hapter. It is sufficient here to say,
that the attempt of AEacides to come to the rescue of Olympias in her
peril wholly failed, and there was nothing now left but the wall of
the city to defend her from her terrible foe.

In the mean time, the distress in the city for want of food had become
horrible. Olympias herself, with Roxana and the boy, and the other
ladies of the court, lived on the flesh of horses. The soldiers
devoured the bodies of their comrades as they were slain upon the
wall. They fed the elephants, it was said, on saw-dust. The soldiers
and the people of the city, who found this state of things
intolerable, deserted continually to Cassander, letting themselves
down by stealth in the night from the wall. Still Olympias would not
surrender; there was one more hope remaining for her. She contrived
to dispatch a messenger to Polysperchon with a letter, asking him to
send a galley round into the harbor at a certain time in the night, in
order that she might get on board of it, and thus escape. Cassander
intercepted this messenger. After reading the letter, he returned it
to the messenger again, and directed him to go on and deliver it. The
messenger did so, and Polysperchon sent the galley. Cassander, of
course, watched for it, and seized it himself when it came. The last
hope of the unhappy Olympias was thus extinguished, and she opened the
gates and gave herself up to Cassander. The whole country immediately
afterward fell into Cassander's hands.

The friends of the family of Antipater were now clamorous in their
demands that Olympias should be brought to punishment for having so
atrociously murdered the sons and relatives of Antipater while she was
in power. Olympias professed herself willing to be tried, and appealed
to the Macedonian senate to be her judges. She relied on the
ascendency which she had so long exercised over the minds of the
Macedonians, and did not believe that they would condemn her.
Cassander himself feared that they would not; and although he was
unwilling to murder her while she was a defenseless prisoner in his
hands, he determined that she should die. He recommended to her
secretly not to take the hazard of a trial, but to make her escape and
go to Athens, and offered to give her an opportunity to do so. He
intended, it was said, if she made the attempt, to intercept and slay
her on the way as a fugitive from justice. She refused to accede to
this proposal, suspecting, perhaps, C