Olympias

by Elizabeth Carney

  Though not without error and sometimes limited by Ptolemy’s bias, Arrian generally produces dependable military information.17 The quality of his political analysis, however, is best demonstrated by his conviction that it would be more shameful for Ptolemy to lie than for any other person to do so since he was a king (1.1.2).

  Granted Arrian’s focus on military matters and his desire to make Alexander admirable in a comparatively uncomplicated way, Arrian naturally has little interest in Olympias. As we have already noted, most of the other sources pay little attention to her actions during the reign of her son. Arrian mentions Olympias only five times, and four of these passages offer little information. On the occasion of Harpalus’ return from his first flight from Alexander’s service, Arrian mentions the exiles of Harpalus and other close friends of Alexander. Unlike Plutarch, he makes no mention of the Pixodarus affair in terms of their exile but he does give a similar chronological context by explaining that it happened when Philip was suspicious of Alexander after Philip’s marriage to “Eurydice” (either a mistake or another name for Cleopatra) and dishonored Olympias (3.6.5). Arrian also refers to Callisthenes’ supposed assertion that he would make Alexander divine rather than to Olympias’ lies about Alexander’s birth (4.10.2), to a letter Alexander wrote to Olympias about India (6.1.4), and to Alexander’s possible desire to see his mother again (mentioned in a speech attributed to Coenus as an incentive for Alexander to turn back; 5.27.7). These last three references recall material in the Romance.18

  Arrian, however, also provides an account of Olympias’ quarrel with Antipater and its connection to Alexander’s decision to replace him (7.12.5–

  7), which, despite its obvious gender stereotyping and implausible political analysis, offers more details than any other source about what Olympias and Antipater actually said about each other (see discussion in Chapter 3).

  Arrian insists that Alexander did or said nothing to indicate that he did not hold Antipater in as high regard as before—then, unfortunately, there is a lacuna in the manuscript (7.12.5–7). Despite Arrian’s apologetic analysis, his comparatively detailed discussion of the famous quarrel (based, one

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  suspects, on Ptolemy’s somewhat sanitized version) portrays a difficult but powerful Olympias whose influence has come to surpass Antipater’s.

  Plutarch, unlike the other authors so far discussed, did not conceive of his works as historical writing. As he himself said, he wrote “lives not history”

  ( Alex. 1.2), the famous collection of “parallel” lives of famous Greeks and Romans. He also wrote a series of essays on a great variety of topics, collectively known as the Moralia (each essay has an individual title as well).

  Plutarch, a native of Chaeroneia in central Greece, was roughly contemporary with Arrian. Like Arrian, he was well educated and had friends in high Roman places. He may also have resembled Arrian in holding consular rank and in functioning as a governor, but this is debatable.19 However, Plutarch and Arrian were certainly two of the stars of the Second Sophistic.

  Plutarch, more than any other ancient author, shaped the standard negative image of Olympias found in so many secondary works, but that has happened largely because generations of scholars have privileged his biography of Alexander over the testimony of his essays.20 Plutarch filled that biography with references to Olympias, most of them substantial in nature, and the great majority of them extremely negative.21 Olympias fascinates as well as repels Plutarch and so he simply discusses her more than do other authors. Moreover, with his focus on character and therefore on the youth of the subjects of his lives, the scope and structure of his biographies inevitably required more discussion of parents and family. Plutarch also frequently includes stories and information about Olympias in his many essays. Surprisingly, however, in the Moralia, he paints a much more flattering picture of her, one so different as to be nearly unrecognizable as the same character described by the same author in his biography of Alexander.22

  Plutarch’s Alexander tells us more about Olympias’ early life and the period of her marriage than the work of any other author: how she and Philip met, her dreams of her son’s future greatness, the story of the sexy snake so off-putting to Philip, her religious activities and their extreme nature, her possible but doubted role in the story of Alexander’s divine birth, and the fact that Alexander’s early tutor was her kinsman ( Alex. 2.1–2, 4–6, 3.2, 5.4). Despite his dislike of Olympias’ religiosity, Plutarch does not make her the villain of the story until he turns to the period at the end of Philip’s reign.

  Though he does concede that Philip’s marriages and affairs caused upsets in his oikos, creating a situation that generated problems between the king and Alexander, he claims that Olympias made it worse because of her bad personal character ( Alex. 9.3). The rest of Plutarch’s account of Olympias’

  actions during Philip’s life largely confirms this picture of her as a troublemaker: she is involved in convincing Alexander to intervene in the marriage planned for his half-brother and she incites Philip’s assassin to act ( Alex.

  10.1, 4). Plutarch does, however, blame Attalus and Cleopatra ( Alex. 10.4) for Pausanias’ rape, and Attalus alone ( Alex. 9.4) for the quarrel that leads to Alexander and Olympias’ self-imposed exile.

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  Plutarch continues to portray Olympias as a source of trouble during her son’s reign, usually insisting that Alexander dutifully honored her ( Alex. 25.4, 39.7) but did not allow her to lead him into bad acts or let her meddle in public or military affairs ( Alex. 10.4, 39.7). The final sections of the biography highlight Olympias’ continued troublemaking: she invents (he implies) the story of the involvement of Antipater’s clan in Alexander’s death years after the fact, using it to excuse her own brutal acts, and Plutarch reveals that Philip Arrhidaeus’ mental problems were the consequence of Olympias’

  drugs or potions ( Alex. 77.1, 5). He does include one story about Olympias that seems more admirable: she worries that her son’s generosity will impoverish him ( Alex. 39.5). And he clearly involves Olympias in Alexander’s claim of divine sonship, though he does not offer any view on whether it was her idea or not ( Alex. 3.2). Some of the information Plutarch provides clearly contradicts his insistence that Alexander allowed his mother no influence: Alexander kept her letters secret, was affected by her complaints against Antipater, and did nothing to stop the faction his mother and sister had formed against Antipater, merely commenting on which had made the better choice ( Alex. 39.5, 7, 68.3).23

  Although the image of Olympias Plutarch creates in the Moralia shares some traits with that in the Alexander, the overlap is comparatively narrow.

  In both the Alexander (39.5) and the Moralia (180d, 333a, 340a), Alexander allows Hephaestion to read secret correspondence from Olympias, sealing his friend’s lips, but in one of the Moralia passages (180d) the contents of the latter are specifically said to contain charges against Antipater. In both works, Plutarch recounts ( Alex. 3.4–5; Mor. 105b) the story that Philip hears three good things at the same time, the last being that Olympias has borne him a son. Plutarch provides the information about Olympias’ name-changes in the Moralia (401b) alone, but this contradicts nothing in the Alexander.

  Perhaps the most striking example of the difference in treatment of Olympias in the two works is an incident mentioned in both, but differently treated. In the Alexander (9.4), Plutarch does not involve Olympias directly in the quarrel or the subsequent reconciliation: he specifies that Attalus caused the quarrel between himself, Alexander, and Philip at the wedding and he has Demaratus blame Philip for the discord in his oikos, thus leading Philip to persuade his son to return ( Alex. 9.6). Nonetheless, since this account was immediately preceded by Plutarch’s description of Olympias’ difficult character and its tendency to worsen tensions between father and son (9.3) Plutarch strongly implies that Olympias’ manipulation of her son’s fears was the ultimate, if indirect, cause of the quarrel. In the Mor
alia, Olympias’

  involvement in the quarrel and reconciliation is described as direct. Plutarch says that Philip’s wife and son had quarreled with him, and reports that Demaratus convinced Philip to reconcile with both of them. (Many scholars ignore the second passage in favor of the first, for reasons not usually discussed.) Whereas one story implied that the entire incident was really

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  Olympias’ fault24 (though she was not present) and mentioned only the reconciliation of father and son, the other made no such implication and specified that the reconciliation included both.

  The essays include three incidents not mentioned in the Alexander that portray Olympias and her relationships in a more favorable way and characterize her in a manner that is at odds with the representation in the biography.

  One story ( Mor. 141b–c) begins with Olympias acting in what appears to be a heavy-handed way but concludes by projecting a very different picture.

  Philip’s erotic interest in a Thessalian woman had led to charges that she had gained his interest by means of pharmakon (drug or spell; see Chapters 2 and 5) and Olympias therefore quickly acts to gain control of the woman.

  However, once she meets and speaks to the woman, notes her good appearance, and realizes that she lacked neither good birth nor wit, Olympias remarks that the false accusations should be forgotten and comments that the woman is herself the pharmakon. Plutarch proceeds to comment on what a good model for a wife this behavior is.25

  Elsewhere in the essays Plutarch portrays Olympias as a model mother too.

  Making the point that individuals exemplify various virtues in different ways, he mentions ( Mor. 243d) the variety of exempla offered by several pairs of people with similar admirable traits. He specifies that Cornelia (the proverbially virtuous and self-sacrificing mother of the Gracchi) was not high minded in exactly the same way as was Olympias.

  Perhaps most remarkable of all is a passage ( Mor. 799e) that praises the Athenians because, having intercepted Philip’s mail, they did not break the seal of a letter addressed from Philip to Olympias, thus choosing not to publicize a private message from an absent husband to his affectionate wife.

  These stories depict a very different woman from the difficult troublemaker of the Alexander and a very different royal marriage from the one presented there.26

  While I would agree with the view that Plutarch generally was uncomfortable with aggressive and politically active women unless he could understand them as acting in this fashion in support of (rather than manipulating) male kin or some larger community,27 such generalizations do not explain the differences noted between the representations of Olympias in both of Plutarch’s works. Indeed, the depiction of women in general and Olympias in particular, which is the basis for these generalizations, derives largely or entirely from Plutarch’s Lives. Obviously, Plutarch’s beliefs did not change from one genre of work to another, but something else must have. Moreover, as the differences in the depiction of Olympias in the two kinds of work indicate, the issue is not so much what Olympias’ personal and character traits were in any absolute way, but rather how Plutarch chose to understand and describe them. He chose to represent the jealous virago of one work as the charmingly complacent (to Plutarch anyway) wife of the other.

  The reasons for the dramatically different portrayals of Olympias in Plutarch’s works are probably multiple. Certainly one reason Olympias is so

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  unpleasant in the biography is that Plutarch employs her character, and to some degree that of Philip, as a foil for that of Alexander; they make him look good by being bad. Plutarch tries to palm off on Olympias bad or unattractive features of Alexander.28 Many (though hardly all) of the unpleasant stories about Olympias in the Alexander are prefaced by words or phrases translatable as “it is said,” “the story is,” or something similar,29

  or Plutarch may attribute them to another source without offering his own views on the veracity of the source.30 Whether or not Plutarch intended to distance himself from testimony he considered dubious but entertaining by employing such terms,31 most readers fail to notice the specifics of his diction and simply understand that he has stated such and such. Of course, each essay in the Moralia has its own agenda, often quite a different one from that in the Alexander.

  Pausanias, another Greek author of the Second Sophistic era, composed a multi-volume description of Greece and its monuments that contains material about Olympias, small in quantity but of considerable importance,32 much of it information found nowhere else. Though the foundations of the Philippeum have endured, it is only because of Pausanias (5.17.4, 20.9–10) that we know that the statues in the building included images of Olympias and her mother-in-law as well as those of Philip, his father Amyntas, and his son Alexander. Although Justin also reports that Olympias killed both Cleopatra and Cleopatra’s baby (9.7.12), Pausanias, the only other author to accuse Olympias of the murder of mother and daughter in a clear manner, allots to them a uniquely awful death: Olympias dragged them on to a bronze vessel over a fire and so burned them to death (8.7.7). Pausanias also provides much of what we know about the dynasty of Olympias’ birth and her role in it: he mentions but disputes information about the violation of Molossian royal tombs by Lysimachus (1.9.8), the revolution caused by Aeacides’

  attempt to help Olympias (1.11.3–7), her return to Macedonia from Epirus (1.25.4), the later history and sad end of the Aeacid dynasty in Epirus (4.35.3–5), Olympias’ death at the hands of Cassander, and the subsequent tragic end of the house of Antipater and Cassander, punishment, he says, for Cassander’s treatment of Alexander’s kin (9.7.2–3). Pausanias’ reputation for accuracy is not high, but his generally hostile portrait of Olympias and her family may arise from blaming the decline of Greece (and therefore Roman conquest) on Philip and the Macedonians.33 Pausanias, nonetheless, seems unusually well informed about Aeacid politics, if hostile to the dynasty until it neared its end. He must have had a Molossian or Epirote source, apparently one unsympathetic to the Aeacids in general and Olympias in particular.34

  Many of our sources, even those otherwise critical of Olympias, admire and even focus on her physical bravery in the face of death. One should be aware that this was the expectation of royal women: Plutarch, for instance, otherwise portrays Cleopatra the Great as a barbaric, luxury-loving woman who corrupted Antony, but he saw ( Ant. 85.4–8) her suicide (accomplished

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  to prevent her enemy Octavian from marching her in his triumph) as proof that she was a true offspring of a royal clan.35 Justin, as we have seen, makes a similar reversal about Olympias. Whereas in general it was bad for a woman to be man-like, it was not if bravery and a brave death were the issues. Then a woman was living up to the standards of her male kin.36 This expectation often leads to lengthy descriptions of death scenes, the details of which (for instance, Adea Eurydice’s pious treatment of her husband’s corpse or Olympias’ wearing of royal garb and accompaniment by maids) may be suspect.

  Recognition, however, that aspects of these female heroic deaths suggest artifice does not lead inevitably to the conclusion that the accounts are not historical, perhaps even in their seemingly improbable details. Just as we recognize that epic and tragedy affected ancient writers’ values but were also employed by them,37 it is important to recognize that women like Olympias and Adea Eurydice used and were used in a similar way by Homer and the tragic writers. As each faced death, the models for behavior in this circumstance were present in Homer and, especially, in tragedy. While we have more information about how Alexander shaped his own public presentation, we should not forget that Olympias and other publicly active women may have done the same. Surely, as her murderers approached, Olympias knew that the Argead house was dying. She may have gone to her death playing the tragic queen she really had become.

  I have already commented on the comparative paucity of material, other than highly personalized anecdote, that deals with Olympia
s’ life during her son’s reign. It is important to realize that we would not know that she did, in fact, play a meaningful public role during her son’s reign if a contemporary inscription and speech had not survived. Olympias’ double appearance on a list as the recipient of grain from Cyrene, in a form suggesting she was functioning as the head of a large state ( SEG IX 2), and Hyperides’ repeated allusions to her power, alone and in association with the Macedonians (Hyp. Eux. 19–20, 25), provide otherwise unknown material demonstrating that she did more than harass her son by letter. Another inscription tells us that she asked the authorities at Delphi to turn Persian loot she controlled into gold crowns for Apollo ( SIG I 252N. 5ff). While literary sources did inform us that Alexander had sent his mother plunder, only the inscription reveals what she chose to do with it (see Chapter 3).

  Currently, no securely identified contemporary image of Olympias is known. As we have seen, the only physical images we can be certain were intended to represent her were produced many centuries after her death. As such, they may tell us something about her reception in Roman times but not about her public image in her own day. Should this situation change—

  for instance, should a coin or some other object appear that reproduced the statues in the Philippeum—we might learn a great deal.

  This brief survey of Olympias’ varying fate in the extant sources should convince the reader of two things. Characterizations of Olympias’ personality