Olympias

by Elizabeth Carney

  123 So Macurdy 1932a: 41. (See discussion in Chapter 4.) Of course, Duris may have recalled the story and based his description upon it. Polyaenus (4.1) recounts the tale of Argaeus, king of the Macedonians, who, short of men, used young women who came down from the mountains waving thyrsoi (ritual wands) to scare the enemy: the enemy troops thought they were men, panicked, and retreated. After winning without fighting, Argaeus dedicated a temple to Dionysus Pseudaner (the false man) and gave order to call the young women, whom the Macedonians had previously called Klodones, Mimallones, because they mimicked men.

  Notes 185

  124 Mortensen 1997: 74–5.

  125 See O’Brien 1992: 16, who points out that the women (royal and otherwise) in the Bacchae do not engage in sexual activity (they are violent but sexually chaste) and rightly concludes that Olympias was particularly unlikely to have done anything to compromise her status or that of Alexander. Moreover, according to Plutarch ( Alex. 2.6), only women participated in the ritual Olympias organized.

  126 Kraemer 1992: 42. Orphism is so notoriously broad a term that a number of interpretations are possible. See general discussion in Burkert 1985: 296–304

  and Robertson 2003 on the relationship between Orphism and Dionysus.

  Robertson 2003: 220 argues that the development of personal cults happened as a reaction to the decline of communal cults.

  127 One cannot prove her influence, but many scholars believe in it (see discussion and references in Fredricksmeyer 2003: 255), primarily because the genuine and emotional nature of Alexander’s religious beliefs and practices is now widely recognized (Edmunds 1971; Badian 1981; Bosworth 1996b: 140). This, in turn, has made belief in Olympias’ influence more likely than it was when many scholars, like Plutarch himself, tried to rationalize Alexander’s religion.

  No evidence directly connects Philip to such an individualized religiosity; although, like Alexander, he may well have believed that his extraordinary accomplishments raised him to the level of the gods. (See further below.) 128 See Bosworth 1996a: 98–132 and 1996b; Fredricksmeyer 2003: 264–5, who notes that the idea that Alexander believed Dionysus to be his ancestor is probably false.

  129 Implied by O’Brien 1992: 14.

  130 Fredricksmeyer 1979, 1981, 1982 argued that Philip planned to acquire divine honors and establish dynastic ruler cult as part of his desire to create a more absolute monarchy and that he actually received cult in one sanctuary, but Badian 1981, especially 67–71, though accepting that Philip had “pretensions”

  to divinity, denied that he actually received lifetime cult anywhere. Badian’s views have dominated (Borza 1992: 249–50; O’Brien 1992: 202; Schumacher 1990: 438–9).

  131 See recent discussions and references in Fredricksmeyer 2003: 270–8.

  132 Carney 2000b: 31–40.

  133 Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2000: 397–400 discusses a statuary base found near Vergina inscribed on the side, rather than the front, with the name of Eurydice and her patronymic. She suggests not only that this once supported an image of Eurydice but that, granted the position of the inscription and the shape of the base, that Eurydice’s statue was part of a group of at least three statues and perhaps included all five figures once in the Philippeum. Thus, an image of Olympias could have been part of this second, possibly dynastic monument.

  134 The end of the text of Paus. 5.17.4 is corrupt, but the Eurydice referred to can only be Philip’s mother: see Lapatin 2001: 116–17, especially n. 198.

  135 See Carney 2000b: 24–30; Lapatin 2001: 115–19. See also Huwendiek 1996.

  See discussion in Chapter 2. Lapatin’s discussion is important, but marred by his limited understanding of the political situation in the Macedonian court. I intend to discuss the political significance of the Philippeum at greater length elsewhere. In what follows, I supplement my 2000b conclusions with material from Lapatin.

  136 Lapatin 2001: 118, though agreeing that the gold and ivory materials imply connections to divinity, warns against overemphasis on this point because

  “There is no evidence that chryselephantine materials alone signified divinity.”

  In fact, the fabrication is typical of the ambiguity of the entire construct.

  Lapatin also observes that the images of Philip and the twelve Olympians

  186 Notes

  marched in the wedding procession for Cleopatra, daughter of Philip, could have been chryselephantine; Diodorus (16.92.5) says they were expensive and elaborate and that Philip’s was suitable for a god but does not precisely describe the materials of which they were made.

  137 Fredricksmeyer 1979: 53 rightly rejects the view of Badian 1981: 71 (followed by Huwendiek 1996: 156; Lapatin 2001: 116–17) that her image would not have been included if the building had been completed in the last years of Philip’s reign. As I have argued here and elsewhere (Carney 1992a; 2000b: 25, n. 20), this dating depends on mistaken assumptions about Macedonian royal marriage in general and particularly that of Philip and Olympias. This building was a political construct. It was about power, not personal affection.

  138 Though Alexander may well have had to supervise the completion of this monument after his father’s death, it is wrong to claim, as Lapatin 2001: 118

  does, that the dynastic image it generated “served Alexander’s interests more than his father’s.” Philip had seven wives and at least one other son. The troubles associated with Attalus’ public questioning of Alexander’s legitimacy as heir (see Chapter 2), troubles which Philip did everything he could to end, are why Philip would have been sure to include Olympias and Alexander. He could hardly hope for a successful reconciliation if he did otherwise. Moreover, Philip had more reason than Alexander to include his own parents. In both cases, the selection of those to be commemorated from a much larger possible pool (for instance, apart from Philip’s other wives and children, there was Amyntas’ other wives and Philip’s two royal brothers) indicates a definition of the central part of the dynasty.

  139 Scholarly acceptance of the idea has varied and even those who take it seriously do not necessarily agree about the reasons behind it. Macurdy 1932a: 34

  accepts the planned cult as historical, supposing that Alexander intended it as compensation for her “defeat in the contest with Antipater.” One doubts that Olympias, however much she might have liked the idea of the cult, would have acknowledged her “defeat;” certainly her subsequent actions do not suggest this. Hammond 1980: 475 also accepts it, but on the dubious grounds that it was compensation for a change in Olympias’ constitutional position. See also Berve 1926: 2.286; Momigliano 1934: 174; Edmunds 1971: 380. Strasburger 1939: col. 179 does not accept it.

  140 For instance, Anson 2003: 123.

  141 Entertaining though this remark is, it is unlikely to be true. Once Alexander had begun to assert that he was the son of a god, Olympias was hardly likely to contradict him.

  142 Bosworth 1995: 76 rejects the notion that the historical Callisthenes would have referred to Olympias’ views at all, let alone in such a way. Moreover, one must doubt that he would have dared to put into writing the notion that Alexander approached divinity not because of his heroic acts but because of Callisthenes’ recording of them. Justin (11.11.3–4) reports that Olympias confessed to Philip that a big snake, not Philip, was Alexander’s father, so Philip publicly repudiated both and Alexander therefore invented the claim to divine birth. This story, obviously influenced by the Romance, deserves no credence.

  143 See Anson 2003: 123 for discussion. Asirvatham 2001: 96 is uncertain whether to accept Olympias as the originator. She also argues that Plutarch’s belief (or assertion) that she was is part of his depiction of her as a barbarian foil to Alexander.

  144 Fredricksmeyer 2003: 271–2.

  145 Plutarch ( Alex.27.5) cites a letter (rather than other sources) from Alexander to his mother about his visit to Ammon in which Alexander reveals that the oracle had offered certain secret prophecies that he would tell only to her on

&nb
sp; Notes 187

  her return. Quite apart from the usual doubts about the authenticity of letters, this particular reference mirrors Olympias’ secret conversation with her son in a suspicious manner and seems oddly unnecessary unless one concludes that the secret information that Alexander would tell only to his mother was that he was not simply the son of a god but a god himself. See Hamilton 1969: 72

  for references to those who consider the letter genuine and other possible explanations of his statements, the least implausible of which is Tarn 1949: 2.354, who imagines that the priest offered some spiritual explanation of Alexander’s relationship to Ammon.

  146 Berve 1926: 2.287; Hamilton 1969: 4–5; Wirth 1973: 120; Brunt 1976: 1.477; Badian 1996: 19; Fredricksmeyer 2003: 272.

  147 See discussion and references in Bosworth 1996b: 140–2.

  148 I have changed my views since Carney 1987a: 61, n. 68. Hamilton 1969: 5

  makes the bizarre assumption that Olympias might have made these claims prior to the death of Philip and that Attalus was, in fact, capitalizing on them.

  149 Bosworth 1988: 283–4; Fredricksmeyer 2003: 274; Anson 2003: 124.

  150 Bosworth 1995: 76. Anson 2003: 124 seems to believe that the idea was, to some degree, inspired by both Olympias and Philip.

  6 Olympias’ afterlife

  1 The Attalids also claimed to be Aeacids, but their interest seems to have been in Achilles, Pyrrhus, and perhaps Alexander. I am not aware of direct Attalid reference to Olympias. See Kosmetatou 1995: 138–44 and 2003: 168; Scheer 2003: 222–3.

  2 Plutarch ( Mor. 747f–748a) quotes two lines of elegiac poetry about Olympias:

  “Her father and husband and son were kings, and her brothers and her ancestors. Greece calls her Olympias.” Plutarch says nothing about the origin of these verses; they could, like the lines from a dedication by Olympias’

  mother-in-law Eurydice (see Chapter 5), be copied from an inscription or they could simply be elegiac poetry. The failure to mention the Aeacids directly seems to suggest the latter since (see below) this is very different from the known funerary inscriptions.

  3 See discussion and references in Edson 1949; Robinson 1953; Oikonomedes 1982. Edson believes that the inscription, first discovered by Oikonomos, was part of another tomb but referred to the tomb of Olympias, whereas Oikonomedes (whose arguments I find more generally persuasive, although oddly personal at times) deduced that this inscription appeared on the actual tomb of Olympias. The inscription itself, once found near Makriyialos (the general area of ancient Pydna), is now lost.

  4 One of these inscriptions, once seen by Heuzey in Kitros (near Makriyialos), is also lost. The text of this inscription is the least well preserved of the three, but clearly refers (Edson 1949: 92; Oikonomedes 1982: 16) to the genna (offspring or race/clan) of Neoptolemus. The third inscription ( SEG XII 340), also found at Makriyialos, has the best-preserved text. It is an elegiac epigram that commemorates a three-year-old child, Alcimachus, son of Neoptolemus (see Robinson 1953).

  5 Edson 1949: 93 assumes that the need for secrecy, granted the contents of Cassander’s edict, necessitated her burial close to the place of her death. The text of the Oikonomos inscription, as reconstructed by Oikonomedes (1982: 13), may imply secret burial: “Olympias; whose corpse the noble—enos, one of the brave clan of Aiakos, concealed in the embrace of measureless earth.”

  6 Edson 1949: 93, followed by Oikonomedes 1982: 13.

  7 Edson 1949: 94–5 considers various possibilities, including the survival of

  188 Notes

  some Aeacids who refugeed to Macedonia after the collapse of the Molossian monarchy. Obviously some Aeacids must have been present around the time of Olympias’ death to arrange her secret burial. Neoptolemus (see Chapters 3

  and 4), Olympias’ probable relative, had died bravely in battle against Eumenes (Diod. 18.31.5; Just. 13.8.8), but other members of his immediate family could have been present. Edson 1949: 86 dates the Alcimachus inscription quite late in the first century BCE (Robinson 1953: 151 prefers mid-second century) and has suggestions about how Aeacids might have remained in Macedonia despite the demise of Macedonian monarchy. Robinson 1953: 153–6 also speculates on their identity.

  8 Edson 1949: 94 makes this suggestion. Robinson 1953: 155, n. 5 attacks it, though it seems quite plausible.

  9 Robinson 1953: 156 considers and rejects the possibility that the “Olympias”

  the inscription refers to was not the mother of Alexander but her namesake, Olympias II, the daughter of Pyrrhus (see below). Olympias II died in Epirus, but her daughter had married the king of Macedonia, so Olympias II’s remains could have been brought to Macedonia. The failure of the inscription to provide a patronymic, however, strongly suggests that the Olympias in question is the more famous one.

  10 One could attribute the name choice to the kind of Alexander imitation that characterized Pyrrhus (see Goukowsky 1978: 1.116–18) as well as the Successors, but the names of his other children do not necessarily suggest that:

  “Helenus” refers to the supposed Trojan branch of the Aeacid descent;

  “Ptolemy” to Pyrrhus’ father-in-law and patron; “Alexander” not only to Pyrrhus’ Aeacid descent, but to the earlier king and not necessarily to the Macedonian Alexander.

  11 Her son Pyrrhus, in Ovid, Ibis 307f.

  12 Plutarch, however, refers to factions among the Molossians (Plut. Pyrrh. 2.1).

  13 See Hammond 1967: 567–71, 588–92.

  14 Cross 1932: 48 terms the assassins of Alcetas “nationalist,” but they appear to have been supporters of democracy.

  15 Hammond 1967: 590 sees Alexander II’s reign as stable and prosperous, but external pressures and a succession crisis quickly removed that stability, as Cross 1932: 92–3 recognizes.

  16 Cross 1932: 95 suggests that in these years the Molossians remained loyal to the dynasty but the Epirotes generally did not.

  17 Aeacids, as we have seen, did survive in Macedonia, even if Phthia, Demetrius II’s wife, had no children of her own (see Carney 2000b: 190–3). Nereïs, the Aeacid wife of the tyrant Gelo of Syracuse, kept the dynasty’s memory alive by dedicating statues of the last members of the dynasty at Delphi and Olympia ( SIG 453) and her sons used quasi-Molossian images on their coinage (see Hammond 1967: 592 for references).

  18 Hammond 1967: 591. Cabanes 1980: 345–6 considers the inability of the last Aeacids to defend against these military threats critical. My own view is that, although important, this was not the only factor.

  19 See Goukowsky 1978: 1.108–11 for the memory of Alexander during the reign of Cassander. See also Cohen 1997: 114–16 for discussion and references. The theme of the “hatred” of Cassander for Alexander is, as both scholars argue, a silly one, but a number of factors necessarily limited Cassander’s use of the image of Alexander, though he certainly did employ it, most obviously in his coinage.

  20 Carney 1997a: 213–14 attributes some of this blame to Antigonid propaganda via Hieronymus, but also considers popular sympathy.

  21 Edson 1934: 216–17; Bohm 1989: 27–51; Huttner 1997: 159–74.

  Notes 189

  22 Andronicos 1984: 62 made this plausible suggestion; obviously it would be a particularly appropriate action for a ruler trying to establish his legitimacy. See also Errington 1990: 65–6; Carney 1992b: 5. Most scholars have accepted this suggestion.

  23 On the monument and its remains, see Courby 1912; Edson 1934. Courby 1912: 81 denied that any of the statues were female and Edson 1934: 218

  accepted this view. Le Bohec 1993: 239 suggested that there could have been royal women in the group. My view is that their inclusion is unlikely in the light of the narrow public presentation of Antigonid monarchy.

  24 Bosworth 1986: 11.

  25 Recent scholarship has disputed the degree to which Macedonian manpower was reduced, and, if it was, whether Alexander was responsible. Bosworth, who initially argued that Alexander alone was responsible (1986), has now moderated his
views and attributes the decline in manpower to the wars of the Successors as well as those of Alexander. See Bosworth 2002: 64–97 for discussion and references.

  26 See Bohm 1989 on Alexander imitation in the later Hellenistic period.

  27 Mirón-Pérez 1998: 223.

  28 Here I reject my earlier view (Carney 2000c: 24, n. 17) for reasons stated below.

  29 For an English translation of Liber de Morte, see Stoneman 1991: 148–55. See Seibert 1984 and 1990; Heckel 1988; Baynham 1995 and 1998b; Bosworth 2000: 16–17, 207–41; Baynham 2000: 242–62 for discussion and references on the date, political circumstances, and general nature of Liber de Morte.

  30 Heckel 1988 argued for autumn 317 or spring 316; Seibert 1984 and 1990

  suggests a date between 315 and 305; Bosworth 2000 and Baynham 1995, 1998b, and 2000 suggest c. 308. Much depends on whether one considers the Rhodian references interpolations or integral to Liber de Morte.

  31 Baynham 1998b.

  32 Jouanno 1995: 211–30 discusses Olympias in the context of her relationship to Alexander. Apart from differences in our views and conclusions, my discussion concentrates on the Greek version of the Alexander Romance whereas hers deals with various forms of the Alexander Romance.

  33 All references to the Romance will be to the Greek version unless otherwise stated, and the translation will be that of Stoneman 1991.

  34 On the dating problem, see recent discussions in Stoneman 1996 and Jouanno 2002: 13–55.

  35 On the history and early development of the Alexander Romance, see discussion and references in Gunderson 1970; Stoneman 1991: 1–32, 1994, 1996: 602; Jouanno 2002. Jouanno 1995: 229 notes that Olympias is a less prominent figure in later recensions than in earlier ones.

  36 Jouanno 2002: 181, n. 322, for instance, points out that in the Romance, Attalus’ insult loses all political context; by implication, Olympias can be only a sexual being.

  37 Many of Olympias’ remarks to Nectanebo are double entendres (Jouanno 1995: 222 implausibly insists that her honesty is never in doubt), so the narrator raises the possibility that Olympias knows perfectly well that her lover is Nectanebo, not a god, but, as Stöcker 1976 points out, in this version of the Romance the narrator finally states that Olympias does not know his true identity and she later (1.14) blames herself when she discovers the truth.