Once Philip found
his wife asleep, with a large tame snake stretched beside her; and
this, it is said, quite put an end to his passion for her, and made
him avoid her society, either because he feared the magic arts of his
wife, or else from a religious scruple, because his place was more
worthily filled. Another version of this story is that the women of
Macedonia have been from very ancient times subject to the Orphic and
Bacchic frenzy (whence they were called Clodones and Mimallones), and
perform the same rites as do the Edonians and the Thracian women about
Mount Haemus, from which the word "threskeuein" has come to mean "to
be over-superstitious." Olympias, it is said, celebrated these rites
with exceeding fervour, and in imitation of the Orientals, and to
introduce into the festal procession large tame serpents,[394] which
struck terror into the men as they glided through the ivy wreaths and
mystic baskets which the women carried on their heads.
III. We are told that Philip after this portent sent Chairon of
Megalopolis to Delphi, to consult the god there, and that he delivered
an oracular response bidding him sacrifice to Zeus Ammon, and to pay
especial reverence to that god: warning him, moreover, that he would
some day lose the sight of that eye with which, through the chink of
the half-opened door, he had seen the god consorting with his wife in
the form of a serpent.
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