Mary Beard

Olympias, right?

And she is the most glamorous of Philip's wives and has some kind of religious affect with snakes.

But one thing that's really unusual about Philip, and it may explain something behind the assassination, we don't know, is that...

He has many wives.

The Macedonian monarchy is polygamous, and that provides you with a lot of potential heirs, but it provides a lot of rivalry at the same time.

And so Olympias is not Macedonian.

She's from Epirus.

And Alexander is the son, but Philip subsequently marries one of the many women in the Greek world called Cleopatra, who… So this is a theme, isn't it?

And she is bona fide Macedonian.

And so you've clearly got in…

The idea when you're thinking of succession planning, every monarch in the ancient world is always thinking of succession planning and never getting it right.

It looks as if Olympias and Alexander are beginning to be worried that they're going to be sidestepped by the true blood of the Macedonian race.

Tom, thank you very much.

I mean, Leighton House is my favourite place in London and it's great to talk to you.

And you've just done what you always do.

You always said when you introduced me, she was really kind to me back in the day before I'd written Rubicon.

Well, we thought we had to do sort of two Greek, two Roman.

Yeah.

And how could you not do the Trojan War, you know, where it all begins?

We then thought, how could you not do Alexander the Great?