It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander descended
from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus on the mother's
side. His father Philip, being in Samothrace, when he was quite young,
fell in love there with Olympias, in company with whom he was initiated
in the religious ceremonies of the country, and her father and mother being
both dead, soon after, with the consent of her brother, Arymbas, he married
her. The night before the consummation of their marriage, she dreamed that
a thunderbolt fell upon her body, which kindled a great fire, whose divided
flames dispersed themselves all about, and then were extinguished. And
Philip, some time after he was married, dreamt that he sealed up his wife's
body with a seal, whose impression, as be fancied, was the figure of a
lion. Some of the diviners interpreted this as a warning to Philip to look
narrowly to his wife; but Aristander of Telmessus, considering how unusual
it was to seal up anything that was empty, assured him the meaning of his
dream was that the queen was with child of a boy, who would one day prove
as stout and courageous as a lion. Once, moreover, a serpent was found
lying by Olympias as she slept, which more than anything else, it is said,
abated Philip's passion for her; and whether he feared her as an enchantress,
or thought she had commerce with some god, and so looked on himself as
excluded, he was ever after less fond of her conversation. Others say,
that the women of this country having always been extremely addicted to
the enthusiastic Orphic rites, and the wild worship of Bacchus (upon which
account they were called Clodones, and Mimallones), imitated in many things
the practices of the Edonian and Thracian women about Mount Haemus, from
whom the word threskeuein seems to have been derived, as a special term
for superfluous and over-curious forms of adoration; and that Olympias,
zealously, affecting these fanatical and enthusiastic inspirations, to
perform them with more barbaric dread, was wont in the dances proper to
these ceremonies to have great tame serpents about her, which sometimes
creeping out of the ivy in the mystic fans, sometimes winding themselves
about the sacred spears, and the women's chaplets, made a spectacle which
men could not look upon without terror.
Philip, after this vision, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to consult the
oracle of Apollo at Delphi, by which he was commanded to perform sacrifice,
and henceforth pay particular honour, above all other gods, to Ammon; and
was told he should one day lose that eye with which he presumed to peep
through that chink of the door, when he saw the god, under the form of
a serpent, in the company of his wife. Eratosthenes says that Olympias,
when she attended Alexander on his way to the army in his first expedition,
told him the secret of his birth, and bade him behave himself with courage
suitable to his divine extraction. Others again affirm that she wholly
disclaimed any pretensions of the kind, and was wont to say, "When
will Alexander leave off slandering me to Juno?"