Then began the long and bitter struggle for mastery between the new queen, Eurydice, and the old queen, Olympias, who took the part of Roxana and her son; and only the superior claims of Olympias, as the mother of Alexander, to the respect of the Macedonian soldiery led to her final victory over her gifted and powerful rival. These hostile factions in the royal party of Macedon were to lead to the extinction of all the legitimate heirs to the throne. After the death of her mortal enemy Antipater, Eurydice determined to make an active campaign against his successor, the less able Polysperchon, who had allied himself with Olympias. She therefore concluded an alliance with Cassander, assembled an army, and took the field in person. Polysperchon marched against her, accompanied by Olympias and Roxana, with the young Alexander, and the presence of Olympias decided the day. "As the troops of Alcetas would not fight against her and Cynane, so the troops of Eurydice deserted her when she led them against the queen-mother. It was the moment when Olympias's pent-up fury burst out after many years. Amid her orgies of murder and of disentombing her enemies, she was not likely to spare the offspring of Philip's faithlessness; for Philip Arrhidaeus was the son of a Thessalian dancing girl, and Eurydice the granddaughter of an Illyrian savage. She shut them up, and meant to kill them by gradual starvation. But her people began to expostulate, and then, having had Philip shot by Thracians, she sent Eurydice the sword, the halter, and the hemlock, to take her choice. But she, praying that Olympias might receive the same gifts, composed the limbs of her husband, and washed his wounds as best she could, and then, without one word of complaint at her fate, or the greatness of her misfortune, hanged herself with the halter. If these women knew not how to live, they knew how to die."