CASSANDER (c. 350-297 B.e.), king of Macedonia, eldest son of Antipater, first appears at the court of Alexander at Baby lon, where he defended his father against the accusations of his enemies. On the death of Antipater, who had passed over his son and appointed Polyperchon regent of Macedonia, Cassander allied himself with Ptolemy Soter and Antigonus, and declared war against the new regent. Most of the Greek states went over to him, and Athens also surrendered. He further effected an alliance with Eurydice, the ambitious wife of King Philip Arrhi daeus of Macedon. Both she and her husband, however, were soon after slain by Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great. Cassander at once marched against Olympias, and, having forced her to surrender in Pydna, put her to death (316) . Left master of Macedonia, Cassander joined in a coalition with Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus, against Antigonus; in 311 a peace was concluded by which Cassander was recognized as general of Europe during the minority of Alexander IV. In 310, therefore, he murdered the young king and his mother. In 3o3, Cassander, alarmed at the liberation of Greece by Demetrius Poliorchetes, renewed the coalition, and, when Antigonus was defeated and killed in 301, was recognized as king of Macedonia. He died of dropsy in 297. Cassander was a man of literary taste, but violent and ambitious. He restored Thebes after its destruction by Alexander the Great, transformed Therma into Thessalonica, and built the new city of Cassandreia upon the ruins of Potidaea.
See Diod. Sic. xviii., xix., xx.; Plutarch, Demetrius, 18. 31, Phocion, 31; also MACEDONIAN EMPIRE.