With the same swagger, Alexander can take advantage of his woman friends if that suits his aims. We see a good example some months after he has routed Darius (definitively, though he does not yet know it) at Gaugamela. He then makes a triumphant entry into Babylon, conquers the ceremonial capital of Parsa/Persepolis – and puts it to the torch.
This burning incident has been much criticised by latterday commentators. But it is evident that the Hegemon Alexander, whose control over Greece derives from a mandate of the League of Corinth to lead the Greeks in a war against Persia, has to give his ‘partners’ tangible proof that he is doing his job.
The first and foremost motivation of all warring Greeks is booty. Alexander has balked at giving his soldiers their ‘good right’ to sack Babylon or Susa, but he cannot escape from tradition forever – so Persepolis pays the score. However, Alexander being Alexander, one strict order is enforced: the women citizens of Persepolis are not to be touched (as the Roman biographer Curtius states in his book V.6.8).
By this time, Alexander is planning far ahead. He first has the enormous gold and silver reserves of the royal treasury carried off to safety. Though not to Greece, which in his design has already been set on the sidelines; but to Ekbatana (where he will later install Hefaistion as his prime minister). Then, to hide his real plans to the eyes of the Greeks behind a smokescreen, he theatrically burns down the empty palaces and fortifications of Persepolis. Pure propaganda. But the spectacle has to convince the Greeks that now they can celebrate their triumph over the Persian arch-enemy, who had ravaged and scorched their cities.
And so Alexander coins the legend of Thais: a Greek hetaira has had the inspiration, at a feast with Alexander and his generals, to put a torch to the palace of the hated Xerxes! And what is more, Alexander has immediately approved her initiative, and assisted her personally in throwing more firebrands into the buildings! With the enthusiastic help of her lover, general Ptolemy, the future pharaoh of Egypt!
Why Thais? Because she is from Athens. So “Athens has destroyed Persepolis!” Alexander has always shown a healthy respect for Athens’ brilliant fame…
CYNNANE AND THESSALONIKE, HALF-SISTERS
Just as finely tuned to Greek Realpolitik is Alexander’s treatment of his two half-sisters, Cynnane and Thessalonike. The elder Kunnanè (as her name sounds in her Illyrian –today we would say, Albanian– dialect) is a strong-minded woman. The first child of king Philip, and his blood runs thick. Educated in the war-hardened traditions of her mother Audata, she already accompanies him on his military campaigns when she is only in her teens. The historian Polyainos mentions Cynnane as killing with her own hands the Illyrian queen Kaeria on the battlefield.
Around 338 BC, Philip marries her to his nephew Amyntas. This way, the couple has sufficient legitimacy to function as reserve-candidates to the throne, in case Alexander –who is already leading war parties for his father– would die an untimely death.
When Philip is assassinated a year later, and Alexander needs to shore up a wobbly throne, he immediately has Amyntas eliminated. Cynnane, who has just borne Amyntas’ child, a baby girl, will feel little sympathy for her royal half-brother. To get her out of his hair, Alexander decides to marry her off to a faraway ally, Langaros. But before the trusted Langaros can come over from his dominions (in present-day Bulgaria) for the marriage ceremony, he dies.
Cynnane refuses to be saddled up with another husband. So she withdraws to a corner of Makedon, where she will give her daughter Adea the same warrior education she herself had received. Alexander will never again have to worry about her – but his successors all the more.2
Thessalonike, Alexander’s much younger half-sister, plays no visible role during his lifetime. She is educated in the household of Olympias, as her mother had died three weeks after giving birth to her. She is not allotted a husband. Alexander does not want to see a rival to his own crown prince grow up at the hearth of the Makedonian royal family.
Only after both Alexander ánd Olympias have been eliminated (Antipater’s son, Kassander, is widely suspected of having engineered the first, and publicly seen to have caused the second of these deaths/murders), Thessalonike finally gets married: Kassander forces her to become his wife. And, true to style, it is a son of Kassander who will later kill Thessalonike, his mother, in a fight for the throne.
But now we have wandered into a faraway future; so let’s get back to Alexander, who is busy conquering Persia.
BARSINE
The first Persian woman to play an important role is his life is the princess Barsine. Not a ‘pureblood’ Persian, for her mother is a Greek from Rhodes; but the rest of her pedigree offers more than enough compensation. She is a direct offspring of the High King Artaxerxes II, through his daughter Apame and her son prince Artabazos, hereditary satrap of a Persian province near the Hellespont.
(By the way, “Barsine” is a thoroughly Achaemenid name for a princess. Originally a pet name meaning “my dearie little Highness”, it has been carried by Persian royals since the earliest days of the empire.)
Alexander knows this Barsine since his youth. Her father had taken refuge in Makedon with his whole family, after a failed rebellion against the central government of Susa. King Philip gave him protection in Pella for many years. But finally Artabazos’ brother-in-law, a high ranking mercenary general in Persia’s pay, obtained the royal pardon that allowed the family to return to Ionia. As a thanksgiving present, Artabazos offered this general, Mentor, his daughter Barsine for wife.
However, before that marriage in 342 BC the teenager princess Barsine no doubt became acquainted with Alexander, then in his early teens. Their difference in age was not all that much, probably about two years. Though girls in their adolescence usually outpace boys in social graces, Alexander was an exception. (At that early age, he even succeeded in awing Persian envoys on a visit to Makedon.) So he can easily have befriended a daughter of his father’s longtime guest. In the small, provincial town of Pella, such extraordinary foreign residents as an imperial Persian prince and his elegant daughter must have fascinated Alexander outright.
The fact of her being a youth acquaintance offers the most logical explanation why Barsine is sent to Alexander in 333 BC. She had been captured by the army in Damascus. Most noncombatant members of the Persian court had been left there by Darius on his way to Issos, lest they slow down the march. But he díd take his own family along to the battlefield: the thought that he could lose against that little Makedonian army never crossed his mind.
When Alexander’s general Parmenion makes up the tally of the riches and useful prisoners taken in Damascus –he even counts the number of cooks–, he finds that he also has this princess Barsine in his power. She now is a widowed and remarried woman, mother of a girl and a boy; one from each marriage.
Probably, Barsine and her children have travelled with the Persian court as hostages for the good behaviour of her second husband, the mercenary general Memnon. Anyway, Parmenion correctly thinks that Barsine can be useful for Alexander in the conquest of Persia proper. She is transferred to general headquarters – and as it turns out, straight to Alexander’s bed.
Some sources only want to see her as his housekeeper: a princess of sufficient status, with the added value that she already speaks Greek and knows how a Makedonian household is run; so she can be allowed to look after the daily needs of the king. But Barsine is more than that; and more than a simple bedmate, too. “Her relationship with Alexander was certainly sexual, but also something more substantial –perhaps more formal and more political– than is usually understood,” professor Elizabeth Carney affirms (see: Carney 2000).
Alexander must have loved her for real. He kept her constantly at his side, all discomfort of his endless marches notwithstanding, for at least six years. A few sources even indicate: until his dying day, though not as a concubine any more in the final years. The reason why their relation as lovers came to an end is not explained by the historians, but I wil
l set out my theory presently.
First, another consideration that is more to the point. If Parmenion thinks that Barsine can be useful for the conquest of Persia, this idea has nothing to do with her value in ransom money or as a bargaining chip in political negotiations. For that, Alexander himself has already taken much more valuable hostages on the battlefield of Issos: the wife, the children and the mother of Darius. But he immediately proclaims that he refuses even to think of using them in such a way, and that also applies to Barsine.
Darius, however, dóes think along those lines initially. He sends a haughty letter to Alexander with a proposal to buy back his family. His offer is that Alexander may keep the Ionian dominions he has conquered so far, in exchange for a non-aggression pact with Persia and the return of the royal prisoners. For added measure, Darius also proposes that Alexander may keep one of his (as yet, too young) daughters to marry her. Evidently with the purpose that Persia may one day inherit back, through her children, the lost territories.
No way, Alexander answers, period.
Then why is Barsine still valuable? As a source of information – or rather, as the access point to inside knowledge about the workings of the Persian empire. Her father, prince Artabazos, has again attained high rank at Court. But for now, this cannot be exploited. The prince stays at Darius’ side as a loyal follower, in all senses of the word.
(He still remains with him when, three years later in distant Thara, Darius is killed by Bessos, who proclaims himself High King. Only then will Artabazos, out of enmity to the murderous Bessos, switch sides. Alexander will immediately reward Barsine’s father by appointing him viceroy over wayward Baktria, present-day Afghanistan. But all that lies in an unforeseeable future.)
In the meanwhile, Alexander takes a surprising long time to prepare his assault on Persia proper. No doubt he could have done different. After Issos, with Darius’ army in disarray, he could have stormed down the Royal Road virtually unopposed to take Babylon, Susa and Persepolis.
But no: first he busies himself during nearly two years with occupying the whole eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, from the Hellespont to Lybia. True, this is a legitimate strategic priority, to deny the Persian fleet the option of attacking Makedon behind his back (as Barsine’s husband Memnon indeed tries to do, to no avail). Even so, is it really this visible military/logistic exercise, what takes Alexander such a long time? Or is it the invisible but vital effort to gather the inside information needed to overcome Persia’s still vast might?
In both his decisive clashes with Darius, on the battlefields of Issos and Gaugamela, Alexander directs his attack straight at the enemy’s head: the High King and the small cluster of top-ranking officials around him. These are the real rulers of the world empire that Cyrus has built up, and that is much too large to be effectively occupied by Makedon’s small army. It is this head that Alexander has to overpower, with a swift precision action. To succeed in this, he first has to learn all that can be found out about them. And Barsine knows exactly who can give him the information he so desperately needs.
But despite her merits, in the end Alexander shoves Barsine aside after the birth of their first and only son, Herakles, in 327 BC. This points to a complex situation.
To begin with, it is telling that Herakles does not get born until the sixth year of their relationship. After all, we know Barsine as a fertile woman who became pregnant immediately after her two previous wedding nights. It begs the conclusion that Alexander has told her in very clear terms that she can never become the mother of his heir. And that, therefore, she has used efficient contraceptives for years – until she has suddenly decided to conceive his child even so.
The classical sources indicate that Alexander, who naturally must have felt pride in his first son, díd recognise him in his intimate circle as his offspring; but that he refused to acknowledge either Herakles as his legitimate heir or Barsine as his wife. My view is that he was extremely unhappy with Barsine for presenting him with the accomplished fact of a child in order to bind him at her side.
Whatever the truth, now two things happen. Barsine no longer accompanies the Makedonian army on its campaign through Baktria and Sogdia – and Alexander surprises all and sundry by his sudden decision to have an official marriage ceremony…with another girl.
ROXANE
In part, Roxane will always remain a mystery from the moment on when Alexander took her for a wife. Why did he? Some present-day experts on Alexander prefer to look for political motives. They disregard the fact that classical historians like Arrian and Plutarch give a simple answer: he fell in love.
Curtius adds a revealing tidbit, typical of Alexander: he explained his decision by saying that “Achilles too had loved a captive girl”. (Referring to Briseis, for whose sake Achilles clashed with Agamemnon in a crucial episode of the Trojan war.) And “lest the vanquished feel it as an abuse, Alexander wished to unite himself to Roxane in legal wedlock”.
Arrian even says he has eyewitness accounts of this love story (from Ptolemy of course, and possibly Aristoboulos and Chares too). He also adds a telling personal reflection on Alexander’s relation with women:
“Those who served with Alexander said that Roxane was the loveliest woman they had seen in Asia, after Darius’ wife; and that when Alexander saw her, he fell in love with her. Despite this passion he did not want to violate her as a war captive, but did not think it beneath him to take her in marriage. This was an action of Alexander that I approve and do not censure.
As for Darius’ wife, who was said to be the most beautiful woman in Asia, either he felt no desire for her or he controlled himself, young as he was and at the very height of good fortune, when men act violently. He respected and spared her, showing much restraint as well as an ambition for good repute which was not misplaced.”
Plutarch says much the same, though he characteristically adds both a political and a moralising afterthought:
“His marriage to Roxane was a love match, which began when he first saw her at the height of her youthful beauty taking part in a dance at a banquet. But it also played a part in furthering his policy of reconciliation: the barbarians were encouraged by the feeling of partnership which their alliance created. And they were completely won over by Alexander’s moderation and courtesy, and by the fact that without the sanction of marriage he would not approach the only woman who had ever conquered his heart.”
The moralising end sentence of Plutarch wrongly forgets about the concubine Barsine and the hetaira Kampaspe (plus, possibly, the princess Barsine/Stateira); and his political side remark opens the door to other misinterpretations.
Professor Bosworth, in his Conquest, arguments with the example of Philip: “Alexander underscored his claims to lordship by taking a wife from the conquered territories, following in part the example of his father, though this was not a Makedonian, but a Baktrian princess. Her favourable treatment won over her father to collaborate with the conqueror. However politic it may have been, it aroused resentment among Makedonians opposed to orientalism...”.
Professor Heckel, in his Who’s Who, says: “The chief motive will have been political: the marriage helped to end opposition to him in the northeast.”
These interpretations do not square with the facts. Roxane is no princess, but the simple daughter of a small-time Baktrian noble with no political clout that could provide a motive for Alexander. Only a full two years later –and surely at Roxane’s behest, not because of his own merits– her father is appointed satrap of an outlying region near India.
More to the point, Alexander has already subdued Baktria and Sogdia (and even severely curtailed the unruly Saka tribes across the frontier), by the time he marries Roxane in the summer of 327 BC. He does not need her, nor her father, as a political instrument.
His motive may have been quite the opposite. The salient fact about Roxane is that she has no significant ties, and rather qualifies as a ‘blank page’ when he meets her: a teenager refugee a
mong a group of local maidens performing a welcome dance, at a friendship celebration where Alexander regales the host –nót Roxane’s father– with 30,000 cattle he has just plundered from the Saka.
After the recent breakdown of his relation with Barsine, Roxane’s pubescent appeal probably lays in her stark difference with the adult princess Alexander has had at his side until then. Barsine, a royal with a heavyweight political background, may have led Alexander to the disappointed conclusion that his bedmate was pursuing her own agenda, which could become a political risk. And that is something he would certainly not expect of this child-bride Roxane.
But Roxane becomes a disappointment too. It takes her a year and a half to produce a first child (a stillborn boy). By 324 BC, when Alexander begins his great political reorganization of the empire, she has still not given him a possible heir. Neither has she impressed his court with queenly behaviour. So in the end he decides to marry a real Persian princess: Barsine/Stateira, the granddaughter of Sisygambis.
It was the threat of this rival –pregnant with the undisputed heir to Alexander’s empire, at the time of his fatal illness in 323 BC– that goaded Roxane to take her worst option. If she had linked up with Krateros, or Ptolemy, it could have been different; she too was finally pregnant with a secondary heir. But the first and only thing she thought of, was getting her revenge on Stateira. So she needed Perdikkas, who controlled Babylon — for the moment.
She forged an order sent by Royal Messenger to Susa, probably using Alexander’s seal, telling Stateira and Drypetis to come to the sickbed. As soon as they arrived, she had them killed. Perdikkas covered up for Roxane because he needed her yet unborn child as a counterweight against Alexander’s half-brother Arridaios, whom the mutinous Makedonian troops were proclaiming as the new King.
Professor Carney explains: “…the murder of Alexander’s new Achaemenid wife by Roxane and Perdikkas would confirm that Roxane, despite the fact that she was about to bear Alexander’s child, felt threatened by Stateira, and inclined to believe that any heir borne by this new bride would have precedence over any child of her own. While marrying a daughter of Darius in the 330s would have been a statement of Alexander’s conquest, by 324 it was a symbol for [imperial] continuity rather than for the already completed conquest. No wonder that Roxane was worried about these women and any children they might produce — Alexander had made them the future.”
All Alexander's Women Page 3
