#polygamous courts

Olympias and the Murder of Europa

We don’t know when Olympias killed Kleopatra and baby Europa. Probably sooner rather than later; that is, on Alexander’s initial trip to south Greece, after he took the throne. By all accounts (and there aren’t many) he wasn’t in Pella when it happened. Plutarch tells us he was furious upon his return. He probably was, but not just because of the cruelty.

Tim Howe has an interesting theory in “Cleopatra-Eurydike, Olympias and a ‘Weak’ Alexander,” which suggests he’d intended to marry Kleopatra himself. This wouldn’t be the first example of a Macedonian king marrying the young widow of the prior king. Same thing happened with Archelaos who married the widow of his father Perdikkas II. (Ironically, she was also a Kleopatra.) Archelaos then killed his (unnamed) seven-year-old rival half-brother by Kleopatra. Although we can’t be 100% certain it’s the same woman, the likelihood is very high. We don’t know if the marriage occurred before or after he killed the boy. He then had a child himself by Kleopatra (which child, in turn, was murdered after Archelaos’s death and never took the throne).

Welcome to Macedonian politics.

In Alexander’s case, he wouldn’t have needed to kill the infant girl, as she was no threat. But by marrying his father’s widow, he could actively ‘perform’ his announced, “Only the name of the king has changed,” and secure political alliances before marching for Persia.

Yet a potential marriage on the horizon would be a very good explanation for Olympias’s action. On the face of it, the murder seems unduly vicious. An infant girl was, again, no threat—nor was Kleopatra herself. Perhaps Olympias did it purely for retribution, but she rarely acted for “mean” reasons. Killing Kleopatra suggests she was somehow still a threat. Why? Her uncle, Attalos, couldn’t be king (not an Argead), and her child was female. Why kill the widow?

Unless Alexander intended to marry her. What Alexander may have seen as good policy for him was a serious threat to Olympias’s own status. So she eliminated that option.

That would also explain Alexander’s apparent fury. Yes, he probably was horrified by the murder of an infant, but children under a year old already occupied liminal status, waiting to see whether they’d survive to their first birthday. I don’t mean that to be dismissive, but Europa’s life, or death, didn’t impact him much, politically. He may have seen her only a handful of times, so she was probably “nebulous” to him, his emotional reaction generic rather than specific.

His mother being responsible for the death of his father’s widow, however, DID impact him politically, upending any decision to marry her, plus requiring him to eliminate Attalos, who now had a blood feud with him. Supposedly, Attalos tried to tender an olive branch, but probably before he had news of his niece’s murder. So Alexander’s choice to have him assassinated (with Parmenion’s acquiescence) was a political choice necessitated by Olympias’s actions.

It would have been quite a mess, from a diplomatic POV. Olympias acted to safeguard her own security at court. But that, in turn, upset Alexander’s own plans, forcing him to reposition himself, leaving him desperate for Parmenion’s support, leading to high appointments for both Parmenion’s elder sons. It may have been the first serious (political) clash between mother and son. If normally, a mother’s fortunes in polygamous situations depended on her son’s, not always. Here, we see Olympias securing her own position by eliminating a rival…even if that then complicated her son’s political options.

The end result is that Alexander didn’t marry anybody before leaving for Asia.