The First basilissa

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the life and career of Phila (c. 350–294 bce), daughter of Antipater and first of the many wives of Demetrius Poliorcetes, the first woman to whom the title of basilissa (a coinage of uncertain meaning formed by putting a feminine ending on the Greek word for “king,” basileus) was applied. It considers why she served as the prototype for so many other aspects of the role of royal women in Hellenistic monarchy. It argues that the critical role her husband and father-in-law Antigonus played in the formation of Hellenistic kingship, the ways in which Phila’s actions and titles mirrored theirs, as well as Phila’s function as a legitimator of her husband’s rule of Macedonia (because she was the daughter of Philip II’s and Alexander’s general Antipater) are the primary reasons she became an exemplar of the role of women in Hellenistic monarchy.