Olympias's royal ancestry traced back to the hero Achilles, and the blood of Helen of Troy was believed to run on her father's side; there is no contemporary portrait of her, but stories of her wild behaviour multiplied beyond the point of verification. They turned, mostly, on religion-Worship of Dionysus, Greek god of nature's vital forces, had long been established in Macedonia, and the processions which led to the slaughter of a goat and the drinking of its blood, or even in extreme cases to a human sacrifice, were nothing new to the women of the country. To the Greeks, Olympias was known as a devoted Bacchant, or reveller in the god's honour, and there must be truth in their exaggerations; she would head the processions herself, and on Philip's Macedonian coins, as never before, the portrait of Heracles, ancestor of the kings, is often combined with the grapes and cups of Dionysus, a deity honoured in Macedonia but surely also a reference to the religious preferences of the queen. 'During his rites', it was said, 'Olympias would drag out long tame snakes for the worshippers to handle; they would lie concealed in the ivy and ceremonial baskets, rear their heads and coil themselves around the wands and garlands of the women, so as to terrify the men.' Again, there is truth in this, for according to Cicero, Olympias kept her own pet snake, and snake-handling is a known practice in the wilder sorts of Greek religion; when Olympias's childhood home at Dodona was excavated, archaeologists were much impressed by repeated signs of its people's fondness for snakes.

'Whereas others sacrifice tens and hundreds of animals,' wrote Aristotle's most intelligent pupil, 'Olympias sacrifices them by the thousand or ten thousand.' Theophrastus would have known Olympias personally, and although he had cause to slander her, his remark confirms her strong attachment to religious ritual which letters and stories of doubtful authorship suggest. On Alexander this example would not be wasted. His mother's wild mysticism was also combined with a quarrelsome temper and a reputation, at least partly deserved, for atrocity; certainly, she quarrelled with royal officials and other women of the family, and whatever the truth of Philip's murder, she showed herself as capable as any other Macedonian of killing family rivals who threatened her. The methods and number of these murders were enlarged upon by Greek gossip, whereas in Macedonia they were not inexplicable, but here too gossip was founded on truth. When Alexander heard how his mother was quarrelling with Antipater in his absence, he is said to have complained that she was asking a high price of his patience in return for the nine months she had taken to bear him. There can be no doubt that Alexander's mother was both violent and headstrong. She was seldom, however, without provocation.

The influence of this highly emotional character on Alexander's development can be guessed but never demonstrated. For the last eleven years of his life, he never saw her; she still cared for him, and so, for example, she would send a dedication to the goddess of Health at Athens when she heard that he had recovered from a serious Asian illness; although they wrote letters to each other, no original survives of any significance. As a baby, she handed him over to a well-born Macedonian nurse, but she still took a mother's interest in his education; his early life can hardly be traced beyond his various tutors, but it was Olympias who began the choosing of them. From her own family, she chose Leonidas, and from north-west Greece, an area close to her home but not known for learning, came Lysimachus, a man of middle age; their welcomes made an amusing contrast. Lysimachus was much loved by Alexander and later followed him into Asia, where his pupil one day risked his life to save him. Leonidas was stem, petty and prying. He believed in hard exercise and, it was said, he would rummage through Alexander's trunks of clothing to satisfy himself that nothing luxurious or excessive had been smuggled inside; he reproached his pupil for being too lavish with his sacrificial offerings. At the age of twenty-three Alexander was able to retort. He had already routed the Persian king, and from the Lebanon he sent Leonidas a gigantic load of precious incense, pointing his present with a message: 'We have sent you frankincense and myrrh in abundance, to stop you being mean to the gods'; there is nothing worse than an old man's meanness, and Alexander used humour and generosity to show it up.

Of his other Greek teachers nothing certain is known, and not until the age often does Alexander appear for the first time in contemporary history. This appearance is itself unusual, and a proof that teachers had been busy with their job: it is to be found in the public speech of an Athenian politician. In the spring of 346 Philip's court had been thronged with ambassadors from all over Greece, none more prominent than those from Athens with whom, after much negotiation, he was preparing to swear an agreement of peace and alliance; they dined with him, and after dinner they saw Alexander for the first time. 'He came in,' said Aeschines the ambassador, 'to play the lyre, and he also recited and debated with another boy'; the memory was only revived back in Athens a year later, when the ambassadors had begun to disagree among themselves, for accusations flew in public that one or other Athenian had secretly flirted in Macedonia with the boyish Alexander. In these slanders his after-dinner performance before the ambassadors was used as a sexual double entendre;such bland charges of homosexuality are an interesting comment on their society, and ten years later, when a grown-up Alexander marched on Athens and demanded the surrender of her leading politicians, they must have seemed a very distant irony.

Poetry and music continued to hold Alexander's attention throughout his life; his musical and literary competitions were famous all across Asia, and his favour for actors, musicians and friendly authors needs no illustration. In music, especially, his interest was perhaps more popular than informed. He enjoyed the rousing pieces of Timotheus, a poet and composer who had once visited Macedonia, and his own learning of an instrument is nicely put in a story, well found if not original: when Alexander asked his music-teacher why it mattered if he played one string rather than another, the teacher told him it did not matter at all for a future king, but it did for one who wanted to be a musician. For Macedonians, music was one of life's luxuries, and when Alexander next comes into view, at the age of eleven or so, it is in a more Macedonian manner.

'Every man who has loved hunting', the Greek general Xenophon had recently written, 'has been a good man.' No Macedonian at Philip's court would have quarrelled with his judgement, for hunting was the focal point of a Macedonian's life. Bears and lions still roamed the highlands, and elsewhere there were deer in abundance, for whose sport Macedonians grouped themselves in hunting societies with the hero Heracles as their patron, honoured under a suitable title of the chase. Alexander remained true to his native pastime. If he had a favourite interest, it was hunting, and every day, if possible, he liked to hunt birds and foxes; he was always keen to be shown fine dogs, and he was so fond of an Indian one of his own that he commemorated it by giving its name to one of his new towns. He also needed a horse both for war and relaxation. By the age of twelve, he had found one, for it was at this early age that he first met his black horse Bucephalas, with whom he would one day ride to India and far on into legend and distant memory, Bucephalas the first unicorn in western civilization, Bucephalas the man-eater whose master would conquer the world, Bucephalas born of the same seed as his master and whinnying and fawning with his front legs at the sight of the only man he trusted.