Hippostratos, and niece of Attalos. By this time he was somewhat advanced in years, for Alexander, son of Olympias, approached manhood. At the feast given in honour of this new marriage, when the wine had circulated, as was customary among Macedonians, Attalos, who had probably drunk deep, observed, “At length we shall have legitimate princes, not bastards!” Alexander, who was present, in resentment of the affront, threw his goblet in the face of Attalos, who saluted him in the same way. Upon this, perceiving how matters were likely to proceed, Olympias fled to Molossia, Alexander into Illyria. Philip lived to have by Cleopatra one daughter, Europa; but, shortly afterwards, at the instigation, it is supposed of Olympias and Alexander, was murdered by Pausanias.[5] ----- Footnote 4: Deipnosoph. xiii. 2.—Compare the account in Diogenes Laertius, ii. 5. 10.—The conduct of Socrates, who married Xantippe to prove the goodness of his temper, was imitated, we are told, by a Christian lady, who “desired of St. Athanasius to procure for her, out of the widows fed from the ecclesiastical corban, an old woman morose, peevish, and impatient, that she might by the society of so ungentle a person have often occasion to exercise her patience, her forgiveness, and charity.”—Jeremy Taylor’s Life of Christ, i. 384. Footnote 5: Athen. xiii. 5. ----- Ordinary individuals, however, were restrained from the commission of such immoralities by the laws, more particularly at Athens, where marriage was contemplated with all the reverence due to the great palladium of civilisation. As a necessary consequence, celibacy could be no other than disreputable, so that, to a man ambitious of public honour, the possession of a wife and children was no less indispensable than the means of living.[6] Among the Spartans, bachelors were delivered over to the tender mercies of the women, and subjected to very heavy penalties. During the celebration of certain festivals they were seized by a crowd of petulant viragoes, each able to strangle an ox,[7] and dragged in derision round the altars of the gods, receiving from the fists of their gentle tormentors such blows as the regular practice of boxing had taught the young ladies to inflict.[8] “And ladies sometimes hit exceeding hard.” ----- Footnote 6: Dinarch. in Demosth. § 11. Cf. Poll. viii. 40. Comm. p. 644. Footnote 7: Aristoph. Lysistrat. 78, seq. Footnote 8: Athen. xiii. 2. ----- But we shall be the less inclined to judge uncharitably of this somewhat unfeminine custom, if we consider that, in the ancient world, no less than in the modern, unmarried and childless women were held but in slight esteem. And this feeling, which never for a moment slumbers in society, teaches better than the cant of a thousand sentimentalists what the true origin of love is.