an active campaign against
his successor, the less able Polysperchon, who had allied himself with
Olympias. She therefore concluded an alliance with Cassander, assembled
an army, and took the field in person. Polysperchon marched against her,
accompanied by Olympias and Roxana, with the young Alexander, and the
presence of Olympias decided the day.

"As the troops of Alcetas would not fight against her and Cynane, so the
troops of Eurydice deserted her when she led them against the
queen-mother. It was the moment when Olympias's pent-up fury burst out
after many years. Amid her orgies of murder and of disentombing her
enemies, she was not likely to spare the offspring of Philip's
faithlessness; for Philip Arrhidaeus was the son of a Thessalian dancing
girl, and Eurydice the granddaughter of an Illyrian savage. She shut
them up, and meant to kill them by gradual starvation. But her people
began to expostulate, and then, having had Philip shot by Thracians, she
sent Eurydice the sword, the halter, and the hemlock, to take her
choice. But she, praying that Olympias might receive the same gifts,
composed the limbs of her husband, and washed his wounds as best she
could, and then, without one word of complaint at her fate, or the
greatness of her misfortune, hanged herself with the halter. If these
women knew not how to live, they knew how to die."

A word must be said about Alexander the Great and his relations with the
fair sex; for notwithstanding the fact that in Alexander's career
Persian woman plays the chief role, yet it was by breaking down the
barriers between Greek and Barbarian, between Occidental and Oriental,
that the way was prepared for the larger freedom of woman in succeeding
generations; and in his younger days, before becoming a world-conqueror,
Alexander was greatly influenced by certain women of his household. We
have already spoken of his ardent affection and respect for his
queen-mother. He also had in his childhood a nurse, Lanice, to whom he
was devotedly attached, "He loved her as a mother," says an ancient
writer. Her sons gave their lives in battle for him, and her one
brother, Clitus, who had once rescued him from imminent death, was later
slain by Alexander's own hand in a fit of anger. This deed occasioned
the conqueror infinite regret and remorse, and Arrian tells graphically
how, as he tossed weeping on his bed of repentance, "he kept calling the
name of Clitus and the name of Lanice, Clitu