Olympias

Olympias was Alexander the Great's mother, and the most formidable and dangerous of the Macedonian royal women. Born around 375 BC, she was a princess of Epirus who claimed descent from Achilles — a genealogy her son took seriously — and was initiated into ecstatic Dionysiac rites, which Plutarch says involved handling snakes and which the Macedonian court found alarming. She married Philip II around 357 BC, one of his seven wives, and bore Alexander the following year. Her position depended entirely on her son being the heir, and it collapsed in 337 BC when Philip married Cleopatra Eurydice, a Macedonian noblewoman whose children would have no foreign blood. Olympias withdrew to Epirus, and Philip was assassinated within a year — a coincidence ancient and modern writers have found hard to leave alone. She had Cleopatra and her infant killed as soon as Alexander left for Asia. She then fought Antipater, the regent Alexander had left in Macedonia, in a long correspondence in which each accused the other; Alexander is said to have remarked that his mother charged a high rent for nine months' lodging. After his death she invaded Macedonia in 317 BC on behalf of her grandson, captured Philip Arrhidaeus and his wife and had them killed, and executed around a hundred of Cassander's supporters. Cassander besieged her at Pydna and starved her out in 316 BC. He had her killed by relatives of her victims, having promised her safety. Her body was reportedly left unburied. Her grandson was murdered six years later, ending the line of Alexander entirely.

• Lived: 375 BCE – 316 BCE
• Nationality: Epirote
• Roles: royalty