Philip's numerous infidelities and marriages caused an estrangement between him and Olympias that was far-reaching in its consequences. They reached their culmination when Philip with great ceremony wedded Cleopatra, a niece of his general, Attalus. At the wedding banquet, Attalus, the uncle of the bride, heated with wine, cried out: "Macedonians, let us pray the gods that from this marriage may spring an heir to the throne!" Whereupon, Alexander, who was present, violently irritated at the speech, threw one of the goblets at the head of Attalus and exclaimed: "You villain, what! Am I, then, a bastard?" Philip, taking Attalus's part, rose up, and would have run his son through with his sword, but, overcome by rage and by drink, he slipped and fell to the floor. "Here is a man," scornfully exclaimed the prince, "preparing to cross from Europe into Asia, who is not able to step safely from one table to another." This incident brought to a climax the estrangement between Philip and his wife and Alexander. Olympias and Alexander fled, the one taking shelter with her brother, the King of Epirus, and the other going into Illyria, where he remained until a sort of reconciliation was effected by the marriage of Philip's daughter, Cleopatra, with the Epirote king. When Philip was assassinated, suspicions of complicity in the murder attached to both Olympias and Alexander. The young man's conduct fully acquits him of the crime, but it would not be strange if the mother, seeking her own vengeance and her son's preferment, should have abetted the youth Pausanias, who committed the deed. Olympias could not brook any rivals, and shortly after the murder of Philip she despatched that king's last wife, Cleopatra, and her infant son. Throughout Alexander's brilliant but short-lived career, Olympias remained in Macedon, exercising a queenly power. She and her son seem to have been bound by the closest ties of affection and respect. With Antipater, however, who had been left behind by Alexander to govern Macedon in his absence, she was continually falling out. Plutarch gives an interesting account of the intimate relations between mother and son and of the quarrels between the old queen and the regent: