Antigone of Epirus

Who is Antigone of Epirus?

Antigone was a Greek Macedonian noblewoman. Through her mother’s second marriage she was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty and through marriage was a Queen of Epirus.

Antigone was the daughter and the second child of the noblewoman Berenice and her first husband Philip. She had an elder brother called Magas and an younger sister called Theoxena.

Her father, Philip was the son Amyntas by an unnamed mother. Based on the implying of Plutarch, her father was previously married and had children, including daughters born to him. He served as a military officer in the service of the Greek King Alexander the Great and was known in commanding one division of the Phalanx in Alexander’s wars.

Her mother Berenice was a noblewoman from Eordeaea. She was the daughter of local obscure nobleman Magas and noblewoman Antigone. Berenice’s mother was the niece of the powerful Regent Antipater and was a distant collateral relative to the Argead dynasty.

About 318 BC, her father died of natural causes. After the death of Antigone’s father, Antigone's mother took her and her siblings to Egypt where they were a part of the entourage of her mother’s second maternal cousin Eurydice.