Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/398

 36n HISTORY OF GREECE. imperial familj. King Philip Aridaeus and his wife Euiydikd, alarmed and indignant at the restoration of Olympias which Polysperchon was projecting, solicited aid from Kassander, and tried to place the force of Macedonia at his disposal. In this however they failed. Olympias, assisted not only by Polysper- chon, but by the Epirotic prince ^akides, made her entry into Macedonia out of Epirus, apparently in the autumn of 317 b. c. She brought with her Boxana and her child — the widow and son of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian soldiers, as- sembled by Philip Aridaeus and Eurydike to resist her, were so overawed by her name and the recollection of Alexander, that they refused to fight, and thus ensured to her an easy victory. Philip and Eurydike became her prisoners; the former she caused to be slain ; to the latter she offered only an option be- tween the sword, the halter, and poison. The old queen next proceeded to satiate her revenge against the family of Antipater. One hundred leading ]Iacedonians, friends of Kassander, were put to death, together with his brother Nikanor ; ^ while the sepulchre of his deceased brother loUas, accused of having poisoned Alexander the Great, was broken up. During the winter, Olympias remained thus completely pre • dominant in INIacedonia ; where her position seemed strong, since her allies the JEtolians were masters of the pass at Thermopylae, while Kassander was kept employed in Peloponnesus by the force under Alexander, son of Polysperchon. But Kassander, disengaging himself from these embarrassments, and eluding Thermopylae by a maritime transit to Thessaly, seized the Per- rhajbian passes before they had been put under guard, and en- tered Macedonia without resistance. Olympias, having no array competent to meet him in the field, was forced to shut herself up in the maritime fortress of Pydna, with Roxana, the child Alex- ander, and Thessalonike daughter of her late husband Philip son of Amyntas.2 Here Kassander blocked her up for several months by sea as well as by land, and succeeded in defeating all the efforts of Polysperchon and ^akides to relieve her. In the spring of the ensuing year (31G b. c), she was forced by intol* 1 Diodor. xix. 11 ; Justin, x. 14, 4; P.iusanias, i. 11. 4.
 * Diodor. xix. 36.