Olympias

by Elizabeth Carney

  Justin’s account therefore gives Olympias a death that is partly masculine (killed by men with weapons in public) and partly feminine. See Carney 1993b: 52–4 for discussion and references.

  96 These stories of varying and multiple escape attempts do not inspire much confidence in their veracity, but they could be true. A surprising number of other stories of royal female escapes, often in disguise, survive, but their popularity does not necessitate their falseness; see further Carney 2000c: 175, n. 91.

  97 O’Neil 1999b: 46 points to the parallel with Parmenio: neither Alexander nor Cassander risked allowing them a public defense because of their powerful support and the dubious case against them. See above on Olympias’ treatment of Philip Arrhidaeus and Adea Eurydice.

  98 Bauman 1990: 163 considers and rejects this possibility on the dubious grounds that the punishment—no burial—does not fit the crime of murder but rather treason. Picturing the Macedonians as concerned about such legal niceties is implausible.

  99 Hatzopoulos 1996: 273–6. While his view rationalizes Diodorus to a degree that is somewhat implausible, his idea that Olympias had a right to speak and

  Notes 175

  would have, if proceedings not been halted, better fits Macedonian culture than Adams’ suggestion (1977: 22, n. 23) that, like Athenian women, she had no right to speak in assembly.

  100 See discussion and references in Bauman 1990: 162–3.

  101 Bosworth 1994: 65; O’Neil 1999b: 32, 41.

  102 O’Neil 1999b: 40.

  103 So Hatzopoulos 1996: 273–6, who believes that the murder of Olympias, like the equally controversial murders of Cleopatra, Alexander IV, and his mother, was disguised, in this case by an attempt to make it look like a vendetta on the part of the families of those Olympias had killed.

  104 Mirón-Pérez 2000: 46–52, following Vernant’s view that in Homeric society the wife represented the royal hearth and marriage, connects this to the role of the king’s wife as “perpetuator and transmitter of sovereignty” and argues that power could be understood as a woman’s dowry when a man who wanted to rule (e.g., Cassander) married a king’s wife. My view is that these are quite different circumstances.

  105 Hammond 1988b: 145, 167 doubted Diodorus’ statement about the “pages”

  (Royal Youths) because he thought Alexander IV was too young to have any, but see Burstein 1977 and Heckel 1980 for epigraphic confirmation of the existence of Alexander IV’s Royal Youths.

  106 As Bosworth 2002: 41 notes, Cassander was able to use Philip Arrhidaeus, even after his death, to legitimize his own position.

  107 On these events and their dates, see Carney 2000c: 145–52.

  108 Contra Gruen 1985: 254, who doubts that this was the intention of Cassander and others, even at the time of the murder of Alexander IV.

  109 See Carney 1993b: 53 for references and the Appendix.

  110 Bosworth 2002: 253–5 stresses the importance for Hellenistic kings of Homeric battle action, single combat, and general prowess, all in imitation of Alexander. See Cohen 1995 on the influence of Homer on Macedonian elite culture and Carney 2000a: 273–85 on Alexander’s manipulation of his imitation of Achilles.

  111 Justin’s account, with Olympias going out to meet her murderers, makes this explicit. In Diodorus, with the mention of the royal house, there is the possibility that she was killed indoors, but this was hardly a private death and the means, the sharp blade, was more masculine than feminine.

  112 Justin’s version has her death approximate a forced suicide and he mentions her concern for bodily modesty, both features of the appropriate female death, but other aspects of his account of her end are, as discussed, more masculine.

  Diodorus’ version makes her death overtly masculine.

  113 So also Porphyry FGrH 260 F 3.3.

  114 So Garland 2001: 101–3. But see contra Griffin 1980: 47.

  115 Whitehorne 1983: 137. See Garland 2001: 101 for discussion of the Boeotian refusal in 424 to allow the burial of the dead because they had committed sacrilege. In Sophocles, it is treason or betrayal of philia that inspires Creon’s refusal to bury Polyneices ( Antigone 21–36, 198–210) and Agamemnon to refuse burial to Ajax ( Ajax 1052–63). Pausanias’ version (9.7.2) of Olympias’

  death as execution by stoning, though probably mistaken, may come from its common popular use against traitors (Bowra 1944: 49) or from the fact that Macedonians did sometimes employ it as a method of execution. See above.

  116 So Whitehorne 1983: 133–4.

  117 Contra Whitehorne 1983: 134, who seems to consider Achilles’ treatment of the body of Hector and Hector’s fear of mutilation as unique. Apart from the behavior of the other Greek heroes in terms of Hector’s corpse already discussed, the Aiantes not only strip the dead Imbrius of his armor, but cut off

  176 Notes

  his head and toss it back among the Trojans, so that it lands at Hector’s feet ( Il. 16.200–5). See Tritle 1997 for discussion and references.

  118 Griffin 1980: 46–7.

  119 See also Hegesias of Magnesia FGrH 142 F 5.

  120 So (explicitly) Tritle 1997: 123 and (implicitly) Bosworth 1988: 68 contra Atkinson 1980: 341 and many others (see references in Bosworth 1980: 258).

  121 Cohen 1995: 491.

  122 Lacey 1968: 148–9; Kurtz and Boardman 1971: 143; Whitehorne 1983: 130, 137. Thus the idea of what Whitehorne 1983: 137 terms “posthumous exile.”

  123 Griffin 1980: 160. Thus, though Themistocles had been convicted of treason and the Athenians had therefore denied him burial, his relatives secretly brought him to Athens and buried him there (Thuc. 1.138.6).

  124 He appropriated the role of kinsman to bury Adea Eurydice and Philip Arrhidaeus, suggesting that they were defined as the legitimate royal family.

  His treatment of Alexander IV, even before his murder, in keeping with his treatment of Olympias’ body, implies the illegitimacy of that part of the Argead family.

  5 Olympias and religion

  1 For general discussions, see Kraemer 1992: 22–49; Blundell 1995: 160–8; Dillon 2002.

  2 See discussion in Jones 1999: 2–3. Certainly, as Jones 1999: 51 notes, ties between Greek cities and states were defined and reinforced by their common religion and shared worship of the same gods.

  3 On female pilgrimage, see Dillon 1997: 183–203.

  4 Kraemer 1992: 22.

  5 Blundell 1995: 166.

  6 By the fourth century, priestesses began to dedicate statues of themselves (Kron 1996: 146).

  7 Zeitlin 1982: 129–57; Bremmer 1984: 285. Cohen 1991: 238 discusses the phenomenon of “simultaneous norm-validation and norm-non-adherence.”

  See below on this phenomenon in terms of women in the cult of Dionysus.

  8 Blundell 1995:160

  9 On religion in Macedonia, see Ginouvès 1994: 106–16; Hatzopoulos 1994. See also Baege 1913; Düll 1977.

  10 Le Bohec-Bouhet 2002.

  11 In the remains of the funeral pyre placed on top of slabs covering Derveni Alpha were the carbonized remains of an Orphic text (see Themelis and Touratsoglou 1997: 30, 194, 205–6 and Laks and Most 1997).

  12 Tomb I at Vergina contains a fresco that depicts the rape of Persephone and, perhaps, Demeter herself (Andronicos 1984: 86–97, Drogou et al. 1996: 73–5).

  Also at Vergina, inside the “Tomb of Eurydice” or “Tomb of the Throne” was an oversize throne, its back painted to depict Hades and Persephone in a chariot (see Ginouvès 1994: 154–61).

  13 Kottaridi 2004a: 140 and 2004b: 69; and Lilibaki-Akamati 2004: 91. Kottaridi 2004b: 69 sees the presence of objects connected to sacrifice and feasting as indications of priestly duties. As with other burials at Vergina/Aegae, the difficulty is that, in the absence of an inscription with a name, we have no way to determine which were royal and which non-royal burials. The burials in question are quite rich and may well have been royal, but there is no certainty.

  14 See Carney 2000c: 41 for references and discussion.

>   15 See discussion and references in Mortensen 1992, and Borza 1992: 308–9, Carney 2000c: 40–6.

  Notes 177

  16 The inscription does not specify the nature of the dedication. See discussion of its possible nature in Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2000: 402.

  17 Some scholars have failed to note that the passage is probably not a genuine work of Plutarch (see discussion in Mortensen 1992: 159, n. 16) and are unaware (e.g., Hammond 1994: 184; Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2000: 401–3) of emendations to the text (see Robert and Robert 1984: 450–1; Wilhelm 1949: 625–33). Consequently, with a different understanding of the content of the inscription, they reach conclusions about its significance different from my own. Though the passage does not identify this particular Eurydice as the mother of Philip II, the discovery of the inscriptions at Vergina which give the same patronymic (see below) have led to the virtual certainty that the Moralia passage refers to the mother of Philip II.

  18 Since the dedication itself did not survive, we do not know the location of the inscription.

  19 The first inscribed statue base was found in 1982, the second in 1990. See, most recently, Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2000: 392–7.

  20 AR 2002–3: 61 reports the discovery of the head of a statue from the adjoining sanctuary of the Mother of the gods which is identified (reason not reported) as that of Eurydice.

  21 A headless statue was found near the second inscribed statue base; the plinth of this statue fits the second statue base; subsequently a head was excavated (Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2000: 396). Hammond 1994: 184 identified the statue as Eurydice herself and, without further explanation (other than a reference to the so-called tomb of Eurydice, a structure the original excavator attributed to her but for which attribution there is no specific evidence) concludes that this means she was probably “worshiped after her death as a goddess.” While Eurydice certainly had at least one portrait statue (in the Philippeum) and may well have had another (see below), nothing has survived so it is hardly possible to identify her image, particularly since Greek artists tended to produce only the most generalized images of women (see further Chapter 6). The statue could represent Eucleia (so AR 1990–1: 56), or perhaps Eurydice as Eucleia.

  22 As Dillon 2002: 3 notes, Plato ( Laws 909e–910a) complained that women were peculiarly inclined to dedicate shrines and altars. One can rarely tell whether female dedicators funded the dedications themselves or through their male relatives (Dillon 2002: 25), particularly since (as Kron 1996: 155 notes), law or custom often obliged men to pay for female activity. Similarly, we have no information as to whether Eurydice herself or one of her royal sons paid for the construction of the complex. In any event, since the statue base inscriptions do not mention her husband or sons but only Eurydice and (through the patronymic) her father, they put emphasis on her rather than her Argead family.

  23 The current excavator of the Eucleia shrine (Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2000: 394) thinks that the inscriptions date to the mid-fourth century (or possibly a little later). The last literary reference to Eurydice dates to roughly 368. It is extremely likely that she was dead by 346 at the latest (Carney 2000c: 45).

  24 So Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2000: 397. Kron 1996: 139–40 points out that priesthoods, in the Hellenic world typically held by elite women, dramatically increased the social status of the women who held them. In a monarchy like Macedonia, one would expect that royal women, therefore, would be priestesses of appropriate cults, especially in the two capitals.

  25 Saatsoglou-Paliadeli first (1987: 742) associated it with Philip’s victory at Chaeroneia (following Andronicos 1984: 50–1) but has now (2000: 395) suggested (responding to the criticism of Borza 1992: 193 and Mortensen 1992: 164) that the shrine commemorated Eurydice’s successful intervention

  178 Notes

  in 368 with the Athenian general Iphicrates, when she safeguarded the throne for her remaining sons. This is a more attractive suggestion, though troubles in Macedonia in that period could mean that the actual dedication happened later.

  26 Borza 1992: 192–3.

  27 My views have changed somewhat since Carney 2000c: 44–6. Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2000: 395 assumes that the Vergina cult was associated with victory.

  28 See discussions in Cabanes 1988; Pötscher 1988; Dakaris 1998: 6–10; Vokotopoulou 2001. They differ on the significance of the epithet “Naos” and on the aspect of Zeus on which the cult focused. Over the passage of time, other deities also found a place at the site, among them Dionysus (Hammond 1967: 510–11; Parke 1967: 150–2; see below).

  29 Some differences appear to relate to change in practice over time, but not all.

  See Parke 1967: 80–6; Dakaris 1998: 13–14; Vokotopoulou 2001: 654, 663.

  30 Parke 1967: 113, based on a survey of the surviving lead-inscribed tablets from Dodona then available, followed by Vokotopoulou 2001: 77, based on a much larger collection of tablets (now about 1300). However, if responses to cities were taken back to them (so Dakaris et al. 2001: 511), there may have been more involvement of that sort than the tablets imply. Like Samothrace (see below), the great majority of patrons, however, were local.

  31 Dakaris 1998: 13 points out that the first temple dates to about the time the Molossians came to control Dodona ( c. 410–385 contra Cross 1932: 6).

  Additions and changes to the shrine in the course of the fourth century made it look more like a conventional Greek sanctuary.

  32 As Dakaris 1998: 18 points out, the structure obviously existed by the time of Hyperides’ speech ( c. 330; see below). He suggests that the Dione temple was built between 350 and 330, when the sacred precinct was surrounded by a stone wall. Parke 1967: 142 believes that the shrine was under construction at the time and that the Athenians had been asked by the oracle to provide the cult statue. Hyperides’ language (see below) implies, however, that the seated image already existed and that the Athenians were adding to and improving something that already existed.

  33 Parke 1967: 142, who also assumes that Olympias was regent of Molossia at the time; as we have seen, this is not certain (see Chapter 3).

  34 Vokotopoulou 2001: 65, citing the fact that there was very little construction until the second half of the fourth century, connects it to Olympias’ marriage.

  She seems to assume that Argeads would have funded the building. Another possibility is that the Aeacids, competitive as they were with the Argeads (see Chapters 1 and 2) funded more building for that reason. If the building occurred after 334, as seems to be the case for Dione’s sanctuary, it may have been the work (and funding) of Olympias and/or Cleopatra, granted their apparent role in Molossia (see Chapter 3).

  35 Parke 1967: 142–3 notes that before and after Chaeroneia, the Athenians had looked to northwestern Greece for support against Macedonia, and suggests that their extravagant gifts to Dione were meant to gain them goodwill in that region. For earlier Athenian consultation of Dodona, see Parke 1967: 139–42

  36 Diodorus (18.4.5) includes in the list of projects in Alexander’s last plans the construction of six very expensive temples at Delos, Delphi, Dodona, Dion, Amphipolis, and Cyrnus. The list is clearly panhellenic, but Olympia is not on it, even though Dodona, Dion, and the mysterious Cyrnus are. The authenticity of Alexander’s “last plans” has sometimes been doubted: see Bosworth 1988: 164–5 and 2002: 59, n. 112. Vokotopoulou 2001: 651 believes that Alexander had plans for Dodona.

  Notes 179

  37 See Asirvatham et al. 2001: i–xv for discussion and references on the problematic nature of the categories of “religion” and “magic,” on the tendency to describe as magic the actions of those one considered “Other.” Olympias, as a woman and a Molossian, obviously is liable to be treated as “Other,” as Plutarch clearly does.

  38 Asirvatham 2001: 95 argues that another factor that contributes to Plutarch’s treatment of Olympias is his use of her as a foil to Alexander, the immoderate barbarian as opposed to her Hellenic son. See also Appendix.

  39 Ogden forthcoming points out that ph
armaka can signify not only herbs or poisons but also spells.

  40 As Ogden forthcoming notes, in the Alexander Romance (4–7, 12), Olympias has a relationship with the magician king Nectanebo. See Chapter 6 for further discussion.

  41 Cross 1932: 4 seems to accept Aelian’s testimony at face value.

  42 Asirvatham 2001: 99. They are stories he reports as something others say or they are beliefs he attributes to Philip.

  43 Justin (11.11.3–6) makes this explicit. According to him, Olympias confessed to Philip that Alexander’s father was not Philip but a big snake. This leads Philip to repudiate Olympias on grounds of adultery with the snake and Alexander to pursue the claim of divine birth for his own reasons as well as to clear his mother’s name. Asirvatham 2001: 102 points to the oddity that in the Alexander Romance, Nectanebo appears to Olympias as Ammon in the guise of a snake (i.e., dressed in a snake suit). The version in the Romance clearly derives from the references in more conventional historical sources to Alexander’s belief that he was the son of Zeus Ammon.

  44 This is the central thesis of Ogden forthcoming. See also Ogden 1999: 21–7

  and Chapter 2 on succession struggles in Macedonia between rival wives for the succession of their sons.

  45 Aelian (see above) makes the association for Molossian women but Thessalian women (see Ogden forthcoming for references) were much more commonly associated with witchcraft, and Ogden discusses some passages which may indicate that Philinna too was said to employ witchcraft.

  46 Mortensen 1997: 76–83 has an excellent discussion of Olympias and snakes.

  Asirvatham 2001: 102 seems to believe that tame snakes are somehow not credible and therefore concludes that Lucian Alex. 6–7 (which not only mentions snakes in Pella but alludes to the story about Olympias sleeping with them) derives from his skepticism and is not to be taken seriously. See contra Mortensen 1997: 82 who takes the Lucian passage more literally, as I do. So also Dillon 2002: 144.

  47 See Asirvatham 2001: 97–8 for some of the possibilities. Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 1991: 15–17 and 2000: 391, discussing the discovery of a colossal marble snake in a deposit in the antechamber of Temple II in the Eucleia sanctuary complex at Vergina, connects it to Zeus Melichius. At the moment nothing connects Olympias to this sanctuary. Even if Saatsoglou-Paliadeli is correct, the nature and benefits of the cult would be uncertain. Burkert 1985: 201