Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

And here's your 30-second summary.

She's known for being the mother of a famous warrior and for being extraordinarily fond of snakes.

She was slandered by centuries of historians, but we've activated our highly scientific subject choosing algorithm to bring you the true story of Olympias.

Because of her connection with the Olympics.

The End.

Let's talk about Olympias.

But first, let's drop her into history.

In 357 BCE, it's 26 years before the City of Alexandria was founded, 76 years before the library in the City of Alexandria was founded, and 309 years before it was destroyed.

It's 288 years before our old friend, Cleopatra, was born, 372 years before our old friend, Agrappina, the younger was born, and 717 years before our old friend, Hypatia, was born.

It was also 2378 years before today, and in 357 BCE, a teenage girl from a small kingdom married a new king became a queen and would become a mother who raised a great son.

A quick warning before we begin this episode, it evitably includes episodes of violence and specifically violence against children, although we don't go to any real graphic detail just to let you know that happens.

If you want to preview that before you let little ears listen.

And now on with the show.

Pollock's Danielle was born around the year 375 BCE, one of the daughters of King Neotolomus of Melania, and major question mark mother mysterious unnamed wife of King Neotolomus.

She had at least one sister and at least one brother who we will encounter later.

She was born in Melania within the kingdom of a pirus. Just like when we talked about Hypatia and to some extent Agrappina and Cleopatra were hobbled a little by both the lack of documentation about lady persons in general and the aftermath of their lives when a woman was sufficiently activated in the ancient world to become notable.

You have men's reactions to that behavior to contend with in perpetuity in which they ascribe sinister motivations to her actions or extreme interpretations of her life or lifestyle or simply put her story has been modeled by propaganda and patriarchy.

We could probably even call her Olympias, the Queen of probably and most likely. Sometimes you have to just work around the edge and basically fill in the silhouette and you don't 100% know what happened in the middle.

Think of mother said that during Hypatia too.

So where is a pirus land of Pollux and Yazbirth it is part of modern day Greece and part of modern day Albania is a rugged frontier region of the ancient Greek world they had suffered for centuries from being in the middle of conflict after conflict barbarians headed toward the famous Greek city states but they often got distracted by the shiny things of Melania.

And they were satisfied and couldn't carry anymore frankly and stopped there. Hurray said Greece thanks for taking the heat again and they siped their wine left and turned back to their party.

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