19.50.1). Cassander treated those who departed well, sending them off to their homes. Diodorus comments that Cassander did this in the hope that when people found out about the weakness ( asthenia) of Olympias, they would desert her cause. This, he says, happened. Those who had been determined to continue to fight on the side of those besieged now changed sides to Cassander, leaving Aristonous in Amphipolis and Monimus in Pella as the only resistance to Cassander outside Pydna. Monimus, of whom no more is known, surrendered only when he heard that Olympias had yielded to Cassander; Aristonous held out yet longer, surrendering only when commanded to do so by Olympias herself (Diod. 19.50.1–8). Diodorus’

  account is clear. Though Olympias’ earlier brutal acts may have cost her some support, the main reason her cause failed was the military failure of the generals supporting her and the consistently successful performance of the forces of Cassander.89 The behavior of Macedonians at the time of

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  Olympias’ death (see below) confirms the conclusion that she lost support because of the defeat of her forces, not because people had lost sympathy for her.

  Recognizing that her situation was hopeless, after the failure of an escape attempt,90 Olympias submitted to Cassander on a promise of her personal safety (Diod. 19.50.6; Just. 14.6.5). A similar promise was made to Aristonous, but Cassander later reneged on it and arranged his death (Diod.

  19.51.1).91

  It is hard to believe that Olympias or anyone else doubted that Cassander would bring about her death, despite his guarantee of her safety. The surprise is what a comparatively difficult time he had in accomplishing this task.

  He arranged a trial or judicial proceeding of some sort in front of what Justin (14.6.6) calls a popular assembly and Diodorus (19.51.1) the assembly of the Macedonians.92 We do not know where this assembly took place, but quite possibly it was at Pydna; if so, then those in attendance would have been the men who had just fought against Olympias.93 Both authors report that Cassander urged the relatives of those whom Olympias had murdered to come forward with charges (their nature unspecified) against her (Justin seems to say that he bribed them), and the assembly condemned her to death.

  At this point the accounts diverge. They differ about the context of her death, its perpetrators, and its method. Pausanias (9.7.2) simply says that Cassander turned Olympias over to those Macedonians who were irritated with her so that she could be stoned to death.94 Justin, complaining that the Macedonians had forgotten the wealth, power, and security that her husband and son had brought them, reports that when Olympias saw armed men approaching her, she went out to meet them, dressed in royal attire and supported by two maids. This action surprised her would-be assassins and reminded them of her former majesty and the names of all the kings she called to mind, and they did not kill her. Instead, Cassander had to send other men to stab her. Rather than trying to avoid the sword and its wounds or crying out “like a woman,” Justin claims that Olympias faced death in the manner of brave men, in keeping with the glory of her ancient lineage, so that “you could see Alexander even in his dying mother.” By going out to meet her killers, Justin’s Olympias defined her death and rendered it a kind of forced suicide since she, in effect, chose it and chose to
make it a public death.

  Finally, Justin reports that as she died, she arranged herself to maintain the modesty of her body.95

  Diodorus proceeds with a more complex and confusing version of events than that of the others, but his is probably closer to what really happened.

  Even though Olympias had already been condemned through Cassander’s contriving, he sent his friends to try to lure her into a second escape attempt, not out of concern for her safety but in order to, in effect, condemn herself to death and so appear to experience a just punishment. Cassander, says Diodorus, was concerned about Olympias’ reputation and the changeability

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  of the Macedonians.96 This time, though, Olympias refused to flee, hoping to defend herself in public.97 Fearful that the Macedonians might indeed change their minds if they heard Olympias has defended herself and if they recalled what her husband and son had done for them, Cassander dispatched two hundred soldiers with orders to kill her quickly. Although they broke into the royal dwelling, on seeing Olympias the soldiers were overcome by her reputation ( axioma) and left without killing her. Diodorus says that in the end the relatives of those whom Olympias had slaughtered, hoping to gain favor with Cassander as well as to avenge those who had died, killed her. Diodorus, like Justin, comments that the dying Olympias said nothing unworthy of her birth or “womanish.”

  The oddities and discrepancies in these accounts of an event that must have been famous in its day are puzzling, but hardly unusual. Diodorus’ narrative offers a confused and confusing picture of the political/judicial proceedings.

  Perhaps he misunderstood his presumed source Hieronymus or so fore-shortened it as to make it unintelligible. Cassander, despite having engineered one guilty verdict, apparently had to face the possibility of another sort of trial, one in which Olympias would be allowed to speak. Rather than risk that, he turned to what appear to be extra-legal means to eliminate Olympias without another public decision. As kings had often done, he tried to involve and thus implicate a larger group in the killing of a famous person, but his attempt failed and he was forced to consign to the relatives of those Olympias had killed the business of her death; and even they required encouragement.

  Various solutions to the apparent contradictions of Diodorus’ narrative have been proposed. Some have suggested that the first trial was for Olympias’ murder of members of the elite (thus the role of the kin of the murdered as accusers and executioners) and the second trial, the one Cassander avoided, would have been for treason, for killing a king.98 Others have argued that Diodorus should be understood to mean that, at the time Cassander took alternative action, the Macedonians had not yet condemned Olympias, though they intended to, but that Cassander broke off the trial before she could speak in order to prevent a possible favorable verdict if she did so.99 Still others have concluded that two different deliberative bodies were at work, both of which somehow had a right to participate.100

  Diodorus, however, twice refers to the Macedonians changing their minds (19.51.3, 4), suggesting that the same or some of the same people would have been involved in both the first and second procedures.

  Whatever the character, legality, and legitimacy of these proceedings (or lack of same), some conclusions are still possible. Cassander probably wanted a public event in order to involve large numbers of people in the decision to kill Olympias,101 and he must originally have been confident of her conviction, but something went wrong with his plan. If I have read Diodorus correctly, minds changed during the trial itself. In any event, both Justin and Diodorus indicate a subsequent reversal of opinion on the part of those

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  delegated to kill her. Apparently, Cassander never tried to involve the whole army (his whole army, after all) in her death, unlike other Macedonian executions.102 In the end, her death looked more like a vendetta on the part of the kin of Olympias’ victims and Cassander himself than a judicial punishment.103 The similar fate of Olympias’ general Aristonous confirms this view. As has been said, like Olympias, Aristonous had surrendered on a promise of physical safety (Diod. 19.50.8); a promise, like that made to Olympias, that was subsequently ignored. Cassander had the kinsmen of Cratevas kill him (19.51.1), a particularly outrageous act of vengeance since, when Aristonous had recently defeated and captured Cratevas, he had allowed him to go free (19.50.7). Cratevas’ family members were apparently taking vengeance for Cratevas’ defeat, hardly for his mistreatment. The surprising trouble Cassander experienced in the process of eliminating Olympias clearly testifies to the existence of continuing support for her and doubts about Cassander.

  I do not mean to suggest that this support was entirely or perhaps even primarily for Olympias personally, though some of it probably was.

  Olympias, as we have seen, symbolized the royal house and the great deeds of her husband and son.104 Surely no one, at this stage, could have doubted that the death of Olympias meant the end of the Argeads, and Cassander’s actions immediately after her death (Diod. 19.52.1–5; Just. 14.6.13) would certainly have confirmed this view. Cassander imprisoned Roxane and Alexander IV, having deprived the latter of all signs of his royal status and treated him like a private person,105 and he refused to allow proper burial of Olympias’ body (see below). Thus, by his actions, he tried to categorize the “Alexander branch” of the Argeads as illegitimate. At the same time, he attempted to link himself to other branches of the royal house and thus to legitimacy by burying Adea Eurydice and Philip Arrhidaeus with royal splendor106 and by marrying Thessalonice (a half-sister of Alexander whom he had captured at Pydna, along with the rest of Olympias’ entourage). Years would pass before the cautious Cassander (worried about popular reaction to the killing of Olympias and uncertain about the military success of his allies) thought it was safe to murder Alexander IV and his mother,107 and several more years before he formally took the royal title, but Diodorus is surely right to say he aimed to be king, sooner or later.108 The Macedonians hesitated to kill Olympias because they hesitated to abolish the royal house.

  Justin’s account of Olympias’ last actions and even Diodorus’ more abbreviated and sober version have a literary feel: the notion that a high-born woman died a death worthy of her male kin is a recognizable classical topos (theme) and the concern for the propriety of the female body at the time of death is something one finds elsewhere, too.109 As I have noted, accounts of the death of Adea Eurydice resemble some aspects of those dealing with Olympias’ death and have, as well, other literary aspects. The play-like, even epic, feel of the stories about the ends of these two royal

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  women need not, however, render them entirely false. Alexander and many of the Successors acted like Homeric heroes, often in order to gain the support and approval of their troops. In effect, Homer and tragedy gave them a script, one that was genuinely meaningful to them but also something they could manipulate to their own ends.110 Olympias, her daughter Cleopatra, and Adea Eurydice may have done much the same. Olympias believed herself to be the linear descendant of both Achilles and Priam. The heroic tradition gave her a model for how she ought to die and she may well have followed it. Surely she would have thought that her axioma demanded it. The irony is that Olympias did not die the private, appropriately gendered death she had granted her female enemies. Men killed her with swords, perhaps even in public.111 She died the death of a male hero.112

  We must conclude with a consideration of the immediate fate of Olympias’

  corpse. Diodorus (17.118.2)113 says that Cassander, having murdered her, cast her out unburied, and attributes this treatment to Cassander’s bitter opposition to Alexander’s policies. In other words, he puts Cassander’s refusal of burial in the context of the quarrel between the two families. Surely it must also have been a reaction to Olympias’ treatment of Iolaus, a reaction similar to the violation and counter-violation of Molossian and Macedonian royal graves.
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  While most Greeks had a genuine horror of the idea of treating human remains like domestic refuse, based more on human dignity than concern for the wandering souls of the unburied dead,114 this is not the only historic Macedonian example of refusal to bury. Several years earlier Antigonus had first maltreated the body of Alcetas, brother of Perdiccas, and then left it unburied (Diod. 18.47.3). Refusal of burial, either historic or mythic, seems to occur when the dead have either been involved in a peculiarly bitter struggle or have acted in a way that the winners consider irreligious or immoral. Moreover, despite generic Greek horror of non-burial, many Greek peoples employed it as a legal punishment, the most extreme one, for sacrilege, treason, or attempted tyranny.115 Legality, however, particularly since we do not know if the assembly decreed the punishment or whether Cassander simply decided it, is probably not the issue.

  Perhaps more compelling, particularly for Macedonian society, are mythic and especially Homeric examples of refusal to bury and bad treatment of corpses. Achilles’ maltreatment of the corpse of Hector and refusal to bury it ( Il. 22.395–404, 23.20–3, 24.14–21) is the most famous instance, but hardly the only one. Patroclus hoped to dishonor the body of Sarpedon ( Il.

  16.559–60), Hector planned to cut off Patroclus’ head and give it to the dogs ( Il. 17.125–7), and, once Achilles had killed Hector, the other Greek heroes gathered round the corpse and stabbed it ( Il. 22.371–4). While it is true that in the Iliad, heroes imagined or threatened non-burial but did not generally follow up on the threat (after all, even Achilles allows the burial of Hector in the end),116 the idea of it is an important aspect of Homeric battle, not an extreme notion limited to Achilles in his “feral” period following the death

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  of Patroclus. Nor is maltreatment of a corpse.117 Homeric heroes hoped to deprive their enemies of graves for a variety of compelling reasons: revenge, symbolization of victory, but perhaps most importantly, denial of the memory and fame of the dead.118