Greek Women Part 18

Thus Hypatia, by moral suasion and by avoiding all open opposition, sought to wean the people from Christianity and to revive their faith in the ancient G.o.ds. Her success in attracting to paganism both the cultured and the plain people naturally caused her to be an object of hatred and jealousy to those who strove to promote Christianity by violence and force.

The name of Cyril, among the Church Fathers, is the synonym for fanaticism and bigotry. Elevated to the archi-episcopal chair of Alexandria to succeed his uncle, Theophilus, he sought to attain supreme power in the city and to make the power of the Church dominant in temporal affairs. He succeeded in expelling the Jews, and then turned his attention to the extermination of paganism. As Hypatia was the chief exponent of the old G.o.ds, and as her influence extended even to the palace of the prefect, Cyril hated her with all the zeal of bigotry and was eager for her downfall. Irreproachable in conduct, beloved of all, influential with the civil power, she was not subject to attack in any open manner, and Cyril finally countenanced an inhuman and disgusting plot of a.s.sa.s.sination devised by the most violent of his followers--the deacon Peter.

One day in March of the year 415, Peter secretly gathered in an alley not far from the lecture hall of Hypatia a band of savage monks from the Nitrian desert. When the customary lecture hour approached, Hypatia, unconscious of danger, left her house and entered her chariot to drive to the lecture hall. Soon the mob of zealots, headed by Peter, rush out from the alley, seize the horses, tear the helpless woman from her seat, and drag her into a neighboring church. Here, more like savage beasts than men, Peter's frenzied followers remove from her every shred of clothing, and at the foot of the bleeding image of the Saviour of mankind do to death the virgin martyr in the most horrible manner with fragments of tiles and mussel sh.e.l.ls. The limbs are torn from the still quivering body, and, when life is extinct, the howling mob gather up and burn the fragments of the mutilated corpse.

It was a horrible deed. The life of a beautiful and talented maiden was sacrificed for the cause which she professed, and, like many a Christian maiden, she attained by her death the sanct.i.ty of martyrdom. The purity and n.o.bility of her character invested her with an enduring fame, and, though her end marks the doom of the old G.o.ds, Hypatia herself will never be forgotten. Judged by the abiding results of her activity, Hypatia was, like Sh.e.l.ley, "a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void her luminous wings in vain," but as the embodiment of the highest and best elements of Greek culture she deserves to rank as one of the most typical of Greek women.

A peculiar and deep-rooted trait in woman's nature is tender compa.s.sion and sympathetic devotion to suffering humanity. Hence from heroic times onward through the various epochs of Greek history we find women at the bedside of the sick and the wounded, acting as attendant, nurse, or physician. Thus it is not surprising that we should find Greek women preeminent in the art of medicine.

In the Heroic Age, Homeric heroines were gifted with a knowledge of plants and their virtues. Hecate, wife of King aeetes of Colchis, her daughter Medea, and Circe were so celebrated in this respect that they pa.s.sed for enchantresses. One has but to recall the transformation of Odysseus's companions into swine as an evidence of Circe's peculiar power. All the daughters of Asclepius the physician--Hygiea, Panacea, Iaso, and aegle--were specialists in medicine. Helen of Troy knew how to compound her celebrated potion, Nepenthe, which made men forget all care and enjoy sound slumbers; and OEnone, the forsaken wife of Paris, and Agamede, daughter of a king of Elis, were skilled in the use of simples.

In historical times, the Thessalian women were noted for their knowledge of the virtues of plants, and were acquainted with all forms of witchcraft. They were frequently consulted for the preparation of "love potions," and, as midwives, were in demand throughout h.e.l.las. Women naturally preferred women's services in those ailments which are peculiar to the s.e.x; but in ancient Athens, so unfriendly to the female s.e.x in its laws, there was a statute forbidding the practice of gynaecology by women as a profession. Women rebelled, but their complaints were without avail.

Agnodice, whose date is not known, was the name of the courageous maiden who broke the prevailing traditions and won a natural right for her s.e.x.

She conceived the idea of studying medicine in secret until she became an expert, and then of offering her services to women, also in secret, for medical treatment, especially in cases of maternity. To this end, she cut off her hair, adopted masculine apparel, and, as a promising youth, took instruction in medicine from Hierophilus, a celebrated physician. Her progress was rapid, and when she was p.r.o.nounced sufficiently equipped for independent practice she revealed her ident.i.ty to prospective mothers, who gladly availed themselves of her services, so that she soon obtained the monopoly of this kind of practice. The other physicians were naturally overcome with jealousy and chagrin that the young doctor should supplant them, and finally they brought charges of malpractice against the supposed youth. Agnodice was brought to trial, and in self-defence was compelled to reveal her s.e.x. The older physicians then endeavored to have the laws enforced against her; but all the prominent ladies of the city took her part, and the obnoxious laws were repealed.

From that time forward, large numbers of women studied medicine, the majority devoting their attention to the diseases of women and children.

These female physicians frequently appear as medical writers, especially on gynaecology and pediatrics. They also produced many treatises on cosmetics, which ranked as a branch of hygiene and was cultivated most diligently by many eminent physicians. These women rivalled one another in the discovery of an endless variety of toilet preparations, beauty wafers, skin and hair ointments, pastes and powders, and wine essences for the removal of pimples and freckles.

In later and more immoral times, female physicians lent their talents gladly to demoralization and license, and wrote treatises on love potions and abortives--a disreputable form of literature very popular with the hetserae, and which, according to Pliny, found diligent readers among the great ladies of Rome. Of all the numerous works of the feminine doctors, only fragments and excerpts have come down to us, and their loss is not greatly to be regretted. Yet credit is due to these women as pioneers in female emanc.i.p.ation, and the most eminent of them deserve to be rescued from oblivion.

The greatest was Aspasia--not the favorite of Pericles nor the devoted companion of Cyrus the Younger, but the "medical" Aspasia, who was a prominent figure in the Athens of the fourth century before the Christian era. She attained great fame, not only in women's diseases, but also in surgery and other branches of medicine, as may be judged from the t.i.tles of her works, preserved by Aetius, a physician and writer of the fifth century of our era. It seems clear from what is known of her that the Athenian women saw nothing criminal in giving and using abortives. Even Aristotle desired to have a law regulating the number of children that might be borne by woman.

Antiochis, to whom Heraclides of Tarentum, one of the best physicians of antiquity, dedicated his works, was a practising female physician in Magna Graecia, in the third century before Christ, who devoted especial attention to salves and plaster cures. To the great Cleopatra has been ascribed the authors.h.i.+p of a work "on the medical means of preserving beauty"; but there were probably one or more physicians of this name, as there are various treatises ascribed to "Cleopatra." Other female physicians, of whom we know little more than the name and the t.i.tles of their works, are Olympias of Boeotia, Salpe, Elephantis, Sotira, Pamphile, Myro, Spendusa, Maia, and Berenice.

s.p.a.ce will not suffer us to do more than call attention to many wise and able women of h.e.l.las who were eminent in other branches of learning. In historical writings, Thucydides's daughter is worthy of mention, as she is said to have composed the eighth book of her father's history of the Peloponnesian War; Nicobule, the author of a history of Alexander the Great, was another excellent woman writer. Plutarch gathered about him a learned circle of women, of whom the chief was Clea, the clever matron of Delphi, to whom he dedicated several of his works, and Eurydice, who enjoyed his instruction. Aganice, daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly, possessed an astonis.h.i.+ng knowledge of astronomy, and was regarded as an enchantress. To Melanippe, the sculptor Lysistratus erected a monument as a tribute to her learning.

Alexandria, with its vast number of scholars, its libraries and museums, and its intellectual freedom for women, naturally produced a large number of women eminent in history and philology. Frequently philologists' daughters were trained from childhood by their fathers, and afterward became their companions and secretaries in literary labors. The most prominent of these literary feminine grammarians was doubtless Hestiaea of Alexandria, a Homeric scholar of note, who was the first to devote scientific attention to the topography of the Iliad and to throw doubt on the generally accepted view that New Ilium was the site of Ancient Troy. Pamphile, daughter of the grammarian Soteridas and wife of the scholar Socratidas, was a woman of wide erudition, celebrated especially as essayist and historian. Others whose names are a.s.sociated with similar labors are Agallis, Theodora, and Theosebia.

When one reflects on the varied activity of Greek women, the conclusion forces itself upon him that they were intellectually as acquisitive and as brilliant as the Greek men, who have set the standard for the world in the realm of literature and science. Cleverness is the most salient characteristic of the Greek intelligence, and this trait belonged as truly to the female s.e.x as to the male. The Renaissance furnishes examples of women renowned for their erudition and culture; but perhaps only the present age furnishes an adequate parallel to the varied intellectual activities of Greek women in the centuries that followed the decline of Greek independence and that saw the spread of Greek culture among all civilized peoples. Modern women can therefore learn much from their Greek sisters in all that pertains to the so-called emanc.i.p.ation of the s.e.x.

XIV

THE MACEDONIAN WOMAN

Separated from the lands of the h.e.l.lenes by the range of the Cambunian Mountains which extended north of Thessaly from Mount Olympus on the east to Mount Lacmon on the west, there lay a rugged country, whose inhabitants were destined to play a prominent role and become a powerful factor in the later history of Greece. This country, divided into many basins by spurs which branch off from the higher mountain chains, by its mountain system not only shut the people off from the outside world, but also forbade any extended intercourse between the dwellers in the various cantons. The wide and fertile valleys, however, and the mountain slopes abounding in extensive forests, the haunts of wild game, mark the land as the country of a great people, who by generations of seclusion were storing up strength and vitality to be of vast influence whenever they should break through their narrow confines.

Such a people dwelt there, but it required strong leaders to bring them in touch with the rich h.e.l.lenic life to the south of them and to make them a powerful factor in the history of the world. Philip, lord of Macedon, and his mightier son, Alexander, were the great men who were to accomplish the work of grafting the new blood and energy of Macedon upon the decaying stock of Greek culture, and to diffuse the spirit of h.e.l.lenism throughout the civilized world. With them the old order of things, as represented in Athens and Sparta, pa.s.sed away, and a new order, with new ideals, new motives, new views of life, was born. Hence, the people of Macedon, themselves Greek by race, have a large place in the consideration of any phase of Greek life. When the h.e.l.lenes originally migrated into Greece, a branch of the race found its way into the southwestern part of Macedon behind the barriers of Olympus, and later, by intermixture with the Illyrians and other barbarous races, these invaders lost some of their national characteristics and, shut off as they were, failed to share in the history and development of their kinsmen to the south. In language, in inst.i.tutions, and in aspirations, however, they gave indisputable evidence of their right to be considered as members of the great h.e.l.lenic family.

The people were a hardy, peasant folk, devoted to hunting, to grazing, and to agriculture, and they preserved the patriarchal inst.i.tutions which obtained among the earliest Greeks. They were divided into many tribes, each with its own chief and leader. Among some of the hardier tribes, the man who had not slain a wild boar was not allowed to recline at table with the warriors, and not to have slain an enemy was regarded as a mark of disgrace. In the tribal organization and in the inst.i.tution of the kings.h.i.+p, we are carried back to the society of Homeric times, and in manifold ways the public and private life of the Macedonians reflects the life portrayed in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Aristotle remarks that the ancient kings.h.i.+p survived only among the Spartans, the Molossians, and the Macedonians, of all the Greek peoples; and only among the last mentioned did the office retain all its prerogatives. As in the Heroic Age, so in Macedon, the king was supreme judge, military commander-in-chief, and at the head of the religion of the State. But he was no Oriental despot. The people were conscious of their liberty and sensitive as to their rights. By the side of the king stood the n.o.bles, who were closely a.s.sociated with him at all times, const.i.tuting his council, accompanying him to war, and sharing with him his dangers and his honors. As the population was largely rural, there were present none of the conditions which tend to nullify clan distinctions and create a democracy. The lines between n.o.ble and peasant were very broad. Hence, Macedon was essentially a dynastic State, and its history is largely the history of its royal family. As we have frequently noted, in monarchies woman is ever a most influential factor, A king must have a court, and there can be no court without a queen. The queen's life has necessarily its public, political, and military aspects; and the part she plays largely determines the weal or woe of both king and people. Hence it is with the royal family of Macedon, and with those queens and princesses who make up a large part of its history, that we are now chiefly concerned.

The royal family of Macedon claimed descent from members of the ancient Heracleid family of Argos, which had taken refuge in the north; and this descent was so capable of proof, that, on the basis of it, one of the earlier kings was admitted to the Olympic games. Herodotus, the great story teller, relates the incident of the founding of the dynasty.

According to his narration, three brothers of the royal race of Temenus,--the fourth in descent from Heracles,--Gauanes, Eropus, and Perdiccas, exiles from Argos, went into Illyria, and thence into upper Macedon, where they placed themselves, as herdsmen, at the service of Lebea, one of the local kings. Now, when the queen baked the bread for their food, she always noticed that the loaf destined for Perdiccas doubled its weight; she made this marvel known to her husband, who saw danger in it, and ordered the three brothers to depart from the country.

They replied that they would go as soon as they had received their wages. Thereupon the king, who was sitting by the hearth, on which fell sunlight through the opening of the roof, as if by divine inspiration said to the brothers, pointing to the light on the floor: "I will give you that; that is your wages." Upon this, the two elder brothers stood speechless; but the younger, who held a knife in his hand, said: "Very well; we accept it." And having traced with his knife a circle on the floor surrounding the rays, he stooped down thrice, feigning each time to take up the suns.h.i.+ne and place it in the folds of his garment and to distribute it to his brothers; after which, they all went away. One of those who sat by called the attention of the king to this conduct on the part of the young man, and the manner in which he accepted what was offered him; and the king, becoming anxious and angry, sent hors.e.m.e.n to follow the brothers and slay them. Now in that country is a river, to which the descendants of these Argives offer sacrifice as to a G.o.d. This river, after the fugitives had crossed it, became suddenly so swollen that the hors.e.m.e.n dared not follow. The brothers arrived in another part of Macedon and established themselves near the lake called the Gardens of Midas, and, when they had subjugated the country in those parts, they went thence to conquer the rest of Macedon.

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!'"