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Olympias II of Epirus

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by JJMC89 bot III (talk | contribs) at 17:59, 20 April 2023 (Moving Category:Women regents to Category:Female regents per Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 April 20#Category:Fictional women assassins). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 17:59, 20 April 2023 by JJMC89 bot III (talk | contribs) (Moving Category:Women regents to Category:Female regents per Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 April 20#Category:Fictional women assassins)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Not to be confused with Olympias, the wife of Philip II of Macedon and mother of Alexander the Great.

Olympias (in Greek Ὀλυμπιάς, pronounced [olympiás]; lived 3rd century BC) was a queen consort and regent of Epirus.

She was daughter of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus and his first wife Antigone. She was the wife of her own paternal half-brother Alexander II.

After his death around 242 BC she assumed the regency of the kingdom on behalf of her two sons, Pyrrhus II and Ptolemy; and in order to strengthen herself against the Aetolian League she gave before 239 BC her daughter Phthia in marriage to Demetrius II, king of Macedonia. By this alliance she secured herself in the possession of the sovereignty, which she continued to administer till her sons were grown up to manhood, when she resigned it into the hands of Pyrrhus II.

But the deaths of Pyrrhus II (circa 238) and his brother Ptolemy (in circa 235) followed in quick succession, and Olympias herself died of grief for her double loss. Such is Justin's statement: according to another account Olympias had poisoned a Leucadian damsel named Tigris, to whom her son Pyrrhus was attached, and was herself poisoned by him in revenge.

References

Notes

  1. Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, xxliii. 3
  2. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, xiii. 56; Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 279

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainSmith, William, ed. (1870). "Olympias (2)". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

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