Olympias

by Elizabeth Carney

  Despite Cassander’s prohibition against it, Olympias was buried somewhere near Pydna, the probable site of her murder. A now lost fragmentary inscription referred to her tomb.2 One reconstruction of this inscription makes it the memorial for her tomb itself. The inscription attributed her burial to a brave Aeacid.3 Two other funerary inscriptions indicate that her tomb once stood among or near those of other, less famous Aeacids.4 In all likelihood, then, her kin buried her secretly, shortly after her death.5

  The tomb and its testimonial verses doubtless had to wait for the death of the last of Cassander’s sons. If the Aeacids had not already built the tomb, the period when Olympias’ great-nephew Pyrrhus came to control the portion of Macedonia in which Pydna lies would have given them the opportunity.6

  Whether those who buried her were part of the largely female group of philoi who underwent the siege with her, including Aeacides’ daughter Deidameia (Diod. 19.36.5, 49.4; Just. 14.6.3) or other Aeacids already resident in Macedonia is unknown.7 In any event, some Aeacids continued to live in the Pydna area. All three of the funerary inscriptions, in addition to employing patronymics, also refer more generally to the Aeacid descent of those commemorated, thus demonstrating the pride in lineage that charac-

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  terized the clan. Of course, ordinarily Aeacids would have been buried in their homeland. These Macedonian Aeacids, apparently lacking access to their ancestral plot, must have used the tomb of Olympias as a focus for their burials.8 Certainly the text of the most well preserved of these inscriptions suggests this. It reads, “I am of Aeacid descent, Neoptolemus was my father, my name was Alcimachus, one of those [descended] from Olympias . . .” In this patriarchal society, reference to descent from a woman (so famous a woman no patronymic was needed9) is striking, particularly since the speaker has already mentioned his Aeacid descent. Aeacid loyalty apparently continued to be a potent force: the family seemed to embrace the memory of its most famous member, other than Pyrrhus.

  The fact that Pyrrhus named his daughter Olympias confirms the conclusion that Aeacids revered the memory of Olympias. Since Olympias was not her original Aeacid name, his choice could only commemorate the mother of Alexander the Great.10 The career of Olympias II mirrored that of her famous namesake in some respects. Having married her half-brother Alexander II, she became regent for their sons after her husband’s death, supposedly antagonized the Epirote Alliance, thus inviting an Aetolian invasion, and arranged the marriage of her daughter to Demetrius II, king of Macedonia. Like Olympias I, a hostile tradition accuses her of poisoning someone.11 Both her sons predeceased her and the monarchy foundered after her death c. 229 (Just. 28.1.1–4, 3.1–8).

  Although her kin revered Olympias’ reputation, Molossians in general may not have. One could make a good case for the idea that the downward spiral of Molossian monarchy began in the period of Olympias’ return to Molossia and was in fact triggered by Aeacides’ attempt to relieve Olympias at the siege of Pydna, during her war with Cassander. Nonetheless, granted our poor sources for Molossian history, their tendency to personalize conflicts that were almost certainly broader, their failure to distinguish Molossians from Epirotes in general, and our uncertainty about how Aeacids of the period were related to each other, the reasons for the decline of Molossian monarchy are difficult to determine.

  By the time of Aeacides’ second attempt to aid Olympias (presumably winter or early spring 316), one Molossian king had died in battle, Molossians had experienced a long female regency, had accepted Aeacides as their new king, and had already followed him into Macedonia once in support of Olympias. The emergence of the Epirote Alliance was a major development in the period that affected the Aeacids. Whatever its origins (see Chapter 4), it placed Molossian kings, already limited monarchs compared to those of Macedonia, under even greater strictures, although it did give them greater military power, as the new commanders of the army of the alliance. During much of this same period, Macedonia had dominated Molossian affairs.

  When Aeacides found the mountain passes blocked against his passage into Macedonia by Cassander’s troops, his own forces, already unenthused, revolted and Aeacides had to allow those who wanted to leave to do so. He

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  tried to carry on with his small remaining force but could do nothing to help Olympias. Back in Molossia, the troops whom Aeacides had released generated a revolution against him, had a decree of exile passed, and made an alliance with Cassander, who then sent in a general to act as regent. Diodorus commented that this was unprecedented: previously, in Molossia, father had succeeded son on the throne, from the times of the first Neoptolemus (19.36.2–5).

  While Diodorus offers no reason for these events, Justin, despite his generally more confused and mistaken narrative, does. He explains (Just.

  17.3.16) that Aeacides’ constant wars with the Macedonians tired the people and made him unpopular with the citizens. He blames hatred of Aeacides for a near-successful attempt to kill his two-year-old son Pyrrhus (17.3.18).

  Pausanias, who presents a different order of events, blames Aeacides’ troubles on hatred of Olympias (see below), but he also reports that the Molossians finally relented, only to have Cassander send his brother Philip to oppose Aeacides’ return to Epirus. Aeacides died of wounds from a battle against Philip (Paus. 1.11.3–4).

  Aeacides’ downfall was certainly not the result of nationalistic feelings: the fact that the Antipatrids were able to capitalize on the situation suggests that Epirotes were not anti-Macedonian, nor did they resent Macedonian involvement in Epirus. It is possible, though our sources do not recognize it, that divisions existed between the Epirotes generally and the Molossians.12

  Perhaps Epirotes simply thought that Aeacides had not backed the side likely to win and did not want to risk their lives for a losing cause. Certainly there is no sign of popular support for Olympias and comparatively little evidence of dynastic loyalty.

  When sources describe either Olympias or Aeacides as “hated,” they suggest personal hostility to them as individuals, but narratives of subsequent events in Epirus,13 which refer to hatred of various other later Aeacids and indicate that the political instability first noted by Diodorus continued, imply that something more than reactions to the personal character of specific rulers lies behind this instability. According to Pausanias (1.11.5), Aeacides’ brother Alcetas reigned immediately after the death of Aeacides, but his bad temper had made his father prefer his brother as heir, and when Alcetas returned, he raged against the Epirotes until they killed him and his children and then brought back Pyrrhus. Diodorus describes a more competent Alcetas, but the end result is not much different: Alcetas and his two sons were hostile to Cassander and won at least one battle against one of his generals, despite limited Epirote support. Cassander concluded an alliance with Alcetas but, ultimately, because he treated the common people harshly, they murdered him and two of his sons (Diod. 19.88.1–89.3).14

  Plutarch tells a somewhat different tale. Aeacides’ son, Pyrrhus, despite Cassander’s continuing efforts against him (the Aeacid/Antipatrid feud continued) and the reign of another Aeacid branch, regained the throne through outside assistance from an Illyrian king, only to have, in his absence, opposing

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  Molossians put another Aeacid, Neoptolemus (probably the son of Cleopatra) on the throne (Plut. Pyrrh. 3.1–4.1). Pyrrhus, again with outside help (this time from his father-in-law Ptolemy), came back to Epirus. Plutarch says that most Epirotes were happy to see him because of their hatred of Neoptolemus, who had ruled in a harsh and violent manner. Though Pyrrhus at first co-ruled with Neoptolemus, in the end he murdered him, supposedly because Neoptolemus was plotting to do the same to him. According to Plutarch ( Pyrrh. 4.2–5.7), the most important Epirotes urged Pyrrhus to take sole control. Doubtless with some satisfaction, he parlayed his alleged support for one of Cassander’s two warring sons into control of half of Macedonia
, contributing to the end of the Antipatrid dynasty (Plut. Alex. 6.1–5).

  Since Pyrrhus proved the most able and militarily successful of the Molossian kings, the rest of his reign was relatively stable, but troubles similar to the previous ones reappeared after his death. Pyrrhus’ son, Alexander II, was exiled and returned only with outside help.15 The Aetolians threatened during Olympias II’s regency.16 After both her sons died, a crisis developed and was compounded with the death of Olympias II herself. Her only child still in Epirus,17 Deidameia, died as well. The tomb of Pyrrhus was violated and his ashes were scattered. Pausanias (4.35.3) claims that the dying Deidameia entrusted public affairs to the people.

  Individual Aeacids may have been difficult and the absence of a male heir critical, but the implication of this confusing story of dynastic ins and outs is surely that the Molossians, probably from the beginning of the Epirote Alliance c. 330, grew increasingly hostile to monarchy in general and less and less loyal to the Aeacid dynasty. Indeed, the dynasty lasted as long as it did in good part only because of support for various Aeacids from outside powers. Olympias and her daughter may have brought with them expectations of more absolute power generated from their experience of Macedonian monarchy. They and subsequent Aeacids, all extremely proud of their lineage, seem to have reacted to developing anti-monarchic views by being or trying to be more absolute, not less. This may be the explanation for the references to popular “hatred” of various members of the dynasty and also for loyalty within the Aeacid dynasty (despite the frequent turnover in rule, there was, remarkably, only one dynastic murder).

  Finally, it is not coincidence that the conclusion of the two known eras of extended female regencies marked periods of precipitate decline in royal power, nor that, when the only heir in the direct line was a woman, the Epirotes abolished the monarchy. Although Molossians allowed women more powers and independence than many Greek peoples, including the Macedonians (see Chapter 1), female rule for any lengthy period made the Molossians turn away from monarchy. Female rulers were not accepted as military leaders and lacked the experience to do a reasonable job, even if accepted. This was an important problem because the third century was a time of prolonged military threat for Molossia.18 Moreover, Greeks may have come to object to monarchy exactly because women had a role in it. People

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  often saw royal women as if they were translucent vessels of a kind of dynastic entity; in a sense, they could epitomize and symbolize the entire royal family in a way that royal males, permitted much more individual careers, could not.

  Olympias, high-handed mother of the invincible conqueror, may have embodied what the Epirotes came to detest: Aeacid monarchy.

  Outside of Molossia, in the rest of Greece, memory of Olympias was faint.

  In Macedonia itself, unlike most of the other Successors, Cassander made comparatively little use of links to Alexander.19 After all, he had not shared in the great expedition or fought by Alexander’s side as had the others.

  Cassander did, as we have seen, attempt to build a bridge to the Argeads by means of his marriage to Thessalonice, Philip II’s daughter. However, Cassander stressed a link to Philip, not Alexander: he named his oldest son Philip (rather than naming him, as tradition required, after his own father), although he did name one son Antipater, after his father, and another (perhaps his youngest) Alexander. In the circumstances, Cassander could hardly do otherwise than de-emphasize Alexander: Cassander had murdered not only Olympias, but both of Alexander’s sons and, probably, both of their mothers. Many continued to blame him and his family for the death of Alexander. He destroyed the entire house of Alexander (Paus. 9.7.2).20

  Naturally, there was no place for commemoration of Olympias during the reign of Cassander and, as we have already noted, as yet, not even a tomb.

  Once Cassander’s dynasty imploded, because of a nasty combination of incompetence and matricide, things could have been different. The Antigonids, firmly established on the Macedonian throne by the 270s, claimed to be Heraclids and apparently stressed their descent from the Argeads in particular.21 Antigonus Gonatas may well have been the person responsible for the creation of the Great Tumulus at Vergina, a structure that protected the last Argead rulers buried in Macedonia.22 He or Antigonus Doson dedicated a monument at Delos to Apollo that housed twenty-one statues of his ancestors. While this group very likely included his Argead predecessors, all the statues may have been male.23 If, however, they were not, Olympias could have been commemorated there. Obviously, if any statues of Olympias had been erected in Macedonia previously (see Chapter 4), they might have remained in place.

  Since memory of Olympias was so often linked to memory of Alexander, one wants to know what the popular view of Alexander in Hellenistic Macedonia was. On the one hand, popular support for the Argead clan survived Alexander’s death, and Cassander moved gingerly in arranging the murders of Alexander’s close kin. Diodorus (19.52.4) says that Cassander delayed the murder of Alexander IV and his mother because he feared the reaction of “the many” to the death of Olympias, and Antigonus got a good response from Macedonian troops in Asia when he attacked Cassander for his murder of Olympias and treatment of Alexander IV and Roxane (Diod.

  19.6.1–3). On the other, there was certainly no popular revolt against Cassander:24 his Argead marriage and half-Argead sons, his political and

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  military competence, and his reassuring connection to Antipater, as well as fear of opposing him, all help to explain this. The only enduring political order in Macedonian society until 323 had been the Argead clan. The disappearance of that clan could have caused more trouble than it immediately did, primarily because Cassander offered a smooth transition to a dynasty already familiar to the Macedonians.

  After the collapse of his dynasty, however, the popularity of the Argeads in general and Alexander and his family in particular may have surged.

  Cassander’s son Antipater, who murdered his mother, literally severed their living link to the Argeads and managed, at the same time, to remind people of all those other Alexander kin Antipatrids had killed or been suspected of killing. Macedonia plunged into nearly twenty years of chaos, during which no dynasty established itself and Macedonia experienced a decline in manpower. Despite the likelihood that Alexander as well as the Successors were responsible for this situation,25 the Argead past began to look secure and heroic. The Argeads in general, and Olympias with them, grew more likeable the longer they were gone.

  Outside of Macedonia, it is difficult to know what, if any, attention Olympias’ memory received.26 One intriguing piece of information suggests that later generations of Greeks rewrote the Argead past, removing one visible sign of the dynastic importance of Olympias and her mother-in-law Eurydice, their statues in the Philippeum. By the time Pausanias visited Olympia in the mid-second century CE, the images of Olympias and Eurydice had been placed in the nearby Heraeum (Paus. 5.17.4). The date of their removal from the Philippeum is unknown. Their displacement could have been an honor, intended to associate them with Hera and other gods and heroes placed in the temple, or the statues could have been removed in order to destroy the dynastic image Philip had constructed and to dissociate the women of the Macedonian royal family from political power.27 While I find the latter possibility far more likely than the former, another eventuality seems even more plausible. Considering that both statues, not just that of Olympias, were moved, the change in location is probably not connected to the period of the late fourth and early third century when Olympias still had many surviving enemies but Eurydice, however controversial she may have been in her own day, was just a distant memory.28 The removal more likely occurred close to Pausanias’ day, during the period of the Second Sophistic, and constitutes an example of the kind of sanitized classicizing then going on about the Hellenic past. The agenda must have been gender, rather than partisan political, propaganda and resembles the view of Plutarch (a Second
Sophistic writer) on Olympias and other politically powerful women (see the Appendix).

  The wars of the Successors inspired a considerable body of propaganda of which, at most, only much altered fragments survive. One of these concerns Olympias. The so-called Liber de Morte Testamentoque Alexandri (Book about the Death and Testament of Alexander) is probably one of these scraps

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  of partisan literature. It preserves a fairly lengthy treatment of Alexander’s last days and his supposed will. The document appears at the end of one version of the Alexander Romance and was appended to the Metz Epitome.

  The Liber de Morte combines obviously unhistorical elements, often but not always similar to elements of the Romance, with many details suggesting knowledge of the period immediately after Alexander’s death. The testament provides a detailed version of the story that Antipater and his family poisoned Alexander, but one that makes Olympias’ role critical. According to Liber de Morte, Alexander ordered Craterus to replace Antipater because he was treating Olympias so badly. Antipater, fearful of Alexander, then decided to murder him. Alexander’s will consistently refers to himself as the son of Ammon and Olympias, allows Olympias to retire to Rhodes or anywhere else she likes, and says she should receive the same income she did during his life and have gilded statues of herself (as well as those of Alexander, Ammon, Heracles, and Philip) set up at Olympia and Delphi. More generally, Liber de Morte paints a very negative picture of Antipater and his sons, and contains a number of references to Rhodes and the Rhodians, not simply plans for Olympias’ Rhodian retirement.29