"...in olden days a degree of licence was permissible to those who wrote the lives of eminent men....to put into the mouths of characters the speeches which he considered they ought to have delivered..."
Savill, Alexander the Great, p. 91
"In Him, in God,...rests the final and reconciling truth of this mystery that is human life, which is above all the mystery of undeserved suffering."
Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
"...the Odyssey,
in which Zeus is made
to say, 'How foolish men
are! How unjustly they blame
the gods! It is their lot to suffer,
but because of their own folly they
bring upon themselves sufferings over and
above what is fated for them. And then they blame
the gods.' ...It may help the reader if he thinks of
the gods being an early attempt to explain why things happen,
especially things which seem to be out of the ordinary."
H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks
The primary forces of revenge, regret and redemption move Olympias through the drama. The play has eight scenes, covering events from 319 B.C.E. to 311 B.C.E., during the wars of Alexander's successors. The action takes place in the composite setting of an ancient Greek amphitheater. The story is based on historical facts, greatly embellished.
In the first scene of Act One (Bacchantes and Satyrs), several years after her son, Alexander III (the Great) died in Babylon, Olympias, Queen of Epirus, is at court, nursing her antipathy toward Alexander's appointed regent, Antipater, and vicariously satiating her lust for retribution against the clan that she believes has poisoned her son. She dwells on the past through some Dionysiac revels that approach the level of a Satyr play.
In the second scene (Death of Antipater), before he dies, Antipater appoints a trusted general, Polyperchon, to be the guardian of the two kings, a situation caused by Alexander's dying without an heir. Antipater's son, Cassander, is insulted by being passed over for the appointment. Thus are sown the seeds of many years of wars and treachery by Alexander's successors, who covet the power he had.
Polyperchon goes to see Olympias in scene three (Love) to ask her to become the guardian of the kings and again take the throne of Macedonia while he goes off to defend the realm from Cassander's assaults. The upstart, Eurydice, who is married to one of the kings (the half-wit half-brother of Alexander, Philip Arrhidaeus), has joined with Cassander. She invades Macedon. Olympias leaves to confront Eurydice, and Polyperchon goes to battle Cassander.
When Olympias returns from her defeat of Eurydice (Scene Four: Murderous Olympias), her court revels in the triumph. But Olympias has an appetite for more, now that she has regained the arbitrary power of a monarch. She shows the depths of that desire in murderous impulses which cannot be allayed by the pleadings of her companions. A string of atrocities follows. Many desert her.
She retreats to the castle at Pydna where she comes under siege by Cassander (Act Two, Scene Five: Under Siege). Her situation becomes hopeless. She bargains with Cassander.
(Scene Six: The Siege Is Broken) Cassander breaks the siege. Olympias surrenders. But she recognizes his treachery when his soldiers burst in to slay her. She has the charisma to face them down. As they withdraw, she savors a monumental triumph of her exalted power, but in an instant suffers remorse upon seeing the catastrophe which the withdrawing soldiers leave behind.
(Scene Seven: Death of Olympias) Alone, grief-stricken, she accepts her lot with some grace and perhaps achieves a very small measure of redemption. The Fates descend on her, again through the agency of Cassander. Her bloody acts overtake her. She faces her death calmly, leaving her daughter-in-law and grandson unprotected.
The Epilog (Scene Eight: The End of Alexander's Line) completes the destruction of the family line. Cassander murders young Alexander IV and his mother, Roxanê.
The Olympias pages:
Some of the ideas behind the plays are discussed in the Peroration page, which is a general summing up.
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