ALEXANDER. 171

send Thessalus to him in chains, and banished Harpalns, Nearchus, Erigyius, and Ptolemy, his son's friends and favorites, whom Alexander afterwards recalled, and raised to great honor and preferment. Not long after this, Pausanias, having had an outrage done to him at the instance of Attalus and Cleopatra, when he found he could get no reparation for his dis- grace at Philip's hands, watched his opportunity and murdered him. The guilt of which fact was laid for the most part upon Olympias, who was said to have encour- aged and exasperated the enraged youth to revenge ; and some sort of suspicion attached even to Alexander him- self, who, it was said, when Pausanias came and com- plained to him of the injury he had received, repeated the verse out of Euripides's Medea : — On husband, and on father, and on bride.* However, he took cai*e to find out and punish the accom- plices of the conspiracy severely, and was very angry with Olympias for treating Cleopatra inhumanly in his absence. Alexander was but twenty years old when his father was murdered, and succeeded to a kingdom beset on all sides with great dangers, and rancorous enemies. For not only the barbarous nations that bordered on Macedo- nia, were impatient of being governed by any but their own native princes ; but Philip likewise, though he had been victorious over the Grecians, yet, as the time had not been sufficient for him to complete his conquest and accustom them to his sway, had simply left all things in a general disorder and confusion. It seemed to the Macedonians a very critical time ; and some would have

• Upon all of whom, says Jason, quoted, Medea was threatening to

in the speech from which the line is take vengeance.