Olympias

Olympias was a princess of Epirus, wife of Philip II of Macedon and mother of Alexander the Great. She maintained strong religious and dynastic identities and became involved in the violent politics surrounding Philip’s later marriage and assassination.

After Alexander’s death she supported her grandson Alexander IV and fought against rival successors. In 317 BC she returned to Macedonia and executed opponents, but Cassander captured and killed her the following year. Olympias was born in Passaron and died in Pydna.

Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s Child of a Dream makes Olympias a powerful influence on the young Alexander, presenting her religious intensity and turbulent marriage to Philip II as essential to the prince’s sense of exceptional destiny. Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven likewise places her at the centre of Alexander’s childhood and the violent Macedonian court, while Funeral Games shows the consequences of her dynastic ambitions after Alexander’s death. Diodorus Siculus’ The Library, Books 16-20 records Olympias as an active participant in the Successor struggles, including her return to Macedon and conflict with Cassander. Quintus Curtius Rufus’ The History of Alexander supplies another ancient tradition for the royal family and the tensions surrounding Alexander’s lineage, allowing Olympias to be read against the later literary image of the formidable queen mother.