hat when Stratonice, the prince's young stepmother,
was present, he exhibited all the symptoms mentioned by Sappho in her
famous ode,--"his ears rang, sweat poured down his forehead, a trembling
seized his body, he became paler than grass." The physician at once
perceived that Antiochus was sick for love of the queen. The wily
physician, however, in explaining to Seleucus the nature of the malady,
pretended at first that it was his own wife with whom the prince was in
love; but, so soon as he fully ascertained the king's mind, he told him
that his son was dying for love of his stepmother, the beautiful
Stratonice. Without a moment's hesitation, the old king resigned his
wife to his son and gave them an independent kingdom as a wedding
present.

It is rather a remarkable society of queens and princesses to which the
court of Macedon admits us,--the licentious and cruel Eurydice the
Elder, mother of Philip; the gloomy and violent Olympias; the brilliant
and versatile Cleopatra; the valiant and eloquent Cynane and her
warlike and ambitious daughter Eurydice; the rather colorless and
ill-fated wives of Alexander the Great; the kind-hearted Cratesipolis;
the unselfish and noble Phila; and her beautiful daughter Stratonice.

The court life of which they formed a part had its brilliant side, with
its veneering of Greek culture and much of the etiquette and ceremony of
an Oriental monarchy, and they were the objects of all the respect with
which high station endows royal women at the hands of courtiers and
gallant soldiers. But one is apt to think rather of the storm and
turmoil through which they passed, of their jealousies and intrigues, of
their marriages and alliances, and of the violent deaths which they all,
with one or two exceptions, found at last. Yet, the most wicked of them
had redeeming qualities; even Olympias, who sent numberless men to
death, was devoted to her own children, and fought to the bitter end for
the rights of her son's heirs; and Eurydice the Younger, who carried on
the losing battle with the aged queen, was ever the zealous wife of her
weak husband, Arrhidaeus. Phila stands out, however, amid this remarkable
group, as the one against whom nothing can be said and whose virtues
were preeminent--the ever-faithful and devoted wife of the most
brilliant and most licentious man of his time.

A history of Greek womanhood would not be complete, did it not somewhere
in the volume consider the story of two G