It was, of course, a proud thing for Demetrius that the city was much and profitably frequented. Trade itself was probably livelier in Athens during these years than at any other time and rivalled that of Rhodes, Byzantium, and Alexandria. According to a census which was probably undertaken during the year Demetrius was archon (309), the population of Attica amounted to 21,000 citizens, 10,000 strangers, 400,000 slaves—certainly a great number of inhabitants for a territory of little more than forty square miles.[c]
[318-317 B.C.]
The acquisition of Athens by Cassander, followed up by his capture of Panactum and Salamis, and seconded by his moderation towards the Athenians, procured for him considerable support in Peloponnesus, whither he proceeded with his army. Many of the cities, intimidated or persuaded, joined him and deserted Polysperchon; while the Spartans, now feeling for the first time their defenceless condition, thought it prudent to surround their city with walls. This fact, among many others contemporaneous, testifies emphatically how the characteristic sentiments of the Hellenic autonomous world were now dying out everywhere. The maintenance of Sparta as an unwalled city was one of the deepest and most cherished of the Lycurgean traditions; a standing proof of the fearless bearing and self-confidence of the Spartans against dangers from without. The erection of the walls showed their own conviction, but too well borne out by the real circumstances around them, that the pressure of the foreigner had become so overwhelming as hardly to leave them even safety at home.
THE LAST ACTS OF OLYMPIAS’ POWER
[317-311 B.C.]
The warfare between Cassander and Polysperchon became now embittered by a feud among the members of the Macedonian imperial family. King Philip Arrhidæus and his wife Eurydice, alarmed and indignant at the restoration of Olympias, which Polysperchon was projecting, solicited aid from Cassander, and tried to place the force in Macedonia at his disposal. In this however they failed.
Olympias, assisted not only by Polysperchon, but by the Epirot prince Æacides, made her entry into Macedonia out of Epirus, apparently in the autumn of 317 B.C. She brought with her Roxane and her child—the widow and son of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian soldiers, assembled by Philip Arrhidæus and Eurydice to resist her, were so overawed by her name and the recollection of Alexander, that they refused to fight, and thus insured to her an easy victory. Philip and Eurydice became her prisoners; the former she caused to be slain; to the latter she offered only an option between the sword, the halter, and poison. The old queen next proceeded to satiate her revenge against the family of Antipater. One hundred leading Macedonians, friends of Cassander, were put to death, together with his brother Nicanor; while the sepulchre of his deceased brother Iollas, accused of having poisoned Alexander the Great, was broken up.
During the winter, Olympias remained thus completely predominant in Macedonia; where her position seemed strong, since her allies the Ætolians were masters of the pass at Thermopylæ, while Cassander was kept employed in Peloponnesus by the force under Alexander, son of Polysperchon. But Cassander, disengaging himself from these embarrassments, and eluding Thermopylæ by a maritime transit to Thessaly, seized the Perrhæbian passes before they had been put under guard, and entered Macedonia without resistance. Olympias, having no army competent to meet him in the field, was forced to shut herself up in the maritime fortress of Pydna, with Roxane, the child Alexander, and Thessalonice daughter of her late husband Philip, son of Amyntas.
Here Cassander blocked her up for several months by sea as well as by land, and succeeded in defeating all the efforts of Polysperchon and Æacides to relieve her. In the spring of the ensuing year (316 B.C.), she was forced by intolerable famine to surrender. Cassander promised her nothing more than personal safety, requiring from her the surrender of the two great fortresses, Pella and Amphipolis, which made him master of Macedonia. Presently however the relatives of those numerous victims, who had perished by order of Olympias, were encouraged by Cassander to demand her life in retribution. They found little difficulty in obtaining a verdict of condemnation against her from what was called a Macedonian assembly. Nevertheless, such was the sentiment of awe and reverence connected with her name, that no one except these injured men themselves could be found to execute the sentence. She died with a courage worthy of her rank and domineering character. Cassander took Thessalonice to wife, confined Roxane with the child Alexander in the fortress of Amphipolis—where (after a certain interval) he caused both of them to be slain.