Part 18 (2/2)

Herodotus states that Perdiccas I. founded the reigning dynasty in Macedon, and he mentions as his successors Argaeus, Philip, Eropus, Alcetas, and Amyntas I., whose son, Alexander ”the Philheliene,” the Greeks permitted to take part in the Olympic games. This Alexander on one occasion visited dire punishment upon a party of Persian envoys who at a banquet forgot the respect due to the ladies at the court of Macedon; he caused them to be a.s.sa.s.sinated by a company of young men whom he had disguised in women's attire. When the Persians sent to require the punishment of the guilty, Alexander won over the envoy by giving him his sister in marriage.

This Alexander, who became king in the year 500 before the Christian era, begins the series of those Macedonian kings who felt the need of h.e.l.lenizing their people, and his reign accordingly marks a turning point in the history of Macedon. Perdiccas II., Archelaus I., and Amyntas II. were his successors, who continued this policy; but this forced civilization by no means reached the ma.s.s of the people, and, while it refined the n.o.bility and the court and paved the way for the Macedonian inroads into Greece, it also introduced luxury and corruption. Amyntas II. left three sons, Alexander II., Perdiccas III., and Philip, the last of whom was the one so well known to fame; and Eurydice, the mother of these three valiant sons, was the first of that series of remarkable women, noted for their power, their beauty, or their crimes, who from this time on fill the annals of Macedonian history.

In her barbarous instincts, Eurydice gives evidence of the non-h.e.l.lenic blood in her veins. Her career in crime was such as to place her among the Messalinas and Lucrezia Borgias of history. To begin with, she was implicated in a conspiracy with a paramour, Ptolemaeus of Alorus, against her husband's life; but when the plot was detected, she was, out of regard for their three sons, mercifully spared by her husband.

Alexander, the eldest, succeeded his father, but, after reigning two years, was a.s.sa.s.sinated by Ptolemaeus, with his own mother as an accomplice of the murderer. When Perdiccas grew to manhood, he avenged his brother's death and his mother's disgrace by slaying Ptolemaeus; but he himself, a few years later, fell in battle against the Illyrians, or, as was a.s.serted, at the hand of an a.s.sa.s.sin hired by his mother Eurydice. Philip, the next in succession, then ascended the throne, and succeeded in securing himself against the attempts of his mother and in conciliating all factions. Eurydice then disappears from the scene, and the manner of her death is unknown. Heredity, without doubt, had much to do with the cruelty in Philip's nature, and in spite of her crimes he seems to have had much respect for his sanguinary mother, for he placed a figure of her among the gold-and-ivory statues embellis.h.i.+ng the monument he erected to commemorate his victory over the Athenians and Thebans at Chaeronea.

We are not concerned here with the rise of Philip's power over h.e.l.las, nor with the history of his son Alexander and the empire he established, except in so far as the spread of h.e.l.lenism 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sion 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 h.e.l.las, 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 fas.h.i.+on of marrying many wives; according to Athenaeus, 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 preeminently 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 pa.s.sionate ardor of her nature found its fullest expression in the wild ecstasies and crude superst.i.tions 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 Haemus, 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 G.o.ds 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d?” 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated, 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 dest.i.tute.' 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.”

Upon the death of Alexander, Olympias espoused with great devotion the cause of her daughter-in-law Roxana and the young Alexander against the intrigues of the generals, and she did everything in her power to maintain their rights in opposition to the cold and calculating Ca.s.sander. Diodorus gives a graphic account of her last days:

”As soon as Olympias heard that Ca.s.sander was entering Macedonia with a large army, she, taking with her the son of Alexander and his mother Roxana, and other kindred and eminent relations, entered the town of Pydna. Neither was there provision in that place sufficient for such a mult.i.tude to hold out any long siege. Yet she was resolved to stay here, expecting many Greeks and Macedonians to come in to her a.s.sistance by sea. Now spring came on, and the famine increased every day, whereupon most of the soldiers came up in a body and entreated Olympias to suffer them to leave the place because of the scarcity, who, not being able to supply them with bread, let them go. At length Olympias, perceiving that many went over to Ca.s.sander, without delay got ready a galley of five oars with a design to rescue herself and her kindred; but being discovered to the enemy by some of the deserters, Ca.s.sander sailed to the place and seized the vessel. Whereupon Olympias sent a herald to Ca.s.sander to treat upon terms of pacification, but he insisted upon the delivering up of herself to his mercy; she at length prevailed only for the preservation of her person. He then incited the relations of such as were put to death by Olympias to prosecute her in the general a.s.sembly of the Macedonians, who readily complied with what they were desired to do; and though she herself was not then present, nor had any person there to plead her cause, yet the Macedonians condemned her to die.

Ca.s.sander therefore sent some of his friends to Olympias and advised her to get out of the way, and promised to procure for her a s.h.i.+p and to cause her to be conveyed safely to Athens. He did not do this for her preservation, but that, as one confessing her own guilt by her flight, it might be judged a just vengeance upon her if she was cut off as she was on her voyage; for he was afraid as well of the fickle disposition of the Macedonians as of the dignity of her person. But Olympias refused to fly, and said she was ready to defend her cause before all the Macedonians. Ca.s.sander therefore, fearing lest the people should change their minds and so take upon them to defend the queen, sent to her a band of two hundred soldiers with orders to despatch her forthwith, who, rus.h.i.+ng on a sudden into the palace, as soon as they saw her, in reverence to her person, drew back without executing the command. But the kindred of those she had put to death, both to ingratiate themselves with Ca.s.sander, and likewise to gratify their own revenge for the death of their relations, cut her throat, she not in the least crying out in any womanish terror or fear to spare her. In this manner died Olympias, the greatest and most honorable woman in the age wherein she lived, daughter of Neoptolemus, King of Epirus; sister of Pyrrhus, who made the expedition into Italy; wife of Philip, the greatest and most victorious prince of all that ever lived before in Europe; and lastly the mother of Alexander, who never was exceeded by any for the many great and wonderful things that were done by him.”

So Olympias showed herself in her death, as in her life, every inch a queen; and, in spite of her temper and her bloodthirstiness, she deserves a high place in the history of womanhood, because of her untiring devotion to her son and to his helpless widow and child against the machinations of cruel and powerful men.

Philip had three daughters who appear prominently in Macedonian history: Cynane, by an Illyrian princess, who figures in the history of her daughter Eurydice, which we shall recount later; Thessalonica, whom Ca.s.sander married after he had slain Olympias and all the heirs of Alexander, and after whom he named the famous city which he built; and Cleopatra, full sister of Alexander, who was first married to her uncle, Alexander, King of Epirus, murdered in Italy while he was trying to subdue the West. The young Princess Cleopatra was left a widow in good time to enter upon a career in the stormy days that followed the death of the world-monarch. She returned to Macedon, and notwithstanding the fact that she and her mother Olympias were both of violent tempers, and frequently quarrelled, yet their interests were too closely united to permit any permanent estrangement. Her claims to the throne were the strongest, next to those of the infant Alexander, and, in consequence, she was much sought after in marriage, and had her choice of almost all the distinguished men of the time. She regarded marriage as a legitimate weapon of diplomacy to advance her interests and to increase her influence. Yet a sad fatality seemed to attach to the men whom she proposed to honor with her hand. She first chose, probably from ardent affection, Leonnatus, one of the most gallant of Alexander's generals, but he was killed while a.s.sisting Antipater before Lamia. Her mother then offered her hand to Perdiccas, when he became regent, and he gladly accepted; but before the nuptials were celebrated, he was slain in an attack on Egypt. Had the loyal Eumenes been victorious in his long struggle against Antigonus, Cleopatra would doubtless have married him, in spite of the fact that he was not of royal blood. She then resided for fifteen years in Sardis, amid all the pomp and luxury naturally attending so n.o.ble and beautiful a princess, and became the object of intrigue among the rival generals. Old Antipater, when appointed regent, accused her of treason and sedition; but she publicly defended herself, in their native tongue, before the Macedonian soldiers, and so great was the influence she exerted over them that Antipater wisely concluded to withdraw the charge, and hara.s.sed her no further. At last, however, at Sardis, she fell into the power of her old enemy, Antigonus. Realizing her peril, this redoubtable princess, although past fifty, was planning escape and flight to Egypt to marry Ptolemy, who had already two wives and grown-up children. To prevent this marriage of the queen with his strongest rival, Antigonus put her to death.

Cleopatra manifested the same strength of personality and independence of character as her mother Olympias, and she had, in addition, all the advantages of education and culture which would naturally accrue to the sister of Alexander. She differed most strongly from her mother and other Macedonian princesses of the day, in that no murders could be laid at her door.

When we come to Cynane, the third daughter of Philip, we find another type of womanhood. She showed her Illyrian blood in her fondness for outdoor exercise, being a skilled horsewoman, and she would even enter into battle at the head of her troops. She was first married by Philip to her cousin Amyntas. Left a widow, she devoted herself to the education of her daughter, Eurydice, whom she trained in the same martial exercises for which she herself was famous. When Philip Arrhidaeus, the imbecile half-brother of Alexander, son of a female dancer, Philinna of Larissa, was proclaimed joint heir with the posthumous son of Roxana to Alexander's dominions, Cynane determined to marry him to her daughter, and started over to Asia to accomplish this end. As her influence was great, Perdiccas and Antipater determined to forestall such a contingency by the murder of the mother, and Perdiccas sent his brother Alcetas to meet her on the way and put her to death. By her valor and her eloquence, however, she won over the Macedonian warriors, so that the schemes of the generals could not be publicly carried out; but, in defiance of the feelings of the soldiery, Alcetas secretly consummated the ruthless plot, and Cynane met her doom with dauntless spirit. After the death of the mother, the discontent of the Macedonian troops and the respect with which they looked on Eurydice, as one of the few surviving members of the royal house, induced Perdiccas not only to spare Eurydice's life, but also to give her in marriage to the unhappy King Philip Arrhidasus, whose weakened intellectual powers were due to the drugs of Olympias--the queen who never ceased to wreak her vengeance upon her rivals in Philip's affections and upon their ill-fated offspring.

Then began the long and bitter struggle for mastery between the new queen, Eurydice, and the old queen, Olympias, who took the part of Roxana and her son; and only the superior claims of Olympias, as the mother of Alexander, to the respect of the Macedonian soldiery led to her final victory over her gifted and powerful rival. These hostile factions in the royal party of Macedon were to lead to the extinction of all the legitimate heirs to the throne. After the death of her mortal enemy Antipater, Eurydice determined to make an active campaign against his successor, the less able Polysperchon, who had allied himself with Olympias. She therefore concluded an alliance with Ca.s.sander, a.s.sembled an army, and took the field in person. Polysperchon marched against her, accompanied by Olympias and Roxana, with the young Alexander, and the presence of Olympias decided the day.

”As the troops of Alcetas would not fight against her and Cynane, so the troops of Eurydice deserted her when she led them against the queen-mother. It was the moment when Olympias's pent-up fury burst out after many years. Amid her orgies of murder and of disentombing her enemies, she was not likely to spare the offspring of Philip's faithlessness; for Philip Arrhidaeus was the son of a Thessalian dancing girl, and Eurydice the granddaughter of an Illyrian savage. She shut them up, and meant to kill them by gradual starvation. But her people began to expostulate, and then, having had Philip shot by Thracians, she sent Eurydice the sword, the halter, and the hemlock, to take her choice. But she, praying that Olympias might receive the same gifts, composed the limbs of her husband, and washed his wounds as best she could, and then, without one word of complaint at her fate, or the greatness of her misfortune, hanged herself with the halter. If these women knew not how to live, they knew how to die.”

A word must be said about Alexander the Great and his relations with the fair s.e.x; for notwithstanding the fact that in Alexander's career Persian woman plays the chief role, yet it was by breaking down the barriers between Greek and Barbarian, between Occidental and Oriental, that the way was prepared for the larger freedom of woman in succeeding generations; and in his younger days, before becoming a world-conqueror, Alexander was greatly influenced by certain women of his household. We have already spoken of his ardent affection and respect for his queen-mother. He also had in his childhood a nurse, Lanice, to whom he was devotedly attached, ”He loved her as a mother,” says an ancient writer. Her sons gave their lives in battle for him, and her one brother, c.l.i.tus, who had once rescued him from imminent death, was later slain by Alexander's own hand in a fit of anger. This deed occasioned the conqueror infinite regret and remorse, and Arrian tells graphically how, as he tossed weeping on his bed of repentance, ”he kept calling the name of c.l.i.tus and the name of Lanice, c.l.i.tus's sister, who nursed and reared him--Lanice the daughter of Dropides,--'Fair return I have made in manhood's years for thy nurture and care--thou who hast seen thy sons die fighting in my behalf; and now I have slain thy brother with mine own hand!'”

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