a celebrated woman, who was daughter of a king of Epirus, and who married Philip king of Macedonia, by whom she had Alexander the Great. Her haughtiness, and more probably her infidelity, obliged Philip to repudiate her, and to marry Cleopatra, the niece of King Attalus. Olympias was sensible of this injury, and Alexander showed his disapprobation of his father's measures, by retiring from the court to his mother. The murder of Philip, which soon followed this disgrace, and which some have attributed to the intrigues of Olympias, was productive of the greatest extravagances. The queen paid the greatest honour to her husband's murderer. She gathered his mangled limbs, placed a crown of gold on his head, and laid his ashes near those of Philip. The administration of Alexander, who had succeeded his father, was in some instances offensive to Olympias; but when the ambition of her son was concerned, she did not scruple to declare publicly that Alexander was not the son of Philip, but that he was the offspring of an enormous serpent who had supernaturally introduced himself into her bed. When Alexander was dead, Olympias seized the government of Macedonia; and, to establish her usurpation, she cruelly put to death Aridaeus, with his wife Eurydice, as also Nicanor the brother of Cæsander, with 100 leading men of Macedon, who were inimical to her interest. Such barbarities did not long remain unpunished: Cæsander besieged her in Pydna, where she had retired with the remains of her family, and she was obliged to surrender after an obstinate siege. The conqueror ordered her to be accused, and to be put to death. A body of 200 soldiers were ordered to put the bloody commands into execution, but the splendour and majesty of the queen disarmed their courage; and she was at last massacred by those whom she had cruelly deprived of their children, about 316 years before the Christian era.