“No, madam. But Alexander had no cause.”
“Let them see me!” she cried. “Let them try me if they wish. Say to Kassandros only to tell me the day, and I shall be there.”
Disconcerted, he said, “Is that well advised? I was to warn you that some of the people wish you harm.”
“When they have heard me, we will see what their wish is then.”
“Tell her the day?” said Kassandros when this news was brought him. “She is asking too much. I know the fitful hearts of the Macedonians. Call Assembly for tomorrow, and give out that she refused to come.”
The bereaved appeared before Assembly in torn mourning clothes, their hair newly shorn and strewn with ashes. Widows led orphaned children, old men bewailed the sons who had propped their age. When it was made known that Olympias would not appear, no one stood up to speak for her. By acclamation, Assembly voted for death.
“So far so good,” said Kassandros afterwards. “We have authority. But for a woman of her rank, a public execution is unseemly. She would be able to address the people, a chance that she would not waste. I think we will make a different plan.”
The household at Pydna was busy with small mid-morning tasks. Roxane was embroidering a girdle; Thessalonike was washing her hair. (She had been told, on Kassandros’ authority, that she was free to return to the palace; a distinction received with dread, and not responded to.) Olympias, sitting in her window, was reading Kallisthenes’ account of the deeds of Alexander. He had had it copied for her by a Greek scribe somewhere in Bactria, and sent it her by the Royal Road. She had read it often; but today it had come into her mind that she would like to read it again.
There was an urgent tap on her door. Kebes came in. “Madam. There are soldiers asking for you outside. They’re here for no good; I have barred the doors.”
As he spoke, battering and clanging began, with shouted oaths. Roxane ran in with her sewing still in her hand. Thessalonike, a towel wound round her hair, said only, “Is he with them?” The boy came in, saying sharply, “What do they want?”
She had been putting her book aside; now she picked it up again. She gave it to him, saying, “Alexander, keep this for me.” He took it with grave quiet eyes. The battering on the door grew louder. She turned to the women. “Go in. Go to your rooms. And you too, Kebes. It is for me they are here. Leave them to me.”
The women withdrew. Kebes paused; but the boy had taken his hand. If he had to die, it would be for the King, He bowed and led him away.
The door was splintering, Olympias went to her clothes-chest, dropped to her feet the house-gown she was wearing, and put on the crimson robe in which she had given audiences. Its girdle was Indian cloth of gold, embroidered with bullion and rubies. She took from her casket a necklace of great pearls which Alexander had sent her from Taxila, clasped it on, and walking without haste to the stairhead, stood there waiting.
The doors gave way. A press of men stumbled in and stood staring about them. They began pulling out their swords, ready to ransack the house and seek such hiding-places as the sacking of towns had made them cunning in. Then, as they moved towards the stairs, they saw the silent figure looking down on them like an image on a plinth.
The leaders stopped. Those behind them, even those still at the gaping doors, saw what they saw. The clamor died into an eerie silence.
“You wished to see me,” said Olympias. “I am here.”
“Did you run mad?” said Kassandros when the leader reported back to him. “Do you tell me she was standing there before you, and you did nothing? Slunk off like dogs chased out of a kitchen? The old hag must have put a spell on you. What did she say?”
He had struck the wrong note. The man felt resentful. “She said nothing, Kassandros. What the men said was, she looked like Alexander’s mother. And nobody would strike first.”
“You were paid to do that,” said Kassandros tartly.
“Not yet, sir. So I’ve saved you money. Permission to withdraw.”
Kassandros let him go. Affairs were at a crux, commotion must be avoided. He would see the man got some dangerous mission later. At present, he must think of another plan. When it came to him, it was so simple that he wondered he could have been so slow to see it.
It was drawing towards evening. At Pydna they were looking forward to supper, not so much from hunger—their stomachs were still somewhat shrunken—as because it broke the tedium of the day. Alexander was being read to by his tutor from the Odyssey, the book where Circe changes the hero’s men to swine. The women were making small changes in their toilet, to keep good manners alive. The sun hung over the high peaks of Olympos, ready to sink behind them and plunge the coast in dusk.
The little crowd came quietly along the road, not with the tramp of army boots, but with the soft shuffling tread that becomes a mourner. Their hair was cropped, disheveled and dusted with wood-ash, their clothing ritually torn.
In the last sunlight they came to the broken door, shored up by a local carpenter. It was ramshackle work. While passers-by stared, wondering what burial these people came from at such an hour, they ran up to the door and tore the planks apart.
Olympias heard. When the frightened servants ran up to her, she had already understood, as though she had known already. She did not change the homely gown she had on. She looked in the box where she kept the Deeds of Alexander. Good, the boy had it still. Walking to the stairs she saw the ash-streaked faces below, like masks of tragedy. She did not go through the farce of standing there, appealing to those unrelenting eyes. She went down to them.
They did not seize her at once. Each wanted his say. “You killed my son, who never injured anyone.” “Your people cut my brother’s throat, a good man who had fought for your son in Asia.” “You hung my husband on a cross and his children saw it.” “Your men killed my father, and raped my sisters too.”
The voices rose, lost words, became a gabble of rage. It seemed they might tear her to pieces where she stood. She turned to the older men, steadier in their sternness. “Will you not see that this is decently done?”
Though they felt no pity, she had touched their pride. One of them lifted his staff for quiet, and cleared a place around her.
Above in the house the womenservants were keening, Thessalonike moaning softly, Roxane wildly sobbing. She heard it like the noises of some foreign town which did not concern her. She cared only that the boy should not see.
The old man pointed his staff. They led her to a piece of waste-land near the sea, too poor for farming, where glaucous shore-plants grew in the stony ground, and a mat of flotsam edged the water. The stones that strewed it were smoothed by the sea’s grinding, cast up in the winter storms. The people drew away from her, and stood round her in a ring, as children do in games. They looked at the old man who had appointed himself to speak.
“Olympias, daughter of Neoptolemos. For killing Macedonians without trial, contrary to justice and the law, we pronounce you worthy of death.”
Alone in the circle, she stood with her head up while the first stones struck her. Their force made her stagger, and she sank to her knees to prevent an unseemly fall. This offered her head, and soon a big stone struck it. She found herself lying, gazing upwards at the sky. A cloud of great beauty had caught the light from the sinking sun, itself hidden behind the mountain. Her eyes began to swim, their images doubled; she felt her body breaking under the stones, but it was more shock than pain; she would be gone before the real pain had time to start. She looked up at the whirling effulgent cloud, and thought, I brought down the fire from heaven; I have lived with glory. A thunderbolt struck from the sky and all was gone.
315 B.C.