Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

PHILIP’S EURYDICE IN THE PHILIPPEUM AT OLYMPIA 35
glory was brief, for not only did she give birth to a daughter (Europa)
not a son, she was also murdered by Olympias, along with her child,
not long after her husband’s violent death (Ath. 13. 557e; Plut. Alex.
10.8; Paus. 8.7.7; Just. 9.7.12). 7 She is now a mere footnote in Macedonian
history but her position at court (and in Philip’s life) from the
day of her marriage in summer 337 to the day of his assassination a
year later must have been both very prominent and very promising. It
was during that year that construction of the Philippeum at Olympia
was going on in full swing. And yet modern scholarship has convinced
itself that she was absent from the dynastic portrait gallery
designed by Philip to be viewed at the heart of the Panhellenic sanctuary
as an advertisement of his past and future plans. His message
was aimed at the domestic front as well as at the Greeks at large.
We will attempt to decipher that message by looking closely at
Pausanias’ text.
Pausanias states (5.20.10) that the Philippeum was a round building
made of mud brick, no doubt because he was misled by the reddish
brown color of its limestone walls. He states that it was made by
Philip after the fall of Greece at Chaeronea, and it housed statues of
Philip and Alexander, alongside a statue of Amyntas, Philip’s father.
These statues, he says, were made by Leochares in ivory and gold,
just like the portraits of Olympias and Eurydice. In his description of
the temple of Hera, which lies adjacent to the Philippeum, Pausanias
(5.17.4) had already remarked that the chryselephantine statues of
Philip’s Eurydice and . . . had been brought in from the Philippeum.
The text is lacunose but we assume that the other statue was that of
Olympias. 8 There are enough blocks surviving from the semicircular
pedestal of the statuary group in the Philippeum ( fi gure 4.2) to suggest
that it originally held fi ve statues even though Pausanias only
saw three in place.
Attempts to fi ll the gaps in Pausanias’ text have concentrated on
two Macedonian queens named Eurydice, fi rst, Philip’s mother, wife
of Amyntas III, and second, Philip’s grand-daughter, Adea, who,
according to Arrian ( FGrH 156 F 1.23), took the name Eurydice upon
marriage to her uncle Arrhidaeus, Alexander’s half-brother. 9 It is
assumed that Adea chose the name Eurydice in order to honor Philip’s
mother but we must bear in mind that Adea’s own grandmother,
Audata, Philip’s Illyrian wife, had probably also been renamed Eurydice
(Arr. FGrH 156 F 1.22). Arrhidaeus in his turn assumed his father’s
name, Philip, upon his accession in 323 (Diod. 18.2.4; Curt. 10.7.7). 10
Further name changes are known in the Macedonian court. According
to Plutarch ( Mor. 401B), Olympias had three other names, Polyxena,
Myrtale, and Stratonice. 11 We do not know at which stages in her