Olympias

, a certain space of time which elapsed between the celebration of the Olympic games. The Olympic games were celebrated after the expiration of four complete years, whence some have said that they were observed every fifth year. This period of time was called Olympiad, and became a celebrated era among the Greeks, who computed their time by it. The custom of reckoning time by the celebration of the Olympic games was not introduced at the first institution of these festivals, but, to speak accurately, only the year in which Corœbus obtained the prize. This Olympiad, which has always been reckoned the first, fell, according to the accurate and learned computations of some of the moderns, exactly 776 years before the christian era, in the year of the Julian period 3938, and 23 years before the building of Rome. The games were exhibited at the time of the full moon, next after the summer solstice; therefore the Olympiads were of unequal length, because the time of the full moon differs 11 days every year, and for that reason they sometimes began the next day after the solstice, and at other times four weeks after. The computations by Olympiads ceased, as some suppose, after the 364th, in the year 440 of the christian era. It was universally adopted, not only by the Greeks, but by many of the neighbouring countries, though still the Pythian games served as an epoch to the people of Delphi and to the Bœotians, the Nemæan games to the Argives and Arcadians, and the Isthmian to the Corinthians and the inhabitants of the Peloponnesian isthmus. To the Olympiads history is much indebted. They have served to fix the time of many momentous events, and indeed before this method of computing time was observed, every page of history is mostly fabulous, and filled with obscurity and contradiction, and no true chronological account can be properly established and maintained with certainty. The mode of computation, which was used after the suppre ion of the Olympiads and of the consular fasti of Rome, was more useful as it was more universal; but while the era of the creation of the world prevailed in the east, the western nations in the sixth century began to adopt with more propriety the christian epoch, which was propagated in the eighth century, and at last, in the tenth, became legal and popular.――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 haughtine , 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 extravagancies. The queen paid the highest 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 which had supernaturally introduced itself into her bed. When Alexander was dead, Olympias seized the government of Macedonia, and to establish her usurpation, she cruelly put to death Aridæus, with his wife Eurydice, as also Nicanor the brother of Cas sander, with 100 leading men of Macedonia, who were inimical to her interest. Such barbarities did not long remain unpunished; Cas sander 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 directed to put the bloody commands into execution, but the splendour and majesty of the queen disarmed their courage, and she was at last ma acred by those whom she had cruelly deprived of their children, about 316 years before the christian era. Justin , bk. 7 , ch. 6 ; bk. 9 , ch. 1 .— Plutarch , Alexander .— Curtius. — Pausanias. ――A fountain of Arcadia which flowed for one year and the next was dry. Pausanias , bk. 8 , ch. 29 .