When the soldiers burst into Olympias’s residence, they found her standing in her royal robes, waiting. They had been ordered to kill her, the mother of Alexander the Great, but none of them could raise a hand against her. It fell instead to the relatives of the people she herself had executed, and they stoned her to death. She neither cried out nor begged for mercy, and one ancient author wrote that it seemed as though Alexander himself could be seen in his dying mother.
She had been born Myrtale, the eldest daughter of the king of Molossia, a rugged kingdom bordering Macedonia whose people the Greeks regarded as little better than barbarians. Her family, however, claimed descent from Achilles, the great hero of the Trojan War. Her father died when she was still a child, and her uncle took the throne, promptly using his brother’s children for his own political ends. He married off one of her sisters and promised Olympias to Philip II of Macedon.
She took the name Olympias only later, after her husband’s victory at the Olympic Games, and sometimes used the name Polyxena in devotion to the cult of Dionysus. According to legend, when Philip first saw the eighteen-year-old redhead, he fell hopelessly in love. On their wedding night, she dreamed that a bolt of lightning struck her womb and ignited a great fire, while Philip dreamed he placed a seal bearing the image of a lion upon her womb. Both took it as a sign that the child she would conceive was destined for something extraordinary.
In 356 BC, she gave birth to a boy who would become Alexander the Great. The marriage that began with love and passion soon soured. Olympias was not thrilled by her husband’s wandering affections, which extended to men as well, and she retaliated by claiming that Zeus himself visited her chamber and that her son was not Philip’s but the child of a god. Philip, in turn, was deeply disturbed by his wife’s fascination with snakes.
One day, he walked into her chamber and found her surrounded by them. Convinced she was bound to the creatures through dark magic, he lost all desire for her and never returned to her bed. Caught in the middle of their parents’ conflict were young Alexander and his little sister Cleopatra. Olympias gradually turned the children against their father, and realizing Philip would never again share her bed, she devoted all her energy to securing the throne for her son.
Philip had another son, Arrhidaeus, who might have claimed the throne as well, but the boy showed signs of what appeared to be serious mental illness. Malicious tongues blamed Olympias, claiming she had driven him mad with her snake poisons. As a result, Alexander was considered the primary heir, a position that gave his mother considerable influence at court. Everything changed when Philip decided to take a seventh wife.
The girl was Macedonian and came from an ambitious family. If she bore sons, they would be full-blooded Macedonians and could challenge Alexander’s claim to the throne. At the wedding celebrations, the bride’s uncle raised a toast and declared that the king would soon have a legitimate son. Alexander lost his temper and threw his cup at the man.
Philip tried to draw his sword against his own son but was so drunk he stumbled. The royal wedding turned into a wrestling match. Furious, Olympias left the country with her son and returned to her homeland of Molossia. She even tried to persuade her brother, who now sat on the throne there, to declare war on her own husband.
Unlike many women of her time who endured humiliation in silence, she had no intention of tolerating anything of the sort. Hoping to win back his strong-willed wife and preserve the alliance with her homeland, Philip decided to marry off their grown daughter to Olympias’s brother, once again an uncle marrying his niece. But the wedding meant to reconcile everyone ended in bloodshed. In the middle of the celebrations, Philip was attacked by his own bodyguard, a former lover, who drove a dagger into the king’s ribs and killed him.
The assassin was cut down almost immediately, taking his reasons to the grave. Suspicion fell squarely on Olympias and Alexander, the two people with the most to gain from the king’s death. And Olympias hardly looked like a grieving widow. She personally saw to the burial of her husband’s assassin, and her first order was to eliminate Philip’s youngest children by the wife she hated most.
Eurydice had given birth to two heirs, a daughter named Europa and a son named Caranus. According to one account, Olympias forced the young queen to hang herself after murdering both children in her arms. Another, even more horrifying version claims she had Eurydice and her children boiled alive in a cauldron. Alexander was horrified by his mother’s cruelty and condemned her actions, but by then his own hands were already stained with blood.
To secure his power, he had been forced to eliminate many Macedonian aristocratic families that refused to recognize his rule. Such was the price of the throne. Once in power, Alexander began the campaigns that would write his name into history. Mother and son were separated by enormous distances, but Olympias was determined not to lose her influence over him.
They maintained constant correspondence, with her sending instructions and advice, though the now fully grown Alexander was not always eager to listen. While he was off conquering new lands, Olympias wanted to play an active role in running the kingdom, but Macedonian society would not accept a woman as regent. Instead, Alexander’s trusted friend, Antipater, was appointed in his place. Over the next fourteen years, Alexander built an empire stretching three thousand miles from Europe to India.
Then, in 323 BC, he suddenly died at the age of just thirty-two. Historians still argue over the cause. Some believe it was a natural illness such as malaria. Others blame his excessive drinking and reckless lifestyle.
Some even suggest he was poisoned. Olympias firmly believed in the last version. She had sensed her son’s death approaching and had written to warn him to beware of his own physician. His death brought chaos.
Alexander had left no heir, though his wife Roxana was pregnant and later gave birth to a boy, Alexander IV. The child was expected to share the throne with Alexander’s mentally disabled half-brother, Arrhidaeus. One kingdom suddenly had two kings, followed by a struggle over who would rule as regent in their name. The regency was meant to pass to Olympias, but Arrhidaeus’s ambitious wife, Adea Eurydice, had no intention of letting that happen.
The country found itself caught in a war between two queens. When the Macedonian soldiers saw the mother of Alexander the Great and his young son, they refused to obey Eurydice and crossed over to Olympias without a fight. Such was the power of Alexander’s memory and the respect his name still inspired. Once again, the throne stood before Olympias, along with the price that had to be paid for it.
Arrhidaeus was killed on her orders. Her royal rival was granted what could almost be called a privilege: Olympias allowed her to choose her own death, sending her a sword, a rope, and poison. The proud young woman cursed her and chose her own belt, using it to hang herself. After all those years, the Macedonians finally accepted the rule of a woman.
Olympias became regent and governed on behalf of her grandson. But power changed her. She began taking revenge on every noble family that had once humiliated her during her marriage or dared to oppose her son. Macedonia descended into a full-scale bloodbath.
Then Cassander, the son of Antipater, Olympias’s longtime rival, returned to the stage. He marched against her, laid siege to the city where she and her grandson were staying, and after a desperate struggle, she was forced to surrender. Although Cassander initially promised to spare her life, he understood how much influence she still commanded and that she would never stop fighting for power. He selected two hundred soldiers and ordered them to kill her.
When they saw her standing in her royal robes, they could not bring themselves to do it. So Cassander turned to the relatives of the people she herself had brutally executed. They were the ones who finally carried out the sentence, stoning her to death. History usually remembers Olympias only as Alexander the Great’s mother.
But she was a historical figure in her own right, a product of an age when there were only two possible outcomes, victory or death, and when the winner took everything. She had devoted her life to placing her son on the throne, stained her hands with blood to keep him there, and met an equally bloody end herself.
