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Iollas (in Greek Ioλλας or Ioλας; lived 4th century BC), son of Antipater, and brother of Cassander, king of Macedon. He was one of the royal youths who, according to the Macedonian custom, held offices about the king's person, and was cup-bearer to Alexander the Great at the period of his last illness (323 BC). Those writers who adopt the idea of the king having been poisoned, represent Iollas as the person who actually administered the fatal draught, at the banquet given to Alexander by Medius, who, according to this story, was an intimate friend of Iollas, and had been induced by him to take part in the plot.¹ It is unnecessary to point out the absurdity and inconsistency of this tale. Plutarch himself tells us expressly that it was never heard of until six years afterwards (317 BC), when Olympias availed herself of this pretext as an excuse for the cruelties she exercised upon the friends and adherents of Antipater. Iollas was then dead, but she caused his grave to be opened, and desecrated with every mark of indignity.² The period or occasion of his death is nowhere mentioned: the last we hear of him is in 322 BC, when he accompanied his sister Nicaea to Asia, where she was married to Perdiccas.³ The story of Hyperides having proposed the voting a reward to Iollas as the murderer of Alexander⁴, which is in direct contradiction to the statement of Plutarch already cited, is unquestionably a mere invention of later times.

References

Smith, William (editor); Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, "Iollas", Boston, (1867)

Notes

1 Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, vii. 27; Plutarch, Parallel Lives, "Alexander", 77; Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri Magni, x. 10; Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, xii. 14; Vitruvius, De architectura, viii. 3

2 Plutarch, ibid.

3 Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 92;

4 Pseudo-Plutarch, Moralia, "Lives of the Ten Orators", Hyperides

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This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1867).

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