10.4
And so when Pausanias, who had been outrageously dealt with at the instance of Attalus and Cleopatra and could get no justice at Philip’s hands, slew Philip, most of the blame devolved upon Olympias, on the ground that she had added her exhortations to the young man’s anger and incited him to the deed; but a certain amount of accusation attached itself to Alexander also. For it is said that when Pausanias, after the outrage that he had suffered, met Alexander, and bewailed his fate, Alexander recited to him the iambic verse of the Medeia The Medeia of Euripides, v. 289 (Kirchhoff). The context makes the verse suggest the murder of Attalus, Philip, and Cleopatra.:— The giver of the bride, the bridegroom, and the bride. However, he did seek out the participants in the plot and punished them, and was angry with Olympias for her savage treatment of Cleopatra during his absence. After his death Olympias killed Philip’s infant son, together with his mother Cleopatra, niece of Attalus, by dragging them over a bronze vessel filled with fire (Pausanias, viii. 7, 5).
11.1
Thus it was that at the age of twenty years Alexander received the kingdom, which was exposed to great jealousies, dire hatreds, and dangers on every hand. For the neighbouring tribes of Barbarians would not tolerate their servitude, and longed for their hereditary kingdoms; and as for Greece, although Philip had conquered her in the field, he had not had time enough to make her tame under his yoke, but had merely disturbed and changed the condition of affairs there, and then left them in a great surge and commotion, owing to the strangeness of the situation.
