Cratesipolis

(Κρατησίπολις), wife of Alexander, the son of Polysperchon, was highly distinguished for her beauty, talents, and energy. On the murder of her husband at Sicyon, in B. C. 314 [see p. 126a], she kept together his forces, with whom her kindness to the men had made her extremely popular, and when the Sicyonians, hoping for an easy conquest over a woman, rose against the garrison for the purpose of establishing an independent government, she quelled the sedition, and, leaving crucified thirty of the popular leaders, held the town firmly in subjection for Cassander. [See p. 620.] In B. C. 308, however, she was induced by Ptolemy Lagi to betray Corinth and Sicyon to him, these being the only places, except Athens, yet possessed by Cassander in Greece. Cratesipolis was at Corinth at the time, and, as her troops would not have consented to the surrender, she introduced a body of Ptolemy's forces into the town, pretending that they were a reinforcement which she had sent for from Sicyon. She then withdrew to Patrae in Achaia, where she was living, when, in the following year (B. C. 307), she held with Demetrius Poliorcetes the remarkable interview to which each party was attracted by the fame of the other. (Diod. 19.67, 20.37; Polyaen. 8.58; Plut. Demetrius, 9.) [E.E]