It was during this interval too that Philip married Olympias, daughter of Neoptolemus prince of the Molossi,[505] and descended from the ancient Molossian kings, who boasted of an heroic Æakid genealogy. Philip had seen her at the religious mysteries in the island of Samothrace, where both were initiated at the same time. In violence of temper—in jealous, cruel, and vindictive disposition—she forms almost a parallel to the Persian queens Amestris and Parysatis. The Epirotic women, as well as the Thracian, were much given to the Bacchanalian religious rites, celebrated with fierce ecstasy amid the mountain solitudes in honor of Dionysius.[506] To this species of religious excitement Olympias was peculiarly susceptible. She is said to have been fond of tame snakes playing around her, and to have indulged in ceremonies of magic and incantation.[507] Her temper and character became, after no long time, repulsive and even alarming to Philip. But in the year 356 B. C. she bore to him a son, afterwards renowned as Alexander the Great. It was in the summer of this year, not long after the taking of Potidæa, that Philip received nearly at the same time, three messages with good news—the birth of his son; the defeat of the Illyrians by Parmenio; and the success of one of his running horses at the Olympic games.[508] [505] Justin, vii. 6. [506] Plutarch, Alexand. c. 2. 3. The Bacchæ of Euripides contains a powerful description of these exciting ceremonies. [507] Plutarch, Alexand. c. 2. ἡ δὲ Ὀλυμπιὰς μᾶλλον ἑτέρων ζηλώσασα τὰς κατοχὰς, καὶ τοὺς ἐνθουσιασμοὺς ἐξάγουσα βαρβαρικώτερον, ὄφεις μεγάλους χειροήθεις ἐφείλκετο τοῖς θιάσοις, etc. Compare Duris apud Athenæum, xiii. p. 560. [508] Plutarch, Alexand. c. 3; Justin, xii. 19. CHAPTER LXXXVII. FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SACRED WAR TO THAT OF THE OLYNTHIAN WAR. It has been recounted in the preceding chapter, how Philip, during the continuance of the Social War, aggrandized himself in Macedonia and Thrace at the expense of Athens, by the acquisition of Amphipolis, Pydna, and Potidæa—the two last actually taken from her, the first captured only under false assurances held out to her while he was besieging it: how he had farther strengthened himself by enlisting Olynthus both as an ally of his own, and as an enemy of the Athenians. He had thus begun the war against Athens, usually spoken of as the war about Amphipolis, which lasted without any formal peace for twelve years. The resistance opposed by Athens to these his first aggressions had been faint and ineffective—partly owing to embarrassments. But the Social War had not yet terminated, when new embarrassments and complications, of a far more formidable nature, sprang up elsewhere—known by the name of the Sacred War, rending the very entrails of the Hellenic world, and profitable only to the indefatigable aggressor in Macedonia.