edonians, let us pray the gods that from this marriage may spring an
heir to the throne!" Whereupon, Alexander, who was present, violently
irritated at the speech, threw one of the goblets at the head of Attalus
and exclaimed: "You villain, what! Am I, then, a bastard?" Philip,
taking Attalus's part, rose up, and would have run his son through with
his sword, but, overcome by rage and by drink, he slipped and fell to
the floor. "Here is a man," scornfully exclaimed the prince, "preparing
to cross from Europe into Asia, who is not able to step safely from one
table to another." This incident brought to a climax the estrangement
between Philip and his wife and Alexander. Olympias and Alexander fled,
the one taking shelter with her brother, the King of Epirus, and the
other going into Illyria, where he remained until a sort of
reconciliation was effected by the marriage of Philip's daughter,
Cleopatra, with the Epirote king. When Philip was assassinated,
suspicions of complicity in the murder attached to both Olympias and
Alexander. The young man's conduct fully acquits him of the crime, but
it would not be strange if the mother, seeking her own vengeance and her
son's preferment, should have abetted the youth Pausanias, who committed
the deed.

Olympias could not brook any rivals, and shortly after the murder of
Philip she despatched that king's last wife, Cleopatra, and her infant
son. Throughout Alexander's brilliant but short-lived career, Olympias
remained in Macedon, exercising a queenly power. She and her son seem to
have been bound by the closest ties of affection and respect. With
Antipater, however, who had been left behind by Alexander to govern
Macedon in his absence, she was continually falling out. Plutarch gives
an interesting account of the intimate relations between mother and son
and of the quarrels between the old queen and the regent:

"How magnificent he, Alexander, was in enriching his friends appears by
a letter which Olympias wrote to him, where she tells him he should
reward those about him in a more moderate way. She said: 'For now you
make them all equal to kings, you give them power and opportunity of
making many friends of their own, and in the meantime you leave yourself
destitute.' She often wrote to him to this purpose. To her he sent many
presents, but would never suffer her to meddle with matters of State or
war, not indulging her busy temper; and when she fell out with him on
this accoun