A few general reflections will prepare us for the sombre history which we are about to read. The Macedonian kings were, as a rule, not content with one wife; they either kept concubines, or married a second wife, as did Philip and Alexander, while the first was living. This practice led to jealousy, envy, and hatred, and the attendant ills of constant and bloody tragedies in the royal families. We find henceforth a combination of Greek manners and Macedonian nature. In the life of the courts, women as well as men, in spite of their Greek culture, show the Thracian traits of passion and cruelty. Owing to the intense respect in which women were held, the royal princesses occupied an exalted station and hence found willing instruments for the carrying-out of their cruel practices. Every king was either murdered or conspired against by his family. Women entered into matrimonial alliances with a view to increasing their power and extending their influence. Hence, the women who played so prominent a part in the great struggles that attended Philip's extension of his power over all Hellas, Alexander's conquest of the world, and the founding of independent dynasties by the Diadochi and their descendants, were not women who attained the Thucydidean ideal of excellence; namely, that those are the best women who are never mentioned among men for good or for evil. They were, on the contrary, powerful and haughty princesses, who possessed royal rights and privileges, who had resources of their own in money and soldiery, who could address their troops with fiery speeches and go forth to battle at the head of their armies, who made offers of marriage to men, and who finally got rid of their rivals with sinister coolness and cruelty.