Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

We are not concerned here with the rise of Philip's power over Hellas, nor with the history of his son Alexander and the empire he established, except in so far as the spread of Hellenism and the union of the world under one dominion brought about changes in social conditions which affected the status of woman. We shall, for the present, confine our attention to the consideration of those women, chiefly royal princesses, whose names group themselves about the careers of Philip and Alexander and their immediate successors, and who by their strong personalities greatly influenced the course of events.

A few general reflections will prepare us for the sombre history which we are about to read. The Macedonian kings were, as a rule, not content with one wife; they either kept concubines, or married a second wife, as did Philip and Alexander, while the first was living. This practice led to jealousy, envy, and hatred, and the attendant ills of constant and bloody tragedies in the royal families. We find henceforth a combination of Greek manners and Macedonian nature. In the life of the courts, women as well as men, in spite of their Greek culture, show the Thracian traits of passion and cruelty. Owing to the intense respect in which women were held, the royal princesses occupied an exalted station and hence found willing instruments for the carrying-out of their cruel practices. Every king was either murdered or conspired against by his family. Women entered into matrimonial alliances with a view to increasing their power and extending their influence. Hence, the women who played so prominent a part in the great struggles that attended Philip's extension of his power over all Hellas, Alexander's conquest of the world, and the founding of independent dynasties by the Diadochi and their descendants, were not women who attained the Thucydidean ideal of excellence; namely, that those are the best women who are never mentioned among men for good or for evil. They were, on the contrary, powerful and haughty princesses, who possessed royal rights and privileges, who had resources of their own in money and soldiery, who could address their troops with fiery speeches and go forth to battle at the head of their armies, who made offers of marriage to men, and who finally got rid of their rivals with sinister coolness and cruelty.

Philip the Great followed the Oriental fashion of marrying many wives; according to Athenæus, he was continually marrying new wives in war times, and seven more or less regular marriages are attributed to him. Of his numerous wives or mistresses, the strong-minded Olympias was the chief; and, as she survived both her husband Philip and her son Alexander, she played a dominant part in Macedonian history and was the most prominent woman of those stormy times. Olympias was the daughter of Neoptolemus, King of Epirus, who traced his lineage back to Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. Philip is said to have fallen in love with Olympias while both were being initiated into some religious mysteries in Samothrace, at a time when he was still a stripling and she an orphan. He was ardent in his suit, and, gaining the consent of her brother Arymbas, he shortly after married her. We know nothing of the first few years of their married life, but the union seems never to have been a happy one. Both were of too decided individuality to blend well together. Says President Wheeler: "Both were preëminently ambitious, energetic, and aggressive; but while Philip's ambition was guided by a cool, crafty sagacity, that of his queen manifested itself in impetuous outbreaks of almost barbaric emotion. In her, joined a marvellous compound of the mother, the queen, the shrew, and the witch. The passionate ardor of her nature found its fullest expression in the wild ecstasies and crude superstitions of her native religious rites."

Plutarch gives a graphic account of the religious intensity of Olympias's nature: "Another account is that all the women of this country, having always been addicted to the Orphic and Dionysiac mystery rites, imitated largely the practices of the Edonian and Thracian women about Mount Hæmus, and that Olympias, in her abnormal zeal to surround these states of trance and inspiration with more barbaric dread, was wont in the sacred dances to have about her great tame serpents, which, sometimes creeping out of the ivy and the mystic fans, and sometimes winding themselves about the staffs and the chaplets which the women bore, presented a sight of horror to the men who beheld."

In Olympias we find all the traits of character which selfishness and love of power, combined with intense religious fervor, could engender; and her devotion to weird religious rites makes more ghastly the story of her life. With a different husband she might have been a good woman, but when two such natures clash much evil is bound to result. To her young son, Alexander, she was ardently attached, and she expected great things of him. Just before her marriage with Philip she dreamed that a thunderbolt fell upon her body, which kindled a great fire, whose divided flames dispersed themselves all about and then were extinguished. This was later regarded as a presage of the rapid spread of Alexander's empire and its ultimate breaking-up among the Diadochi.

Philip's numerous infidelities and marriages caused an estrangement between him and Olympias that was far-reaching in its consequences. They reached their culmination when Philip with great ceremony wedded Cleopatra, a niece of his general, Attalus. At the wedding banquet, Attalus, the uncle of the bride, heated with wine, cried out:

"Macedonians, let us pray the gods that from this marriage may spring an heir to the throne!" Whereupon, Alexander, who was present, violently irritated at the speech, threw one of the goblets at the head of Attalus and exclaimed: "You villain, what! Am I, then, a bastard?" Philip, taking Attalus's part, rose up, and would have run his son through with his sword, but, overcome by rage and by drink, he slipped and fell to the floor. "Here is a man," scornfully exclaimed the prince, "preparing to cross from Europe into Asia, who is not able to step safely from one table to another." This incident brought to a climax the estrangement between Philip and his wife and Alexander. Olympias and Alexander fled, the one taking shelter with her brother, the King of Epirus, and the other going into Illyria, where he remained until a sort of reconciliation was effected by the marriage of Philip's daughter, Cleopatra, with the Epirote king. When Philip was assassinated, suspicions of complicity in the murder attached to both Olympias and Alexander. The young man's conduct fully acquits him of the crime, but it would not be strange if the mother, seeking her own vengeance and her son's preferment, should have abetted the youth Pausanias, who committed the deed.

Olympias could not brook any rivals, and shortly after the murder of Philip she despatched that king's last wife, Cleopatra, and her infant son. Throughout Alexander's brilliant but short-lived career, Olympias remained in Macedon, exercising a queenly power. She and her son seem to have been bound by the closest ties of affection and respect. With Antipater, however, who had been left behind by Alexander to govern Macedon in his absence, she was continually falling out. Plutarch gives an interesting account of the intimate relations between mother and son and of the quarrels between the old queen and the regent:

"How magnificent he, Alexander, was in enriching his friends appears by a letter which Olympias wrote to him, where she tells him he should reward those about him in a more moderate way. She said: 'For now you make them all equal to kings, you give them power and opportunity of making many friends of their own, and in the meantime you leave yourself destitute.' She often wrote to him to this purpose. To her he sent many presents, but would never suffer her to meddle with matters of State or war, not indulging her busy temper; and when she fell out with him on this account, he bore her ill humor very patiently. Nay, more, when he read a long letter from Antipater, full of accusations against her, 'Antipater,' he said, 'does not know that one tear of a mother effaces a thousand such letters as these.'

"The tidings of the difficulties he had gone through in his Indian expedition had begun to give occasion for revolt among many of the conquered nations, and for acts of great injustice, avarice, and insolence on the part of satraps and commanders. Even at home, Olympias and her daughter Cleopatra had raised a faction against Antipater and divided his government between them--Olympias seizing upon Epirus, and Cleopatra upon Macedon. When Alexander was told of it, he said his mother had made the best choice, for the Macedonians would never consent to be ruled by a woman."