Doomed Queens (4 page)

CAUTIONARY MORAL

When completing a job,
don’t overlook the small details.

480 BCE

rtemisia became the sole regent of Halicarnassus, a city on the coast of Caria (part of modern-day Turkey), after the death of her husband in the fifth century BCE. Her husband was evidently not as intriguing as she was—his name has been lost by time. However, their union did bring forth a son, Pisindelis, who joined Artemisia in battle as an adult.

As queen, Artemisia was denounced as a tyrant because she brown-nosed King Xerxes I of Persia despite the wishes of her people. In her defense, Halicarnassus was a client city of Persia, so it was good politics to keep the big kids on the block happy.

Toward that end, Artemisia promised aid when Xerxes went to war with Greece. She also advised the king: “Do not fight at sea, for the Greeks are infinitely superior to us in naval matters.” He ignored her warning and lost the water-based Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE. Artemisia participated in the battle and commanded five large ships. But when the fight turned against her, the queen attacked and sank an ally ship, thus convincing the Greeks she had defected to their side. After she escaped to safety, the Greeks were peeved at her deception and offered ten thousand drachmas for her capture.

Was Artemisia a prudent warrior seeking to limit casualties on her side? Or was she a coward trying to save her derriere? It depends on how you look at it. One rumor claimed that the queen conveniently carried two different flags into battle; she raised the Persian flag on her ship while chasing Greeks but substituted the Greek flag when they sailed too close for comfort.

Yet the historian Herodotus thought highly of Artemisia. He wrote in his
Histories
: “I must speak of a certain leader named Artemisia, whose participation in the attack upon Greece, notwithstanding that she was a woman, moves my special wonder…. [Her] brave spirit and manly daring sent her forth to the war, when no need required her to adventure.” He concluded by praising the advice she offered Xerxes. Nor does Xerxes appear to have held a grudge against her. Or maybe he did not identify her as the naval force who sunk his battleship—after all, dead sailors can’t squeal. In any event, the king requested her counsel again. This time he listened and won victory.

Protected by Persia, Halicarnassus prospered under Artemisia’s rule. However, one story claims that Xerxes could not protect the queen from her emotions. Later in life, Artemisia fell hard for a boy toy named Dardanus. Alas, her affections were not reciprocated. After gouging out Dardanus’s eyes while he slept, Artemisia ended her reign by jumping into the sea.

Drowning

Throughout the ages, drowning was more often deployed to torture witches than to rid a nation of an unloved monarch. However, as a suicide method, drowning wields a romantic spell, all the way from heartbroken Artemisia’s final plunge to Virginia Woolf’s stroll with rock-filled pockets into the River Ouse. This attraction can be partly traced to a belief that drowning was a painless way to die; once the struggle for life ceased, the victim was thought to exit the world surrounded by serene visions and heavenly choirs.

No doubt this belief has roots in physical reality: When a person drowns to death, her brain becomes deprived of oxygen. And brains deprived of oxygen typically hallucinate, whether there’s religion involved or not.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

Don’t let your heart
overrule your head.

316 BCE

ithout Olympias, Alexander the Great could never have existed—and without Alexander, the civilizing force of Hellenism would not have flapped its great wings over Western culture. Olympias was queen to Philip II of Macedon; their only issue was a son who grew up to be known as Alexander the Great. For this, one must grant Olympias thanks. History would be far less interesting without him.

The birth of Alexander the Great was one of Olympias’s few contributions to society. Beyond this, she was known for her affection for snakes and violence. The queen was never one to avoid dispatching a rival, real or imagined, to the great beyond. She approached murder with a ghoulish creativity that appalled even her devoted son, who loved her beyond all others except for one other person—but that’s Roxane’s story, still to come.

When Olympias met Philip, Philip was yet another Greek warrior king accustomed to marrying his enemies’ daughters to ensure peace; a joke from that time claimed that he took on a new wife after each battle campaign. Olympias was wife number four. On top of this, Philip also enjoyed the company of men as more than friends.

After three docile war brides, Olympias was a walk on the wild side. An orphaned princess hailing from Epirus, Olympias’s first loyalty was to the god Dionysus and his ecstatic mysteries, which involved dancing, snake handling, and much alcohol consumption. Plutarch writes that she “was wont in the dances proper to these ceremonies to have great tame serpents about her, which…made a spectacle which men could not look upon without terror.” Amazingly enough, the Macedonian king fell in love with Olympias while participating in these rituals.

Their marriage was filled with portents from the start. The night before the wedding, Olympias dreamed that a thunderbolt fell upon her body and kindled a great fire that spread over the land before it was extinguished. Soon after, Philip dreamed that he sealed her genitals with a wax seal imprinted with a lion’s image. A wise man assured the king that this vision meant that the queen was pregnant with a boy as courageous as a lion.