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
Cassander 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 assisting 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 noble 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 harassed 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
Arrhidжus, 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 Cassander, assembled
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 Arrhidжus 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 sex; for notwithstanding the fact that in Alexander's career
Persian woman plays the chief rфle, 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, Clitus, 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 Clitus and the name of Lanice, Clitus'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!'"

Another friend of his youth was a lady of noble birth, by name Ada, whom
he dignified with the title of "mother," and later established as Queen
of Caria. Plutarch tells how, as a friendly attention, she used to send
him daily not only all sorts of meats and cakes, but finally went so far
as to send him the cleverest cooks and bakers she could find, though,
owing to the rigid training of his tutor, he was extremely temperate in
eating and drinking and did not avail himself of her indulgence.

Alexander was ever considerate of women, even when these were taken
captive in battle, and Plutarch tells an interesting story of his
treatment of a noble lady of Thebes, when he had captured and was about
to raze that city:

"Among the other calamities that befell the city, it happened that some
Thracian soldiers having broken into the house of a matron of high
character and repute, named Timycha, their captain, after he had used
violence with her, to satisfy his avarice as well as lust, asked her if
she knew of any money concealed, to which she readily answered she did,
and bade him follow her into a garden, where she showed him a well, into
which, she told him, upon the taking of the city she had thrown what she
had of the most value. The greedy Thracian presently stooping down to
view the place where he thought the treasure lay, she came behind him
and pushed him into the well, and then flung great stones in upon him
till she had killed him. After which, when the soldiers led her away
bound to Alexander, her very mien and gait showed her to be a woman of
dignity and of a mind no less elevated. And when the king asked her who
she was, 'I am,' she said, the sister of Theagenes who fought the battle
of Chжronea with your father Philip, and fell there in command for the
liberty of Greece.' Alexander was so surprised, both at what she had
done and what she said, that he could not choose but give her and her
children their liberty."

In the evil fortunes of the princesses of Macedon the Persian wives of
Alexander shared. Roxana, the daughter of a Bactrian satrap, whose
youthfulness and beauty charmed him at a drinking entertainment, was the
first of his wives. Later, in celebrating at Susa the union of Europe
and Asia by the marriage of his Greek officers to Persian maidens, he
himself wedded Statira, the daughter of Darius. "After Alexander's
death, Roxana," says Plutarch, "who was now with child, and upon that
account much honored by the Macedonians, being jealous of Statira, sent
for her by a counterfeit letter, as if Alexander had still been alive;
and when she had her in her power, killed her and her sister and threw
their babies into a well which they filled up with earth, not without
the assistance of Perdiccas, who in the time immediately following the
king's death, under cover of the name of Arrhidжus, whom he carried
about with him as a sort of guard to his person, exercised the chief
authority." There is no more tragic story than that of the fate of the
young Alexander and his mother. Olympias, the grandmother, warmly
espoused the youth's cause, but his existence was a menace to the
ambitions of the rival generals. Cassander finally seized the power in
Macedon and obtained possession of Roxana and her son, whom he confined
in the fortress of Amphipolis and later caused to be secretly
assassinated by the governor of the fortress.

After the murder of Roxana and her son, a movement was made to raise to
the throne Heracles, son of Darius's daughter, Barsine, he being the
sole surviving offspring of Alexander, though a bastard; but Cassander,
perceiving the danger,