Roxana

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Alexander the Great and Roxana, in a 1756 painting by Italian Baroque artist Pietro Rotari.

Roxana (Greek: Ρωξάνη; Avestan: Raoxshna or Roshanak; Persian: روشنک‎, "luminous beauty"; Persian: رکسانا, رخساناRokhsāna; Pashto: روښانهRox̌āna), sometimes Roxanne, Roxanna, Roxandra and Roxane, was a Bactrian (Persian Empire) princess and a wife of Alexander the Great. She was born earlier than the year 343 BC, though the precise date remains uncertain.

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Life [edit]

Roxana was the daughter of a minor Bactrian baron named Oxyartes of Balkh in Bactria (around modern-day Balkh province of Afghanistan), and married Alexander_the_Great at the age of 16 after he visited the fortress of Sogdian Rock. Balkh was the last of the Persian Empire's provinces to fall to Alexander. In 327 BC Alexander married Roxanne, despite the strong opposition from all his companions and generals[1].

After Alexander's sudden death at Babylon in 323 BC, she bore him a posthumous son called Alexander IV Aegus. Also, after Alexander's death, Roxana murdered Alexander's other widow, Stateira II, as well as either Stateira's sister Drypteis[2] or Parysatis II (Alexander's third wife).

Roxana and her son were protected by Alexander's mother, Olympias, in Macedonia, but her assassination in 316 BC allowed Cassander to seek kingship. Since Alexander IV Aegus was the legitimate heir to the Alexandrian empire, Cassander ordered him and Roxana to be assassinated ca. 310 BC.

Historical novels [edit]

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ The Nature of Alexander by Mary Renault
  2. ^ Plutarch. Alex. 77.4

External links [edit]