ympias.--Her visits to
Epirus.--Philip.--Olympias as a wife.--She makes many
difficulties.--Alexander takes part with his mother in her
quarrel.--Olympias is suspected of having murdered her
husband.--Alexander's treatment of his mother.--His kind
and considerate behavior.--Antipater.--Character of
Antipater.--Alexander's opinion of him.--Olympias makes a great
deal of trouble.--Alexander sends Craterus home.--Alexander's wife
Roxana.--Her babe.--Aridaeus.--The two competing claimants to the
crown.--Some account of the Ptolemaic dynasty.--The distribution of
Alexander's empire.--Compromise between the rival claims.--Question of
marriage.--Cleopatra.--Nicaea.--Nicaea is sent to Babylon.--Antipater's
plan.--Another matrimonial question.--Cynane.--Excitement in the
army.--Ada's new name.--Various intrigues.--Schemes of Antipater
and Ptolemy.--Nicaea.--Perdiccas' plans.--A battle.--Craterus is
killed.--Discontent.--Unpopularity of Perdiccas.--Transit of the
Nile.--Extraordinary incident.--Great numbers swept into the river
and destroyed.--The kings are to be sent back to Babylon.--Antipater
returns to Macedon full of honors.

Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, entered at the very beginning of his life
upon the extraordinary series of romantic adventures which so
strikingly marked his career. He became an exile and a fugitive from
his father's house when he was only two years old, having been
suddenly borne away at that period by the attendants of the household,
to avoid a most imminent personal danger that threatened him. The
circumstances which gave occasion for this extraordinary ereption were
as follows:

The country of Epirus, as will be seen by the accompanying map, was
situated on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea,[A] and on the
southwestern confines of Macedonia. The kingdom of Epirus was thus
very near to, and in some respects dependent upon, the kingdom of
Macedon. In fact, the public affairs of the two countries, through the
personal relations and connections which subsisted from time to time
between the royal families that reigned over them respectively, were
often intimately intermingled, so that there could scarcely be any
important war, or even any great civil dissension in Macedon, which
did not sooner or later draw the king or the people of Epirus to take
part in the dispute, either on one side or on the other. And as it
sometimes happened that in these questions of Macedonian politics the
king and the peopl