Category:Philippeion

English: The Philippeion in the Altis of Olympia was a two-style circular memorial (tholos) of limestone and marble, an outer ring of Ionic columns, and an inner ring of Corinthian columns. It was commissioned by Phillip himself to commemorate his victory at the battle of Chaeronea, in which he quelled all Greek resistance, but was unfinished before his untimely murder. His son, Alexander, suddenly called away from Aristotle's school to take command of the largest army in Greece, ordered it completed. The major addition was "five chryselephantine statues representing Alexander, his parents Philip and Olympias, and Philip's parents Amyntas and Eurydice. The two female statues were later transferred to the Heraion, which served as a treasury, and this is where Pausanias saw them. None of these statues have survived." (Quote from Olympia Vikatou, Ministry of Culture.) The sculptor was the Athenian Leochares, as Phillip had probably planned. There was complete solidarity between Phillip and his son, though Olympias was Greek, since Alexander had ridden Bucephalus, a horse no one else could ride, which the tearful Phillip had taken as a sign of manifest destiny; thus, the statues were not likely to have had a political significance.