The Illyrian Warrior versus the Bacchante

One of the most tantalizing fragments extant from the third-century Macedonian history by Duris of Samos is a summary of his narrative of the military confrontation on the borders of Macedonia in 317 BCE between Alexander the Great’s mother Olympias and his niece Adea-Eurydice. Although this confrontation set into motion a chain of events that ultimately led to the end of the Argead line, Duris (BNJ 76 F 52) focuses upon the dramatic and sensationalistic aspects of this martial encounter, commenting that Olympias led out her troops dressed as a Bacchante to the accompaniment of drums, whereas Adea-Eurydice was armed in traditional Macedonian attire. Duris’ reduction of both women to the pervasive stereotype of the “warrior woman” was highly influential on the later historiographical tradition, which portrays them one-dimensionally as violent and transgressive figures. Despite Duris’ embellished description of the two royal women in martial array, it is not clear that an actual battle ever took place. Furthermore, as I demonstrate, both Adea-Eurydice and Olympias, in their efforts to ensure the safe transition of royal power to their (male) relatives, in fact relied on normative gender-conforming methods to obtain their objectives. But it was very much in the interests of Cassander (who oversaw the elimination of the last of the Argeads) to portray Adea-Eurydice and Olympias (who had both at times successfully opposed the Antipatrids) as illegitimate usurpers in order to bolster his own claims to power. Cassander’s hostile “take” on the transgressive role of royal women was appealing to the Greco-Roman source tradition as a way to highlight the “otherness” of the Macedonian Successors.