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6. THE ROYAL FAMILY (MACEDONIA, AUTUMN 318 B.C.)

Meanwhile, in the hill country between Epirus and Macedonia, two armies advanced toward each other, each led by a queen. Only one description survives of the world’s first known battle between female leaders. According to this no doubt sensationalized report, Olympias, on one side of the field, appeared in the fawn-skin wrap and ivy headdress of a bacchant, as though leading an ecstatic procession for the god Dionysus, and marched to the beat of drums. On the other, Adea came forward in full Macedonian infantry gear. It is an unverifiable but unforgettable image, almost an allegory of the different kinds of power the two women possessed.

Olympias was returning to Macedonia with her grandson Alexander, and Adea was determined to stop her. Olympias was accompanied by her top general, Polyperchon, but Adea did not have Cassander, who was at that moment in the Peloponnese shoring up his Greek support. Adea had urgently sent for him when she learned Olympias was on the march but in the end could not wait, or else thought he wasn’t coming. She chose to play the role of field general herself, distributing gifts to her top officers to secure their loyalty. But all her bribes were wasted. Her soldiers, young recruits who had not known Alexander and in whose eyes the conqueror was already a myth, were awed by the sight of his mother, Olympias, and instantly switched sides. The battle ended without a blow being struck. Philip was captured immediately, Adea a short while later while attempting to flee. Olympias, Polyperchon, and the young Alexander marched on to Pella to take control of the riven state.

Olympias had seized power in Macedon at last, the prize for which she had grappled with old man Antipater for so long. Her first order of business was the captured king and queen, Philip and Adea. Olympias walled them up in a cell, supplying rations of food and water through a small opening. Perhaps she thought the Macedonian people, who had deserted the royal pair so readily, would enjoy seeing them treated like beasts in a cage. But she overplayed her hand. Opinion was outraged at her abuse of members of the Argead house. Adea played on her countrymen’s sympathy, crying out from her cell that she, daughter and granddaughter of Macedonian kings, was true queen of the realm, not an outsider from Epirus. Olympias could not allow this shrill voice to go on making itself heard.

Argead monarchs had often killed their kin to secure rule, but they tried to do so covertly. Olympias no longer had this option; her murders of Philip and Adea would have to be done in plain view. A gang of Thracians was hired to stab Philip to death, perhaps because no Macedonians would undertake such a deed. Adea, meanwhile, being a woman, was given the right to kill herself and offered a choice of methods. Olympias sent to her cell a sword, a noose, and a cup of poison, with orders to employ whichever she preferred. Defiant to the end, Adea removed one of her own garments and hanged herself with that, rather than use her captor’s noose. Her guards reported that she died a brave death, worthy of a tragic heroine, first praying that Olympias might herself receive gifts like the ones she had sent to the cell. As a final rebuke to her royal rivals, Olympias hid their bodies and refused to accord them proper burial.

With these two off the scene, Olympias set about settling scores with the family of Antipater, which she held to blame for the poisoning (as she saw it) of her son. Antipater was dead, as was his son Iolaus, who had allegedly slipped the toxin into Alexander’s drink. But Olympias took revenge on the son anyway, opening his grave and scattering his ashes to the elements. She then killed another son of Antipater’s, Nicanor (a different person from the Piraeus garrison commander); he had never been implicated in Alexander’s death but, by long-standing Macedonian custom, was presumed an enemy because